[JoAnneM]

Which is the most difficult - Bidding, Play, or Defense? Years ago I saw some percentages with defense supposedly being the most difficult but I can't find it now. We are having a discussion on another forum and I need expert help.

[aguahombre]

JoAnneM, on Jul 1 2009, 07:24 PM, said:

Which is the most difficult - Bidding, Play, or Defense?  Years ago I saw some percentages with defense supposedly being the most difficult but I can't find it now.  We are having a discussion on another forum and I need expert help.

good grief. u ARE the expert help. but based on the number of problems posted here, and elsewher....and the amount of time people spend on their systems, and anything else i can think of, bidding gets my vote.

[Hanoi5]

Defense
Play
Bidding (the most difficult thing in bidding is evaluation unless you have a memory problem in which case why would you be playing bridge?)

[Mbodell]

The most difficult part of bidding is the competitive aspects, IMO. And you'll see a lot of "what do I do over preempt" or "should I act" type posts. Many people (myself included) spend a lot of time on constructive systems, which may be the easiest part of the game. I think, by far, defense is the hardest though - especially MP defense. You need to visualize partner and declarer's hand, figure out what the goals are, figure out what lines of attack to make, and what information to signal to partner that helps him more than declarer.

Really all 3 pieces are reinforcing though as you need to consider the bidding and the declarer play when thinking through defense. In the bidding you need to think about the play of both sides. And when declaring you need to consider the bidding and the defensive strategies and what you are giving away versus learning on your line.

[qwery_hi]

IMO declarer play is significantly easier than defense or bidding. I think bidding is the toughest, since at defense, we have information from the bidding and the dummy, but not the other way round.

[Elianna]

I think that it's individual.

And some people are definitely better at certain aspects than others.

For example, I know that my declarer play is at a MUCH worse level than my bidding or defense. I know that it's supposedly easier, but for some reason, I find that it's harder.

For example: I was declaring something at a regional against very competent defenders, and realized that I needed to cut-off lines of communication between the sides. I even got so far as to realize that what I needed to do was not cover a certain card. Unfortunately, I realized it on hand 1, and didn't re-realize it for hand 3!

[peachy]

I think defense is hardest but the most rewarding to get it right, it also contributes to results more because we defend in about half the hands and declare only about 25% of them. Bidding is the easiest.
.

[jdonn]

Defense is CLEARLY the hardest. Why do you think everyone bids so much?

[matmat]

i'm still not sure what you mean by "difficult." What is the measuring stick here?

[Mbodell]

matmat, on Jul 1 2009, 10:30 PM, said:

i'm still not sure what you mean by "difficult." What is the measuring stick here?

I think just doing the right thing. Playing SA what do I bid with AQxx Kxx KJxx Kx is an easy question. Not all bidding is that easy, but constructive bidding often is. On defense, there are many more challenging questions where it is harder to tell what the right answer is from what should be the opening lead, what spot card should I play here, should I win and switch or duck or what not.

One interesting experiment to do to try to get a feel for declarer versus defense is to track your matchpoints over a half dozen sessions. If you track what matchpoint percentage your side gets when you declare versus when you are dummy versus when you defend (possibly breaking down defend based on if you had the opening lead or not) you likely will notice a pattern that you score more matchpoints in general when your side is declaring than when you are defending. Obviously, aspects of the bidding are tied into this measure. But I've used this as a Q&D check to see that I'm pulling my weight in my declarer play (or that partner is or that we're really blowing it when I make the anti-killing opening lead). And I've also noticed that our side routinely scores between 10 and 20% more when we declare versus when we defend. And from talking to others, they've seen the same thing.

[Codo]

I am with Elianna, it is an individual problem.

My declarer play is my worst part.

[gnasher]

I think that defence is the area where the problems are hardest to get right, but bidding problems are much more frequent than defensive problems, so bidding usually has a greater influence on the result than anything else.

The proportions of each type of problem on these forums probably reflects what people find interesting, rather than what they find hard. That's why there are so few lead problems.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

depends mainly on personal interest, but in my opinion

Declarer play is the easiest one, since you can practice this alone,
you dont need a partner.
You see a lot of Bridge players, which are good at declarer play.

2nd comes bidding, to train bidding you need only your partner.

Hardest is defence, because an effective training requires 4 players.

Personnally I am more interestes in bidding, followed by defence.
Not suprinsingly declarer play is my weakest area (self estimation).

With kind regards
Marlowe

[helene_t]

Declarer play is arguably the easiest part because it does not involve seeing the situation from partner's view. I think intermediate players can get away without paying attention to partner's view during defense. Making bidding the most difficult part for most beginners/intermediates.

Also, declarer play theory can be presented more compactly that the other two. Plan the play in notrumps and plan the play in suit contracts are two themes that take you a long way. Defense is already more complex because of the added dimension: Choose an opening lead, plan the defense after your own opening lead, plan the defense after partner's opening lead. Bidding theory is much more complex.

Personally I find bidding the easiest part because information exchange and constructed languages are areas that appeal to me. Whereas the complex if-then analysis involved in play is my weakest point, together with my bad attention and short term memory. I rarely answer play problems, especially defense problems, on this forum, because the mere presentation of the problem (what happened during the first three rounds) dizzies me.

But matmat raises a key question, what does "difficult" mean? You can measure the difficulty of a pop quiz question by the percentage of participants who get it wrong. In that sense, I think bidding is the easiest part except maybe for novices: you will soon reach the level where you make no major bidding mistakes on most boards. Edit: this is contrary to what Gnasher says. Have to think about it. Anyway, while a major defensive mistake often happens not to make much difference to the MPs/IMPs, a major bidding mistake usually does.

Bidding is the part you will need to read/discuss most to get right. I think a typical beginner's curriculum is 65% bidding, 20% declarer play and 15% defense, or something like that.

[Phil]

For me, the play of the hand is tougher, because there's usually less information available.

[Aberlour10]

Watching matches with absolute world class teams, where in the end nuances deciding about win and loose, I have a subjective feeling that the performance in the defense plays a main role, that there are the most problems players have to think about.

Robert

[Free]

Imo:
1. leads
2. defense
3. bidding
4. play

[aguahombre]

Joanne, by posting this in "offline", are you suggesting the answer might be different in live bridge than on bbo or ok? If so, I hope that this would entail considerations which are above board.

[cherdanno]

1. Defense 2. Play 3. bidding.

[mikeh]

Defence is and always will be the more difficult aspect of the game, and declarer play the simplest.

Declarer has complete control over his side's assets, and proper technique has been well-described for all common situations for decades. The control aspect eliminates any doubt as to what partner intended... a doubt that exists in defence and bidding in even the best partnerships, to some degree.

Bidding is largely a matter of discussion and practice, and while the opps can try to disrupt the bidding, we can trust our partner's calls.

On defence, we not only have the ambiguities inherent in determining partner's intentions, but we also have to wrestle with falsecards by declarer, or a line of play calculated to make our tasks difficult but we also have to recognize that the more information we give partner, the more we give declarer... that is an issue in bidding as well, but not to such an extreme degree.

Anyway, that's my view