[georgeac]

Two part question about benifits of analyzing hands after session and what to really analzye.

My regular p and I play on BBO a lot and sometimes do really well and sometimes not but almost never talk about the hands afterwards. How benificial is this practice?

We usually play about 30-40 boards so analyzing all of them is probably not feasible. What should we focus on if we do discuss them? considering the imp swings on bbo can be any number of things. strength of opps, bids on other tables that are x and xx, etc.

[Free]

If I analyze hands, I usually start with the bad ones and see what went wrong. If I have time left, I also analyze the good ones and why they gave us a good result.

You learn from your mistakes, and you learn from things you did well.

[kenberg]

I am a big fan of bbo but on the downside i do find dixcussions with online partners more challenging than f2f discussions. For me, and I think for many, the following example is illustrative:

I was second hand.

(1NT)=pass-(2D)-X

Eventually they land in 3NT and I am on lead. I have four diamond spots and I will lead one of them. Partner and I have not discussed which one. It turned out not to matter as long as I lead one of them, but on another hand it might.

Such areas of non-discussion occur much more on bbo than f2f, at least with me. Going through such things would be useful and there are more than enough of them to keep me busy.

[Codo]

What you do with your regular partner depends on your goals.

If you primaly want to have fun: Play - this will still improve your pla.
If you want to improve: Analysze all bad boards. Maybe they are bad because you had just a few comparing scores and these are silly. Maybe your opps defended very well. But most often, something went wrong in your partnerships.
If you REALLY want to improve: Check all boards. Even the great ones. IF you reach a + 15 imps swing at bbo, the chances are great that you misbind or took the wrong and lucky line. IF you score an average board you may just found a lucky line in your declarer play, needing a workung finesse and anybody else made it with a better line. Maybe you signalled wrong but it did not matter.

I skype with my regular partner after each session to discuss the obvious things. One of us looks at all boards later and mailed the errors he found. It works well and it pays.

Of course this means that you cannot play 30 or 40 boards any more because you have not enough time. But you cannot have everything.

[DJNeill]

Hi georgeac,

The first job is to talk to your partner and find out if they have the same views on analysis you do, and I would suggest sticking to a plan that allows both of you to have fun.

Once you have defined that scope, you can decide what to try to improve.

To that end, it would help to have someone you consider much better than you analyze your online session records and point out any major flaws. It helps to get opinions.

Thanks,
Dan

[suokko]

You don't exactly need partner for analysis and learning from it. There is a lot of personal skills that can improve from replaying same hand in bbo teaching table.

In teaching table you get GIB to help in double dummy analysis that helps spotting all the minor double dummy details. To this to work you better check that you have selected bbo to record all the hands that you play. Then yo ucn open the latest lin file from bbo\hands\<nickname>\.

In personal analysis you can check your own declarer play, leads and some key defesive decisions. You should always ask if there was any reason to find the better line that you can see open cards. Sometimes there was the hint but you just didn't know to look for it at the table. But there is also many hands where you are not supposed to have information enough to do the best double dummy decision without lucky guess.

But of course the best would be if you did this teaching table season together. Then you can talk about biding and signals too.

[billw55]

kenberg, on Dec 4 2009, 07:35 AM, said:

I am a big fan of bbo but on the downside i do find dixcussions with online partners more challenging than f2f discussions. For me, and I think for many, the following example is illustrative:

I was second hand.

(1NT)=pass-(2D)-X

Eventually they land in 3NT and I am on lead. I have four diamond spots and I will lead one of them. Partner and I have not discussed which one. It turned out not to matter as long as I lead one of them, but on another hand it might.

Such areas of non-discussion occur much more on bbo than f2f, at least with me. Going through such things would be useful and there are more than enough of them to keep me busy.

Interesting! Most first-time partners, in a hurry, will discuss a few quick bidding agreements. But for me, number one is defensive carding, and "what do you lead from spot cards?" is high on the list. We're going to be defending half the hands on average, so neglecting this whole domain makes no sense to me.

[vuroth]

Having partnership on the same page is key. Some like the post-game analysis, some don't.

My partner and I always exchange emails the next day.

billw55 - a great many players seem overly enamoured with bidding theory. It's just how it goes.

[y66]

Once you and pard agree on your goals, I suggest you make a commitment to spend some time doing this and just do it. Ditto for partnership bidding practice. Be careful about trying to do too much at first. You can adjust the time commitment and the types of problems you focus on as you move forward.

JLall has a good post on this general topic here and some specific comments here (under "Communication").

Chapter 6 in Bob Hamman's book At The Table has a fascinating discussion of Joe Musumeci's "performance analysis system" that the Dallas Aces used to transform themselves from "wimps to tigers".

I used to think accepting constructive criticism was the hardest thing. Now I think giving useful, constructive criticism is even harder.

[georgeac]

thanks for all the replies.

[peachy]

If you want to analyze, you do not need to do it with your partner. But if both of you are interested, it is good to discuss the hands that either partner wants to discuss, for purpose of getting on the same page with partner. For example, clarifying system, filling a hole in system, clarifying defensive issues, going over reasons why some card was played or why passive or aggressive lead was necessary/not necessary. Leave declarer play out of it unless you want to point out your own declarer play error; or, partner asks what he could have done differently as declarer.

[peachy]

billw55, on Dec 4 2009, 09:23 AM, said:

We're going to be defending half the hands on average, so neglecting this whole domain makes no sense to me.

Shining even a clearer light to this good observation: each individual player is defending about twice as many hands as he declares.