[SteveMoe]

If you look at the ACBL convention card you might surmise that bidding is at least 75 % of the game...
My limited experience says Defense > Declarer play >> Bidding. Best results have always had strong defense and sound but not perfect declarer play.
Consider the long run: we declare 50% of the time and defend 50% of the time. When declaring partner will play 1/2 and we will play 1/2. So 50% of the time we defend and 25% we declare, 25% we are dummy.

[blackshoe]

If you can't bid, you will play and defend in bad (for you) contracts. So the amount of time you spend bidding compared to tossing cards around is not the whole picture.

Another way of looking at it: a bridge hand has two parts: 50% is bidding, 50% is play or defense. So 50% is bidding, 12.5% is declaring, and 37.5% is defense. Even that isn't an accurate picture, though, because some hands are more difficult to bid than others, and some hands are more difficult to play than others, and some hands are more difficult to defend than others, and there's not necessarily any correlation between difficulty in one area and difficulty in another.

[32519]

In a recent teams match we ended third after throwing away 35 IMPS on two boards, both were bidding mistakes. Those 35 IMPS cost us second place.

On defence you can pick up an IMP or two by preventing declarer from making overtricks. Similarly you can gain an IMP or two when you as declarer make an overtrick. But you need plenty of boards to eat back the 35 IMPS that you yourself threw away because of a bidding error.

[mike777]

Clearly declarer play and defense is most important you need to make zero% games to win

You can bid zer% games or low % games and win if you can play well and defend well.

See last board of Spingold.
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It just seems if you bid andmake your games and don't go for a number on part scores you will win your fair share.

That means if we need to win the part score battle to win I wont and that is ok.
If I need to fake out your team and steal hands with my bidding to win I wont.
OTOH if that means I need to be aggressive in my bidding and take chances to win..ok but steal from you no.....

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btw it might help to define just what a bidding error is as compared to I just did not know what to bid.....

If you know the correct bid and don't make it that is an error....if you don't know the correct bid for whatever reason I would not call that an error. If I don't know that 1+1=2 that is more much more than a simple error.

If you keep losing 35 imps on simple errors..errors where you know the correct answer, then the problem is more than bidding.

OTOH you may be losing 35 imps for no other reason other than you don't know the correct answer and that is ok.

[Free]

32519, on 2013-August-22, 23:02, said:

On defence you can pick up an IMP or two by preventing declarer from making overtricks. Similarly you can gain an IMP or two when you as declarer make an overtrick. But you need plenty of boards to eat back the 35 IMPS that you yourself threw away because of a bidding error.

Short through the corner, as usual... You can also win or lose 10+ imps when you set the contract 1 trick, or if you manage to make an unmakeable contract. And in MP every trick is important.

[32519]

We got system notes. So the correct bid can be found in our system notes. When you screw up something that is in your system notes, to me that is a bidding error.

[hrothgar]

blackshoe, on 2013-August-22, 22:54, said:

Another way of looking at it: a bridge hand has two parts: 50% is bidding, 50% is play or defense. So 50% is bidding, 12.5% is declaring, and 37.5% is defense.

Why do people always ignore my finely honed talent in laying down cards as dummy?
I've worked hard to master this element of the game, and I humbly feel that I am the equal of any of the greats...

I've always been upset to see this aspect of bridge given such short shrift.

[Zelandakh]

blackshoe, on 2013-August-22, 22:54, said:

So 50% is bidding, 12.5% is declaring, and 37.5% is defense.

Did you mean 50:17:33? I cannot imagine defending 3 times as often as I declare. You have to be playing a really cautious system to achieve that. We usually defend about 8-9 of 22 hands in the local club. Earlier it was more but the locals bid more aggressively against us now after being stolen from too often.

[blackshoe]

Zelandakh, on 2013-August-23, 06:35, said:

Did you mean 50:17:33? I cannot imagine defending 3 times as often as I declare. You have to be playing a really cautious system to achieve that. We usually defend about 8-9 of 22 hands in the local club. Earlier it was more but the locals bid more aggressively against us now after being stolen from too often.

No, I meant what I wrote, but I probably got it wrong. :-)

[helene_t]

If dummy time doesn't count and half the time is spent bidding, then the ratio should be 4-2-1. But I don't think that was the OP statement. It's not about time.

[kenberg]

---

Suppose 3NT makes. Kudos for play? Kudos for bidding? Criticism of defense? Criticism of 3♦? If 3NT goes down, is it bad bidding or bad play?

Mike, above, mentions the Spingold. This is from the Spingold, and 3NT was made. Looking at the EW cards, I would not say 3NT is a favorite although, looking at all four hands, it seems to be on ice. The opening lead was a club, Q holding. Bad lead? The spades were played small to the Jack, small back to the 8. Very good, but no doubt made easier by the opening 3♦. Oh, and that's eight tricks after bringing in the spades.

There are of course hands where the contract is hopeless, other hands where you cannot go down (although some still do go down). On many hands, I find it difficult to say whether the result was mostly do to the play or mostly do to the play. Here the play was excellent, but they had to first get to 3NT and, as I say, I am not so sure EW would have chosen that contract if they saw each other's cards.

So is this good result for EW due to bidding or play? I prefer to simply see it as really good bridge.

[sfi]

Playing any reasonable system, having good agreements is far more important than what those agreements are (my guess would be at least a factor of 10). If you assume both pairs have reasonable agreements, then the majority of the points are likely to come down to declarer play or defence.

For one useful data point, I took a look at the final we just played the other night. All 8 players are competitive in national events and several have represented Australia, so the standard was pretty good. Over 28 boards the score was 61-40, and it turns out it's clear how to attribute all of those IMPs:

Declarer/defence: 57
Bidding judgement: 27
System differences: 16
Psyche: 1

Since defence and declarer play are intricately linked, it's quite hard to separate the two, but that sort of breakdown feels pretty normal. It's also hard to separate swings that should be attributed to a better system than those properly attributed merely to a difference in system (my view is that all 7/16 was due to a misunderstanding and the other 9 to hands that just happened to work better for one pair).

It's worth noting that all the double digit swings came from games that were made at one table and set at the other - mostly due to difficult defensive decisions or defensive errors.

Looking just at the swings doesn't necessarily tell the whole story, but it's an easy first approximation.

[cloa513]

32519, on 2013-August-22, 23:02, said:

In a recent teams match we ended third after throwing away 35 IMPS on two boards, both were bidding mistakes. Those 35 IMPS cost us second place.

On defence you can pick up an IMP or two by preventing declarer from making overtricks. Similarly you can gain an IMP or two when you as declarer make an overtrick. But you need plenty of boards to eat back the 35 IMPS that you yourself threw away because of a bidding error.

I saw a hand that was stone dead due to extreme distribution on good defence- not one opponent found the defence.

Basically it was in 4 spades and the lead was the best club to AK in partner- doubleton clubs in dummy. The killer return was a diamond as partner was void. That would have been a lot of IMP transfer. Amazingly playing with GIBs they found that killer. Some opponents in that tournament played three rounds of clubs. Excellent defence or lucky defence can kill otherwise good contracts.

[mycroft]

sfi: How many of the play/defence swings could be due to system differences in the auction? One side bid X where the other bid Y, and so declarer/partner knew/could guess better...

[sfi]

mycroft, on 2013-August-26, 09:25, said:

sfi: How many of the play/defence swings could be due to system differences in the auction? One side bid X where the other bid Y, and so declarer/partner knew/could guess better...

I don't have the auctions at the other table, but it looks like 13 IMPs were due to the hands being declared from the other side and getting a different lead. Systemic differences appear to play a part in both cases (the big swing came when declarer had to guess which king to finesse for and I had led low in one of those suits. At the other table the other hand had a safe lead and declarer misguessed). Another hand cost 13 IMPs when declared from a different side. Here also the play at trick 1 gave away the contract, but that one was defender error rather than who was declaring.

Different leads from the same side also directly resulted in 13 of the IMPs. Only 1 of those might have been affected by the auction.

So 39 IMPs were decided at trick 1, and 1/3 of those are due to differences in system.

The other play decisions were unaffected by any bidding IMO.

[dustinst22]

chasetb, on 2011-July-05, 16:19, said:

I feel not counting luck, that bidding CANNOT be 80% of the game simply because of the number of bidding systems that have had success.

Are we referring to Bidding as simply the "system" used or are we referring to judgment?

Btw, the answer to what % of the game is bidding must certainly be relative to what field you are playing in. I suspect that the stronger the field, the more that the bidding % increases (since card play becomes more equalized).

[jallerton]

sathyab, on 2013-August-22, 14:16, said:

But it was swings in bidding that decided the match. A 28 IMP swing hand was definitely a big one. At our table we judged well to get to 4M judging that 6M was against odds given the lead of an obvious unbid suit. The bidding at the other table got messy with issues of UI being raised and when opponents got to 6M, our counterpart made a poor choice in lead and the slam came home.

Why is that a swing from bidding rather than from the play? It looks like both to me: the bidding meant there was going to be a swing. The play determined which direction it was in. The bidding swung 14 imps. The lead swung 28.

[Vampyr]

32519, on 2013-August-23, 02:28, said:

We got system notes. So the correct bid can be found in our system notes. When you screw up something that is in your system notes, to me that is a bidding error.

Why were the errors made? Did the player judge that the system bid was inferior to another, or was the system forgotten? If the latter, two system forgets in one match is outrageous. It sounds like you need to dramatically pare down your system.

[32519]

Vampyr, on 2013-August-26, 18:54, said:

Why were the errors made? Did the player judge that the system bid was inferior to another, or was the system forgotten? If the latter, two system forgets in one match is outrageous. It sounds like you need to dramatically pare down your system.

There was no excuse for either mistake. In fact the first was elementary, something a novice might make. Definately not what an intermediate should do.

[kenberg]

The first response to the OP was from nigel_k who said that it depends on exactly what question is being asked. I agree wholeheartedly. The following hand perhaps supports this point. I am South. Mathchpoints (I forgot to put that into the daigram).

---

Assuming (I can always hope) that you do not think that I have done anything particularly moronic yet, what now? The five level belongs to the opponents? Does LOTT help? Just how many total trump are there? I post the full hand below, with a bit of a gap, so you can think before seeing it.











The full hand:

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Huh! EW have 12 clubs, NS have 9 hearts, doesn't LOTT say that the number of tricks in a club contract plus the number of tricks in a heart contract is supposed to be 12+9=21? We are a little short. In hearts, the defense can be Ace of spades, spade to K, ruff, heart Ace holding hearts to 9 tricks. In spades it may be harder to find, but a diamond lead appears to hold a spade contract to 9 tricks via 2 spades, a heart and a third round diamond ruff (LOTT does assume best defense, right?) . In clubs, take the first 2 diamonds and sit and wait for a heart, holding clubs to 10 tricks.

OK, so this time "Obey the LAW" is the wrong adage, "The 5 level belongs to the opponents" is the right adage. BUT. Passing 5♣ scores a little under 40%, doubling 5♣ scores a little under 50%. I bid 5♥ and scored 93% since the opponents forgot to beat it: Club lead ruffed, heart lead ducked (now I will be down 1 at worst), heart continuation won by E, another club, run diamonds, score it up.


OK, E should beat it. After I ruff the first club, just how was E planning on beating this if I was holding the Ace of spade? So yes, he should place that card in his partner's hand and then the defense is easy. If it should turn out that declarer (that's me) should turn up with the spade Ace then that's just too bad, they were never beating it.

So I should have been down. Yes. But I wasn't. And was 5♥ a bad bid? Wrong on this hand, but at the time I made my decision I was far from convinced that we were beating 5♣.

It seems to me that this is the usual situation. We make close decisions, we are sometimes wrong, we are sometimes lucky. I guess tis hand exhibits my bad bidding since we can beat 5♣ and even bad bidding from the oppoents since they can beat 4♠. And it exhibits bad play, since they can beat 5♥. Otoh, everything seemed reasonable at the time.

Btw, my real objection to LOTT is not that the totals don't always work out right. The problem is that at the time of decision, the trump totals are usually, as here, not known. I knew we had 8 spades and probably not 9, I did not know we had 9 hearts, and I knew EW had "a lot" of clubs but translating "a lot" into 12 was beyond my powers. And then the total trumps were 2 more than the total tricks anyway. What's a guy to do?


May we all get better. I think I still bid 5♥ next time, but perhaps I am nuts. I have been called worse.