[32519]

These forums are crammed with first class advice; whether it be bidding, defence, playing, conventions or whatever. Yet very few actually manage to successfully apply all this advice freely given. The BBO Forums versus JEC matches are a case in point.

So where does the problem lie?

[manudude03]

Experience. Pros spend all day practising meaning they have a lot more experience than anyone else. Matches aren't won in the 3NT contracts with 9 top tricks and a combined 27 count. There are a lot of decisions where lesser folk may go one way or another, but the more experienced players are more likely to get them right.

[suokko]

Many don't do same decission in table and when presented something as problem. It is natural to suspect that first tough coming for problem isn't the correct one and people take longer to think for the solution.

[FrancesHinden]

deleted

[diana_eva]

The world class advice in these forums comes from players who rarely (if ever) had time to play JEC vs BBF, and not always with team mates of their choice.

[rogerclee]

You might be shortchanging the accomplishments of a lot of the posters. Frances, gnasher, jallerton are all considered top English players, philking was a coach for the open English team before I think, MFA is a top danish player, JLOGIC is one of the best players in the world period, etc.

[diana_eva]

OK, i'll try to rephrase that, sorry.

OP says there are posters who give first class advice
OP says there are posters who play BBF vs JEC
OP asks why BBF team doesn't do better in practice with all the good advice in the Forums.

I was trying to say that the teams who play JEC are made of regular posters who post all over the forums, not just of 1st-class-advice-givers.

Delicate subject, of course, but IMO there were few instances where BBF was represented by two regular partnerships of 1st-class-advice givers.

[JLOGIC]

 32519, on 2013-May-15, 12:24, said:

These forums are crammed with first class advice; whether it be bidding, defence, playing, conventions or whatever. Yet very few actually manage to successfully apply all this advice freely given. The BBO Forums versus JEC matches are a case in point.

So where does the problem lie?

There are 2 main parts to playing well, one is improving your overall knowledge and judgement, the other is executing up to your theoretical potential.

The forums can help with part one (as can books, magazines, blogs, etc). If you have never seen a squeeze, you need to read about it to know how to do it. If you have not been exposed to different expert viewpoints on bidding theory etc, you will have more knowledge holes and be more likely to do bad things.

The forums can show you all different kinds of themes, and expose you to many different viewpoints about bidding, can challenge your beliefs and make you better theoretically (and make you think about more situations).

However, the forums cannot help you with part 2, and that is the most important part. At some point, rather than knowing how to do a backwash squeeze, it is more important to be able to count on every hand, remember what cards have been played, count your points and tricks correctly, not revoke, etc.

Executing up to your theoretical level is mostly about playing a lot so that it is routine. There are lots of good players who are inconsistent, going from advanced to expert is more a consistency thing than an upping your knowledge thing. Naturally, professional players like those who play in JEC and even JEC himself who plays 52 boards a day every day is going to be better at part 2. There is no shame in that, it is hard to be a consistent bridge player when you can't play much since you also have a job, a family, etc to take care of.

I don't know if you think reading the forums will magically make you an expert player, but it won't, there is no way around putting in lots and lots of work. That is true of becoming expert at anything. I don't think there's any shame if a team of amateurs cannot beat a team of life long pros. The forums should be helpful for players of all levels and there's lots to learn here but not few people even want to put in the work required to be as good as people like Michael Seamon and JEC and Alfredo Versace lol, that would be a life long journey and even then it is no certainty that someone can be that good as they are some of the best players around.

[JLOGIC]

An example of what I'm saying, I happened to watch a few hands of the JEC match last week. Team BBF went down in 2 games because they simply did not count or miscounted their tricks. I do not say that to pick on anyone, it happens, my point is more that obviously those players are experts or better and it's not a lack of skill or knowledge that caused them to make those mistakes, it's simply a concentration lapse or w/e. Reading the forums cannot stop those kind of errors. We lost by like 30 so that was most of the deficit. It is not like hands are too hard, it is really true that bridge is a game of errors, and at some point whoever makes less of those rates to win. And a team of all bridge pros who play all the time are going to make less of those every time.

This is why I laugh when people say that playing at the club every day is bad for you. There is nothing better, it keeps you sharp, just going through the motions so often. That is what this game is all about.

[GreenMan]

"The best play badly, and the rest are awful." --Hamman

One way to think about what Justin says is the old saw that experts don't win by making brilliant bids and plays so much as by not screwing up the not-too-difficult hands.*

The time I played in the JEC match, I think I tossed about the number of IMPs we lost by just in not thinking clearly on a couple of hands, one where I misbid, one where I misplayed. Someone who plays more regularly would have been more thoughtful on those hands and might have won the match. (I made lots of other mistakes, but those hands bug me most because they were well within my abilities.)

*Or you might say, "An expert is someone who recognizes his mistakes as soon as he's made them. A world-class player sees more of his mistakes before he makes them."

[JLOGIC]

 GreenMan, on 2013-May-15, 22:01, said:

(I made lots of other mistakes, but those hands bug me most because they were well within my abilities.)

That is a very rational and healthy attitude.

Related to something you said, the mistakes that tilt me the most by far are the ones where I immediately realize why I should have gone right (and not in the sense of resulting myself, in the sense that I just overlooked or didn't think about something important that I should have). My view is that I should never make those mistakes, because if I would have thought for a little bit longer I would have gotten it right.

Conversely, the ones where I think that I thought about everything and used my best judgement and it didn't work don't bother me at all, that's just life sometimes. I will usually ask friends or post it or something to get different perspectives because maybe I weighted the clues incorrectly but at least I gave it my best effort at the time, no shame in that. So pretty much what you're saying, the ones that bug you the most are the ones well within your abilities to get right.

If it bugs you enough and you are brutally honest with yourself you will probably start trying harder to avoid those since you will hate yourself so much for those kind of mistakes, and thus you will improve. MOTIVATION. That is why people who are intellectually dishonest and blame other factors like luck or their partner for their mistakes get better slower (or not at all). It's probably a defense mechanism to spare themselves the pain of knowing they screwed the pooch but it is bad for development.

[gwnn]

To paraphrase my favourite quote on chess, 'bridge is the battle between your aversion to the pain of losing and your aversion to the pain of counting to thirteen.'

[EricK]

 gwnn, on 2013-May-16, 00:49, said:

To paraphrase my favourite quote on chess, 'bridge is the battle between your aversion to the pain of losing and your aversion to the pain of counting to thirteen.'

But it's not really that simple. Counting up to thirteen is the easy part, isn't it? It's retaining and using that information which is hard.

It's one thing to look at, say, an eight card end position written down on paper and see that if you cash 5 tricks West will be forced to discard down to A; Kx and be ripe for a throw in. It's another to be able to do that with a couple of the hands purely imagined, and not written down. It is yet harder to do it if you have had to construct those unseen hands from clues in the bidding and play (only some of which will have involved counting up to 13!). And of course all the time it is important to be sure you will know if West has discarded down to Ax; K in which case case your winning play is to drop the K. And even that is not enough. On many hands you will need to work this out much earlier in the play, and rely on various hypotheticals (I can only make it if West has such and such, in which case, If I play the cards in this order, then by trick 8 ...).

[dustinst22]

 JLOGIC, on 2013-May-15, 20:40, said:

There are 2 main parts to playing well, one is improving your overall knowledge and judgement, the other is executing up to your theoretical potential.

The forums can help with part one (as can books, magazines, blogs, etc). If you have never seen a squeeze, you need to read about it to know how to do it. If you have not been exposed to different expert viewpoints on bidding theory etc, you will have more knowledge holes and be more likely to do bad things.

The forums can show you all different kinds of themes, and expose you to many different viewpoints about bidding, can challenge your beliefs and make you better theoretically (and make you think about more situations).

However, the forums cannot help you with part 2, and that is the most important part. At some point, rather than knowing how to do a backwash squeeze, it is more important to be able to count on every hand, remember what cards have been played, count your points and tricks correctly, not revoke, etc.

Executing up to your theoretical level is mostly about playing a lot so that it is routine. There are lots of good players who are inconsistent, going from advanced to expert is more a consistency thing than an upping your knowledge thing. Naturally, professional players like those who play in JEC and even JEC himself who plays 52 boards a day every day is going to be better at part 2. There is no shame in that, it is hard to be a consistent bridge player when you can't play much since you also have a job, a family, etc to take care of.

I don't know if you think reading the forums will magically make you an expert player, but it won't, there is no way around putting in lots and lots of work. That is true of becoming expert at anything. I don't think there's any shame if a team of amateurs cannot beat a team of life long pros. The forums should be helpful for players of all levels and there's lots to learn here but not few people even want to put in the work required to be as good as people like Michael Seamon and JEC and Alfredo Versace lol, that would be a life long journey and even then it is no certainty that someone can be that good as they are some of the best players around.

This is really a great post. This really rings true also in the game of Spades where I obv have vastly more experience and am now trying to go through that same process in Bridge. To extend this further, there are some people who are theory specialists (and write books, or teach), but when it comes down to the nitty gritty details of actual practical play, they cannot compete at the top level simply due to lack of experience/grinding out a ton of hands. The skills of counting/risk judgment/tactical decisions/reading your opponent, etc come through playing a lot, not having theoretical knowledge. I also think most top players are beyond insanely competitive, something that is pretty much requisite at that level and all the theory in the world cannot compensate for.

[GreenMan]

 JLOGIC, on 2013-May-15, 22:46, said:

So pretty much what you're saying, the ones that bug you the most are the ones well within your abilities to get right.

If it bugs you enough and you are brutally honest with yourself you will probably start trying harder to avoid those since you will hate yourself so much for those kind of mistakes, and thus you will improve. MOTIVATION.

Indeed, and I think this is why this game is so addictive for many of us: We can see that if we'd JUST put a little more thought into this or that hand we'd have done better, so we come right back and try again. And that's true no matter what level you're playing at.