[matmat]

just saw this exchange:


south: I think the play is important as bidding, I have to improve that
north: no, bidding 70%, defence 20%, play 10% only

discuss...

[FrancesHinden]

Haven't we been here before?

You can come up with two different splits

1. What should I be spending my time on?
2. Which has the most impact on results?

I think (2) is probably the one you are referring to, and the answer is that it depends on the standard. The general opinion last time this question came up is that bidding has the most impact on results in world championships, but this is because most people capable of competing for a world championship are already excellent card players, while there are still many different bidding systems around together with differences of judgement in difficult situations.

Some huge generalisations follow:

At my local club, one of the biggest differentiators at matchpoints is partscore defence and declarer play.

The way I win imp matches against weaker teams is usually by bidding (and making) game more often.

The biggest source of "culpable" swings when I play KO matches against similar standard teams tends to be in the defence & declarer play of games. There are obviously also swings both in and out when it's marginal whether you want to be in game/slam or not. This isn't world championship standard.

The way I win imp matches against stronger teams is either because they are playing worse than we are on the day, or through more successful uncontested auctions. But that's because our team tends to have a lot of detailed partnership agreements (not necessarily complex system, but just a lot of understanding) so that's our 'strong point' if you like.

[Walddk]

Let me put it this way. You can teach people to bid, but you can't teach them to play or defend if they have no card flair. So any day of the week I will prefer a competent card player as my partner.

What good is it if he can bid to the right contract if he can't play the cards? If he can play the cards, however, he will, sooner or later, catch up with his shortcomings in the bidding area. Smart card players will.

Roland

[dburn]

Jeremy Flint once remarked that you could always teach a good card player how to bid properly. Then he took a sip of his favourite Ruddles County beer and a puff on his cigar before adding "At least, that's what I thought before I met Irving Rose."

[the hog]

"Let me put it this way. You can teach people to bid"

I doubt it Roland. One of the best card players I have ever seen bid like a petrified pig.

[P_Marlowe]

Walddk, on Oct 22 2008, 05:43 AM, said:

Let me put it this way. You can teach people to bid, but you can't teach them to play or defend if they have no card flair. So any day of the week I will prefer a competent card player as my partner.

What good is it if he can bid to the right contract if he can't play the cards? If he can play the cards, however, he will, sooner or later, catch up with his shortcomings in the bidding area. Smart card players will.

Roland

Of course this is true.

But quite often Good Card players dont have a
regular partner, hence they usually play a limited
set of agreements.
Agreements means partnership understandings,
which is different to system and conventions.

And if you regular reach sensible contracts, you dont
need to play the cards as well, as would be needed,
if you reach dubious contracts.

I think the following is attributed to Alfred Sheinworld
"Bad contracts have one advantage, they teach you,
how to play cards."

Personnaly I prefer Bidding over Defence over Play,
hence I would rate the relevance like Bidding
50%-60%, 30-20%,20%.
Although the 50%-60% Bidding contains also a lot
"knowing" partners bidding style, a thing, which gets
quite often forgotten.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[TimG]

Walddk, on Oct 22 2008, 05:43 AM, said:

Let me put it this way. You can teach people to bid, but you can't teach them to play or defend if they have no card flair.

Isn't this sort of the opposite of what we have seen for computer bridge programs? I get the sense that their card play skill (at least declarer play) exceeds their bidding skill.

[hotShot]

To improve put your efforts into declarer play.

Perfect bidding is useless unless your declarer play is good enough to routinely make the intended number of tricks most of the time. Additionally the quality of your judgment on the strength of your hand, is directly related to your abilities in declarer play.

The key to a good defense is understanding and anticipating the declarer play. So all efforts to improve your defense require you to improve your declarer play first.

Of cause you are declarer 25% of the boards and defending 50% of the boards, but since your defense depends on your abilities in declarer play, the ratio will not be 1:2.

[babalu1997]

I think louis Watson set out to write his book because he thoight put too much emphasis on bidding.

Good declarer play will make you play faster in ordinary bidding situations.

In Off-the-wall bidding sequences, it will help you play harder contracts.

Plus, if you do not have a regular partner, you can study declarer play alone.

Both defense and bidding depend on agreements and interations with partner. and, nowadays, what is standard anyway?

[effervesce]

I like to consider bridge performace as somewhat like

bridge performance = (bidding skill) * (play skill).

Serious deficiencies in either area will make you a poor player, while being competent (not necessarily expert) at both will make you a better player than a world class declarer but poor bidder.

[Codo]

My feeling is that I earn/lost most imps or mps on defence.

I think that with a very limited system of bidding and a very simple basic judgement you can reach 90% of the spots you had reached with a good scientific system.
Yes you miss the 23 HCP Slams like in Tims example, but these are not the butter and bread hands.

With a basic declarer play, just counting trumps and some high cards and knowing how to finesse, you will make 60% of your games.

But I really belive that without understanding your partners signals and thinking about defensive play, you will just beat at most 30 % of all hands.

So defense is anything.

But as you need a partner to practice and as it is much harder to learn then declarer play, most discussions are about declarer play and bidding judgement for unusual hands.

[bid_em_up]

I look at it a slightly different way.

You bid 100% of the hands, but in many cases, it will not matter how good (or bad) your bidding is necessarily. I would estimate that 85-90% of the time, your bids are clear cut, whether you are going to pass, preempt, etc. The hands where system and/or judgement in the bidding actually make a difference will make up the remaining hands. At extremely high levels of play, this is a significant difference, but for most people, it is not what they should be concentrating on to improve their game, imo.

You will defend, on average, 50% of the time (or in my case, what seems to be more often). You will play only 25% of the hands, and will be dummy the other 25%.

So of the three, I consider defense to be the most important aspect of the game and where an advancing player should concentrate their efforts to improve their game.

[han]

All those formulas and percentages are great for those who want to sell vacuum cleaners but they don't help you to become a better bridge player.

In al three aspects of the game the differences are huge, not only the differences between experts and novices but also the differences between average experts and truly world class players. If you want to become good at bridge then you have to spend energy on all three parts of the game.

Also, to be a very good defender you have to be a very good declarer, as well as the other way around. If you spend a lot of energy on one of these parts then you will notice that you will get better at the other part as well.

On some hands the bidding is straightforward for non-beginners and the difference will be made in the play. On other hands it is only the bidding that determines the result of a board. This is true for matchpoints as well as IMPs. At matchpoints you can win a lot by getting the partscore battles right and by taking extra tricks. A lot of IMPs are at stake in partscore/game/slam decisions and of course by making contracts that go down at the other table. Maybe some aspects of the game are more important at one form of scoring than at the other but I think that this is overrated.

[jdonn]

I think certainly among the vast majority of bridge players in the world, particularly intermediate level or worse players, they are FAR better players than bidders, so bidding is where the most people could make the most improvement.

[han]

By the way, I think that there are a lot of amusing formulas in this thread, but this one I enjoy the most:

Quote

bridge performance = (bidding skill) * (play skill).

Why are these two numbers multiplied? Maybe they should be added, or maybe bridge performance is the square root of the sum of the squares of these quantities? And how do you even measure the right-hand-side quantities so that you can benefit from this formula at the table?

[JanM]

One thing no one has mentioned - bidding judgment (not system, judgment) is dependent on declarer play: in order to analyze a contract, you need to be able to play the hand in your head during the bidding. So declarer play is relevant not only to defense (where you need to visualize declarer's problems in order to help him or her get them wrong) but also to bidding.

[Mosene]

This is a quote from Bobby Wolff from a 1987 NY Times article.

''What you've got to remember is that 90 percent of bridge hands, a monkey could play,'' Wolff went on. ''In the other 10 percent, experts are supposed to be able to work out the best line of play as declarer and on defense 99 times out of 100, and execute it fast enough so you don't give yourself away by long pauses. But bidding is 70 or 80 percent of the game, and if you make bidding mistakes like ours you're going to pay for them.

[matmat]

han, on Oct 22 2008, 10:40 AM, said:

By the way, I think that there are a lot of amusing formulas in this thread, but this one I enjoy the most:

Quote

bridge performance = (bidding skill) * (play skill).

Why are these two numbers multiplied? Maybe they should be added, or maybe bridge performance is the square root of the sum of the squares of these quantities? And how do you even measure the right-hand-side quantities so that you can benefit from this formula at the table?

they;re not multiplied, Han, they're convolved...

[Edmunte1]

I think that the defense (the opening lead is included here) is by far the most important part of the game in expert's area. Why? Because the defense generates the most important part of the swings. Most of the time a good declarer is also a good defender. He constructs a defensive plan and acts accordingly. He puts himself in declarer's shoes and tries to read his moves. Of course signalling has a important role in this act.

Bidding comes second. When we talk about bidding we should divide it in three parts:
-uncontested bidding - here's a lot of work for partnership
- contested bidding - resumes to 2 important things: disscusing the position with partner and knowing the situation. Here's a lot of work for partnership too.
-bidding judgement - the most important part of the bidding process - experience, good thinking, good declarer skills so you can sometimes visualise the play before it gets started are necesary here

Declaring comes third, usually due to the fact that most expert players have good declaring skills, but plays it's role in both defensive and bidding processes. Still a lot of IMP's come from this area too.

There are a lot of other factors that intervene in winning at bridge, most of them you can find in Georgio Belladonna's book "Strategy and tactics for formula one player"

[rogerclee]

People really underestimate how much of a factor cardplay is at all levels of bridge.