[effervesce]

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?

A world-class declarer who has no clue how to bid will lose since they will never reach the right contract.
A world-class bidder who has no clue how to play will lose since they will never play a hand correctly.

It's my approximation of the importance of each.
Say one bids to the right spot 80% of the time, and plays a hand correctly 80% of the time. Then the 'skill' of that person would be 0.8 * 0.8 = 0.64.
If one plays a hand correctly 100% of the time but bids it correctly 60% of the time, their 'skill' would then be 0.6.

It's just a way of thinking about it-not that it's anywhere near how bridge skill should be measured or anything. I certainly don't think bridge skill is a sum of bidding and declarer play. It also explains why alot of people believe bidding is most important at WC level - most players would play a hand correctly 95+% of the time, and thus there is little difference there. On the other hand, there is more variance in their bidding skills.

[mikeh]

A friend of mine recently moved here from Toronto. We have begin playing together. He is an expert, having represented Canada in a couple of WCs.

His first reaction, after our first game, was that what he enjoyed the most was that, even tho we are accustomed to different methods (I like Obvious Switch, he detests it.. he likes odd-even... I detest it), we took all of our tricks on defence.

We bid reasonably well, for a partnership with only 5 pages of notes, and both of us can handle dummy reasonably well, altho not at the level of a Rodwell/Rosenberg/Fred player.

As a partnership, we have spoken at length about bidding (far beyond the notes) and we have spoken less, but a lot, about defence, and hardly ever about declarer play.

I think that that probably is a fair representation of the relative importance of those factors at the expert level.

I suspect that play is more important at lower levels of skill. Indeed, I agree with the proposition that the average (or even less-experienced) player should consider assigning equal weight to both play and defence. There is little point learning subtle hand valuation and effective bidding methods to reach contracts that experts would strive to reach until your play has given you the means of making them. We all know that at imps, red, we should bid games that are less than 50% to make. But there is no point learning to bid 45% games if you are incapable of utilizing the techniques that make it a 45% proposition. Equally, if you are a great player, but cannot reach normal contracts, no amount of skill will let you win 10 tricks after the opps cash 4 winners, and no number of overtricks in 2♠ will suffice to make up for missing game when it is cold.

[hotShot]

The importance of bidding is highly overrated.
Agreeing to
"5caM, strong NT with Stayman and transfer, weak 2's and one version of RCKB,
1 level overcalls 8+HCP 5c suit, 2 level overcalls 10+ HCP 5+c suit, t/o dbl up to 2♠"
together with judgment is all you need for about 75% of the boards you play.

Only the remaining 25% of boards may benefit from your efforts to improve your bidding agreements and abilities. And some of them belong to your opps anyway.

Agreeing on leads and signals in defense will help you on another 10-15% of the boards.

Good declares skills will help you with the 25% of boards you declare and with the 50% of boards you defend.

[TimG]

mikeh, on Oct 22 2008, 06:18 PM, said:

We all know that at imps, red, we should bid games that are less than 50% to make. But there is no point learning to bid 45% games if you are incapable of utilizing the techniques that make it a 45% proposition.

This is only true if your opponents are 100% defenders. It's OK to bid 45% games even if your declarer play by itself will only see you to make 40% of the time if the defense will hand over the contract another 10% of the time. Even Rodwell and Meckstroth (where defenders are first rate) make some of their games when the defense slips.

Especially in ACBL land where players tend to be grouped with players of similar ability, you ought to stretch to those 45% games even if you can't execute "tricky" declarer plays, because the opponents who are your peers will be unable to defend accurately.

[awm]

mikeh, on Oct 22 2008, 06:18 PM, said:

As a partnership, we have spoken at length about bidding (far beyond the notes) and we have spoken less, but a lot, about defence, and hardly ever about declarer play.

I think that that probably is a fair representation of the relative importance of those factors at the expert level.

Bidding and defense are very much partnership issues.

If I sit down with an expert player that I've never played with before, nothing that I do will cause him to play hands poorly. But it's pretty easy for me to cause him to bid to the wrong contracts or misdefend hands.

Perhaps the point is, a small amount of discussion will improve partnership bidding immensely. But improving someone's declarer play takes a lot of work. And it's not something that discussion usually helps with -- sure you can point out "you missed the trump squeeze" or whatever but that won't necessarily help partner find the trump squeeze next time (and it might make him play worse if you comment on this during a session).

Declarer play swings a lot of boards among intermediate-advanced players. It still swings a few boards at the world-class level too, but you fairly often see top players switching partnerships, which means they have to start almost from scratch on developing accurate bidding whereas their declarer play expertise carries over. So I suspect that the number of "world-class partnerships" is a lot less than (half) the number of "world-class players." And this is part of why we see more swings due to bidding than play in many of the top-flight events.

[effervesce]

hotShot, on Oct 22 2008, 06:41 PM, said:

The importance of bidding is highly overrated.
Agreeing to
"5caM, strong NT with Stayman and transfer, weak 2's and one version of RCKB,
1 level overcalls 8+HCP 5c suit, 2 level overcalls 10+ HCP 5+c suit, t/o dbl up to 2♠"
together with judgment is all you need for about 75% of the boards you play.

Only the remaining 25% of boards may benefit from your efforts to improve your bidding agreements and abilities. And some of them belong to your opps anyway.

Agreeing on leads and signals in defense will help you on another 10-15% of the boards.

Good declares skills will help you with the 25% of boards you declare and with the 50% of boards you defend.

In the same vein, having mere advanced level declarer/defensive play is all you need for about 75% of the boards you play.

[benlessard]

Playing skills have an influence on your bidding skill while the opposite isnt so true. (it just take a minimum of bidding skill to undertand the opponents bidding so that you can read thiers cards)


If often see medium strenght players that have a strong "partnership" view of bridge, 90% of their effort are discussion for bidding, defense signals. They build their system in consultation and have few bidding misunderstand, but sometimes their value bidding is somewhat off track because their card sense isnt sharp. They often stick to their own methods that are sometimes a bit obsolete or inneficient. They are slow to change since they have to adjust their "partnership" not just themselves. There are more prone to find the solutions within the partnership rather to ask for outside advice. They also have frequent ego/ argumentation clash after bidding misunderstanding. If they break up its a major drawback since they need to rebuild a partnership.


On the other side i see the "solo" players that read plenty of declarer/defence books. They often play with differents partners and have major bidding misunderstanding. But they have a good feel for the "values" of the hands. They are pretty quick to notice who are the strongers players and are not afraid to ask questions. Sooner or later theyll pick up a mentor, for them its the best way to learn and its fun for the mentor because they pick up a partner with a good card sense that defend well and that has no bidding "conditionning" The mentor/ student relation is clearly established and the mentor can dictate methods, play his system 100% without concession and the bidding misunderstands dont generate in an argument, they become lessons. The solo players can change partner/mentor and their skill will not be affected as much as the "partnerships players".


What i see is that young players often focussed too much on bidding while their cards sense is seriously lacking, they know a jacoby 2NT responses structure but they never ducked a trump in their life. There are getting quicker results than the solo players because they are working as a pair. But the fact that they are doing all 3 thing (def/dummy/bidding) at the same times slow their developpement. Also the energy they spend on bidding isnt totally efficient because the card sense is not there.

While the solo are only developping their card sense and all the spent energy on card playing will eventually be useful for bidding when the solo pick up a mentor or a good partner.

I know there is some of bridge mumbo jumbo in what ive wrote but i truly think that card sense should be learned first (without caring for bidding) After getting a good card sense you should learn bidding with much strongers players than yourselves.

[vuroth]

I realize that this subject comes up over and over and over again, but this thread should be required reading for aspiring players like me.

Thanks, everyone, for giving me some more things to think about.

V

[Tcyk]

Walddk, on Oct 22 2008, 10:43 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

Dennis Dawson always told me that I needed to learn to play the hands as well as I bid them. Someone reminded me that we bid on 100% of the hands, defend on 50% of the hands and declare on only 25% of the hands. I guess the answer to the question is that it depends on the person. I think learning basic declarer play was important to me and it also helped with defense because I began to understand what declarer was trying to do.

[kenberg]

The relative importance no doubt varies with the level of play. However, at my level and below, and probably somewhat up, defense seems to me to be far and away the most important. The other day I played in an acbl indy. I declared 5 of the 12 hands (no, I'm not usually that much of a hand hog). I made all five of my contracts. On three I should have been set regardless of how I played. On one I held nine trumps, played to drop the queen and when it didn't I could have been set. On (at least) two hands we defended we should have set the contract and did not.

Here is a typical hand.

Scoring: IMP

---

The bidding (I am S):

Pass 1S x 2S
3H Pass 4H Pass
Pass Pass

Maybe Marty Bergen would have bid 3S or 3C or something with my hand but I bid 2S. Since the hands produce eight tricks in spades and nine in hearts, the contract is a good one for us however. That is, it's good if we take our four tricks.


The play:
Spade to Ace, heart Ace, spade ruff heart to King, spade ruff, diamond to my ace, deuce of clubs to the Jack, ducked, diamond King, oops.

Personally, I think declarer made the first mistake by ruffing a spade. If he cashes the AK of hearts and leads a D, partner may win with the King and try to cash a spade, after which the contract cannot be beaten. Maybe if he plays that way I, since I know no spade is cashing, need to hop up on the first D and lead a club. But declarer gave us a better chance by showing us he held five hearts and one spade, so surely we should get our tricks. Perhaps I should have led the club Q to make sure there is no error, but at any rate this hand is supposed to go down.


As I look over my results, good and bad, it is clear to me that improved defense is the most frequently untapped source of better scores. Higher level players may find it to be different, or maybe not.


Incidentally, what spade should I play at trick 1 to let partner know a spade is not cashing? I can't say I am sure at T1 what the shift, if any, should be but I do know there is no future in spades. I suppose that this is one thing that Marty gets by showing a raise with four trump. So maybe bidding agreement is relevant in a subtle way here.

[Wackojack]

My choice of opening lead loses me more points than anything else. So thats what I should concentrate on, but i don't.

[rogerclee]

Wackojack, on Oct 25 2008, 09:27 AM, said:

My choice of opening lead loses me more points than anything else. So thats what I should concentrate on, but i don't.

I disagree, and I don't even know you.

[han]

Haha, very nice.

[PrecisionL]

C. C. Wei analyzed World Championship hands before deciding on Precision and the results were printed in the Precision Club Newsletter. Also, Ken Lindsay (3D and the MAFIA Club, 1981) studied W.C. hands and made his own analysis:

                Wei        Lindsey        Me (345 ACBL club hands)

Bidding       70 %        50%       46%

Defense      10 %       30%       21 %
Opening Lead                            1 %

Declarer      10 %      10 %       17 %
Play

Luck             5 %          -          11 %

System         5 %       10%        4 %

Larry

[cherdano]

There is a difference between
- which of the three aspects causes most of the swings, and
- which of the three aspects makes the biggest difference in strength between a top team and an almost top team (e.g.).

PrecisionL's tables almost certainly answer the former question, whereas the question of the thread is the latter.

[kenberg]

I looked back and I am not sure that the original question was for expert play only. Maybe it only makes sense for expert play. If a hand is misbid, misplayed and misdefended then it may be tough to identify the proper bag to put it n.

[MFA]

cherdano, on Oct 25 2008, 09:47 PM, said:

There is a difference between
- which of the three aspects causes most of the swings, and
- which of the three aspects makes the biggest difference in strength between a top team and an almost top team (e.g.).

PrecisionL's tables almost certainly answer the former question, whereas the question of the thread is the latter.

Excellent point!

I would say that a swing caused by bidding is more likely to be random than a swing caused by card play.

This natural variance doesn't mean that the good player will gain more imps from good bidding than from good card play. I would say that it's close to 50-50 in importance.