dealing with stress

[pclayton]

Great thread - I especially appreciate Luis' and Mike's comments.

[mikeh]

Mike if you follow all of those we need to play some time :D You sound like the perfect partner lol.

I always advise: 'Do as I say, not as I do" :D

[Al_U_Card]

1. I never keep score, unless I absolutely have to do so. This has helped me in pairs events - I used to find myself going back over past results, estimating and re-estimating quality of score. Complete waste of time, as I am never good enough to know whether we need extra-good scores at the end of the session.

For the statisticians in the crowd, back in the day I did a regression analysis of about 200 sessions to derive a linear relationship between hands declared, plusses scored and total points. Interestingly the correlation coeff. was around 99.5%

 

It translates thusly:

 

Over 24 boards if you have declared at least a 1/3 of them, for each plus score more than hands declared, add one board to your score (2 1/2 % above average).

 

Take the total score (yours plus the opps) and divide by the hands played. This value (often around 300) is worth another board for each 300 you are above the half total score.

 

The resulting % (or boards above average) is within 1% of your actual result.

 

try it with 1 or 2 rounds to go, ie you have 10 hands declared and 12 plusses (55%)

 

with 7200 total points scored by both sides so far, your total of 3950 is 350 above the half total score and adds another 2 1/2%. Your actual matchpoint score will be 57.5 % plus or minus 1% at that point.

 

This is also a good change of pace method to stay fresh near the end of the game.

[inquiry]

Al, are you serious? I assume not... I would have to be totally out of my mind to try to keep up with all that during a session.....

 

I do "estimate scores", I estimate on a 12 top, if matchpoints. IF it looks more or less normal, I average a six (a little more if it is normal with me plus, a little less if normal with them plus).

 

If it looks good for me, I estiamte a 9, bad a 3. Sometimes, I go all the way out on a limb and estiamte a 12 or 0. You don't have to be right.. you might estimate a 9 one time and get 6, you might estimate 9 another and get 11. But over 26 boards, the under-estiamtes and the over-estimates usually come out close to even.

 

The only thing I do in addition, is I keep a running total... First board I estiamte a 6, second a 9.... so after round run, my estiamte is 15 (average is 12).... This is not hard, and I don't "sweat" over the estimate and analyze every nuance of play. I am seldom off by more than 3 or 4 MP at the end (if top is 25, at end you have to adjust.... for that...after the round is over).

 

AT imps, I just keep rough estimate of +/- imps. History has taught me I am not very good at estimating the crazyness at the other table so I just try to keep track of our blunders... and decide if they were so bad that something despirate is needed.... sadly half the time I think there is a need, our oppoinnets had the same problems or worse. So mostly I try to just play each hand the best I can... and not worry too much aobut the "state of the match" (of course if there were quarters and I know I am behind or if it is barometer, then all bets are off late in the match).

[Al_U_Card]

Al, are you serious? I assume not...

au contraire, mon cher....at MP's this takes 30 sec to do and, as I said, is better than a "guesstimate". Try it on one of your session scorecards, you'll see.

[SoTired]

I do "estimate scores", I estimate on a 12 top, if matchpoints. IF it looks more or less normal, I average a six (a little more if it is normal with me plus, a little less if normal with them plus).

 

If it looks good for me, I estiamte a 9, bad a 3. Sometimes, I go all the way out on a limb and estiamte a 12 or 0. You don't have to be right.. you might estimate a 9 one time and get 6, you might estimate 9 another and get 11. But over 26 boards, the under-estiamtes and the over-estimates usually come out close to even.

I estimate just "+" for good, "-" for bad, and "0" for average. Then I just count the +'s versus the -'s. Each extra + is worth about 1/3 a board. My estimate is usually off by no more than 2 % points.

[inquiry]

I do "estimate scores", I estimate on a 12 top, if matchpoints. IF it looks more or less normal, I average a six (a little more if it is normal with me plus, a little less if normal with them plus).

 

If it looks good for me, I estiamte a 9, bad a 3. Sometimes, I go all the way out on a limb and estiamte a 12 or 0. You don't have to be right.. you might estimate a 9 one time and get 6, you might estimate 9 another and get 11. But over 26 boards, the under-estiamtes and the over-estimates usually come out close to even.

I estimate just "+" for good, "-" for bad, and "0" for average. Then I just count the +'s versus the -'s. Each extra + is worth about 1/3 a board. My estimate is usually off by no more than 2 % points.

This is in effect what I do, although I have lea way for a top (12) or bottom (0) for those hands when they happen. But there is one extra advantage of using MP instead of +/- and then total... You get to keep an actual running MP total. So you know easily if you are close to 190 or 200 or an 156 average for instance. That is the kind of information you need to decide if it is worth the gamble to maneuver late in a match... .but since methods are identical (I start wtih 6 and for a plus add 3 to get 9, and for minus subtrace 3 to get 3: while you start with 0 and add or subtract 3 for plus and minus), your assessment of the accuracy of the method closely matches that of my own... and amazingly I often miss a handful of boards by a mile when it comes to estimating, but these are random and tend to cancel each other out.

[pigpenz]

interesting post...sometimes bridge is a battle of attrition and other times the lemmings come to your table and want to jump off the cliff.

 

Alan Sontag in his book the bridge bum quoted Matt Granovetter back in the 70's that Matt like to have sex before imps cause it calmed him down and have nothing in his stomach before matchpoints cause there was so much intensity he wanted all the blood to go to his brain not his stomach for digestion. :)

 

Another thing is expectations: If your plaing in a world class field your expectations are alot different than if you are playing in Pocatello Idaho regional.

[42]

I am really thankful that you all answered :) Great advices!!

For myself I would claim to be a careful partner and teammate (I'm not talking about bridgeskills, I mean partnership behaviour). My problems start where my partner breaks those rules, not only with words, also nonverbal signals like headshaking or sounds of disappointment or so. I am not very selfconfident. And I learned that women in bridge are often victims of male power (ok, they accept perhaps that role...??)

When opps argue in zero-tolerance-manner, I could call for the TD, but I am already upset and out of the needed "trance".

A break during the session was not possible, even running to toilet was hard. The time schedule forbid that!

It was remarkable in this tourney: I had most of the time points and was either declarer or had the problems with lead or defense, so no relaxing as dummy. When I saw some (f)aces in my hands I just thought "oh no, not again" :D

The "forced" dinner: I ate just a little bit salad because I know that I would be more tired after a heavy meal.

Good that we can talk about that all here :D

 

Caren

[Gerben42]

I think the forced dinner is a terrible idea. I'd rather have a different setup for the whole thing.

[cf_John0]

Too big stress to play bridge for us.IMO,the most important for bridge is environment, a friendly and easier environment.

[pdmunro]

Linda Lee (Canadian Women's Team) wrote an interesting article "Be Prepared". You can find it on claire bridge links in the "Psycholgy" section.

[glen]

Even though I’m quite late replying to this thread I would like to make a few comments. First, I would like to say I concur with everything that mikeh wrote about, and Linda Lee's article.

 

My comments here will refer to playing in an event that one really really wants to win with a non-client partner. Other times one might be playing just for fun, or teaching somebody, or playing pro, or playing while waiting for an upcoming big event at the same tournament.

 

One of the more complex bidding systems books in recent years is “The Viking Precision Club”. At the end of the great book, the main author notes that while the system is helpful:

 

It cannot be stated more clearly, that mental attitude is of major importance.

 

So what can we do to prepare better? Here are some success factors:

 

Regular Work: If you have been working 70 hours a week in a mentally straining job in order to have time for the tournament, your brain will want to take a holiday at the tournament instead of working hard at the table. So somehow one needs to take it easy with the mentally straining stuff in the weeks leading up to the tournament.

 

Rusty: If you haven’t been playing much top notch bridge (either not playing much, or just practising bidding, or just playing against weak opponents), then you will need to put in some time just before the tournament or right at the start of the tournament to take the rust off.

 

Travel: Some, including me, don’t play well the travel day, so try to arrive the day (or days) before the really-want-to-win event.

 

Sleep: Intense bridge gets the brain going, so sleep gets lost running over hands and “what could have done”. So many players suffer from some sleep deprivation during a tournament. One has to try to let things go instead of dwelling on them. Read a good thriller, find a club to go out to where you will not talk over hands, play golf, see a concert or a movie, work out at the hotel gym, check out the hotel pool, visit the local art gallery, go shopping etc.

 

Now let’s look at how I handled these factors for the World Mixed Pairs. Start time was 10am in downtown Montreal. Here’s what I did:

 

- Being very busy at work, I played very little bridge in the weeks leading up to the event.

- I worked until midnight on a very complex work report that had to be done.

- I fought with the convention card editor for the WBF cc, from midnight until 7 am, preparing two cc’s.

- From 7 to 8:15 I packed, shaved, showered and grabbed a pillow and blanket to put in the car.

- At 8:15 I handed the car keys to my wife, and told her to drive to Montreal (two hours travel time) while I snoozed, which I did somewhat.

- I navigated the final 15 minutes to the tournament site, and we arrived a healthy 5 minutes before game time.

 

So after all that preparation, we did not qualify for the finals: not sure what went wrong.

 

Other factors:

 

Discussion: If one is playing in a really-want-to-win event, avoid discussion with partner, opponents, and, if a team event, teammates. Discussion is mentally draining – what could we, should we, might we have done etc. Discussion is great for learning, but you are now here to win, not learn. So no discussion unless needed to just get back on same wavelength as partner (e.g. 1430 right partner?), and then only as minimal as possible.

 

Bad Results/Good Results/Blah Results: Once the board is over, it’s over – not more discussing.

 

Eating/Drinking: Between sessions, eat lightly and don’t drink alcohol. Keep water levels up.

 

Let’s look at how I applied these factors in winning a regional pairs event. We had a big score in the first session of two sessions, so it was off to a restaurant for a big steak dinner with lots of red wine (within walking distance so no driving). Back at the second session, we both started to make some mistakes, so I started harping on partner every time we had a bad result. We both then made more mistakes, and we lost focus completely. Finally after I was certain we had no hope of winning the event or even placing in it, and the wine had finally wore off, I shut up and just played bridge. Suddenly our results started to improve, the gloom disappeared and we finished strongly to win. So key was to shut up and just play bridge.

 

In the same tournament we later ran into some nasty people in a knockout event. They were likely sleep deprived and thus generally irritable. Instead of responding them we shut up and just played bridge, and won the match.

 

Other factors noted in the original post:

 

Off-the-rails: When the partnership goes off the rails, either partner should be able to impose a period of getting back to normal: during this period both players do everything "by the book" as much as possible - no genius leads, no super-clever bids etc. - just solid bridge until the partnership is back on track.

 

System: Stick to what the partnership is comfortable with. Freeze system at least six months before the really-want-to-win-this event. Every time I’ve added a load of gadgets in order to optimize system, I’ve sunk a partnership.

 

First time at the big one: If you are playing in the Super Bowl for the first time, you will feel it, and there is no preparation to make it any easier besides playing in some Super Bowls beforehand. So if you want to win a big tourney, attend a bunch of big tourneys until you feel comfortable.

 

Stress: Relax by not playing and/or thinking bridge 24/7 at the tournament, and do some other neat stuff.

 

Fun: Don't just play big events - play for fun sometimes too!

 

Partners: Avoid partners who don’t know when to shut up and just play bridge. Be a partner who knows when to shut up and just play bridge.