BBF Par Contest

[Echognome]

In my crazy ideas, I have thought of a par contest. The contest is done in two separate parts for each board: bidding and play. I already have four good hands for this and my goal is the same as before. I want to have reasonable hands that have some interest (i.e. not pass throughout) and are not extreme goulashed hands. I think I will have approximately 6-8 boards in total in order to keep the total time to bid and play reasonable. The environment will again be controlled so that each set of participants will face the same problems as their counterparts. I had a couple of ideas on how the play part might go, but wanted to elicit people's opinions on it. In all of the suggestions, the idea is that the pair will bid the hand to its entirety. Then the par (challenge) contract will be revealed and that contract (even if it has not been bid) will be played. We will then add up separate scores for bidding and play and it will be self reported (so people can participate anonymously if they wish).

 

Format 1 - Pairs bid the boards, then either North or South declares the par contract. North and South will declare half of the contracts.

 

Format 2 - Pairs bid all the boards first. Then each partner is split up into two separate tables to play the boards.

 

Format 3 - Partners are split up into two separate tables and there are two organisers. As bids are made, the organisers pass them on to each other. Then each partner plays the par contract after the bidding.

 

I personally think each of the formats have some merit. The last being the toughest to organise.

 

Any thoughts? Anyone interested in participating or helping organise? Let me know.

 

Matt

[Robert]

Hello Echognome

 

Sounds like a very good idea. :)

 

There seemed to be great interest in various systems playing against each other in other posts. I do like to see bidding methods 'at work.'

 

I also like to bid the hands to 'see' how my system methods handle the difficult hand types.

 

Looking forward to your par contest. :P

 

Regards,

Robert

[luke warm]

good idea, matt...

[hrothgar]

I've never been all that fond of par contests, especially where bidding is involved...

There are simply too many possible iterations to consider.

[Echognome]

Well, I suspect the bidding will be along the lines I ran before. There will be some uncontested hands and some controlled intervention and some defensive bidding.

 

The twist really is the added declarer play element.

[Rebound]

I love the idea. I ran out of time to participate in your last effort, but I am very interested. I'll be keeping an eye out for this :P

[Free]

Hey Matt, great idea (again)! I prefer format 2, and I'm looking forward to participate :P

[david_c]

Um, can I vote for more of the "adequate solvers" format instead? I thought that that was really interesting, being able to see how different pairs would bid a hand. Whereas, seeing how pairs would play a hand is not so interesting, as it's more a matter of right and wrong rather than style.

 

Though, it would certainly be work well as a competition - you'd need to be very good bridge players to win it.

[Echognome]

I imagine that the bidding part of the contest will be exactly like the adequate solvers. The play part I will make optional for those that want to participate. In particular I will conduct all the bidding first and then let individuals play the hands as they wish. Since I will be mainly running the contest on my own, the individuals will probably have to play the hands one at a time.

 

I'm also posting to announce that the hands are ready. I still need to get a hold of Griffenmac who will post the discussion so people can read it afterwards. So if you and your partner are online and see me, send me a message if you'd like to participate.

[Blofeld]

I think that bidding and play should be kept seperate here: i.e. based on different hands. Otherwise the play is not entirely fair, as different people will have seen different auctions on the hands and so already know different amounts about the hands when they start declaring/defending.

[hrothgar]

I imagine that the bidding part of the contest will be exactly like the adequate solvers. The play part I will make optional for those that want to participate. In particular I will conduct all the bidding first and then let individuals play the hands as they wish. Since I will be mainly running the contest on my own, the individuals will probably have to play the hands one at a time.

I still think that the basic idea is flawed:

 

Hands that are "interesting" for the purposes of bidding discussion will often suggest multiple different contracts, potentially even different strains.

 

Hands that are "interesting" for questions of declarer play / defense typically require that players are declaring the same contract.

 

I've seen lots of attempts to combine the two design goals. The ACBL used to run lots of "par" contests in which results are scored against a datum and detailed hand analysis were provided. I also found these somewhat silly since they implicitly assume an element of standardization which just doesn't exist...

 

I would far prefer to see separate exercises devoted to declarer play and bidding

[Echognome]

Ah thanks for the posts Richard and Owen. I can see what the confusion is now. The bidding and play are indeed separate.

 

The bidding is recorded as per the ASC. For the play, the bidding is completely forgotten. I give you an auction and a contract and you have to play for it. The contract isn't even always the optimal or one I would expect people to reach.

 

I can understand that different bidding sequences would lead to different information about the opponents hands. However, I have been careful to make sure that isn't the case! Without giving too much away, I can only assure you that this isn't a problem.

 

So it works basically like this:

 

You and your partner see me online and tell me you want to participate. I make a table and you two bid the hands. Some have opposition bidding, some do not.

 

After you are finished bidding, I ask if either or both of you want to participate in the play aspect of the contest. If one or the both of you do, then I make a table and give you an auction to the desired contract. I also run the defense and it is predetermined! The declarer aspects range in difficulty from fairly straightforward to extremely difficult.

 

So it is not a problem of different contracts because I'm giving you the contract. I imagine I will post the bidding problems and play problems as completely separate entities. My challenge was to create them from the same hands!

 

I hope that clarifies any confusion.

 

Matt

[mr1303]

One problem that we observed: once then hands have been bid, you can see the opponents hands for the play problem. Doing it in the other order wouldn't help matters either.