Know Thyself.

[han]

Well, I must say I'm also a bit uncomfortable writing about my strengths, so let me start with those. Perhaps my strongest point is concentration. I also take bridge quite seriously, so I will often reread puzzle books, go through system notes and study MSC hands. I think I also have a good poker-face, but I am not 100% sure about that.

 

I think that neither my bidding, declarer play or defense is much stronger than the other parts. Having said that, I know Arend often complains about my defensive signalling, I haven't given it enough attention recently so I'm going to work on that. I'm probably not aggressive enough when it comes to game-bidding, but that's something that should be easy to fix. Perhaps slam bidding is a weak part of our partnership, although I think that we've been steadily improving that over the last year.

 

The fact that I play so little face to face bridge certainly is a disadvantage to me. BBO is excellent for improving most aspects, but for some (like reading the opponents' faces) you have to play live bridge. I do think that I am a lot better now than I was 2 years ago, while I hardly touched a card in these two years.

[Codo]

My biggest weknesses are all parts of declarer play. If I compare myself with the guys in the same league, I am ahead of them in bidding and defence but far behind in declarer play. One of the biggest flaws in this area is lasyness. If I find a 75 % route, I too often stop thinking about the 87 % lines. And if I think the hand is easy, I don´t count any more. ;)

 

In the bidding, the biggest flaw is that I never psych and never bid on real junk.

Better players "know" or at least feal when it is the right to bid bad hands, I don´t.

Like "all" I don´t double enough, even if I do so more oftern then many and I don´t like my abilities in competetive bidding, maybe the law is not enough.

 

I like my success in finding good marginal slams and in game/partscore descissions. For some seasons my partnership had been realy good in finding 80 % slams with less then 27 HCP and failing to the 4-0 split in the trump suit. :)

 

In defence, I need good signals from partner, then I can figure out most hands. With partners who are lazy signalers, I am quite bad.

Of course I prefer to defend at imps, because the goal is much clearer.

 

As a partner I am not able to get the best out of my partner. I don´t argue, growl or do anything nasty (as long as my partners are no relatives).

But there are people who can make their partners feal really good, so that they can play their best bridge. I am not good enough in this part of the game.

[Gerben42]

My biggest weakness is mental toughness.

This is about avoiding making the stupid mistakes. I guess it also has to do with "giving up" in some situations where there is still one more trick for us in the bag.

Also, I have never won a "big" event, but have led before the final session more than 5 times. Then ALWAYS suddenly heat 3 sets in.

 

Also I tend to go for the legitimate line rather than so psychological stuff, which I should probably do more, but I am not a gambler. This also means that I don't attack enough against weaker opponents. The problem is that if I bid agressively against weaker opponents and might reach a bad game which they might misdefend, I fear looking stupid since the game is not 30% but 0%, or the defense turned out to be totally trivia.

 

One reason for this is that I often cannot figure out if someone has the queen in guess situations, even if they are really bad players. So I stick to the math in that case.

 

Overall that means I tend to produce boring results. Luckily I almost always play agressive bidding systems.

 

Better players "know" or at least feel when it is the right to bid bad hands, I don´t.

 

I noticed that when I "try" something, it is invariably badly timed. So I don't. See above.

[Fluffy]

Also I tend to go for the legitimate line rather than so psychological stuff.

I do this also, and it is very hard to improve ebcause there is no way to tell after the hand what was the % for the psychological play.

 

 

I also miss the good old times when I just run my 6♦ tricks in 3NT afte winning the lead no matter what and saw how my opponents discarded wrong. Now I tend to keep the suit for comunication in case of (put your prefered low % reason here) and I think I often make less tricks than I could have done because of that.

 

 

From the previous post, I think I am no longer that good on what I felt good (maybe I was being lucky). I don't realise having improved on my bad areas at all.

 

Yet my results are better, and the reason is simple: I make less silly mistakes, I can concentrate better.