Bermuda Bowl And The VuGraph

[pbleighton]

I have never used the VuGraph before.

I will let more knowledgeable people (and those who watched more of the match than I did) comment on the match itself. My personal observations as an intemediate watching these great players:

1) Boy, do I have a long way to go :)

2) Even experts guess wrong, and make obvious errors (not just the last board)

3) What a terrible end to a great event.

4) Thanks loads to Fred et al!

 

Peter

[inquiry]

Vugraph's are great, and this BBO final match was unbelievable, as the score indicates: 1 imp difference. It was a shame it ended this way.

 

It is clear everyone makes mistakes, even the world very best players, as we saw here... they just make a whole lot less than all the rest of us.

[JRG]

I wouldn't call the last hand the one that won or lost the match. We have a natural tendency to do that, but there were lots of other boards.

 

I think the hand the Italians will remember is the one in which Duboin played 6S redoubled and went down one when he could have made it. Rodwell & Meckstroth played in 4S making an overtrick.

 

That was 12 IMPs.

 

Having said that, the last board was a pity. I'm sure Soloway will dream of it often, wishing he had led the 10 of hearts. All the players were tired by that time.

[csdenmark]

Vugraph's are great, and this BBO final match was unbelievable, as the score indicates: 1 imp difference. It was a shame it ended this way.

 

It is clear everyone makes mistakes, even the world very best players, as we saw here... they just make a whole lot less than all the rest of us.

 

 

 

You really think so Ben! I am not sure they make less faults than we do. I think we cannot recognize their mistakes simply because we dont know their systems. It is often said that modern bridge is based more on systems today than it was earlier. And those who have composed the best systems are therefore those who have the best chances to end on top.

 

Our Vugraph commentators often tells us they dont know the specific systems they commentate, so we have no real chance to look behind and discover what was bidden correct according to system and what was done mistakenly. - Chris Compton was the clear exception - he seems to have taken his time to study Meckwell Club.

 

If the players cannot do the mechanics right due to they are exhausted how can anyone expect they will be able to do the thinking and remembering right under same conditions? How to interpretate the catch-ups of the italians and the US's if not as the mental conditions for the players.

[alansc]

Does anyone know the 6Sxx hand?

[inquiry]

Does anyone know the 6Sxx hand?

Board 22 - Dealer East - EW vul.

 

S A J 2

H 10 6

D A Q J 3 2

C Q 10 3

S 10 7 6 4 S

H K J 2 H 8 3

D 10 6 D K 8 7 5 4

C K 9 6 5 C A J 8 7 4 2

S K Q 9 8 5 3

H A Q 9 7 5 4

D 9

C

 

 

Closed Room

WEST NORTH EAST SOUTH

Hamman Bocchi Soloway Duboin

p 1S

p 2C! p 2H

p 2S p 3D

p 3H p 3S

p 4D p 4H

p 4S p 5C

p 5D d p

p r p 5H

p 6S d r

 

Play

1: W D10 DA D4 D9

2: N H6 H3 HA H2

3: S H4 HJ H10 H8

4: W HK SJ C8 H5

5: N SA C2 S3

 

6SXX by S, down 1, NS: -200

[inquiry]

 

It is clear everyone makes mistakes, even the world very best players, as we saw here... they just make a whole lot less than all the rest of us.

 

 

 

You really think so Ben! I am not sure they make less faults than we do. I think we cannot recognize their mistakes simply because we dont know their systems.

 

 

Come on Claus, you can't really be serious that the top world class players make the same number of mistakes that the rest of us do?? Let me give you a proof that this is silly proposition.

 

First, I hope we can agree that winning bridge is a case of avoiding mistakes, that is, the team that makes the fewest blunders as a rule is the team that wins.

 

Second, that to get to the world championships, each team had to beat back challenges from 100's if not thousands of teams from their own country to try to win their local and then zonal championships (if necessary).

 

For a pair or a partnership to reach this level two times, given the number of people trying to unseat them, is an astounding accomplishment, and to get there, they have to, by definition defined earlier, make fewer mistakes than the others they ran over on the road to the bermuda bowl. When you add to that observation that the same pairs are constantly winning, time and time again to get to this level, there is only one conclusion. They play better (hence less mistakes) than the rest of us.

 

One commentator kept quoting Bob Hamman's statement about the world's best player makes mistakes, and the rest of us are even worse. This is certainly true.

[csdenmark]

I really am serious Ben - I assume the top pairs make the same number of blunders in 10 deals as we do. But certainly their mistakes are not of same nature as mine.

 

But that is not what counts. My aim is we cannot see their mistakes simply because we dont know their systems. To judge or discover a mistake means you need to have a really good knowledge of the alternatives. A mistake is to choose the wrong alternative in a restricted choice - and the system itself and nothing else - decides what is able to be right. Here a commentators analysis based on another system will often not be relevant.

 

Therefore I was very pleased to see that Chris Compton had a good knowledge of Meckwell Club system. I think this really was the first Vugraph we have seen some kind of analysis based on knowledge of that system - that means I assume he has a basis to judge the alternatives possible according to that system and not according to standard bidding in 2o1 or something else. I also noticed thal Allan Graves had some real knowledge of the system.

 

Please see my comment as a very welcome of qualified analysis based on the conditions the players acts according to. We also saw good analysises from the polish championships - but else we often need to be pleased with the comment that the Vugraph commentator have no knowledge of the system - but assume continuation to be standard(advanced of course) like.

 

If you disagree to above - please come up with something about the big swings we saw in both directions Italy vs. USA1.

 

I think we need more commentators who plays club systems themselves. I think Roland Wald ought to be thanked very much he has been able this time to find new commentators with that sort of skills and also a thank you to Alfred Conterno and Herve Lustman who both often gave explanations of artificial sequences late in the bidding sequences.

 

I would like to see I am wrong Ben!

[luis]

I really am serious Ben - I assume the top pairs make the same number of blunders in 10 deals as we do. But certainly their mistakes are not of same nature as mine.

 

But that is not what counts. My aim is we cannot see their mistakes simply because we dont know their systems. To judge or discover a mistake means you need to have a really good knowledge of the alternatives. A mistake is to choose the wrong alternative in a restricted choice - and the system itself and nothing else - decides what is able to be right. Here a commentators analysis based on another system will often not be relevant.

 

Therefore I was very pleased to see that Chris Compton had a good knowledge of Meckwell Club system. I think this really was the first Vugraph we have seen some kind of analysis based on knowledge of that system - that means I assume he has a basis to judge the alternatives possible according to that system and not according to standard bidding in 2o1 or something else. I also noticed thal Allan Graves had some real knowledge of the system.

 

Please see my comment as a very welcome of qualified analysis based on the conditions the players acts according to. We also saw good analysises from the polish championships - but else we often need to be pleased with the comment that the Vugraph commentator have no knowledge of the system - but assume continuation to be standard(advanced of course) like.

 

If you disagree to above - please come up with something about the big swings we saw in both directions Italy vs. USA1.

 

I think we need more commentators who plays club systems themselves. I think Roland Wald ought to be thanked very much he has been able this time to find new commentators with that sort of skills and also a thank you to Alfred Conterno and Herve Lustman who both often gave explanations of artificial sequences late in the bidding sequences.

 

I would like to see I am wrong Ben!

 

This is completely wrong, fix the contract in a thousand deals and with the same fixed defense a top player will produce a zillion more tricks per deal than you. Bridge is not only about systems and bidding, there's a lot of technique in the play, the defense and judgement and thats the area where top players distinct from the rest. This skills are mastered studying and practicing hard.

Even beginners can play a system as good as the one played by Meckwell, there's no skill in memorizing sequences.

 

Luis

 

Luis.

[Erkson]

 

...fix the contract in a thousand deals and with the same fixed defense a top player will produce a zillion more tricks per deal than you.

No doubt about it.

 

 

Bridge is not only about systems and bidding, there's a lot of technique in the play, the defense and judgement and thats the area where top players distinct from the rest. This skills are mastered studying and practicing hard.

 

No doubt about it.

But I observe that the number of deals where technique of play makes the difference is, IMO, low.

(technique of defense a bit more than declarer's technique).

 

Do you agree that most of the difference is made by the bidding ?

 

 

Even beginners can play a system as good as the one played by Meckwell, there's no skill in memorizing sequences.

 

Bidding is very difficult - and makes the difference- because it is not only a question of memory.

 

But I understood that Csdenmark's purpose was to tell that some commentators did know very well what they were talking about.

Sure.

 

Erkson

[JRG]

I agree to an extent with both Luis and Claus.

 

When I first started playing bridge, a group of us got very interested in the Italian bidding systems being used by the Blue Team (that is, the Roman Club and Neapolitan Club systems). We memorized the system (I was the worst, as I've always had a bad memory :-(

 

However, when there were systemic choices, we tended to be guessing. We did not have the experience and judgement of expert players. It is quite possible that Word Class players sometimes make inferior choices ("mistakes") as well, but I really doubt they do it as often in the bidding as us lesser players.

 

On the other hand, it is amazing how often they still arrive at the same contract as is bid in the other room, despite making choices that knowledgeable commentators point out as inferior (when they do know the bidding system).

 

I do agree, quite strongly, with Luis's comment about the play and defense of the hand. The World Class players squeeze more tricks out of a hand single-dummy than I can double-dummy :-(

 

An aside:

 

When we played the exotic systems, we were lucky to play at a bridge club where the general calibre was very high (sometimes playing against the likes of Eric Murray and Sammy Kehela) (which is probably why they allowed us to play the systems). So the "unusual systems" did not give the edge people tend to think (Note: we were playing them for fun, not to try to get an unfair advantage). For the most part people just bid their hands against us and doubled us when they thought we had overreached.

[fred]

 

This is completely wrong, fix the contract in a thousand deals and with the same fixed defense a top player will produce a zillion more tricks per deal than you. Bridge is not only about systems and bidding, there's a lot of technique in the play, the defense and judgement and thats the area where top players distinct from the rest. This skills are mastered studying and practicing hard.

Even beginners can play a system as good as the one played by Meckwell, there's no skill in memorizing sequences.

 

Luis

 

Luis.

 

I agree with Luis 100%. Not only that, I don't think he goes far enough.

In my bridge career I don't recall playing ever playing a long match against

a good team in which "choice of system" made the difference between

winning and losing.

 

Even at the highest levels, for every swing caused by differences in

bidding systems, there are 10 or more swings caused by careless

errors, blindspots, bad judgment, and just pure luck.

 

I played a 160-board Bermuda Bowl Final in which Meckstroth-Rodwell

(who arguably have the best bidding system in the world) played

most of the boards. There were exactly 2 hands where their superior

methods earned them a swing. The happened to be 2 other hands

where screwing up their superior methods cost them. I am sure there

were at least 30 hands in which swings were caused due to the

factors mentioned in the above paragraph.

 

Bidding systems have never won anybody anything (other than

bidding contests maybe).

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

 

PS I don't always agree with Luis - his characterizations of Hamman

and Avarelli (in another thread) are pretty close to sacrilege in my view,

but I am not going to get into that discussion - sorry.

[csdenmark]

 

Even at the highest levels, for every swing caused by differences in

bidding systems, there are 10 or more swings caused by careless

errors, blindspots, bad judgment, and just pure luck.

 

 

Very interesting - we never hear about such! I think good knowledge of the system concerned is needed to discover such. - Therefore Chris Compton were a real asset to this last Vugraph.

 

Quote from: luis on Today at 06:12:31pm

This is completely wrong, fix the contract in a thousand deals and with the same fixed defense a top player will produce a zillion more tricks per deal than you. Bridge is not only about systems and bidding, there's a lot of technique in the play, the defense and judgement and thats the area where top players distinct from the rest. This skills are mastered studying and practicing hard.

Even beginners can play a system as good as the one played by Meckwell, there's no skill in memorizing sequences.

 

Yes Luis - bridge is more than systems and bidding - but not much more. The rest is mechanical work. For me bridge is over when auction is over. Rest is technique and could be any cardgame.

 

Maybe you think no skill in memorizing. In your age I was able to remember danish phone books - but no longer. But the important is not to memorize a system but to compose it!

[hrothgar]

Comment 1: Over time, I think that most bidding systems have become much more "efficient". It would be interesting to see how a pair playing "The Official System", Vienna Club, or Vanderbilt Club would fare against a pair using any one of a variety of modern systems.

 

Comment 2: Over time, I think that the variance in the efficiency of popular bidding systems has diminished. I think that it is reasonable to claim that the Neopolitan Club was a better system than most of its contemporaries. Today, I think that the gap between Meckwell Precision and Bridge World Standard has narrowed significantly. [For what its worth, I don't think the Meckwell have a particular brilliant system. However, they do have a remarkably complete system which may be more important.]

 

Comment 3: People have known how to design bidding systems that a much better than anything in current use for 25+ years. The Strong Pass systems developed by the Poles and Kiwis are much stronger than current mainstream systems. However, the "powers that be" legislated these systems out of existence because they threatened more popular methods. [if you ever want an inteesting discussion talk to Paul Marston about why he stopped playing strong pass. I'm sure that the Passing Poles have some stories as well]

 

In short, while I basically agree with what Fred says, I think that he overstates his case somewhat.

[fred]

 

Even at the highest levels, for every swing caused by differences in

bidding systems, there are 10 or more swings caused by careless

errors, blindspots, bad judgment, and just pure luck.

 

 

Very interesting - we never hear about such! I think good knowledge of the system concerned is needed to discover such. - Therefore Chris Compton were a real asset to this last Vugraph.

 

Just look at the .lin file for a random session from

the Bermuda Bowl. Look at how most of the swings

were caused.

 

Quote from: luis on Today at 06:12:31pm

This is completely wrong, fix the contract in a thousand deals and with the same fixed defense a top player will produce a zillion more tricks per deal than you. Bridge is not only about systems and bidding, there's a lot of technique in the play, the defense and judgement and thats the area where top players distinct from the rest. This skills are mastered studying and practicing hard.

Even beginners can play a system as good as the one played by Meckwell, there's no skill in memorizing sequences.

 

Yes Luis - bridge is more than systems and bidding - but not much more. The rest is mechanical work. For me bridge is over when auction is over. Rest is technique and could be any cardgame.

 

If you really think that than you are missing a lot in

my view. Listen more carefully to the commentators

other than Chris Compton (no offense to him intended).

You may learn that there is a lot more to the game

of bridge than you realize.

 

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[DrTodd13]

It seems like there is a small arms race when it comes to bidding

systems. At the highest levels, is there any sign that the level of

complexity is not gradually increasing? When you win the Bermuda

bowl by 1 IMP, you are probably happy for every gadget that you

had and used that gave you an advantage.

 

I saw many cases where a seemingly logical lead was disasterous

and let a game make that otherwise wouldn't. If we want a 99%

guarantee that the better team wins, how many boards do you

think they need to play? 128 seems too few based on my experience

with confidence intervals in technical papers.

[hrothgar]

Hi Todd

 

Back when I was doing serious statistics, most of the analysis that I saw assumed independence between observations. If we can assume that each board played is an independent sample, its relatively easy to calculate the number of boards necessary to produce the desired confidence interval. [We'd need to make a couple assumptions regarding the relative skill of the two teams, but the problem itself is tractable]

 

Unfortunately, I think that board results are strongly autocorrelated. If I believe that I am behind in a match I am going to alter my strategy and try to generate swings. Its been a while, but I don't recall any "simple"methods for calcuating confidence intervals for autocorrelated samples.

[DrTodd13]

Like you mention, you need to make assumptions about the relative skill

of the two teams. I'm not exactly sure how this is a tractable problem.

I don't know what the units of measurement of skill level would be. Maybe

we could assume that they are the two best teams in the world and figure

out how many other teams in the world each could beat. Take the # of

bridge players in the world, divide by 6 giving the number of bridge teams

in the world, X. Then, one of the last two teams could beat X-1 teams

(you can't beat yourself unless you're really kinky) and the other X-2 teams

(being worse than only one other team). The difference between these

teams would be 1/X. Let's give X a tentative value of 50,000. Anybody

with some spare time want to compute the 95 and 99% confidence intervals

using my assumptions?

 

I do agree though that knowing the number of boards does lead to SOTM

actions. These just complicate matters. Personally, I'm not confident

saying either of these teams is better when the lead changed hands

several times with a final result of 1IMP difference. It might be interesting

to play the final until one team was up a certain number of IMPs rather

than a fixed number of boards. That sucks for the tournament organizers

and everyone having to make travel plans but it would certainly be

exciting.

 

Another option would be to designate certain events as special and then

have a formula for each team's performance for those special events over

an entire year. Off the top of my head, something like the CART, Indy, or

Nascar season championships.

[hrothgar]

You need to define a relationship between the sample and what you are sampling.

 

Case in point: I would argue that the most logical sample is a single board in a team event.

 

In this case, you are measuring the the number of IMPs that changed hands.

 

I think that it is dangerous to use this data predict how well a team would preform against other teams. This requires some transitivity assumptions that don't necessarily hold true.

[Erkson]

...

Even at the highest levels, for every swing caused by differences in

bidding systems, there are 10 or more swings caused by careless

errors, blindspots, bad judgment, and just pure luck.

...

 

I agree, and I didn't mean that most of the swings are caused by differences in bidding SYSTEMS.

 

IMO most of the swings are caused by differences in bidding, whatever is the system.

Watching those high level matches confimed to me that at the end of the auction phase a board is won or lost in a much higher number of cases than in the play or defense phase : they didn't call game, or they called game and will be down, they didn't double, or they doubled, they missed the slam etc...

-------------------------------------------

 

csdnmark wrote :

"Yes Luis - bridge is more than systems and bidding - but not much more. The rest is mechanical work. For me bridge is over when auction is over. Rest is technique and could be any cardgame."

 

 

Although this affirmation seems to me exagerated, I tend to agree because it rightly emphasizes the weight of bidding in the final result of a match.

 

Erkson

[mpefritz]

I know the declarer is allowed full disclosure of meanings from calls and non-calls. However, it must be difficult for a declarer to fully grasp all that information.

 

Do pairs that have a highly detailed bidding system then have an advantage because their positive and negative inferences on defense are greater?

 

fritz

[luis]

I know the declarer is allowed full disclosure of meanings from calls and non-calls. However, it must be difficult for a declarer to fully grasp all that information.

 

Do pairs that have a highly detailed bidding system then have an advantage because their positive and negative inferences on defense are greater?

 

fritz

 

 

Yes indeed and pairs playing some complex 2 level openings and other gadgets have an advantage over other pairs because they are "used" to situations arising from that openings or special bids while their opponents are not. Opener knows what his pd is expected to do with different holdings and thats an advantage since their opponents don't know that.

While I love complex systems I recon that this is unfair advantage and the laws should do something about it. You can use relays, asking bids and all the tools you want in your constructive bidding for your own profit, but methods designed just to disrrupt your opponent's bidding are a different thing.

[luke warm]

whether the game is bridge, chess, or even tiddly winks, there is a *huge* difference between the expert and even the advanced player (real experts, not those who mark themselves as such at BBO and elsewhere)... i'm not talking about systemic differences (though those obviously exist), i'm talking about skill differences..

 

in chess, the openings and defenses to openings have been around for eons.. sure, occasionally there will be a new wrinkle added, but generally it isn't the "system" (ie, opening) one uses that wins, it's how one plays the game

 

to hint that the true expert makes anywhere near the number of errors the average "advanced" player makes is to greatly simplify what's going on, and is frankly an affront to talent and skill (imho)

 

technique can be learned... systems can be learned.. once learned, however, the differences between players is called talent.. the true expert is simply more talented, period

 

as slim says, them's my 10 cents, my 2 cents is free

[hrothgar]

 

Do pairs that have a highly detailed bidding system then have an advantage because their positive and negative inferences on defense are greater?

 

fritz

 

 

Pairs that devote extra effort to the game are rewarded for their efforts.

This is normally considered to be a "good" thing.

[hrothgar]

Yes indeed and pairs playing some complex 2 level openings and other gadgets have an advantage over other pairs because they are "used" to situations arising from that openings or special bids while their opponents are not. Opener knows what his pd is expected to do with different holdings and thats an advantage since their opponents don't know that.

While I love complex systems I recon that this is unfair advantage and the laws should do something about it. You can use relays, asking bids and all the tools you want in your constructive bidding for your own profit, but methods designed just to disrrupt your opponent's bidding are a different thing.

 

There are two major problems with Luis's post.

 

As Luis notes, players who are using non-standard methods will have an advantage during auction branches where they have more familiarity than the opponents. However, this will occur any time that players are adopting methods that deviate from the the norm.

 

Weak NTs versus Strong NT's

4 card majors versus 5 card majors

Precision 1D Openings

"Polish" Club openings

 

Adopting any of these methods has enormous repercussions on the positive and negative inferences available during the auction. If we really want to adopt Luis's argument about "unfair methods" then we are saying that Acol Pairs should be allowed to mix with players who Prefer Standard American since their is no way that the two groups can compete fairly with one another.

 

In turn, this brings up a second significant problem. Luis is all for allowing methods that he deems "constructive", but wants to restrict methods that give individuals an unfair advantage. I know from a series of other posts that Luis is running into significant problems with the regulatory authorities in Argentina due to the fact that the Luis constructive methods include a series of non-standard openings. [see Luis's comments on MOSCITO for a complete description of the opening structure in question] At the core, the arguments of all the regulators boils down to "Permit the methods that I like to use, ban the rest of it"

 

Bridge is a complex game that requires many skills to suceed. Some players are enormously gifted at defense, other are declarer player, and still others are blessed with an innate ability to apply bidding systems effectively. I would argue that adaptability is one, often overlooked skill. Players needs to be able adjust their strategies in the face of imperfect information.

 

This really isn't all that difficult; Pairs that develop some reasonable "meta-agreements" won't have perfect defenses, but they'll be 90% of the way there. More over, I doubt whether these pairs have anything approaching "optimal" defenses to any of the standard stuff that they encounter.