Hands for use in Tournaments

[hrothgar]

I'd like to bring up a "pet peeve" of mine.

 

The new BBO executable allows tournament directors the option of pre-selecting hands for use in a tournament. Many directors have already started to make use of this feature by offering tournaments based on hands found in BBO's Deal of the Week or some such.

 

From my own perspective, I see nothing wrong with Tournament Directors offering whatever type of event that they want, however, as a player I very much would like advanced warning when this type of silliness is taking place. Simply stated, I have no interest in participating in this type of event and become somewhat annoyed when I unwittingly do so.

 

I think that Bridge Master hands are an enormously valuable tool in learning, however, presenting this content in the context of a tournament seems badly flawed. Its a distraction from the game and significantly biases the results of the tournament. In this case, lets keep the chocolate separate from the peanut butter.

 

What I would find useful/valuable is something akin to the analysis that Inquiry has been performing for some of the Novice/Intermediate events where he analyzes the hands after the facts and provides commentary regarding interesting points in the bidding and/or play.

[skrshawk]

Maybe it's just me, but I might also think there are potential copyright issues involved in using someone else's hands in a tournament setting without permission. There are many advanced tools available for generating interesting bridge hands and even allow for a single winner style tournament (all hands N-S having the same number of points as E-W through the tournament or some such), and this I think would be a much better use of the ability to preselect hands.

 

The thing about hands designed for practice and teaching skills is that from the opponents chairs the hands are often pathetically easy to defend while being tremendously challenging for the declarer (or vice versa if the lesson is on defense). The best hands I think give an even split of "can make if declarer finds best line of play" and "will fail if defenders find best defense" in a tournament situation.

 

Take care,

John

[inquiry]

Thanks for the kind comments about my attempts with the novice event hands.

 

I have only witnessed one tournment with preset hands. To be honest, while the hands were interesting, when you turn the players lose on them, the play was not as interesting as you would find in the original problems. A couple cases in point...

 

One hand a defender against a six heart slam was to hold (after partner supported clubs)....

 

S - void

H - 542

D - JT842

C - AKQJ4

 

The "trick" to this one was to underlead the C-AKQJ to your partner's ten to get a spade ruff. Sadly, only 3 of 34 tables found 6H's, and only one of these three defeneders underlead the AKQJ... (congradulations to slaktaren).

 

Similiarly, the first hand was a clever little jettison play, where you play 6S on a club lead and have to cash a second club at trick two and throw away the DIAMOND ACE and then give up a Diamond....the hand is...

 

S-AK7xxx

H-ATxxx

D-A

C-x

 

S-Q8x

H-Qx

D-QJT982

C-AK

 

Sadly, about half the defender lead a diamond or a trump, so many players didn't have to worry about the jettison play.

 

Then, there was the seven heart hand that requires declearer to set up a simple squeeze to make, but 1) only one pair bid 7H's (and they went down.) And 2) almost everyone lead the diamond ACE from: s-98 H-void D-AQJ965 C-QJT92 so making 13 tricks with the setup diamond king (one hand void) was trivial. To add insult to injury. Of the guys who lead a club, many simply accepted claims of all the tricks without seeing if declearer could work out the squeeze.

 

All of the 12 hands were interesting to us kibitizers, as we had a great time discussing "what was the trick" among ourselves. But, as far as pesenting the challenge that the designer had in mind for the players? I don't think that every really materialized. For the players, it must have looked like just another tournment (albeit with a lot of slams out of the 12 hands. I guess that is where the problem would be, these are problem hands so it would have paid to "bid em up" if you had played in it... assuming your card playing skill was up to the task of these book hands).

 

Ben