IMP Question

[AAr]

I usually play very well when overtricks or extra undertricks are at stake, fair when tricks that make or set partscore contracts are at stake, but horribly when the trick that makes or breaks a game contracts are at stake.

 

What I don't like about this is that it seems like the boards where contracts are at stake weight about five or six times or more than the ones where just overtricks are at stake. I get punished for my bad defenses and plays more than I am rewarded for my good ones, and therefore always finish in the bottom half, despite playing optimilally in most of the boards. Is this fair?

 

Why should one bad play cost 12 IMPs (because it made or set a game contract) while five good ones only gain about 6 IMPs (because only overtricks or extra undertricks were at stake). Is this fair? Shouldn't each board be the same weight? I want my good plays rewarded exactly the same as by bad plays are punished, reguardless of what they cost. My good plays usually result in overtrick swings, and my bad plays usually result in game swings, so my bad plays seem to get punished more than my good ones? What advice would you give? Should I play Matchpoints instead of IMPs more, likely do better there? (I do tend to fair better in Matchpoints than in IMPs, so you know, although I like IMPs better).

 

Further comments and advice? I just don't like how one bad play get punished more than the combined total of four or five good plays because of the timing or weight of the bad play, while other players might make four bad plays but their one good play outweights their one bad player.

 

Sorry to vent. Thanks!

[jdonn]

I also think it's unfair that when I drive and there are no other cars on the road I am able to go in a perfect straight line and stop on a dime, but when there is heavy traffic I weave everywhere and constantly crash.

 

On a similar note, I just hate how when I am carrying a glass of water across the kitchen I never spill a drop, but when the glass is filled with burning hot acid I always spill it on my foot.

 

Kind of like how when I am using a toothpick nothing goes wrong, but when I am using a chainsaw I always lose control and endanger all those around me.

 

 

So in all seriousness, you think it's unfair that a player is punished in the scoring for choking every time something actually significant is at stake? Horrors!

[Gerben42]

ONE ghost driver? I see hundreds!

 

On a more serious note, you might want to try Board-a-match scoring.

[helene_t]

Yes, Gerben is right, BAM is the solution to the problem. Or Patton as a compromise.

 

In the Dutch BF magazine, there is a bidding contest which awards scores from 1 to 10 but assessing the value of a contract as if it where IMPs. I can understand the reasoning: IMPs is statistically inefficient because a single slam deal can outweigh several partscore deals, and MP (or BAM) is unclear since you need information about the field to make a decision.

 

Yet the strategy to follow in such a "reverse-weighted" IMP contest becomes very artificial. Contestants don't bid a vulnerable game that, given their limited information about partner's hand, has 50% chance, because they reason that if it's only a partscore board we get 10 for a makeable partscore and zero for a hopeless game. Yet they do bid a vul game that has 50% chance given the limited information they have about opps' hands, because they reason that it's IMPs.

 

On the Dutch bridgesite StepBridge (which has a very controversial ranking system) we had the discussion about whether the IMP-ranking should be based on "reverse-weighted" scores in the same fashion. I'm sorry to admit that I was one of those who suggested such a weighting scheme, because of statistical efficiency. Thinking more about it, I'm afraid that it would lead to the same artificial strategies that you see in the BF magazine bidding contest.

[barmar]

IMP play requires you to know which plays are critical and which are not. I think most players actually find this easier -- it's pretty simple to understand that your primary goal is to make your contract (when declaring) or set the contract (when defending), and most other considerations are secondary. In matchpoint or BAM play, it can be difficult to determine what you need to accomplish for a good score on the board: you have to figure out what "the field" will be doing, and try to beat them (or at least do no worse).

 

IMP scoring is also the form of duplicate that requires strategy most like that of rubber bridge, which is how many people initially learn to play. But if you started with matchpoint duplicate bridge, I can see how you might not find this useful.

[mikeh]

I usually play very well when overtricks or extra undertricks are at stake, fair when tricks that make or set partscore contracts are at stake, but horribly when the trick that makes or breaks a game contracts are at stake.

 

What I don't like about this is that it seems like the boards where contracts are at stake weight about five or six times or more than the ones where just overtricks are at stake. I get punished for my bad defenses and plays more than I am rewarded for my good ones, and therefore always finish in the bottom half, despite playing optimilally in most of the boards. Is this fair?

 

Why should one bad play cost 12 IMPs (because it made or set a game contract) while five good ones only gain about 6 IMPs (because only overtricks or extra undertricks were at stake). Is this fair? Shouldn't each board be the same weight? I want my good plays rewarded exactly the same as by bad plays are punished, reguardless of what they cost. My good plays usually result in overtrick swings, and my bad plays usually result in game swings, so my bad plays seem to get punished more than my good ones? What advice would you give? Should I play Matchpoints instead of IMPs more, likely do better there? (I do tend to fair better in Matchpoints than in IMPs, so you know, although I like IMPs better).

 

Further comments and advice? I just don't like how one bad play get punished more than the combined total of four or five good plays because of the timing or weight of the bad play, while other players might make four bad plays but their one good play outweights their one bad player.

 

Sorry to vent. Thanks!

I think what you are describing, if you are serious, is that you play and defend all contracts on the basis that you try to maximize the tricks your side takes. This is effective (within limits) at matchpoints but a recipe for poor results at imps.

 

It is a mindset issue: I have seen it many times at our local club, where imp games are relatively infrequent...for many years, there were none, and even now there are 5 mp games for one imp game and the imp game is poorly attended.

 

The result: players who have tried hard to learn the mp style have problems at imps.

 

Imp bridge is a different game: even tho the rules are the same, and almost everyone uses the same bidding system in one game as they do in the other.

 

But good players bid and play/defend differently at imps than they do at mps.

 

I suspect you simply haven't grasped that yet.

 

In other words, when playing every hand at imps, forget the overtricks as declarer and forget trying to beat the contract as much as you can.

 

Make the contract, then, once you have that assured, see if an overtrick is available. Beat the contract one trick and then see if another is available.

 

Now, once you master that mindset, you can start to be more aggressive in terms of judgement as to when to start looking for over/under-tricks... else you will lose a lot of 1, 2 and 3 imp swings to the real experts... but you won't lose so many 10 and 12 imp swings.

[Stephen Tu]

AAr has been recycling this statement/question (along with a couple others) for many years now. I really don't know whether to take him seriously. This is probably the 4th or 5th time I have seen him posting this variation.

 

AAr, if you are serious, I really have a hard time believing that you are "playing optimally" on the other boards. In my experience, if you are making mistakes on the game boards, in reality you are probably making all kinds of mistakes also on the partscores & when overtricks are at stake. You just don't notice as much because of the smaller score fluctuations, and perhaps because you & opponent are trading errors canceling each other out.

 

Instead of recycling the same questions over & over again, which is silly (you've gotten same answers for years, they aren't going to change), why don't you post actual hand records from your play & ask where you went wrong, what you should be thinking about so that you make the right decisions? That way you can maybe improve. What's the point of asking the same questions that you already should know the answer to?

 

Find a mentor to go over your hand records, or post them here for constructive criticism. Asking "should I risk the contract at IMPS for overtricks?", and "I did something anti-field that resulted in a poor bridge score, should I be surprised my MP/IMP score is bad?" over & over again year after year is kind of ridiculous.

[BebopKid]

A simple answer.

 

IMP scoring is designed to award the most consistent pair/team.

 

MP scoring is designed to minimize the effects of large point swings on each board.

 

If you don't like IMPs, play MPs.