Which helps most?

[awm]

Obviously any/all of these can help to one degree or another. All were suggested in a recent thread on the same topic (I apologize if I missed any other serious suggestions). I'm curious as to which of these people think is the most valuable.

[helene_t]

I voted "solve play/defense problems" since I think that is what I have to do more at my current state if I want to improve. Obviously this is an individual thing. Six years ago my bidding was hopeless and I really needed to read books. Now I have read enough theory. Not that I know everything (Frances usually finds mistakes in what I write about bidding theory) but I have reached the zone of diminishing returns, given my limited skills in other areas.

 

But most of the IMPs and MPs that I lose are related to stupid mistakes that I would not commit when solving puzzles, yet for some obscure reason I do make those mistakes at the table. Not sure what to do about that - would it help to hire a mentor? While in Lake District I found that I played much better than I usually do. I think it was related to being away from work and other stress-causing things, eating better than usual, drinking less coffee, getting physical exercise.

[Trumpace]

If I was allowed to choose only one, I would pick reading books. A good book is the result of years of experience/wisdom of experts put together. You can't beat that.

[blackshoe]

I'd say form a regular partnership, play with that partner, and go over every hand to see where you went wrong.

[han]

Here are 3 that I don't think will improve your bridge game: avoid weak fields, play exclusively with a small number of regular partners and design a new bidding system.

 

All others should help.

[han]

I voted "play more bridge hands".

[kenberg]

One thing I have found helpful and lately I have not been doing: Quietly, by yourself, sit down with hand records and review your play. See where your bad results are due to bad decisions. Sometimes they will be due to good decisions by your opponents. Sometimes you are in a reasonable contract played, as near as you can tell, reasonably. If you are honest with yourself I believe this can be very helpful. Reading books is of course very useful and one of the ways that it helps is that you are more apt to spot a mistake, or a missed opportunity, when you review the hands. Too late for that hand but on track for the next.

[Guest Jlall]

My top 2 choices are way more important than any of the others in my opinion, those are discussing hands with good players and playing more hands. As far as which is the most important among those, it really depends on what you mean and what level you are at. There certainly is diminishing returns with hands played, and right now I feel like most of my new insight is gained by talking with others.

[Elianna]

I agree with Justin, it really depends on your level. I also think that it depends on your particular problem.

 

For myself, I can see that I definitely start playing better when I've played more hands. I tend to fall out of practice because I go months without playing serious bridge, and I have problems playing serious bridge online/in clubs for various reasons.

[jdonn]

There certainly is diminishing returns with hands played, and right now I feel like most of my new insight is gained by talking with others.

I agree about the diminishing returns, but it's a very slow process and obviously playing hands is still valuable. But it's true, I don't find something that I think is new or I never saw before nearly as often as I used to, although when I do I still think it's very cool.

 

I think books are the most variable, they will help some people immensely and others not at all.

 

I think playing against weak fields will still improve you, but at a slower rate and you will also develop bad habits that need to be broken.

 

Something left off the list that I think has helped me a lot - playing in a wide variety of circumstances. I mean getting experience at imps, matchpoints, rubber, money bridge, standard american, 2/1, precision, old partners, young partners, scientific partners, unscientific, playing at night, playing in the morning, playing for long stretches, etc etc etc.

[matmat]

i dunno.

i'm not very good at this game, so maybe my opinion shouldn't matter... but... Know when to stop. it's dangerous, and in my experience, bad for your game to play past the point at which you either stop caring about the outcomes or are too tired to try to focus. i.e. stop before playing becomes a negative experience.

 

other than that, prolly playing as many hands as is reasonable and talking to people (that know stuff) about them...

[Fluffy]

I voted for discuss hands with godo players wich is by far IMO the best way to learn.

 

Second you cab hire a pro an play with him, so you can discuss hands with him later :).

 

Agree with Han that those 3 don't look very useful.

 

I don't like reading books because it is not as good as talking with the experts who wrote them :)

[whereagles]

other: all of the above ^^

[helene_t]

Sorta disappointing that nobody votes for forum polls.

[matmat]

Sorta disappointing that nobody votes for forum polls.

silly helene... everyone knows that forum polls are only there to confirm the original posters bids and assign the blame to their p

[helene_t]

Here are 3 that I don't think will improve your bridge game: avoid weak fields, play exclusively with a small number of regular partners and design a new bidding system.

 

All others should help.

Learning more conventions and evaluation methods is also not likely to help that much, except if you have yet to learn t/o doubles, Stayman, the LOTT and HCP counting.

 

As for avoiding weak fields, I'm not quite sure if bad bridge is realy better than no bridge. But if you realize that the field is so weak that you might be better of not playing there, you are probably not susceptible to picking up bad habbits from the opponents.

[vuroth]

Obviously any/all of these can help to one degree or another. All were suggested in a recent thread on the same topic....

Link to the original thread please? This topic holds considerable interest, especially as I'm struggling to concentrate on my reading.

[awm]

This topic was previously discussed in:

 

This Thread

 

People gave a lot of suggestions; most of the serious ones are part of this poll.

[Gerben42]

Avoiding bad fields is important, but sadly not always easy.

[skjaeran]

This depends on your level. But I'd say discussing hands with top players, including of course regular partner(s) and play more bridge hands are most important for developing after you've reached a certain level.

 

When you're at expert level discussing with expert and world class players become more important, and you don't need to play a huge amount of boards. You still need to play enough to not become rusty (how much this is is individual) and preferrably against strong opponents.

[awm]

I voted "play more bridge hands" since I think this is really the key. Obviously most of these things will help (at least help some people).

 

One thing I think is interesting is that not very many are selecting "play exclusively with a small number of serious partners." I think this is curious, especially since you see a lot of people insisting that playing against bad opponents is bad for their game, whereas I would think that playing with a bad partner and/or a partner with whom you have poor agreements could easily be worse for your game. After all, bidding judgement and defense are hard to develop when you can't trust partner or don't know what he expects for certain calls/signals.

 

I also see a lot of aspiring expert players who play frequently with very weak partners (sometimes clients/students, but often just friends) and seem to feel this doesn't hurt their game, but would never be caught dead playing a club game (because this would "obviously" make them worse players). This seems kind of opposite to me, since you encounter many play/defense problems in a typical club session which are still interesting regardless of the opponents skill level (you just have to avoid resulting the board) whereas it's hard to make any decisions except in declarer play without partner being relevent.

 

In any case, I think it's helped me a lot to play primarily with a small number of strong partners, with thoroughly worked out agreements on system and style. Defending a hand when you're "in tune" with partner is very different (and a lot more fun) than defending a hand with a random (even an expert random).

[helene_t]

For intermediate players like me I don't think playing lots of hands is very useful, although I may be underestimating it. It is a very complex to analyze a hand and destile general conclusions from it. Often you made the right decision but it turned out badly, or vice versa. Part of the story is that club games are seven minutes per board like serious events, but beginners cannot achieve much more in seven minutes than throwing some cards in random order.

 

As for playing with a few regular partners: of course Adam is right that it is difficult to train bidding judgement if it's impossible to know what partner's bids mean, but OTOH playing with a single regular partner may make you rigid. If you play with many partners you'll be motivated to learn standard principles, and if you make some non-standard agreements with specific partners at least you will acknowledge that they are non-standard.