Australia going well

[DenisO]

Australia are currently lying 3rd in the Bermuda Bowl round robin. However none of the three pairs were selected for the initial Ozone iniative and don't seem to have got in since then. Seems strange --- can some from Oz explain?

[nickf]

Firstly, I can't explain why Australia is performing so well. Certainly they were not rated among the top half of competing teams. The NPC of the team, David Stern, has commented in his blog that he has never captained a team who have put so much work in.

 

Of their 6 players, I think it's fair to say only one, maybe two could be considered even bordering on world class. The others are very very good national level players.

 

I would, however, suspect that a proportion of their success can be attributed to David's captaincy. David is a very experienced international NPC and never approaches any task with less than 100% effort and committment. I dont know to what extent he has motivated his players but I know a lot of careful consideration has gone into the match by match lineups and pre-match preparation.

 

In respect to the OZ1 programme, I think Bruce Neill was in the squad for a while but that's not to say the others would not have been selected had they applied. Andrew Peake, Murray Green and Warren Lazer all have full time jobs with the usual four weeks annual leave, so committing to overseas and interstate travel to play in bridge tournaments was out of the the question. Bruce Neill and Pauline Gumby are retired and I'm not quite sure what Richard Jedychowski does.

 

After 18 matches, it looks likes Australia will qualify for the QuarterFinals, however a real test of their mettle will be R19 when they play Italy.

 

nickf

sydney

[Gerben42]

Anything can happen in one 16-board match, more importantly they have been playing well all-around.

 

With Italy, Egypt and Taiwan left:

 

4. Australia 301

9. South-Africa 278.5

10. USA2 274

 

I would really be surprised if they don't hold this up, especially since:

 

South-Africa still meets Italy

USA2 still meets Norway & Netherlands

[hrothgar]

Anyone know whats up with OzOne?

 

They've been very quiet for a few monthes now.

[MickyB]

Looks like the Aussie team was selected at trials in March. The BB team performed very well in the early stages of the competition, before winning the 64 board final by 1 imp from Zolly Nagy, Bob Richman, Tony Nunn, Sartaj Hans, Peter Gill and Paul Gosney.

[Cascade]

Looks like the Aussie team was selected at trials in March. The BB team performed very well in the early stages of the competition, before winning the 64 board final by 1 imp from Zolly Nagy, Bob Richman, Tony Nunn, Sartaj Hans, Peter Gill and Paul Gosney.

This Australian team (OzOne) that was defeated in the Australian trials finished a very close second to China in the PABF in June and ahead of the other Asian teams competing in the Bowl - Japan, Indonesia and Chinese Taipei. They might have won had there not been so many fouled boards - misduplications.

 

So the Australian Bowl team is performing comparably with that result now in the Bowl. Actually slightly better since they are currently ahead of China. This is consistent with their close win in the trials.

[nickf]

Anyone know whats up with OzOne?

 

They've been very quiet for a few monthes now.

Despite no public announcement, I understand that the OzOne programme has been terminated. This was a privately funded venture (initial donation - $1m) but continued support was subject to good results in domestic and international competion. The squad won a minor national event in a weak field (the Autumn National Open Teams in Adelaide) but apart from that no first places, anywhere.

 

There's a little bit left in the kitty and this will used to fund some youth scholarships.

 

nickf

sydney

[cherdano]

Hmm that is disappointing. It seems to me that the donor expected results a bit too quickly, I would expect something like this to have a reliably measurable impact only after 5 years or so.

[pclayton]

Hmm that is disappointing. It seems to me that the donor expected results a bit too quickly, I would expect something like this to have a reliably measurable impact only after 5 years or so.

I like private sponsorship too, but I'd really feel like a chump if some 'national level' players beat my racehorses and are now in top 3 of the Bermuda Bowl RR.

[goodwintr]

The Dallas Aces got almost immediate results, didn't they?

[Cascade]

Hmm that is disappointing. It seems to me that the donor expected results a bit too quickly, I would expect something like this to have a reliably measurable impact only after 5 years or so.

I like private sponsorship too, but I'd really feel like a chump if some 'national level' players beat my racehorses and are now in top 3 of the Bermuda Bowl RR.

In perspective this 'national level' team beat OzOne by 1 IMP. OzOne could easily have done as well had they won the trial.

 

Given the randomness in bridge and the small margins that top players have over good players then I think one year or so is a very small amount of time to be able to accurately measure the improvement.

 

There is also the very real possibility that other Australian players are doing better because or in response to OzOne. The OzOne players improve and therefore any other players need to improve to compete.

[cherdano]

The Dallas Aces got almost immediate results, didn't they?

That's not comparable, the depth of the field of world class players today is much much bigger than at that time.

[Cascade]

The Dallas Aces got almost immediate results, didn't they?

They began in 1968 and won the Bowl in 1970.

 

I think they had some mixed results in national competitions.

[mrdct]

Of their 6 players, I think it's fair to say only one, maybe two could be considered even bordering on world class. The others are very very good national level players.

I wonder what "world class" actually means? One would think that being good enough to make the top 8 teams in a Bermuda Bowl would qualify.

 

A feature of this Australian team is that the three partnerships tend to play most of their bridge, particularly in national events, in those partnerships. Neill-Jedrychowski have bid thousands of hands on BBO and are regularly seen practising on BBO. Green-Peake have been one the regular expert partnerships on the professional Noble team for some time now and Lazer-Gumby live together.

 

If you can eliminate bidding stuff-ups from your game and be in reasonable sync with your partner defensively, you can afford to slip a little bit (only a little bit) in some of the judgement and advanced card-play areas and still be competitive at the very top level.

[Guest Jlall]

The Dallas Aces got almost immediate results, didn't they?

no

[Cascade]

Of their 6 players, I think it's fair to say only one, maybe two could be considered even bordering on world class. The others are very very good national level players.

I wonder what "world class" actually means? One would think that being good enough to make the top 8 teams in a Bermuda Bowl would qualify.

I think it would be possible to qualify without every player on your team being world class. How many non-world class players you could get away with would probably depend on other factors like how much luck you had and how well your world class players played etc.

 

A feature of this Australian team is that the three partnerships tend to play most of their bridge, particularly in national events, in those partnerships.  Neill-Jedrychowski have bid thousands of hands on BBO and are regularly seen practising on BBO.  Green-Peake have been one the regular expert partnerships on the professional Noble team for some time now and Lazer-Gumby live together.

 

If you can eliminate bidding stuff-ups from your game and be in reasonable sync with your partner defensively, you can afford to slip a little bit (only a little bit) in some of the judgement and advanced card-play areas and still be competitive at the very top level.

 

These are excellent points that cannot be underestimated. In my regular partnership we have played and bid literally 1000s of hands - most on BBO in the partnership bidding rooms. The result of this is that in most situations we know what each other is doing. This is something that spoils you for playing with anyone else. On the contrary playing in less regular partnerships I find that I often get to situations where I do not know my partner's style or I do not know what partner will expect from my bid or play.

 

From a long way out we have based our partnership on getting as many of the communication aspects of bidding and to a lesser extent play (defense) - although we now realize we have to work more on our defense - right. Its nearly a realistic aim to get 100% of all communication issues right. On the other hand we realize and expect that we will get some judgement decisions 'wrong'. Of course our bidding practice that is primarily aimed at getting our communication right also enables us to work on our judgement.

[Mbodell]

How much, if at all, do you think it helps the Australian teams that they get to play against many more systems than some of the teams (particular the acbl based folks) in their regular bridge games so they get more practice in a variety of competitive artificial auctions? Factor or complete non-factor?

[mrdct]

How much, if at all, do you think it helps the Australian teams that they get to play against many more systems than some of the teams (particular the acbl based folks) in their regular bridge games so they get more practice in a variety of competitive artificial auctions? Factor or complete non-factor?

I'd say it's a factor but not an overly significant one.