How do you cope with defeat?

[Guest Jlall]

Just lost to Passell/Wold Landen/Pratap in finals of KO, and thus lost my bonus...... UBER TILT. JUST NEVER LOSE. EVER. OR ELSE YOU WILL FEEL LIKE CRAP.

[the hog]

No, a cilice is in fact a device for self mutilation, usually strapped to your arm or leg. I guess you are not a Catholic.

 

Btw in answer to the question of how do you cope - "Badly."

[P_Marlowe]

Exactly. I need to be more serious. Any way I can do that? Do I flail myself after a mistake? How do I conquer my will?

It can only be done to a certain degree, but

to get serious you need to play for something,

which is important for you.

 

#1 get a partner, who wants to win

#2 make yourself a realistic plan, what you want to achieve,

e.g. play a league with some friends, getting to the next

higher league

#3 you may try playing for money, one option would

be BBO

 

With kind regards

Marlowe

[skjaeran]

The other thing to realize is that as a developing player you will make at least several mistakes a session, probably more.

That's putting it mildly. I've seen a quote by a World Class player saying he'd love to be able to play 3 consecutive boards without making a single error.

[y66]

Well , on Monday we played against the team which finished 5th in BB last month and on the 3rd board I went off in a game where I thought I could have made on a slightly better line, and one opponent smirked.

 

I hunkered down and played error -free tiger bridge for the remainder of the night.

 

result: 48 imps to 3 in our favour.

 

Hunkering down and kicking a** after opponent smirks ... how did that feel? <_< Nice going.

[Rossoneri]

So overcome them. IMO these mistakes should NEVER happen if you are a serious player. They should not be hard to cut out, just play slower and maintain your focus. Online these mistakes will happen if you're not taking it too seriously which is fine, but again if you are taking it seriously it should not happen.

I find it impossible to avoid these mistakes online, even if I'm taking the game fairly seriously. Don't know why - guess I'm distracted by simple things like checking my email...plus it feels less acceptable to think for a while when playing online.

MSN is worse.

[Hanoi5]

I ended up winning the tournament. Of course I had to botch one more hand...

 

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I got to 5♠ after my LHO preempted showing 6♣. I got a small heart lead. I blew this hand, how would you play it?

[glen]

Odor eaters and clean socks

Forget clean socks, for defeet just have lots and lots of safe socks

 

On the above hand, do I know that LHO has exactly 6♣s, or has 6+♣s?

[Hanoi5]

Should be exactly 6. I opened 1♠ and she overcalled 3♣.

[guggie]

could be 7 too than?

If exactly 6, t would take the a, club a, ruff club, cross to sp a, ruff last club, draw trumps, eventually concede trump Q and di ace.

But if east has only 2 clubs and 4 trumps some more thinking is required.

[SoTired]

God forbid I should ever learn to "cope" with defeat. NOT EVER. I don't ever want it to happen again. I want it to hurt.

 

I will laugh with the opps and be polite, but when the cards are withdrawn from the tray, I will attempt to crush them and show no mercy while doing it.

 

Like Justine I just lost a knockout (but at a lower level) when my partner reverted to a novice for 3 hands.

 

I went to a convenience store, bought 2 Butterfingers and a box of Good & Plenty, went back to the hotel, turned on an old movie, and ate candy until my stomach hurt.

[Al_U_Card]

A great contemporary philosopher had the ideal one word reply to defeat.....

 

(hidden below)

 

 

Doh!

 

[MFA]

@ SoTired

 

Blaming your partner is IMO the worst possible way to react to a defeat.

[Yogeshdg]

You drink a bottle of wine,go to bed and wake up the next morning for a fresh start.

[Free]

You're only defeated after playing all the boards. So until that's the case, just move on, don't care about anything you do! Sometimes your opponents do even worse things and you win on such awful boards... As long as you don't know the final result, don't care about anything good or bad you do. Yes the good to, because if you get too hung up about how well it's going, you can get hit back hard if you have one lousy board. Just play your hands, ignore the results, do what you're supposed to do, and keep the analyzes for later.

 

Ofcourse, after you lose it's time to reflect on what went wrong. :P But even if I win I tend to analyze the hands and try to see what I did well and what I did wrong. Learning from mistakes is one thing, learning from the good things is also quite valuable imo. For example a nice falsecard or misleading line of play that worked: ask yourself WHY it worked!

[Codo]

As others had mentioned before, there are different issues:

 

1. How to cope with a loss in a hand/round/Segment: Stay focused, don´t care too much about the bad ones, remember their faults and hope that there are more. Stay positive.

For me this is known- but not easy to do. I am surely not as good as I should be in this area.

 

2. After you lost a match/league/k.o/BB

Get depressed, decide. You are guilty, you did all the errors, you are scum. Or: All others are guilty, esp. partner, teammates, bad luck.

In both cases: Get drunk, think about buying a rope, stop playing bridge. take it serious. It is not just a game. They destroyed you. These lucky bastard.

 

Some time later (sometimes minutes, sometimes weeks) look over the hands.

See your faults. Get to know that all had been guilty. (At least normally). Maybe it was really bad luck. Maybe you gave all you have and there are better players then you around (unlikely, but possible). Try to beat these lucky bastards next time. Try to be less emotional, more focussed and well prepared.

[Rebound]

I have serious problems with my ability to concentrate, as some here can certainly confirm, so I do make some terrible errors.

 

I recently went to a local small tournament after not having played much for some time. In a 2-session open mp event, my partner and I managed to be well placed after the first session. In the first two rounds of the second session I grossly misplayed two easy hands. In a swiss on the final day, with a few consecutive victories in hand, my team faced one of the best teams there. At my table, we got off to a great start. I told myself, "All we have to do is avoid a major disaster and we'll win this one." Well, on the last board I singlehandedly created a disaster that resulted in our defeat. I kicked myself around a lot after the game but we had a sweep on the next round. I it was painful, I admit, but it only made me more determined to kick butt next time.

 

Clearly, the above could not be considered "serious bridge" in the sense that I agree that if you are serious, you need to get a single partner, practice a lot, and play in the toughest events you can find. Unfortunately, I might never reach the level of being able to play "serious bridge" simply because I concentrate so poorly. Playing almost constantly allows for much improvement but I still lose focus too frequently even then. But I take almost any bridge game to be serious in that I want to play my best and I get equally hard on myself then as when playing in competition. I have played with one or two of the posters here and played like I didn't know what I was doing on more than one hand. But I am determined to play as well as I can on each such occasion.

 

To me, what it comes down to is your own expectations. If you want to win, and if you feel you have the ability, all you need is your own determination to play better bridge next time. Perform activities designed to improve your ability to concentrate. Even if this is away from the bridge table it will improve your game. Accept that you will make mistakes and use them as a learning opportunity. I agree that basic errors like miscounting trump must never happen in serious competition, but that's all down to concentration.

[sathyab]

Typically my goal is to play well in various events; if I feel that I played my best game I'm usually happy even if this didn't result in a first place finish. For national-level pair events, making the final day or placing in the overalls can be a better goal than winning the whole thing.

 

I've been using the same metric for quite some time, i.e, performance in top-level pair events as a measure of one's progress and also as a goal to aim for, but it's not a universal yardstick by any means. I frequently attend Nationals which my regular partners don't. When I look for new partnerships, it's always the same question I have "Tell me about your recent performace at the Nationals". On the other hand, quite a few of them aren't impressed by my 1500 MP's, for it places them in lower brackets in events like Spingold and Vanderbilt which seed teams. I tell them I didn't have the time or the inclination to attend all the Bracket VII KOs in all those regionals to accumulate MP's by the bushels.

 

Some day instead of an aggregate number of MPs and BRP Q's, they'd tell us how many Blue Ribbon Pair Qualifiers you acquired in Open events like Pair events or Open Swiss teams versus Bracketed KOs.

[sathyab]

You drink a bottle of wine,go to bed and wake up the next morning for a fresh start.

Reminds me of a signature in an ex-colleague's e-mails, a quote attributed to Napolean. "Have champagne, in victory you deserve it; in defeat you need it" !