All this system talk...

[matmat]

hypothetical scenario.

 

Pairs A and B live in the same area, play the same clubs, tournaments etc.

 

Pair A plays one system, pair B plays another system. Each has a well discussed partnership and know their own systems equally well.

 

There is nothing to differentiate the pairs in terms of ability when it comes to defence or declaring. Basically, they are equally good, with the only difference being system.

 

Now, suppose that the systems they play are fairly commonplace, with some special agreements for each to fine tune things.

 

What mean difference would you expect in their matchpoint scores over a statistically significant set of results?

 

How about, if one pair plays a highly artificial, very gadget filled, uber-discussed cuebidding set of methods? what sort of difference would you expect now?

 

 

Does it matter whether the fields they play in are mainly club players or tournament players?

 

thoughts? comments? flames?

[helene_t]

Unless one of the pairs played really inferior methods, such as something from the 50's or earlier or some unplayable home-grown stuff, I would expect the only difference coming from playing unusual methods against which opps have no good defense. For example it can be quite effective to play weak NT at club level in strong-notrump land. But even that would hardly amount to more than 0.05% I think.

[gwnn]

Maybe you're asking the wrong question. What if one forced this strong club guy to switch to 2/1? Even if he put in a great deal of his time to study all the intricacies, he'd still feel better with strong ♣. His results should go down significantly (even after a year or so).

[mike777]

Maybe you're asking the wrong question. What if one forced this strong club guy to switch to 2/1? Even if he put in a great deal of his time to study all the intricacies, he'd still feel better with strong ♣. His results should go down significantly (even after a year or so).

Well we can put this to a real life test with Hamman in the summer. :)

 

He is going to switch to wk nt, 5 card majors.

[han]

The title of this thread is "all this system talk", suggesting that you doubt talking about system will make a big difference. However, your assumption is that both pairs have well discussed agreements, including system, so surely they have been talking about it a lot.

 

As long as they have made reasonable agreements and know these well, I think that their actual choices in system matter relatively little.

[matmat]

The title of this thread is "all this system talk", suggesting that you doubt talking about system will make a big difference. However, your assumption is that both pairs have well discussed agreements, including system, so surely they have been talking about it a lot.

 

As long as they have made reasonable agreements and know these well, I think that their actual choices in system matter relatively little.

you are right. perhaps i titled this wrong. but i wasn't going to title it "all these pi$$!#& contests about the superiority of certain methods..."

[pclayton]

Frankly systems can be a negative or a positive constant.

 

If they are too cumbersome, if they remove judgment, or if they serve to reduce confidence, I'll take the 5 minute discussion over the 100 pages of notes any day.

 

The Uncluttered Mind is one that wins.

[han]

"all these pi$$!#& contests about the superiority of certain methods..."

Yes, sometimes these discussions can be annoying. But while Rexford cuebidding may not be the ultimate follow-up to 1S-2C-2D-2S, it surely is a lot better than the agreements that most people have, i.e. very few.

[kfay]

Frankly systems can be a negative or a positive constant.

 

If they are too cumbersome, if they remove judgment, or if they serve to reduce confidence, I'll take the 5 minute discussion over the 100 pages of notes any day.

 

The Uncluttered Mind is one that wins.

I play with two patners regularly.

 

One is a relative beginner who I play with because I like her and I have genuine fun. You could count the conventions we play on one hand.

 

She is a beginner yet we have done pretty well in our local club (decent).

 

I have another partner who is a bidding FREAK!!! We play a highly artificial system which I LOATHE!!! I began playing with him to get better and then played with him more because we won a lot. I have been unsettled by the partnership for a while. We win probably 80% of the club events we enter and place well in sectionals and fairly in regionals. Personally I feel like the system successes we have are highly tempered by the lapses in system memory.

 

It's possible that in the latter case results have been bumped down simply because I don't like the system we play and I'm not comfortable playing it. But in my experience if you are talking about anywhere up to regional events system agreements don't matter as long as you have the agreements. You'll enjoy success if you mesh well and are both good players.

 

I would suspect, however, from these varying partnerships and from what I've seen on Vugraph that system agreements become much more crucial at the highest levels. I believe that judgement is enhanced by concrete evidence and the more stylized your system the more concrete the information you will receive from partner. I'm not endorcing any relay systems or such nonsense, however.

[mikeh]

My own experiences suggest that a complex method IF understood and internalized, is significantly better than a simple method, if both are played by equally skilled individuals.

 

However, there are a host of variables, including:

 

1. Mps: maybe in the Blue Ribbon or the World Open Pairs, method will play a more important role, but in the typical mp field, where the majority of the pairs are non-experts, table presence, solid card play and good judgment predominate. Finding the magic 6♦ contract that affords extra chances rather than the crude 6N will usually cost mps, not gain them, as one example. The flip side is that unusual methods will intimidate/confuse the opps and that will sometimes be a big edge. On the whole, the really unusual (but legal) methods, especially in ACBL-land don't come up often and aren' t that unusual.

 

2. Personality. One of my friends, with whom I play occasionally, disdains science. He used to play very successfully with another of my friends who is, at heart, a mad scientist. One of the reasons (only a minor one, I think) that they stopped playing regularly was that friend B found a partner (me) willing to let him design his dream system and play it. Friend A, a very good card player possessed of great table feel and confidence, basically won't play a lot of gadgets.... well, he plays quite a few of the expert standard gadgets, but relays and so on are, for him, a waste of energy. So, if he were compelled to play an esoteric method, I think his results would deteriorate, because he'd have a lot of 'forgets'

 

3. Ability to learn without compromising play. When friend B and I formed our partnership, my card play went down hill in a big way. I suffered for about 2 years before the system clicked, after which we became arguably the strongest imp pair in Canada.. not the strongest imp players, btw...the whole was definitely greater than the sum of its parts, considering that one of those parts was me B)

 

That only lasted another 2-3 years before we stopped playing after a big event, where as a team we crashed and burned.

 

I know this didn't answer the question about the mp odds a complex system grants its users.... I'd say maybe .5% at best, while in a long match (64 boards or more) I'd say about 1/6th of an imp per board... maybe one double-digit swing in such a match.

[Apollo81]

If both pairs know their system equally well and play the cards equally well then their MP results will probably be equal. The complex pair's IMP results will probably be slightly higher because of better slam investigatory methods ASSUMING they dont have more forgets than the simple pair.

[benlessard]

In MP its hard to tell because most high complexity system are designed for IMPs.

[MickyB]

In addition to the scenario already presented, I think we need to assume that both systems are equally anti-field (or that the players are of average standard for the field that they are in).

 

I'd expect the difference between

 

- a good system (relatively simple, but well-designed)

 

- and a poor system (not hideously poor...e.g. Capp or DONT over 1NT)

 

to be about 1%.

[Guest Jlall]

Very little difference. I even think 1% is too high.

[MickyB]

Very little difference. I even think 1% is too high.

That's just cos you haven't seen how good my systems are yet. Or how bad "Benji Acol" is...

[awm]

I'd actually rate system higher than a lot of people are suggesting.

 

My estimate is that system makes a difference of about one board per session. This is not including boards lost due to "system misunderstandings" or boards randomized due to system (i.e. played from the opposite side). It's also ignoring opponents who make obvious screwups because they don't have their defenses straight. This is even more significant at IMPs because the system wins are often slam or game decisions.

 

Obviously this is quite significant -- a full board is something like 4% and can be the difference between average and placing or between placing and winning.

 

On the other hand, I suspect that even experts probably throw away a good bit more than a board per session in defensive mistakes. And if the system is complex/good enough to win the maximum of around one board per session, a lot of partnerships will occasionally "screw up" the complex methods and may actually end up well behind where they'd be playing simple bridge.

 

In all, I think improving card play (especially defense) will help more than improving system for the vast majority of pairs. There are a few exceptions at the highest levels, or for people who find memorizing a hundred pages of system notes "a cinch."

[Cascade]

As long as they have made reasonable agreements and know these well, I think that their actual choices in system matter relatively little.

I agree with this very strongly.

 

System choices are often about swings and round-abouts. You win on some hands and you lose on others.

 

The biggest advantage comes from discussing many situations and knowing your methods.

[ClaceyJ]

That's just cos you haven't seen how good my systems are yet. Or how bad "Benji Acol" is...

 

Hey... some people make Benji work... sort of...

[Cascade]

In addition to the scenario already presented, I think we need to assume that both systems are equally anti-field (or that the players are of average standard for the field that they are in).

 

I'd expect the difference between

 

- a good system (relatively simple, but well-designed)

 

- and a poor system (not hideously poor...e.g. Capp or DONT over 1NT)

 

to be about 1%.

The biggest advantage in detailed discussion is not at the part-score or even game level but in slams.

 

The frequency of these is relatively low but when they come up they score lots of IMPs - ok I am talking about IMPs rather than MPs I guess that is a side track.

[Echognome]

I actually think system can make a difference, but couldn't quantify it in percentages (but still a low %).

 

If I were going to play mainly or exclusively MPs, I would play some form of EHAA or Fantunes variety, because I feel it puts a lot more pressure on the opponents board after board.

 

Whereas if I were going to mainly play IMPs, I would play strong club + relays, because I think the slam bidding methods are superior.

 

But I end up playing the same system with the same partner regardless of the scoring, so the best system for some MPs, some IMPs is "I don't know." And I'm not claiming that the two systems above are the "best systems", I am claiming that I found them to attain the best results for me when I play.

 

By the way, I want to mention that just because you play relays, does not mean you are playing a highly complicated system. I find that because of the parallelisms you often have fewer things to remember. It's really just getting over the initial learning of the relays. Once you get those down, it's quite easy to remember the rest.

[blackshoe]

There was a board at this afternoon's club game where slam was cold. The board was played 12 times - and only one pair bid the slam. So they got a top, and everyone else got an average. On another board, 7NT was cold - one pair (not the same one) bid it. Another pair were in 6NT making seven. A third pair were in 6C. Most of the rest were in game, but several played in a part score - and some of the game and part score pairs didn't make twelve tricks.

 

The conclusion I draw from all this is that there aren't very many good players around here. :)

[keylime]

I think system matters to a degree, but I think the style of the partnership is much more critical.

 

Case in point:

 

During my time in Canada, my pard was an aggressive player that got after it. So I was naturally the rev limiter of sorts, because when I played aggressively, the scores dropped. The system, as good as it was in the game and slam bidding zone, was being distorted into a mess in the competitive bidding area. That, and my cardplay blew chunks.

 

With Larry, there is a far more measured approach to the partnership; I firmly believe there is an acute awareness of the limits of style and how to work within those boundaries. I never thought that I'd be playing 4 card majors with canape. However, I'm much happier that I am now. He doesn't go overboard, and allows me to be somewhat creative. There is the willingness to say no to something.

 

System wise it's important to find what the boundary is, but style wise, it's far more important to determine the intent of your pard. I'd rate it 20/80.

[kenrexford]

I generally distrust any "educated guess" as to how important any general or specific partnership agreement might be, because I have found my own assumptions to be off-kilter when I have tested them. If you are curious as to the relative importance of system, and if you can be objective and honest, then I suggest doing what I have often done and spend the time going through hand records, hand generators, vugraphs, and the like to see whether a system gadget or a general approach seems to actually gain or not, and how frequently.

 

For instance, I was of the opinion at one point, from experience, that a 2♦ opening to show at least nine cards in the minors and about 13-16 HCP was a huge and unexpected gainer. I had used this for years and seemed to be having incredible success. I had done an early vugraph review and found what appeared to be large numbers of IMP swings from this tool. However, upon changing the parameters to add a different tweak to a different alternative auction, the advantage disappeared entirely. Kind of like, perhaps, Falnnery being "solved" a different way. So, I abandoned that idea.

 

The entire idea of quantifying any possible impact is somewhat misleading. Suppose, for instance, that a specific idea to change the system has a mere 1% impact on the system. That sounds remote, right? That means that the tweak only gains about once every four sessions, if by "1%" we mean on 1% of the hands. Well, if we assume that a one-level opening, a 1NT opening, a 2♣ opening, or a weak two opening is each a fairly common opening, then we have a fairly likely possibility of one of 9 openings occurring on any given hand. That makes a 1♠ opening, for instance (I know that the math is wrong, but hear me out) occurs maybe 11% of the time. However, if you add in the first, second, or third seat usually sarts the bidding, then I need a 1♠ opening only about once every 4% of the time, or once per session. I suppose I probably could manage fairly well without a 1♠ opening. I might not even lose that board when it came up.

 

Bridge is a game where partnerships gather as many tools as they can handle to better be able to handle varying situations. Choosing effective tools is good; choosing more effective tools is better. You want to reach a point where return on investment is positive, even if 0.0000001%. If you lose X amount of concentration from the "X Convention" but gain Y amount of advantage from the "X Convention, then use the "X Convention" if Y-X is a positive number, however slight.

 

Now, no one I know has a calculator capable of quantifying the net gain from the "X Convention" and of also calculating the net concentration loss. In fact, I'd suspect that many folks have experienced burnouts, where a partnership seems to be thriving but suddenly collapses because one partner can no longer hold that concentration, or maybe neither. You may also find that you can handle X+Y+Z after about two days of solid play until about 5 days of solid play, but that you suck early and collapse late. Maybe the range is the second day to the ninth. My experience is a total hopelessness during the first session, a quick recovery, and then a solidly increasing game until about 27 sessions out (I've done this and know). As I age, this will probably change.

 

So, you guess, with experience. Ultimately, no one should ever question whether X, or X+Y, or X+Y+Z is "best" from a partnership standpoint. From a standpoint of "sypothetically best" or "most promising if can handle it," there may or may not be an answer.

 

As to MP or IMP's, I think that MP is like politics and IMP's like a singles bar. In politics, you want to find the argument that appeals to the most people, whether it makes sense or not. You will fail if you are pure in theory. In a bar, however, when you are trying to score that hook-up, you need the exact right argument from start to finish, and any slight error will ruin the entire thing.

[Gerben42]

System can be a way to increase variance while at the same time not reducing the expectation value. By not playing what the field plays you will thus have a higher percentage of top 3 finishes and wins, unless you were winning "all the time" anyway (expected result > 65%). Yes I've done simulations about this.

 

So unless you are Meckwell playing in a regular club game or something, don't play what the field plays.

[paulg]

That's just cos you haven't seen how good my systems are yet. Or how bad "Benji Acol" is...

 

Hey... some people make Benji work... sort of...

Innocence of youth?