Strategies for bizarre format

[karlson]

So I'm playing tomorrow in a team game that has a very unusual format. You and teammates both sit in the same direction in different sections of a pair game, and play the same boards. For each board, you get the better of your two scores. E.g. at one table you bid 6s-1, and teammates with the same cards stop in 4s+1, you get just get +650 and the -100 is canceled out. These scores are then matchpointed normally.

 

It's easy enough to see that you should try to vary strategy as much as possible. Ideally, the two pairs should be playing very different methods, but even within the context of standard methods, we've already assigned one pair as the one that prefers 3N to 4M whenever possible, one that preempts very aggressively and one very conservatively, one that always plays east for the missing card, and one that always plays west for the missing card, one that leads passively and one that leads actively, etc.

 

I was going to assign one pair to be conservative in constructive bidding too, but then I realized that perhaps this is far from optimal. It seems both pairs should be more aggressive than usual, because we basically get two shots at the play (hopefully there's something to the play and at least two different lines can be taken, at least one of which is likely to work). Along a similar theme, it seems bad to make wild bids early in the auction or play, because you may be missing a chance to use your two shots at a better time later in the hand.

 

Any more thoughts?

[helene_t]

Not sure if you both should bid aggresively towards game. After all, some games just can't go down due to lucky split, and some can't be made due to unlucky split.

[cherdano]

Yeah, I think one pair should bid games aggressively, and the other should only bid games if they think that the chance of them making game and team mates not is bigger IMPwise than the chance of neither making game. I think in practice this means bidding games conservatively.

I guess you should eliminate queen asks from RKCB.

I guess one pair should play transfer over 1C and the other shouldn't. Obviously one pair should play weak NT the other strong.

[rogerclee]

This format sounds awesome.

 

I would have one pair make penalty doubles very aggressively.

[matmat]

This format sounds awesome.

 

I would have one pair make penalty doubles very aggressively.

not that aggressively. While it'll be nice to pick up some 200s and 500s, giving away 670s to your opponents a large chunk of the time doesn't sound like a good idea.

[helene_t]

This format sounds awesome.

 

I would have one pair make penalty doubles very aggressively.

not that aggressively. While it'll be nice to pick up some 200s and 500s, giving away 670s to your opponents a large chunk of the time doesn't sound like a good idea.

If the field is not too small, you should not worry about giving opps a juicy 670. Most of the times, opps will not be close competitors anyway.

 

Thinking about it, this format is unique in that it is not a zero-sum game. Both pairs have a stake in high variance.

[han]

Yep, obviously the best strategy would be to agree with each of your opponents that each table will play 7NTXX-13, once from the north, once from the south.

[Gerben42]

Yes, but the pair getting the bad board will have to trust your teammates to do the same. And maybe they don't play against each other so it doesn't work.

[karlson]

Yeah, the collusion possibility occurred to us as well, hopefully it won't be an issue.

 

A more practical problem is that not getting a lot of decisions will be an even worse matchpoint fate than it is normally.

[Hanoi5]

This format seems pretty interesting. Where is it gonna be played? Can you update the results?

[barmar]

This format sounds awesome.

 

I would have one pair make penalty doubles very aggressively.

not that aggressively. While it'll be nice to pick up some 200s and 500s, giving away 670s to your opponents a large chunk of the time doesn't sound like a good idea.

But it's practically free. As long as the other pair doesn't do this, the extreme score goes away.

 

An interesting thing about this format is that if you have an accident that lands you in a hopeless contract that's going to go for a telephone number, you don't have to worry too much. It's unlikely that the result was duplicated by your teammates, so you can just get the pain over with and go on to the next board. You probably only have to try hard on the "normal" contracts.

[TimG]

The "zero" might not count for you, but the "top" will count for someone else. And, you probably don't want to hand out too many of those, especially to the same pair/team.

[Tomi2]

if you bid 3♠ on nothing and get doubled and fly for millions, some pointed out, that we dont geht the bad score so its not that dangerous - thats right

others pointed out, that you will give your opponents good scores - thats not 100% right...

 

on every board on every table that has a counted scroe 2 MP are given away to opponents who sit on the other direction. so if you go for top zero on every hand you give your actual opponents lots of MPs but steal them from other pairs sitting in the same direction as your opps

 

this event sounds funny - maybe fred should add this to BBO, would be nice to try out such :)

[barmar]

I didn't realize that you and your teammates would be playing the same boards against opponents from different teams. If figured that this would use a movement like BAM.

 

But unless this is a single-winner format, why do you care about giving away matchpoints to the pair sitting in the other direction? If you're NS you're not playing in the EW field, so it's not your problem.

[effervesce]

Having _too_ many differences between the bidding/play of the two pairs could be a bad thing. For example, if one pair bids to 3H, the other bidding to 4H, while the 3H pair takes the trump finesse in one direction and the 4H pair in the OTHER direction, BOTH can go down!! Thus, if 4H is the EXPECTED contract, you should only have the difference in the choice of finesse.

 

If, on the other hand, it is possible either 3H or 4H is right, have one in 3H, the other 4H, BUT BOTH PLAY THE SAME WAY.

[ASkolnick]

Actually, its not a bad format, its a golf format playing Best Ball. But I would think that one should play conservatively and one should be more aggressive since this way you would get the best of both worlds.

[mycroft]

This is the original method of "teams of two pairs". Some people, probably seeing the 7NTxx-13 dodge, now play it (when it's ever played) as the lower of the two scores. That makes for a much less fun game, but at least fairer.