Why do you suck at bridge?

[JLOGIC]

And, as the computers have now shown, humans suck at chess also.

[Antrax]

If this is the way you measure, then certainly Magic: the Gathering is harder than Chess and Go. Go computers can at least play around Dan-1.

[Zelandakh]

Having played both to a decent level (although not to Justin's standard) I must say I found high level chess much more difficult (and time consuming in preparation) than bridge which is why I now only play bridge.

 

Why ? Well the bridge analysis tree only goes 13 moves deep, chess ones can easily go 25 moves or more, sometimes with 5 or 6 choices at the start.

Only 25 moves? I played a league game that went well over 30 moves in book theory to a superior endgame, and my rating was only 135 or so. You could think of preparing the bidding system and carding as the equivalent of this chess preparation. If you are willing to put in as much time as for chess then perhaps you end up with a comprehensive expert-level method. Also, if you choose to play only a very limited chess opening repertoire then it cuts down on the amount of preparation enourmously, but in return you have to know that repertoire to a very high level since you have made yourself very easy to prepare against. This was the approach I took and there were many, for example, Dragon lines which I could quote to move 30 or beyond. Perhaps this is the equivalent of learning a relay system 30 bids deep.

 

However, the evidence imho suggests that to play chess at the highest level is more difficult than bridge. If you are not a high class chess player by age 13, say, then you have almost no chance whatsoever of becoming a GM. The brain actually reprograms itself to use the face-recognition part as a chess pattern recognition center. This should make the decision on whether to concentrate on chess or bridge very simple for anyone looking to reach a high level. In bridge there are examples of players that have reached a world class level having started playing much later in years. I do not have enough knowledge to compare either with Go. However, anyone who has played MtG will know that the suggestion of its complexity being in the same ball-park is laughable. I suspect it was made tongue-in-cheek to make some point or other.

[JLOGIC]

If this is the way you measure, then certainly Magic: the Gathering is harder than Chess and Go. Go computers can at least play around Dan-1.

 

This seems like a logic fail. I did not say the way to measure which game is the hardest is by how well computers play relative to humans.

 

I said that humans clearly suck at chess. Good evidence of this is by seeing how the best humans are so much worse than the best computers.

 

I also said that people suck at bridge.

[Fluffy]

Perhaps a bit off topic, but I wonder why all science fiction always make extra terrestrials so human-like in both intelligence among other things.

 

Most likelly is that if they are able to come to hearth they can teach chess to a 5 year old kid and he happily beats all the masters he finds :)

[JLOGIC]

 

However, the evidence imho suggests that to play chess at the highest level is more difficult than bridge. If you are not a high class chess player by age 13, say, then you have almost no chance whatsoever of becoming a GM. The brain actually reprograms itself to use the face-recognition part as a chess pattern recognition center. This should make the decision on whether to concentrate on chess or bridge very simple for anyone looking to reach a high level. In bridge there are examples of players that have reached a world class level having started playing much later in years. I do not have enough knowledge to compare either with Go. However, anyone who has played MtG will know that the suggestion of its complexity being in the same ball-park is laughable. I suspect it was made tongue-in-cheek to make some point or other.

 

Why is this evidence of playing chess at the highest level being more difficult than bridge? I submit that extremely young people are not capable of playing bridge because their brains are not developed enough at things that are necessary to be a top bridge player. Bidding judgement, taking inference from the opponents actions, etc are too hard for someone that young. You also need more experience for bridge, because you see so many different situations/patterns than you do in chess, and it's hard to get enough useful experience when you are that young.

 

I believe that your processing speed/abilities are probably going to be best as a late teen. I could definitely crunch the numbers faster and better, and think clearer when I was younger. That kind of processing ability being at or near its height is much more important in chess than bridge.

 

Bob Hamman once told me he thought a bridge players peak is probably around 40. This is the best combination of acquiring the right amount of judgement/experience while also having high processing abilities, as well as physical ability (being able to concentrate for a long time). It's possible that it's younger because younger players can get more experience now playing online faster, but I'd be surprised if it was earlier than your earlier 30s. I'm sure it's younger in chess because the price you pay in your processing ability is more costly in chess for the trade offs.

 

Of course the counter argument to this is we've never seen what young people can really do, because far more young people dedicate themselves to chess than bridge, by a large amount. I could be wrong, but I believe that while very young people would be capable of playing the cards at an elite level, they would be incapable of bidding at an extremely high level. Bidding is just so much more about things that a more mature brain is going to be better at, on top of the enormous amount of knowledge and experience necessary.

 

Also, I am biased. I will immodestly say (not to brag) that I was very likely one of the best 2 13 year old players ever. And again, I'm sure this is because I was one of the few people who got heavily into it so young, it's easy to beat a small pool of people. My cardplay then was very good, and my bidding was not. I did not focus on bridge full time though, I went to school, but I do believe no matter what that I was not capable of being an elite bidder at that level. My cardplay was not elite, just quite good, but I believe that had I been a hardcore dedicated person like some of the chess people, I would have been able to play my cards at a near elite level. Still, I'm not sure if I would have been able to process all possible inference well enough. The parts of cardplay that are like chess though, definitely a kid could be great at that, like solving double dummy problems, endgames, etc.

 

 

My main point was that both games are very hard though, and despite both games having dedicated people, people suck at both games. I find it hard to believe that this is debatable. I never meant to imply that only in bridge did everyone suck as far as games go.

 

Comparing incomplete information games to perfect information games is really hard, and depending on your priorities you can reasonably judge either game as harder obv, it's subjective.

[Cyberyeti]

Only 25 moves? I played a league game that went well over 30 moves in book theory to a superior endgame, and my rating was only 135 or so. You could think of preparing the bidding system and carding as the equivalent of this chess preparation. If you are willing to put in as much time as for chess then perhaps you end up with a comprehensive expert-level method. Also, if you choose to play only a very limited chess opening repertoire then it cuts down on the amount of preparation enourmously, but in return you have to know that repertoire to a very high level since you have made yourself very easy to prepare against. This was the approach I took and there were many, for example, Dragon lines which I could quote to move 30 or beyond. Perhaps this is the equivalent of learning a relay system 30 bids deep.

 

However, the evidence imho suggests that to play chess at the highest level is more difficult than bridge. If you are not a high class chess player by age 13, say, then you have almost no chance whatsoever of becoming a GM. The brain actually reprograms itself to use the face-recognition part as a chess pattern recognition center. This should make the decision on whether to concentrate on chess or bridge very simple for anyone looking to reach a high level. In bridge there are examples of players that have reached a world class level having started playing much later in years. I do not have enough knowledge to compare either with Go. However, anyone who has played MtG will know that the suggestion of its complexity being in the same ball-park is laughable. I suspect it was made tongue-in-cheek to make some point or other.

 

I did say 25 or more, Lopez and queens gambit can get to 40 I think. I deliberately used to play an opening repertoire that didn't go that long (morra v the sicilian for example, Polugayevsky sicilian before it was busted) to attempt to get into a tactical mess in the middle game which is where I was strong. I played most of time around 140 but had a year spread across 2 seasons where I was 180+ and regularly knocking off 200+ people at blitz. To do that required at least 3 hours chess a night and is probably the major reason I failed my degree.

 

MtG (maybe I should come out of the closet as the first mindsports olympiad MtG gold medallist) is a complex game in the deckbuilding and testing, but much less so in the play most of the time.

[billw55]

I have never played go

I encourage you to give it a try, even if only recreationally. I find it fun, challenging, and rewarding. Best of all, it relies the least on memorization, compared to chess (opening theory) and bridge (bidding systems).

 

I have played both go and bridge to a modest level of competence, but I cannot easily say which is more difficult to become expert at. Perhaps the problem is that I am not expert myself. All I can say for sure, is that both have more than enough difficulty and variety for a lifetime of study and enjoyment, while never running out of room to improve.

[Antrax]

Cyberyeti, I disagree wrt playing MtG being simple. It's very off-topic, but even a simple decision like whether or not to mulligan depends on evaluating the opening hand in the context of the information you have about the opponent's deck. For that you'd need a computer that read MtG forums to know the metagame, constantly, beyond everything else. If you like we can take the MtG discussion offline or to another thread, but I feel quite strongly that MtG is an extremely difficult game to teach a computer to play.

[Zelandakh]

I think you miss the point of the level of MtG to which Yeti was playing Antrax. Serious MtG players spend serious amounts of time testing various deck builds against alternative deck builds and know in advance with what hand types versus what deck types they need to mulligan. This is not an on-the-fly decision most of the time. The same goes for the turn by turn play. What keeps MtG fresh is not the complexity of play but rather the fast tunover of cards due to the (inspired) decision to limit the selection so strictly. That makes the deck-building and testing where it is at as previously mentioned.

 

And @Cyber, yes, critical lines of the Marshall especially are making move 40 with book theory beyond that. As for the Morra, bleurgh, good in blitz but I found it incredibly drawish in proper play.

 

Justin's point that bridge players mature slower is well made but I strongly suspect if you took a child and trained them with hours of bridge card-play every day that they would be likely to also start modifying their biology in the way chess players do. If there were millions (cash) in bridge the way there are in, say, American football then I am sure this would have been done by now. There are also more chess players and therefore from a maths point of view it makes sense that the top of the game is the more extreme section of the (presumed) underlying normal distribution. When you add to that the fact that you need a database of tens of thousands of games and, depending on your opponent, you need to be aware of the critical points of a large proprtion of the games in that database it is perhaps easier to see the differences. But it is only my opinion and as a non-expert in both games perhaps not my place best to judge.

[Antrax]

Zelandakh, I don't think I missed it, I was alluding to it. Try feeding all that information to an MtG-playing program to allow it to do the play-by-play analysis properly.

I also strongly disagree if you're implying that MtG pros don't make mistakes - clear mistakes have been made up to world championship level. Besides, that's like saying pro chess players never make mistakes in the opening because they prepare so much for it.

[Hanoi5]

I think theoretically speaking Justin explained it all with the ending of his last post:

 

Comparing incomplete information games to perfect information games is really hard, and depending on your priorities you can reasonably judge either game as harder obv, it's subjective.

 

But I also liked the point of Zelandakh:

 

I strongly suspect if you took a child and trained them with hours of bridge card-play every day that they would be likely to also start modifying their biology in the way chess players do. If there were millions (cash) in bridge the way there are in, say, American football then I am sure this would have been done by now. There are also more chess players and therefore from a maths point of view it makes sense that the top of the game is the more extreme section of the (presumed) underlying normal distribution.

 

Even though all the information for chess is available (!) and not so in bridge you can learn much by reading and applying that knowledge that exists about not only theory but also practice (which could take the place of the 'experience' Justin argues about) in, for example, the Bridge World. If Cyberyeti expent 3 hours everynight reading the Master Solvers Club part of the magazine I bet his judgement would get at least as good as by playing 72 boards a day.

[Cyberyeti]

Cyberyeti, I disagree wrt playing MtG being simple. It's very off-topic, but even a simple decision like whether or not to mulligan depends on evaluating the opening hand in the context of the information you have about the opponent's deck. For that you'd need a computer that read MtG forums to know the metagame, constantly, beyond everything else. If you like we can take the MtG discussion offline or to another thread, but I feel quite strongly that MtG is an extremely difficult game to teach a computer to play.

I agree MtG is a difficult game to teach a computer to play, but it's not so difficult for a human, particularly sealed deck which was the MSO tournament I won (I didn't get amazing power cards, but I did get cards that went together well).

 

On the chess front, what finally prompted me to give up was reading Kotov's "Think like a grandmaster" and "Grandmaster preparation" which told me how much effort the top players put in and how they thought, and I decided it was going to be too much work for me to improve and I wasn't going that far anyway. I'm not sure whether an equivalent book has really been written (or can be written) for bridge.

 

Maybe it's just that having played both bridge and chess from an early age (I learned bridge at 8, played my first senior league match at 12 or 13 and won my first adult county trophy at 14) I was always more comfortable with bridge, and crucially, I can play at an adequate standard after a couple of months gap, something I certainly can't do with chess.

[helene_t]

Not sure if I understand the question of whether one activity is harder than another.

 

If there is an optimal strategy which humans can learn then you can ask how difficult it is to learn it. But in most activities there will (at least in practice) always be room for improvement. There will always be a certain level to strive for which is infinitely difficult in the sense that nobody will reach it. I think this is true even for silly games like sh**head and "Mensch ärgere dich nicht" although those games have so low S/N ratio that it would take thousands of rounds to distinguish the world class from a mediocre player.

 

Reaching the top 10% segment of the local bridge club is probably easier than at the local chess club but that is just because more than 90% of the bridge players are not particularly talented/ambitious and learned the game at a mature age. Go is probably even more difficult than chess in this respect.

 

Reaching the top 1000 worldwide would be very difficult in both games because there are (in absolute numbers) so many talented and ambitious players. It may be slightly easier with Go.

 

It would be impossible for me to reach the top 10% of the local under-water rugby club but for someone who could do that, reaching the top 1000 worldwide would be within reach.

 

Chess may feel easier because you can learn the basic rules in an hour and in a few days will have some basic notion of the tactics. Once you have learned Bridge, it may feel easier because there is so much randomness that occasionally you can beat a good pair in a 6-board round of a swiss. But it is really comparing apples to oranges.

 

Justin's observation about age is spot on I think. For someone who decides to take up one of the two games at the age of 20 and aims to reach the national sup-top, bridge is probably a better choice than chess.

[gwnn]

helene_t wins the thread as usual :)

[Antrax]

Bridge is a game, that requires several skills. Other games require several skills as well. I don't think there's any skill unique to Bridge, at least offhand, so one could say "I think Bridge is more difficult than chess since the most important aspect is preparing a good system and it's much easier to study opening variations than it is to defend against precision" or whatever. That saying would make sense, I believe. It wouldn't necessarily convince someone who thinks other aspects of Bridge are tougher to master, but I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything (there was this huge thread about whether card play or bidding is more important in Bridge, and I don't think that was decided). I was just wondering if people with experience playing other incomplete information / strategy games consider Bridge to be the pinnacle of gaming or not.

[jdeegan]

:P OMG Weenies RULE!

[Thymallus]

For all those who think they are not talented I suggest they read "Bounce" by Matthew Syed.

 

He puts forwards a clear and cogent argument that there's no such thing as talent, all you need is hard work, good training and a lot of purposeful practice.

 

Sadly I suck at bridge because I am deficient in all 3.

 

My cynical elderly father says that

"The one thing you learn from experience is that you ... don't learn from experience."

[Yu18772]

Isn't it always the partners fault? http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif

 

Seriously - I could be much better if I had enough time and will to invest, to me it seems to be just a matter of two things

1. investing a lot of time in reading and practicing - basic "mathematical" view of the world is a must - i.e. in general statistics works, and like in cooking - deviate form the recepie once you know what you are doing, not the first time you cook it.

2. Finding a good partner that you will feel comfortable to learn with, and make mistakes with.

[JLOGIC]

Ive been sucking the past couple of weeks. Hope I'm just gettin it out of my system before the nationals!

[PrecisionL]

Isn't it always the partners fault? http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif

 

Seriously - I could be much better if I had enough time and will to invest, to me it seems to be just a matter of two things

1. investing a lot of time in reading and practicing - basic "mathematical" view of the world is a must - i.e. in general statistics works, and like in cooking - deviate form the recepie once you know what you are doing, not the first time you cook it.

2. Finding a good partner that you will feel comfortable to learn with, and make mistakes with.

 

Yes, I do #1 to an extreme, but #2 is the stumbling block despite my 10,000 hours at the table.

 

Perhaps too much intuition on defense and not pausing for thought at the tipping point in defense.

[Vampyr]

Is "Magic the Gathering" a more complicated version of War?

[Antrax]

In the same sense chess is a more complicated version of tic tac toe. Why do you ask?

[mikl_plkcc]

1. lack of long-term partner due to schooling:

The bridge club in our school was in a very high standard when I joined in F.2, always having tables filling more than a classroom in the meetings. This was probably due to the then-recent award got in the Rose Bowl (the highest level tournament for secondary schools).

 

After that, the club became smaller and smaller. When I was in F.3, the tables filled near a classroom (there can be at most 7 tables in one classroom); in F.4, there was only 3 to 4 tables left; in F.5, there was usually only 2; in F.6, there was usually only 1, and some meeting had to be cancelled because there were fewer than 4 members present(!) In my last year (F.7), the regular meetings even seemed to be disappeared!

 

The first regular partner (Jason Wong) I got was studying at the same year as me in secondary school, when I was in F.4, but he was knocked out after the HKCEE (HK equivalent of O-levels, discontinued) and failed to get in university after the A-levels due to poor academic results, while I could.

 

The second regular partner (Patrick Cheung) I got was from the school's bridge club when I was in F.6, but when the older members graduated from F.7, the club went dysfunctional with the lack of new members, with only me and him knowing how to play contract bridge.

 

Now, I've already finished my secondary school and is getting into university, in my secondary school, there are now about 3 tables of players, but all of them, except me and Patrick, are new players which have played for less than a year. My current partner is Jacky So, but I'll have to find a new one again when I get into university, since all the older members in our school's club have got into different university. (Although I'm getting into a top uni in HK, it is unpopular in my school even when our school has generally the high academic standards required to get in that uni.)

 

2. lack of coaching:

When I was in F.5, Charlie Lee, who won the Rose Bowl mentioned above and got into the Hong Kong youth team, regularly went back to school for coaching every Saturday. However, I had to participate in other training teams, in my case, the Hong Kong Olympiad of Informatics (HKOI), so I couldn't attend them. Afterwards, as the older members were near their public exams and Charlie was busy in university and his youth team training, the coaching in my school disappeared.

 

3. Inferior bridge judgement, especially when competing:

In yesterday's match, LHO opened 1♠, partner doubled, RHO raised to 2♠, confirming a fit. I held a hand with great ODR, with one ♠ only and ♥AKTxxx, and bid 3♥. LHO then bid 4♠, after both partner and RHO passed, I raised to 5♥, thinking that 4♠ would make, with equal vulnerability, thinking that partner had 4 ♥s and short in ♠ shown by the takeout double. LHO penalised us, and when the dummy lie down, it shocked me. There were only 3 ♥s! (15 HCPs 2=3=4=4), with great defensive strength!, which was not I expecting. Finally, we went down 3, certainly losing lots of IMPs.

 

4. Frequent overbids and underbids:

All overbids are done by me, and all underbids are done by my partner. First, let me talk about my overbids. One of my overbids is already mentioned above, and the following is another:

Partner opened 1♥, I raised to 2♥ with 10 HCPs (2♥ in our agreement is 6 to 11 points, while 3♥ is a game-forcing raise), LHO overcalled it with 2♠s, and I balanced with 3♥, thinking we could made with at least 22 HCPs combined, and went down 1 vulnerable.

 

Sometimes, when not vulnerable, I tend to overbid when I think that the opponent's contract can be made, hoping that the opponents don't have enough trumps to double me. But unfortunately, sometimes the opponents double on their defensive power (such as controls and quick tricks), even with trump shortness, and successfully set our contract.

 

Nearly all underbids are done by my partner, which he need to find some strange bids after his underbid. For example, on one hand, he overcalled at the 1-level with 22 HCPs(!) (he actually remembered our agreement that an overcall is 8-17 HCPs), and rebid 2NT, which is undefined in our agreement, when I held rubbish in my hand and was unable to rescue him to the 3-level (no trump fit existed!), and went down in 2NT.

 

Another example of his underbids is that, he failed to raise my 1♥ overcall which shows 5 ♥s to 3♥ in competition, which in our agreement is weak, when he actually had 4 ♥s and nearly no HCPs in his hand, and let the opponents play cheaply.

 

The third example, although the underbid is not done by my partner, his misbid caused me to underbid, and missed a cold game:

Partner opened 1♥ in 5-card majors, me, holding 4-card support and 3 cards in all other suits (the "flat" shape) with 8 HCPs, raised to 2♥s. Then partner bid 3♣, alerted as a weak suit game try, and I, holding Kxx in ♣s and xxx in ♠s, denied the game try and stopped in 3♥. I lie down the dummy and watched the play, and discovered that the "weak" suit actually was AQxx, the strongest side suit in his hand! 4♥ was actually an easy game.

 

I don't know what's wrong, but in a match, I found us defending for about 2/3 to 3/4 of the session, and let opponents make game easily because we don't have an 11-card trump fit to compete to the 5-level! (We have agreed that we should compete the the law of total tricks only, and only compete when we don't have defensive strength)

 

5. Extremely bad NT play:

Yesterday, in a 3NT by me, I repetitively counted and counted and couldn't count nine tricks. Then, hopelessly, I tried to establish the dummy's 5-card ♠ suit, hoping to get two more tricks to make the 3NT. But unfortunately, the ♠s split 1-5, and no additional tricks could be taken, and even failed to take a winner (I planned to take that winner after running the ♠ suit, but the ♠ suit failed to run. The suit could be run when it broke 3-3 or 2-4). In the hand record, a way to make 3NT is provided.

 

Moreover, in some 3NT-1, partner told me that I failed to cash a winner. I asked, he told me that 9 was the top card at that time!

[chasetb]

Ive been sucking the past couple of weeks. Hope I'm just gettin it out of my system before the nationals!

You and me both. I've been working on Double Squeezes and more advanced endplays (BSQ by Love), but my game has been awful, about as bad as when I started 3 years ago. While I won't play in any of the major events like you, my friend needs 11.3 masterpoints (6.74 Gold) to make Life Master, and she's counting on me to get her across that line.