What does a bridge coach do?

[Hanoi5]

For example, Kokish. What are their duties, how do they work? What's the difference between them and a captain?

[han]

In the case of Kokish I think his primary task is to help with system and prepare defenses, etc. Usually the captain is the person that decides who plays which match. This can be a player or non-player.

[matmat]

In the case of Kokish I think his primary task is to help with system and prepare defenses, etc. Usually the captain is the person that decides who plays which match. This can be a player or non-player.

he makes them do sit-ups and run laps? :)

 

(what Han said)

[Echognome]

It was certainly nowhere near the level that Kokish coaches at, but I used to coach the university team where I was teaching in England.

 

I would do some teaching, which I would not consider coaching, but on more advanced techniques than you would a beginner or intermediate class. (I coached their A team and someone else helped their B team)

 

On the coaching side, I would give them some partnership bidding. Help them with discussing their approach (no right or wrong answers, just a matter of getting them to agree). I'd discuss various ways they should work on their own game and their game as a partnership. I'd help them resolve differences of opinion. Etc.

 

I wasn't a full time coach mind you. I only met with them once a week for about an hour. We didn't go over hands and I didn't prepare defenses for them. However, I did give them suggested treatments and defenses upon request. I almost always tried to give them options, so that they could decide on their own what they wanted to do.

[Guest Jlall]

When you have a captain and coach appointed for you, for example for a world championship, the coach is supposed to take care of the bridge related stuff (tell you the methods of your opps and what a good defense is, help you work out kinks in your system, discuss general bridge strategy, etc), while the captain is supposed to take care of the non bridge stuff (motivate you, yell at you, administrative stuff, make sure no one is drinking or up late, line ups, etc).

 

For pro teams that hire a coach like ALan Cokin or Eric Kokish, those guys do much more in depth things to help the pairs in terms of their bridge. One thing Kokish does is give you worksheets with several auctions and ask you what those auctions mean. No pair ever has an agreement for every auction that he comes up with. He does not try to push any particular methods on you, he just tries to make sure you have agreements in as many auctions as possible. Coaches will also go to tournaments with the team and record hands and point out what he sees as flaws in your bidding so that you can fix them. Stuff like that.

[Hanoi5]

So the coach is sort of a teacher and the captain a shrink?

 

Can't players self-coach? I also heard that teams like the Brazillian have a psychologist at their disposal before going to an important tourney to deal with, emotional issues (maybe help in concentration?) or partnership or team members situatios, is this true?

[Guest Jlall]

So the coach is sort of a teacher and the captain a shrink?

 

Can't players self-coach? I also heard that teams like the Brazillian have a psychologist at their disposal before going to an important tourney to deal with, emotional issues (maybe help in concentration?) or partnership or team members situatios, is this true?

Sure players can self coach, and most teams do. It can't hurt to have a neutral third party to bounce things off of though, and who is more knowledgable than you about things like good defenses to conventions you don't see that often. If you are going to spend millions of dollars hiring a team it makes sense to me to pay a little extra to get them a coach too (if you have that kind of money).

 

Also hopefully I did not downplay the job of the NPC in world championship events in terms of the administrative things they do/behind the scenes things they have to do. There is a ton of it. Personally I think the NPC of our junior team, Bob Rosen, is an amazing captain because we truly respect him and fear pissing him off, but he is also a friend and we know if **** ever hits the fan he is on our side and will fight for us. He doesn't really tell us anything about bridge because he assumes we know what to do on that front, but he knows how to get the best out of us and how to make us win. It is really remarkable actually.

[cherdano]

So the coach is sort of a teacher and the captain a shrink?

 

Can't players self-coach? I also heard that teams like the Brazillian have a psychologist at their disposal before going to an important tourney to deal with, emotional issues (maybe help in concentration?) or partnership or team members situatios, is this true?

You sound like you think this is really weird. Given that doing well in a bridge tournament is so much about whether you are able to concentrate fully (even when it looks like an easy hand), to approach judgment decisions with a clear unbiased mind (even when you may be upset at opponents or partner or the dealer because of the previous hand), don't you think it's a pretty good idea to hire someone whose actual job is to help people do well at things like that?

[Hanoi5]

Given that doing well in a bridge tournament is so much about whether you are able to concentrate fully (even when it looks like an easy hand), to approach judgment decisions with a clear unbiased mind (even when you may be upset at opponents or partner or the dealer because of the previous hand), don't you think it's a pretty good idea to hire someone whose actual job is to help people do well at things like that?

 

You sound like your one of those people who charge for that kind of job. I just wanted to know about these kind of experiences, if any of you has been in a team with a psychologist, or a coach, etc and what you knew about it.

[barmar]

A bridge coach is probably not much different from a coach in any other endeavor. Champion athletes and teams all have coaches, who work with them to point out their mistakes and help them improve. No matter how good you are, it's still difficult to self-evaluate, and a coach can offer objective criticism and advice.

 

Bridge is a little different because you have a partner, and you can each try to advise one another. But partnerships get into ruts, and a third party can see ways for them to work together better.

[y66]

Chapter 8 "Moose" and Chapter 9 "Juggernaut" in Bob Hamman's book, At The Table, partially describe the bridge coach's role.

 

Chapter 8 starts out with these lines:

 

"In the pre-Moose days, the Aces were disorganized. Things were pretty loose and the team had no real direction. "

 

and ends with

 

"By the summer of 1969 the team was beginning to gel. The losing practices were slowly but surely being abandoned. The partnerships were really humming" ... It was an awesome feeling to be a member of the Aces during that period".

 

Guess what happens in Chapter 9?

 

In Bridge, Zia ... and me, Michael Rosenberg talks about "temperament" and how he overcame "shocking deficiencies" in the focus department thanks largely to his experience playing with Bob Hamman in 1991 and 1993. Hamman would probably not describe his role there as "coaching". He was prolly just trying to get the most out of his partnership. But isn't that what a good coach does -- helps others perform at a higher level?

 

Even Tiger Woods, who plays his sport at the highest level, has a coach. And he also has a long standing relationship with Jay Brunza, a sports psychologist (sort of) and family friend that started when Tiger was 13.

 

This forum has a lot of good coaching material scattered across many threads. But it's hard to find a flesh and blood human who has the experience, skill, interest and availability to act as a bridge coach.

 

BTW, Carl Ritner has the Hamman and Rosenberg books on sale. I am not a financial beneficiary although someday I hope to play a round of golf with Carl, if he can get us on a decent course in Florida.

[Rossoneri]

I definitely don't have any experience of high-level bridge, but at the lower levels, from what I've seen myself with my experiences of trying to guide my juniors in my alma mater (equivalent to high school), I've definitely seen quite a bit.

 

My school's pretty lucky to have the national junior team coach (Singapore is very small bridge-wise...) to be our coach this year. From what I've seen, he mainly goes through some of the finer points and details that most of them usually miss or overlook. This definitely helps with training the thought processes. Of course, bouncing ideas off him is another help, even I sometimes "use" him in that aspect.

 

With the U-21 team he mainly goes through boards with various themes, bidding problems and he even has a set of system notes based on 2/1 for them...

 

P.S. Gnome, why do you have to leave the university before I even step foot in it...lol.

[SoTired]

A bridge coach does a similar job as an athletic coach, except 1) the captain takes care of game day stuff, and 2) coach is not the boss.

 

but like an athletic coach he is responsible for preparing the team.

 

An athletic coach is not the best player on the field. May not have ever been that good at playing, but he is good at preparing the athletes to perform at their best. Same with a bridge coach. It is not hard to think what tasks would be included in preparing 4 to 6 brilliant individuals to perform at their best. Scouting the opposition, coaching away problem auctions, preparing training sessions, analyzing performance, advising, etc.

[paulg]

When Harald is back down on earth in a few days he can tell us what a successful coach does.

 

As an unsuccessful NPC in Pau, I would say that top class bridge players are a lot more fragile than you might expect when you have a set of poor results. It can happen to the top teams too, where England Ladies (not my team) did not win a match for three days despite leading initially. This can really knock a team's confidence.

 

There is also a fair amount of administrative work, scoring and getting your team to the right tables.

 

It is actually more exhausting being a scoring captain (as all the smaller countries cannot afford scorers) as you never have a match off.

 

Paul

[y66]

fyi - 2004 Better Bridge Interview with Eric Kokish

[geller]

It seems to me that frquency of occurrence needs to be considered more in coaching. The coaches and players both have only a finite amount of time. Investing X hours in exploring relatively esoteric questions that seldom arise will produce far less gain than the same amount of time addressed to matters that occur frequently (and are easier to fix). The start of coaching (or self-coaching) should be an analysis of ten or twenty sessions by the pair, to see what sort of problems are actually causing them to drop points, and then fixing those areas of their game first.

 

This is essentially what Hamman meant in his book "At the Table" when he said, "Don't screw up the easy ones."

[ArcLight]

Excerpt from the Kokish interview:

 

>(some defenses to complex methods might be more than 20 pages and can be kept at the table for reference, so we make them as comprehensive as possible);

 

WOW!!!!