how important is declarer play...

[matmat]

just saw this exchange:

 

 

south: I think the play is important as bidding, I have to improve that

north: no, bidding 70%, defence 20%, play 10% only

 

discuss...

[Finch]

Haven't we been here before?

 

You can come up with two different splits

 

1. What should I be spending my time on?

2. Which has the most impact on results?

 

I think (2) is probably the one you are referring to, and the answer is that it depends on the standard. The general opinion last time this question came up is that bidding has the most impact on results in world championships, but this is because most people capable of competing for a world championship are already excellent card players, while there are still many different bidding systems around together with differences of judgement in difficult situations.

 

Some huge generalisations follow:

 

At my local club, one of the biggest differentiators at matchpoints is partscore defence and declarer play.

 

The way I win imp matches against weaker teams is usually by bidding (and making) game more often.

 

The biggest source of "culpable" swings when I play KO matches against similar standard teams tends to be in the defence & declarer play of games. There are obviously also swings both in and out when it's marginal whether you want to be in game/slam or not. This isn't world championship standard.

 

The way I win imp matches against stronger teams is either because they are playing worse than we are on the day, or through more successful uncontested auctions. But that's because our team tends to have a lot of detailed partnership agreements (not necessarily complex system, but just a lot of understanding) so that's our 'strong point' if you like.

[Walddk]

Let me put it this way. You can teach people to bid, but you can't teach them to play or defend if they have no card flair. So any day of the week I will prefer a competent card player as my partner.

 

What good is it if he can bid to the right contract if he can't play the cards? If he can play the cards, however, he will, sooner or later, catch up with his shortcomings in the bidding area. Smart card players will.

 

Roland

[dburn]

Jeremy Flint once remarked that you could always teach a good card player how to bid properly. Then he took a sip of his favourite Ruddles County beer and a puff on his cigar before adding "At least, that's what I thought before I met Irving Rose."

[the hog]

"Let me put it this way. You can teach people to bid"

 

I doubt it Roland. One of the best card players I have ever seen bid like a petrified pig.

[P_Marlowe]

Let me put it this way. You can teach people to bid, but you can't teach them to play or defend if they have no card flair. So any day of the week I will prefer a competent card player as my partner.

 

What good is it if he can bid to the right contract if he can't play the cards? If he can play the cards, however, he will, sooner or later, catch up with his shortcomings in the bidding area. Smart card players will.

 

Roland

Of course this is true.

 

But quite often Good Card players dont have a

regular partner, hence they usually play a limited

set of agreements.

Agreements means partnership understandings,

which is different to system and conventions.

 

And if you regular reach sensible contracts, you dont

need to play the cards as well, as would be needed,

if you reach dubious contracts.

 

I think the following is attributed to Alfred Sheinworld

"Bad contracts have one advantage, they teach you,

how to play cards."

 

Personnaly I prefer Bidding over Defence over Play,

hence I would rate the relevance like Bidding

50%-60%, 30-20%,20%.

Although the 50%-60% Bidding contains also a lot

"knowing" partners bidding style, a thing, which gets

quite often forgotten.

 

With kind regards

Marlowe

[TimG]

Let me put it this way. You can teach people to bid, but you can't teach them to play or defend if they have no card flair.

Isn't this sort of the opposite of what we have seen for computer bridge programs? I get the sense that their card play skill (at least declarer play) exceeds their bidding skill.

[hotShot]

To improve put your efforts into declarer play.

 

Perfect bidding is useless unless your declarer play is good enough to routinely make the intended number of tricks most of the time. Additionally the quality of your judgment on the strength of your hand, is directly related to your abilities in declarer play.

 

The key to a good defense is understanding and anticipating the declarer play. So all efforts to improve your defense require you to improve your declarer play first.

 

Of cause you are declarer 25% of the boards and defending 50% of the boards, but since your defense depends on your abilities in declarer play, the ratio will not be 1:2.

[babalu1997]

I think louis Watson set out to write his book because he thoight put too much emphasis on bidding.

 

Good declarer play will make you play faster in ordinary bidding situations.

 

In Off-the-wall bidding sequences, it will help you play harder contracts.

 

Plus, if you do not have a regular partner, you can study declarer play alone.

 

Both defense and bidding depend on agreements and interations with partner. and, nowadays, what is standard anyway?

[effervesce]

I like to consider bridge performace as somewhat like

 

bridge performance = (bidding skill) * (play skill).

 

Serious deficiencies in either area will make you a poor player, while being competent (not necessarily expert) at both will make you a better player than a world class declarer but poor bidder.

[Codo]

My feeling is that I earn/lost most imps or mps on defence.

 

I think that with a very limited system of bidding and a very simple basic judgement you can reach 90% of the spots you had reached with a good scientific system.

Yes you miss the 23 HCP Slams like in Tims example, but these are not the butter and bread hands.

 

With a basic declarer play, just counting trumps and some high cards and knowing how to finesse, you will make 60% of your games.

 

But I really belive that without understanding your partners signals and thinking about defensive play, you will just beat at most 30 % of all hands.

 

So defense is anything. :P

 

But as you need a partner to practice and as it is much harder to learn then declarer play, most discussions are about declarer play and bidding judgement for unusual hands.

[bid_em_up]

I look at it a slightly different way.

 

You bid 100% of the hands, but in many cases, it will not matter how good (or bad) your bidding is necessarily. I would estimate that 85-90% of the time, your bids are clear cut, whether you are going to pass, preempt, etc. The hands where system and/or judgement in the bidding actually make a difference will make up the remaining hands. At extremely high levels of play, this is a significant difference, but for most people, it is not what they should be concentrating on to improve their game, imo.

 

You will defend, on average, 50% of the time (or in my case, what seems to be more often). You will play only 25% of the hands, and will be dummy the other 25%.

 

So of the three, I consider defense to be the most important aspect of the game and where an advancing player should concentrate their efforts to improve their game.

[han]

All those formulas and percentages are great for those who want to sell vacuum cleaners but they don't help you to become a better bridge player.

 

In al three aspects of the game the differences are huge, not only the differences between experts and novices but also the differences between average experts and truly world class players. If you want to become good at bridge then you have to spend energy on all three parts of the game.

 

Also, to be a very good defender you have to be a very good declarer, as well as the other way around. If you spend a lot of energy on one of these parts then you will notice that you will get better at the other part as well.

 

On some hands the bidding is straightforward for non-beginners and the difference will be made in the play. On other hands it is only the bidding that determines the result of a board. This is true for matchpoints as well as IMPs. At matchpoints you can win a lot by getting the partscore battles right and by taking extra tricks. A lot of IMPs are at stake in partscore/game/slam decisions and of course by making contracts that go down at the other table. Maybe some aspects of the game are more important at one form of scoring than at the other but I think that this is overrated.

[jdonn]

I think certainly among the vast majority of bridge players in the world, particularly intermediate level or worse players, they are FAR better players than bidders, so bidding is where the most people could make the most improvement.

[han]

By the way, I think that there are a lot of amusing formulas in this thread, but this one I enjoy the most:

 

bridge performance = (bidding skill) * (play skill).

 

Why are these two numbers multiplied? Maybe they should be added, or maybe bridge performance is the square root of the sum of the squares of these quantities? And how do you even measure the right-hand-side quantities so that you can benefit from this formula at the table?

[JanM]

One thing no one has mentioned - bidding judgment (not system, judgment) is dependent on declarer play: in order to analyze a contract, you need to be able to play the hand in your head during the bidding. So declarer play is relevant not only to defense (where you need to visualize declarer's problems in order to help him or her get them wrong) but also to bidding.

[Mosene]

This is a quote from Bobby Wolff from a 1987 NY Times article.

 

''What you've got to remember is that 90 percent of bridge hands, a monkey could play,'' Wolff went on. ''In the other 10 percent, experts are supposed to be able to work out the best line of play as declarer and on defense 99 times out of 100, and execute it fast enough so you don't give yourself away by long pauses. But bidding is 70 or 80 percent of the game, and if you make bidding mistakes like ours you're going to pay for them.

[matmat]

By the way, I think that there are a lot of amusing formulas in this thread, but this one I enjoy the most:

 

bridge performance = (bidding skill) * (play skill).

 

Why are these two numbers multiplied? Maybe they should be added, or maybe bridge performance is the square root of the sum of the squares of these quantities? And how do you even measure the right-hand-side quantities so that you can benefit from this formula at the table?

they;re not multiplied, Han, they're convolved...

[Edmunte1]

I think that the defense (the opening lead is included here) is by far the most important part of the game in expert's area. Why? Because the defense generates the most important part of the swings. Most of the time a good declarer is also a good defender. He constructs a defensive plan and acts accordingly. He puts himself in declarer's shoes and tries to read his moves. Of course signalling has a important role in this act.

 

Bidding comes second. When we talk about bidding we should divide it in three parts:

-uncontested bidding - here's a lot of work for partnership

- contested bidding - resumes to 2 important things: disscusing the position with partner and knowing the situation. Here's a lot of work for partnership too.

-bidding judgement - the most important part of the bidding process - experience, good thinking, good declarer skills so you can sometimes visualise the play before it gets started are necesary here

 

Declaring comes third, usually due to the fact that most expert players have good declaring skills, but plays it's role in both defensive and bidding processes. Still a lot of IMP's come from this area too.

 

There are a lot of other factors that intervene in winning at bridge, most of them you can find in Georgio Belladonna's book "Strategy and tactics for formula one player"

[rogerclee]

People really underestimate how much of a factor cardplay is at all levels of bridge.

[effervesce]

By the way, I think that there are a lot of amusing formulas in this thread, but this one I enjoy the most:

 

bridge performance = (bidding skill) * (play skill).

 

Why are these two numbers multiplied? Maybe they should be added, or maybe bridge performance is the square root of the sum of the squares of these quantities? And how do you even measure the right-hand-side quantities so that you can benefit from this formula at the table?

A world-class declarer who has no clue how to bid will lose since they will never reach the right contract.

A world-class bidder who has no clue how to play will lose since they will never play a hand correctly.

 

It's my approximation of the importance of each.

Say one bids to the right spot 80% of the time, and plays a hand correctly 80% of the time. Then the 'skill' of that person would be 0.8 * 0.8 = 0.64.

If one plays a hand correctly 100% of the time but bids it correctly 60% of the time, their 'skill' would then be 0.6.

 

It's just a way of thinking about it-not that it's anywhere near how bridge skill should be measured or anything. I certainly don't think bridge skill is a sum of bidding and declarer play. It also explains why alot of people believe bidding is most important at WC level - most players would play a hand correctly 95+% of the time, and thus there is little difference there. On the other hand, there is more variance in their bidding skills.

[mikeh]

A friend of mine recently moved here from Toronto. We have begin playing together. He is an expert, having represented Canada in a couple of WCs.

 

His first reaction, after our first game, was that what he enjoyed the most was that, even tho we are accustomed to different methods (I like Obvious Switch, he detests it.. he likes odd-even... I detest it), we took all of our tricks on defence.

 

We bid reasonably well, for a partnership with only 5 pages of notes, and both of us can handle dummy reasonably well, altho not at the level of a Rodwell/Rosenberg/Fred player.

 

As a partnership, we have spoken at length about bidding (far beyond the notes) and we have spoken less, but a lot, about defence, and hardly ever about declarer play.

 

I think that that probably is a fair representation of the relative importance of those factors at the expert level.

 

I suspect that play is more important at lower levels of skill. Indeed, I agree with the proposition that the average (or even less-experienced) player should consider assigning equal weight to both play and defence. There is little point learning subtle hand valuation and effective bidding methods to reach contracts that experts would strive to reach until your play has given you the means of making them. We all know that at imps, red, we should bid games that are less than 50% to make. But there is no point learning to bid 45% games if you are incapable of utilizing the techniques that make it a 45% proposition. Equally, if you are a great player, but cannot reach normal contracts, no amount of skill will let you win 10 tricks after the opps cash 4 winners, and no number of overtricks in 2♠ will suffice to make up for missing game when it is cold.

[hotShot]

The importance of bidding is highly overrated.

Agreeing to

"5caM, strong NT with Stayman and transfer, weak 2's and one version of RCKB,

1 level overcalls 8+HCP 5c suit, 2 level overcalls 10+ HCP 5+c suit, t/o dbl up to 2♠"

together with judgment is all you need for about 75% of the boards you play.

 

Only the remaining 25% of boards may benefit from your efforts to improve your bidding agreements and abilities. And some of them belong to your opps anyway.

 

Agreeing on leads and signals in defense will help you on another 10-15% of the boards.

 

Good declares skills will help you with the 25% of boards you declare and with the 50% of boards you defend.

[TimG]

We all know that at imps, red, we should bid games that are less than 50% to make. But there is no point learning to bid 45% games if you are incapable of utilizing the techniques that make it a 45% proposition.

This is only true if your opponents are 100% defenders. It's OK to bid 45% games even if your declarer play by itself will only see you to make 40% of the time if the defense will hand over the contract another 10% of the time. Even Rodwell and Meckstroth (where defenders are first rate) make some of their games when the defense slips.

 

Especially in ACBL land where players tend to be grouped with players of similar ability, you ought to stretch to those 45% games even if you can't execute "tricky" declarer plays, because the opponents who are your peers will be unable to defend accurately.

[awm]

As a partnership, we have spoken at length about bidding (far beyond the notes) and we have spoken less, but a lot, about defence, and hardly ever about declarer play.

 

I think that that probably is a fair representation of the relative importance of those factors at the expert level.

Bidding and defense are very much partnership issues.

 

If I sit down with an expert player that I've never played with before, nothing that I do will cause him to play hands poorly. But it's pretty easy for me to cause him to bid to the wrong contracts or misdefend hands. :)

 

Perhaps the point is, a small amount of discussion will improve partnership bidding immensely. But improving someone's declarer play takes a lot of work. And it's not something that discussion usually helps with -- sure you can point out "you missed the trump squeeze" or whatever but that won't necessarily help partner find the trump squeeze next time (and it might make him play worse if you comment on this during a session).

 

Declarer play swings a lot of boards among intermediate-advanced players. It still swings a few boards at the world-class level too, but you fairly often see top players switching partnerships, which means they have to start almost from scratch on developing accurate bidding whereas their declarer play expertise carries over. So I suspect that the number of "world-class partnerships" is a lot less than (half) the number of "world-class players." And this is part of why we see more swings due to bidding than play in many of the top-flight events.