How to improve your game

[y66]

This is one of the most sensible things I've ever read on this topic. It's very hard for me to do these things consistently. Will be trying.

[JLOL]

Heh, thanks.

[Hanoi5]

I was also impressed by this post. It is really good advice for advancing players and all who want to become just better.

[Trumpace]

Good advice. I agree.

 

One thing I would like to add to Step 2. (Evaluate.), though.

 

You also need to evaluate the boards you _won_ IMPS on and not just the boards you lost IMPS on. You might discover that you just got lucky, and against a better team, you would actually have lost IMPS because of the mistakes you made. This is true especially if you are in the intermediate/advanced range. This would probably also help you cut down on forming incorrect bridge ideas based on the (good) results.

[blackshoe]

In principle, I agree, trumpace. But given a limited amount of time and effort available, I would concentrate on the bad scores first. When (if?) it gets to the point there are not so many of those, it will be soon enough to start looking at others. :mellow:

[JLOL]

Going over every board is inefficient. You will determine most of the time when you go over a hand where you won imps that you did nothing majorly wrong. When you go over hands you lost imps it is much more likely that you'll find a key error. If most of the time you spend looking for errors is spent finding them, you aren't wasting that much time, and can get back to playing or studying. Even if you miss some hands where you made mistakes it's ok.

[whereagles]

One thing you could add is "try and stay focused". This is way harder than it seems, but it's also the way to cut down on stupid errors and perhaps the simpler way to improve your game. It doesn't involve any reading! Just a change of attitude.

[Trumpace]

You don't have to go over each board every time you play.

 

All I was saying is that you just don't ignore them completely. Sometimes during the play itself you will have a good idea which boards are potential mistake boards.

 

Time is always a factor and I agree that a board you lost IMPS on is more likely to highlight your mistakes and those should be tackled first and that if you miss some boards it is ok. But there is no harm in trying to make time for the other boards too. Also, If they are easy enough, you can spend no more than a minute and can get on to the next board.

 

Whether it is inefficient or not depends on the individual, but I agree with you that for most, just the bad boards should be time enough...

 

I consider post-mortems to be an integral part of studying. I find that almost every deal has some instructive point or the other (I do make too many mistakes :( ).

 

Anyway, sorry for derailing this thread.