Club bridge, hand records missing

[cherdanno]

Honestly I find that much of what goes on in the local clubs is pretty random and non-sensical, and that trying to review the hands and think about "what went wrong" is mostly a waste of time when the opponents and field results are how they are. Regionals (and even sectionals although those are often little better than club game fields) normally have hand records.

Sorry but I think this is non-sense. If you missed a good line for an overtrick, then you missed a good line for an overtrick, regardless of how bad your opponents are, or how bad the field is.

 

Of course, you shouldn't be resulting - if you got a bad score just because your opponents didn't make the same mistake as every other pair defending the same contract, then you don't blame yourself for that result.

[NickRW]

Honestly I find that much of what goes on in the local clubs is pretty random and non-sensical, and that trying to review the hands and think about "what went wrong" is mostly a waste of time when the opponents and field results are how they are.

Huh? You don't have to be an expert to have fruitful discussions with p about what you could have done better.

I think that Adam probably meant that in a poor or mixed quality field, quite a high percentage of both your good and bad results are more due to randomness in the results at other tables than due to your good or bad play.

 

But, as you point out, one can still try to work out what you could have done better.

 

Nick

[JoAnneM]

I don't know which is more important - to continue as a playing director and playing with the three players that I am mentoring plus my regulars partners, or just stop playing and print playing records that will still be laying on the table when everyone goes home. Those are the the extremes, of course.

 

Some of these comments from people who don't run clubs are interesting. We all know there are "takers" and "givers". What would be the motivation for me to run a non-profit club where I never get to play, but do most of the work? Now, doing most of the work, but getting to play, makes it go down a lot easier when all the "takers" come in. And I always have one or two "givers" to at least set up the tables.

[Cascade]

I don't know which is more important - to continue as a playing director and playing with the three players that I am mentoring plus my regulars partners, or just stop playing and print playing records that will still be laying on the table when everyone goes home. Those are the the extremes, of course.

 

Some of these comments from people who don't run clubs are interesting. We all know there are "takers" and "givers". What would be the motivation for me to run a non-profit club where I never get to play, but do most of the work? Now, doing most of the work, but getting to play, makes it go down a lot easier when all the "takers" come in. And I always have one or two "givers" to at least set up the tables.

Does everyone at your club play every session.

 

I mean are there sessions in which some players play who might be willing to do something for another session?

 

Hand Records certainly add value to the experience of playing bridge. It is frequent here that we need to print additional hand records.

 

If you don't have a dealing machine then this entails a little extra work but it is possible. Another idea is to play put a print out of the boards for one round on each table. Those tables then make up those boards and then we all move for the first round. This will work fine for a normal Mitchell movement except that we all end up playing one round less than usual. But even that could be beneficial for some numbers of tables.

[helene_t]

Although I personally find hand records very helpful and would easily be willing to pay an extra pound per session for them, I think JoAnne has a point. In a big city like Amsterdam with dozens of clubs there is a niche market for a couple of clubs that offer hand records. The same may or may not be true in Vancouver. But overall, the vast majority of players are not interested.

 

In Amsterdam there even is a club that uses machine dealt cards just for saving players the trouble of dealing - they don't print the records. Obviously nobody has ever asked for it.

[NickRW]

I don't know which is more important - to continue as a playing director and playing with the three players that I am mentoring plus my regulars partners, or just stop playing and print playing records that will still be laying on the table when everyone goes home...

You have a point. I am interested in hand records, when I can get them - which isn't that often. But some players (quite a lot actually) aren't even really interested in the results, let alone hand records.

 

You're hearing comments from keener players here.

 

Nick

 

P.S. There are other non profit models. My club is not particularly owned by anyone (as are [i belive] the majority in the UK). It has a bank account in its own name and is run by an unpaid committee. Eight of us take it in turns to direct. Some do other chores like scoring, maintain web pages, making sure the boards have cleanish decks of cards, ordering fresh stationery and so on. Most everyone else who is a member who doesn't have a chore gets press ganged into volunteering to be a "hall manager" every once in a while (put out the tables, wash up the cups, collect the table money etc). Basically we're a club and we expect everyone to contribute in some way.

[blackshoe]

I suspect if you read your club's bylaws (you do have bylaws, right?) they will say that the members own the club.

[NickRW]

I suspect if you read your club's bylaws (you do have bylaws, right?) they will say that the members own the club.

Frankly there may well be a document that says something like that - I've never seen such a thing (not in relation to my Bridge club, nor any other of the other clubs I've ever been a member of (and there have been quite a few of those). IANAL, but the concept of "ownership" seems to have little to do with clubs (of all types) in the UK for all practical purposes.

 

Nick

[JoAnneM]

Some of you mentioned writing the hands on the traveler the first round. How does that work? I looked at the travelers offered for sale and don't see anything appropriate. I was actually thinking that if that was done I could enter the hands at home after the game and post them with the results. At least that is something.

[Cascade]

If you have access to dealmaster pro it looks much the same as those except where the preprinted hand was there is blank space (lined) where you can fill in the hands.

[blackshoe]

I may be misremembering, but I think the travelers in common use in England (and possibly other places) have a place at the bottom for entering the four hands. You're right that those for sale here (ACBL, Baron-Barclay) don't have that.

[NickRW]

What some clubs used to have were "curtain cards" - smallish pieces of fairly thick paper (so you can't see through it) where you could write the hand - one for each person. Subsequent tables were supposed to check the hand against the curtain card. They seem to have gone out of fashion for some reason.

 

Nick

[jillybean]

Some of you mentioned writing the hands on the traveler the first round. How does that work? I looked at the travelers offered for sale and don't see anything appropriate. I was actually thinking that if that was done I could enter the hands at home after the game and post them with the results. At least that is something.

I'm sure your mentee's would appreciate it, however at $4 a game some of the players could be stepping up to do it for you :)

[Dean]

Here in NZ we pay $5 per night.

 

You get a hand records afterwards with DD analysis on them.. Alternatively they are on the web (along with results) about 20 minutes after play finishes. We are also going to put the travellers and recap sheets on the web.

 

In this day and age if you are dealing computer produced deals there should be no reason for them to be on-line. Cost is very minimal.

 

D./

[JoAnneM]

We do it the old-fashioned way - one card at a time. You would be surprised at some of the wild deals we get and no one can complain about "computer hands" lol

[mycroft]

Yeah, that's the issue in our club (along with people willing to try to buy a $10m building, but not a $5k dealing machine. Priorities, right?) We have several players who won't play "those damned, fixed, biased computer hands". I've done hand records by hand, and it might be the right thing for the game, but it's not the right thing for anyone sane (sorry, McBruce, but I have to get you back for That Bulletin somehow!) And yeah, unlike certain areas of the country ("triple-point clubs", anyone?), we get lots of gripes whenever we charge extra for special games.

 

I do make a point of griping about "those damned computer hands" whenever we get a freaky run at the club (about once every four sessions, I would say, that I notice). Usually I get "but they weren't computer-dealt, we shuf...oh." at least once.

 

On the other hand, we're still the cheapest bar in town. You just have to pay a cover, and push cards around for 3 hours, to get in.

[jillybean]

Yeah, that's the issue in our club (along with people willing to try to buy a $10m building, but not a $5k dealing machine.  Priorities, right?)  We have several players who won't play "those damned, fixed, biased computer hands".  I've done hand records by hand, and it might be the right thing for the game, but it's not the right thing for anyone sane (sorry, McBruce, but I have to get you back for That Bulletin somehow!)  And yeah, unlike certain areas of the country ("triple-point clubs", anyone?), we get lots of gripes whenever we charge extra for special games.

 

I do make a point of griping about "those damned computer hands" whenever we get a freaky run at the club (about once every four sessions, I would say, that I notice).  Usually I get "but they weren't computer-dealt, we shuf...oh." at least once.

 

On the other hand, we're still the cheapest bar in town.  You just have to pay a cover, and push cards around for 3 hours, to get in.

Hi, 2 questions, although I fear opening a new can of worms.

 

1. ""those damned computer hands" fact or ficton? Are computer genrated hands any more distributional, odd, than human dealt hands?

 

2. "I've done hand records by hand, and it might be the right thing for the game, but it's not the right thing for anyone sane" why?

[NickRW]

1. ""those damned computer hands" fact or ficton? Are computer genrated hands any more distributional, odd, than human dealt hands?

 

2. "I've done hand records by hand, and it might be the right thing for the game, but it's not the right thing for anyone sane"  why?

 

Re 2 - I guess that was said because someone thinks it is extremely tedious.

 

Re 1 - Most people do not shuffle enough - this produces a higher proportion of balanced hands and even breaks when a typical bridge club deals by hand.

 

There is a paper somewhere on the web that says 7 riffle shuffles are enough for complete randomness. And there is another one which says 5 is enough for practical purposes. And that to achieve a similar effect with overhand shuffling takes, I think it said, 20 minutes! A lot of people can't riffle shuffle and, even if they do, they don't do it 5 or more times.

 

Some people can't even overhand shuffle properly - someone I know literally cuts the deck several times - which does absolutely nothing at all except move who gets which hand around the table.

 

To see why a poorly hand shuffled deck produces balanced hands, think about it - someone lead, say, a diamond. Usually everyone followed. This carries on for, usually, a majority of the tricks. The hands get put back in the boards. Someone, at the next session puts all four hands together one on top of the other - there is now a diamond on the bottom - and thirteen cards up from that another one - and so on. Then someone does a couple of overhand shuffles that does almost nothing to disturb the order of the deck and deals. Hey presto everyone gets a similar number of each and every suit.

 

People then get used to balanced hands with even breaks and notice when you get properly randomised hands - because they get more bad breaks, more 7 and 8 card suits, more voids and more 2 suiters - on average.

 

Nick

[Cascade]

There is a paper somewhere on the web ...

... that must be true then.

[Cascade]

Yeah, that's the issue in our club (along with people willing to try to buy a $10m building, but not a $5k dealing machine.  Priorities, right?)  We have several players who won't play "those damned, fixed, biased computer hands".  I've done hand records by hand, and it might be the right thing for the game, but it's not the right thing for anyone sane (sorry, McBruce, but I have to get you back for That Bulletin somehow!)  And yeah, unlike certain areas of the country ("triple-point clubs", anyone?), we get lots of gripes whenever we charge extra for special games.

 

I do make a point of griping about "those damned computer hands" whenever we get a freaky run at the club (about once every four sessions, I would say, that I notice).  Usually I get "but they weren't computer-dealt, we shuf...oh." at least once.

 

On the other hand, we're still the cheapest bar in town.  You just have to pay a cover, and push cards around for 3 hours, to get in.

Hi, 2 questions, although I fear opening a new can of worms.

 

1. ""those damned computer hands" fact or ficton? Are computer genrated hands any more distributional, odd, than human dealt hands?

 

2. "I've done hand records by hand, and it might be the right thing for the game, but it's not the right thing for anyone sane" why?

1. Its a long time since I have done any analysis of computer dealt hands from programs that I have written. However when I did do that many years ago they conformed very accurately to the expected frequency of distributions. If anything the repeated flaw that I found with the random number generator that I was using was that there were too few extreme distributional hands (mostly long suits from memory). Which suggests that my computer dealt hands were not quite distributional enough.

 

Comparing this with hand dealt hands. It has been widely reported that hand dealt cards tend to be too balanced. Historically I think there are good reasons for this since players did not shuffle so well and cards were left in the order in which they were played - often running a long suit or drawing trumps. In other words several cards of the same suit would remain together in a hand. If this hand is not shuffled properly then these cards have a higher chance of remaining together and then therefore being spread around the table on the next time that board is dealt. I certainly have seen players many times collect the hands together and give the cards no more than one or two unconvincing overhand shuffles.

 

Its impractical to the sort of statistical analysis on hand dealt hands to accurately compare these methods. It is easy to generate literally millions of computer dealt hands but this is a life time of collecting for hand dealt cards.

 

The 2007 law changes should in theory improve the randomness of hand dealt deals since at the end of the hand each player is now supposed to shuffle their own cards before returning them to the board. This will counter a sloppy shuffle at least a little the next time the board is played.

 

Many years ago I was directing a team's series of four nights at the local club. I used my program to generate sets of hands. We didn't have a dealing machine then so I made up each set by hand and produced hand records for the players. I received many complaints about the wild computer dealt hands. Most of the complaints though were on the last night when I had actually hand dealt all of the cards after thoroughly shuffling each deck and then entering each deal into my hand record program - this took me much longer than making up the sets for the other nights.

 

2. I think I said earlier I think lethagy is the main problem for making up hands.

[JoAnneM]

What! We always shuffle our hands before they go back in the board, even at the end of the game. You don't all do that?

[Mbodell]

There is a paper somewhere on the web ...

... that must be true then.

The 7 shuffle meme doesn't guarantee complete randomness (what ever this means) but gets you past the inflection point. It is like an s-curve where you get diminishing returns. More shuffles are better, but the first few are where the big bang for the buck is.

 

Computer dealt hands is the proper way to go for sure.

[NickRW]

What! We always shuffle our hands before they go back in the board, even at the end of the game. You don't all do that?

Most do it during the session - they are not so diligent after the last round.

 

Nick

[jillybean]

What!  We always shuffle our hands before they go back in the board, even at the end of the game.  You don't all do that?

Most do it during the session - they are not so diligent after the last round.

 

Nick

A cursory shuffle at best. I thought this was so the smart alec at the next table couldnt reconstruct the play.

[Cascade]

I imagine that is the main reason but if players are in the habit it also has a benefit if you are using hand shuffled cards.