Rotating hands to balance strenght between NS-EW

[Fluffy]

yesterday we played last session of a tournament in Madrid.

 

I averaged around 14 HCP, with my partner averaging 12 HCP, wich doesn't leave much for E-W.

 

Despite playing an awful session wit a big headache and making 4 gross mistakes, having all the cards and paying better than the field was more than enough to come over the top and get a 61% session, with our 2 rivals for the tournament sitting EW and getting no more than 57% each. We easilly won the tournament.

 

 

I have heard in the past that computer rotating hands to equalice the strenght on both lines has problems because you can know wich side has more strenght if you happen to see all the strong sides at once.

 

I dunno if that is real, but I am sure that what happenedyesterday was really unfair and I'd prefer to have that problem than this one.

[hotShot]

So if we had 2 good games, I can predict that the computer will give us weak hands next board?

[helene_t]

I have heard in the past that computer rotating hands to equalice the strenght on both lines has problems because you can know wich side has more strenght if you happen to see all the strong sides at once.

This. There is nothing to do about it. Whether the cards are dealt manually or by computer, sometimes one side gets better cards than the other. I believe it would be illegal to bias the dealing aimed at giving EW and NS closer to 20 HCPs on average.

 

Usually it doesn't matter, but of course if there are many pairs who can't handle the good cards (maybe their slam bidding sucks but they are otherwise decent players), for a strong pair it will be an advantage to have good cards.

 

BTW it is only when playing Mitchell one could balance EW vs NS. And playing Mitchell you can't compare a NS score to an EW score anyway, unless the lines were seeded as to be equally strong.

[bluecalm]

There is chance/gambling element to bridge. I think we need to accept it. I am for one happy that is the case :)

[hanp]

Strongly agree that hands should be dealt randomly. This thread is as silly as complaining that you were in a great grand slam with AKQJ9 opposite xx and found 10xxxx offside, therefore you deserve to win. How unfair!!!

[hrothgar]

I averaged around 14 HCP, with my partner averaging 12 HCP, wich doesn't leave much for E-W.

Any chance you could provide the hand records (or better yet, a link to them)?

 

I'd also be interested in knowing the number of boards in the session...

[hotShot]

I guess the probability for this is (something below 1)^(number of boards)

where "something below 1" is the value for 26 combined points of the distribution curve.

The result must be quite small.

[Fluffy]

I averaged around 14 HCP, with my partner averaging 12 HCP, wich doesn't leave much for E-W.

Any chance you could provide the hand records (or better yet, a link to them)?

 

I'd also be interested in knowing the number of boards in the session...

maybe I exagerated a bit richard.

 

But the point is, bridge is a social game, and having to pass all the hands is boring, also defending is more exausting than card playing (and being dummy)

 

I don't think the computer should rotate to make 20 HCP average, but certainly putting them into a margin of 22-18 or 23-17 at most can improve the experience and make the tournament more fair.

 

 

Do you really expect someone playing 27 boards out of a set of 33-36 to be able to tell wich side is stronger in a late board?, and to take advantage of it?

 

well if they are able, congratulate them, it is very slim difference, and having 50 pairs boring down is much worse IMO.

[Fluffy]

Strongly agree that hands should be dealt randomly. This thread is as silly as complaining that you were in a great grand slam with AKQJ9 opposite xx and found 10xxxx offside, therefore you deserve to win. How unfair!!!

unfair is to sit down on a nearly yarborough 70% of the deals and depend on what opponents bid/play all the time having nothing to do about it.

[mycroft]

Well, I once had the displeasure (I actually kept track) of averaging 7.3 HCP in on session (I held 14 once. That was the highest). The best part? It was a Howell, so I couldn't even take solace from the fact that there were others being pooched as badly.

 

The Sultan of Spot, indeed!

[jdonn]

Come on Fluffy this suggestion is silly. Randomness is part of the game that is both necessary and desirable.

[hanp]

Strongly agree that hands should be dealt randomly. This thread is as silly as complaining that you were in a great grand slam with AKQJ9 opposite xx and found 10xxxx offside, therefore you deserve to win. How unfair!!!

unfair is to sit down on a nearly yarborough 70% of the deals

Please provide hand records of this as well.

[Mbodell]

This is frustrating when it happens, especially when it is a Mitchell movement and the E/W will be compared to the N/S in some overalls. This happened to me in the 2 session pairs at the Monterey regional earlier this month. The first session we sat N/S and had none of the cards. We had 8 positive raw scores out of 27 boards and were above average. Some of our friends who sat E/W allowed only 4 negative scores out of 27 boards. The spread in percentages for the E/W pairs was substantially wider than the spread for the N/S pairs, so in the second session the vast majority of the leaders were those who had sat E/W.

 

I don't think you can do much other than hope it doesn't happen too often and hope that you play enough boards over the long run that it mostly equals out.

[Fluffy]

Come on Fluffy this suggestion is silly. Randomness is part of the game that is both necessary and desirable.

silly me, I though randomness was a part of the game that we wanted ot get rid of as much as possible.

 

But ok, I made my points and nobody agrees, so I am probably wrong.

[hrothgar]

Do you really expect someone playing 27 boards out of a set of 33-36 to be able to tell wich side is stronger in a late board?, and to take advantage of it?

 

well if they are able, congratulate them, it is very slim difference, and having 50 pairs boring down is much worse IMO.

Comment 1: We already have to deal with inane discussion with idiots who complain that statistically unbiased random number generators aren't fair enough. The only thing that makes these discussions tolerable is that its relatively easy to demonstrate whether or not a random number generator is biased. I, for one, don't want to have to deal with entirely new inane discussions with idiots who complain that statistically biased random numbers generators are unfair in the wrong way.

 

Comment 2: If players can't remember whether they've gotten a string of good hands or a string of bad hands then they really shouldn't be complaining that we need to bias the random number generators.

 

Simply put:

 

I can understand complaining that the RNG's are fair (unbiased)

I can understanding comments that players can't recall state

 

Doing both at the same time is worthy of the White Queen....

[hrothgar]

Come on Fluffy this suggestion is silly. Randomness is part of the game that is both necessary and desirable.

silly me, I though randomness was a part of the game that we wanted ot get rid of as much as possible.

All in favor of playing the following hand from now on?

 

[hv=d=w&v=b&n=sajt6h643d6543c73&w=sk42hakq52djcqj86&e=s987hjdqt72cakt94&s=sq53ht987dak98c52]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv]

[hrothgar]

But ok, I made my points and nobody agrees, so I am probably wrong.

Word to the wise: Starting your argument with a fairly obvious lie is a bad way to convince people of anything...

[helene_t]

Richard, it's not the issue of whether computer generated hands are random.

 

No need to be toxic.

[NickRW]

But the point is, bridge is a social game, and having to pass all the hands is boring, also defending is more exausting than card playing (and being dummy)

For a recent Xmas party session I got the computer to deal some wild and interesting hands - and I rejected the first batch of hands as one seat had very few cards. This is, IMO, legitimate where it is in fact true that the Bridge session is indeed purely a social game as you put it.

 

However, fixing deals for a session that is at all competitive is an absolute "no no" - it has to be random.

 

Indeed, assuming I've got a partner that knows how to defend somewhat, I don't find a night when we get few cards boring - rather the reverse - we're both playing more hands rather than being dummy - plus we're mashing a decent percentage of those opposing contracts. It is true that you're somewhat in the hands of the opps as, if they bid and play right when they've got the cards at your table, then you're in for a bad score - but things like that happen regardless of who has the cards - every so often a good pair gets a poorish score through no particular fault of their own. Tough - that is how the game is.

 

Nick

[Fluffy]

But ok, I made my points and nobody agrees, so I am probably wrong.

Word to the wise: Starting your argument with a fairly obvious lie is a bad way to convince people of anything...

I don't understand this, nor the thing about a white queen either, at the risk of you spamming even more this thread, could you please elaborate

[bluecalm]

For a recent Xmas party session I got the computer to deal some wild and interesting hands - and I rejected the first batch of hands as one seat had very few cards.

 

I think it's only ok for small club tournaments where nobody cares and you still probably should tell people that this tournament is going to be "wild".

Setting computer to deal "wild" hands is unfair. Rejecting bashes of hands is also unfair (because it makes some hands more likely to occur than others). I know some td's in poland do that I think we need more education about randomness and fairness. If you change setting from "completely random" to "somewhat random" like you did you are hurting some players and their methods and you are rewarding superstitious types who think:

"N can't have all the cards", "This tournament has wild hands" who based their play on those assumptions.

[hrothgar]

But ok, I made my points and nobody agrees, so I am probably wrong.

Word to the wise: Starting your argument with a fairly obvious lie is a bad way to convince people of anything...

I don't understand this, nor the thing about a white queen either, if you could elaborate

The odds that you could play a session of any reasonable length where you averaged 14+ HCPs and your partner averages 12+ HCPs are fairly small.

 

The White Queen is a character from Alice in Wonderland who famously believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

[peachy]

Come on Fluffy this suggestion is silly. Randomness is part of the game that is both necessary and desirable.

plus specifically explained in Law to be not bridge. Cooking the deals no matter how well-intended, is not lawful.

 

Holiday fun fun and goulashes can be fun but those are not "real" bridge. Tournaments are rea, they award masterpoints or whatever, and the hands at a tournament must conform to the laws.

[Jboling]

I agree with Fluffy, I suggested something similar in a domestic discussion some time ago. My argument was that competitions would me more fair if all players would have about the same number of points to play around with. Especially in short tournaments the average number of points for a certain pair can vary a lot, and a pair with a low average on the hcp will obviously have less impact on its results. My interpretation of limiting the average is that is a sort of quality control of the set of the deal, one just discard the obviously unfair sets, with the aim of getting fairer results and more pleasant experiences at the bridge table.

 

The main counterargument in the domestic discussion was that hard contriants on the average hcp could enable people to estimate partners hand strength in the later deals. I countersuggested that the constraints should be random and thus unknown, and possibly even soft (that is just reducing the likelihood for averages lying outside the constraints). And I also tried to show that keeping track of ones average would be very rarely of any use, especially if one intruduced some randomness in the constraints as well.

 

PS. During the domestic discussion I estimated the standard deviation for hcp for pair in a 26 deal competition, it was about 0.91. So in 95% of the cases the average should stay between 18.2 and 21.8, in a 26 deal tournament. Two sigmas was my first suggestion as constraints, but I think that could be slightly too narrow constraints. Due to that people could then with a reasonable frequency use the constraints for some information about partners strength in the last deals. With some information I mean that maybe 1/20 of the sets one can on the last five deals know that our sides expected average hcp is about 19 and not 20. It was much more unlikely that one could judge on the last deal that the other side has 30+ points, but it was possible. So introducing constraints is somewhat problematic, but I think it could be done, using random and unknown limits. And it would for sure increase fairness, on average at least...

[jdonn]

"Fair" is having the same chance at a good hand when I pick up my cards as my opponents do. Having it predetermined that I will have a good hand because my other hands were bad is not "fair". Bridge hands are indepedent events.

 

It may be a goal of bridge to remove randomness of final results, but not randomness of hands.