Quality of declarer play

[Dirk Kuijt]

Try this one.

 

There are about 300 pitchers in the North American major baseball leagues. Let's say that half of them throw fastballs as their best pitch, so 150. I feel confident that the #75 or #100 pitcher throws harder than #25 fifty years ago.

 

However, #1 today doesn't throw any harder than the old timers ever did. Nolan Ryan still has the speed record at a little over 100 mph. Bob Feller threw 98 in the 1940's. Before that, timing was harder, but the consensus among baseball experts is that Walter Johnson, Cy Young, and Smoky Joe Wood threw pretty close to that speed a century or more ago.

 

Why haven't speeds at the top increased? Because the limit is not a muscular limit; it is joints and tendons, which nobody knows how to build up. The top pitchers are right at the edge of blowing their arms out--and the top pitchers always were. However, the mediocre pitchers had a lot of room for improvement.

 

Now as to bridge: How close are the top declarers to theoretical best play? I'm not qualified to answer that question, so I'll leave it to others. But I'd like to lay on the table the idea that Rodwell may not play the dummy all that much better than Schenken did because there just wasn't that much room for improvement, at least in pure technical plays (leaving aside deceptive plays).

[billw55]

.. stuff ..

That's pretty much exactly what I think, it sounds like I wrote it myself!

[hotShot]

The main point about the athletics comparisons is that even if you don't notice it, technical development has changed the sport.

Look at the development e.g. of the shoes, the chances of the running track, etc.

You can hit a tennis ball much harder with a modern racket than you could with a wooden racket.

[Jlall]

lol

[TimG]

I'm sorry I don't have citations for either of these, but...

 

1) I believe a book on baseball's fastball has recently been published. In it, there is some discussion based upon experts' opinions in various fields that the limit on a human pitched fastball is 107-109 MPH. I do not know whether this is speed at release point, over the plate or somewhere in between.

 

2) A few months ago, I heard a radio piece about the 100m dash. There was a similar discussion based upon experts' opinions in various fields that suggests there is at least another second to be taken off the current record before the human limit is reached.

[gwnn]

there was a nice exponential (t=t0+exp(-aT)) interpolation of the 100m record progression but Usain Bolt broke it down, at least ostensibly. I think that would have predicted that at T=+Inf the record would be around 9.4 or so.

 

haha I see wikipedia took down the interpolation from its pages, because it fits so badly now :lol:

[billw55]

I must admit, Usain Bolt is one of the few athletes that so completely destroys what has gone before, even very recent peers and champions, that he stands out even considering changes in equipment and conditions. The dude is scary fast and I don't think he has even run his best race yet.

 

Although even for him a full second off the 100m record sounds absurd.

[Mbodell]

Try this one.

 

There are about 300 pitchers in the North American major baseball leagues. Let's say that half of them throw fastballs as their best pitch, so 150. I feel confident that the #75 or #100 pitcher throws harder than #25 fifty years ago.

 

However, #1 today doesn't throw any harder than the old timers ever did. Nolan Ryan still has the speed record at a little over 100 mph. Bob Feller threw 98 in the 1940's. Before that, timing was harder, but the consensus among baseball experts is that Walter Johnson, Cy Young, and Smoky Joe Wood threw pretty close to that speed a century or more ago.

That isn't true about baseball. A number of pitchers regularly pitch faster than Ryan did. Nolan Ryan's fastest clocked pitch was 100.9 mph. Broxton, to name only one, regularly hits 101 on the gun and has hit 103 on the gun. There is Pitch f/x now that tracks pitches a lot more closely for speed, break, etc. and we get lots of measurements and a number of pitchers pitch faster. It is true that it isn't worlds faster (the way the running records are) but it is faster now than it used to be.

[jdonn]

I must admit, Usain Bolt is one of the few athletes that so completely destroys what has gone before, even very recent peers and champions, that he stands out even considering changes in equipment and conditions.  The dude is scary fast and I don't think he has even run his best race yet.

He isn't the only track and field star to shatter a world record in unheard of fashion. Ever heard of Bob Beamon?

 

On October 18 at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, Beamon set a world record for the long jump with a jump of 8.90 m (29 ft. 2½ in.)....  Prior to Beamon’s jump, the world record had been broken thirteen times since 1901, with an average increase of 6 cm (2½ in) and the largest increase being 15 cm (6 in) while Beamon's gold medal mark bettered the existing record by 55 cm (21¾ in.).

(It was since broken by 5 cm in 1991 which is where it currently stands.)

[awm]

A lot of the sports arguments have to do with better training/nutrition/equipment, and with a wider population of youngsters taking up the sport at an early age.

 

I don't think either of these things really apply to bridge; although some players swear by the benefits of working out regularly, they aren't exactly paragons of modern nutritional science. And while we have some talented young players today, there are fewer than there were years ago, and there's no particular reason to think that a very high percentage of the young people who would be good at bridge if they got involved early are actually playing.

 

As to empirically whether players are better now, bridge players have a long enough "prime" that some of the same names stay at the top of the game for decades. Bob Hamman was great in the 1960s and he's still among the top players today.

 

Yet Bob Hamman had trouble beating the top players of the Blue Team. So unless you believe that he specifically has gotten a lot better in terms of his play and defense over the 40 intervening years (despite the fact that he is now, I think, in his 70s)... it seems unlikely that Garrozzo and Forquet and such in their primes were much weaker players than the best of today.

 

Of course, bidding is an entirely different story. Hamman was among the first American players to really emphasize having a coherent system, and surely the many methods designed (and adopted) by players since the 1960s are a significant advance. I find it easy to believe that Bob Hamman's bidding system is a lot better than it was in the 1960s.

[mgoetze]

Chess and bridge (and Go, if you are familiar with it) are a little different, in that there is the aspect of accumulated theoretical knowledge such as openings, endings, bidding methods, etc. But put that aside and consider only ability, and I think Capablanca was every bit as good as Kasparov. I suspect similar for bridge. Maybe it's just me though :)

I believe it is generally acknowledged that top professional Go players played near-perfect endgames as far back as the 16th century. In fact, the quality of professional endgame play has been declining sharply since the mid-20th-century due to altered playing conditions (a championship match is now over in 6 hours, rather than 6 months or more).

 

The opening, on the other hand... they are maybe a bit closer now but still far away from perfect. :) We'll need a few more centuries of accumulated knowledge, unless computers get there first.

[Jlall]

The OP was actually a good question, I wasn't around then but from what I have read and from what people who were around then have told me, the declarer play at the top level was not that much different then than now.

 

Of course, there are far more very good players now than then even though the player pool is small, because professional bridge is now very viable which means there are many more people who can dedicate themselves to bridge than before.

 

Bidding now compared to then is pretty lol though, there is no way the blue team would beat even the 50th best team today imo even with their (relatively small, because there are so many good players now) card play advantage, they would lose so often in bidding.

 

The comparisons to other sports and chess are amazingly lol though.

[billw55]

It may be lol, but your conclusion in your first sentence is basically the same as I was making from my sports analogy. Sometimes lol works? :)

[Jlall]

It may be lol, but your conclusion in your first sentence is basically the same as I was making from my sports analogy. Sometimes lol works? :)

Once I was playing chess and I made the same move a grandmaster would have. I explained my reasoning to him and he was like lol. And I was like...but we came to the same conclusion so my thought process must have been good!

[billw55]

I believe it is generally acknowledged that top professional Go players played near-perfect endgames as far back as the 16th century. In fact, the quality of professional endgame play has been declining sharply since the mid-20th-century due to altered playing conditions (a championship match is now over in 6 hours, rather than 6 months or more).

 

The opening, on the other hand... they are maybe a bit closer now but still far away from perfect. :) We'll need a few more centuries of accumulated knowledge, unless computers get there first.

True and it's not just the endgame. Openings and middlegames are less thorough was well. Game times have been shortened starting in the 1940s and on, to accomodate spectators, commetary, even television, and public interest in general. That has succeeded, in a way; the playing population has boomed. But mistakes do work their way in.

 

Go is an interesting model, because there has been a core of professionalism for more than four centuries. Bridge or even chess cannot compare to this. When this same debate comes up on the go forums, we see more players advocating ancient masters as greatest-ever candidates, and realtively fewer modernists who believe that the best players right now are the best players ever.

[billw55]

It may be lol, but your conclusion in your first sentence is basically the same as I was making from my sports analogy.  Sometimes lol works?  :)

Once I was playing chess and I made the same move a grandmaster would have. I explained my reasoning to him and he was like lol. And I was like...but we came to the same conclusion so my thought process must have been good!

Only once? :P

 

But yeah .. when I play bridge, I make the same play/bid that Hamman would make, numerous times per session. But alas I am still lol. A man can dream :)

[Lobowolf]

In sports, your available pool of players now versus 50 years ago is immensely larger. Combined with better training, the best players of this generation will rate to be better than the best of the old generation, and the field is certainly much 'deeper'.

 

In tennis, wouldn't you bet on a #20 seed of today against a Rod Laver?

Interestingly, with respect to bridge, the metric of pool size is at odds with the metric of "accumulated theoretical knowledge." i.e. we assume that the bigger pool creates better top players, but in bridge, we have a smaller pool than in the past. However, that is counterbalanced by the increased knowledge base available to all.

 

With respect to almost any predominantly physical sport, I suspect that training and evolution are as much to credit as pool size. They're just generally bigger, stronger, faster (though obviously this is mitigated somewhat in sports with weight classes).

[Fluffy]

For your tennis analogy - even out equipment, and I definitely take Laver over the #20 player today.

I would take you up on that bet for a LOT of money, and frankly I'm sure Laver would lose 6-0 6-0. It's not just equipment. It's the population, both of the world and that play particular sports. It's knowledge about training. It's knowledge about nutrition.

WTF? Haven't you seen Rocky Balboa? he comes back and (almost) wins :(

[the hog]

If Tommy Haas was forced to play with a wooden frame raquet, then I would back Laver.

[zasanya]

Being from India I can't help asking.Is Sachin Tendulkar a better batsman than Sir Donald Bradman? ROFL

[jjbrr]

Being from India I can't help asking.Is Sachin Tendulkar a better batsman than Sir Donald Bradman? ROFL

I've been wondering the same thing.

[cherdanno]

I believe it is generally acknowledged that top professional Go players played near-perfect endgames as far back as the 16th century. In fact, the quality of professional endgame play has been declining sharply since the mid-20th-century due to altered playing conditions (a championship match is now over in 6 hours, rather than 6 months or more).

 

The opening, on the other hand... they are maybe a bit closer now but still far away from perfect. :) We'll need a few more centuries of accumulated knowledge, unless computers get there first.

True and it's not just the endgame. Openings and middlegames are less thorough was well. Game times have been shortened starting in the 1940s and on, to accomodate spectators, commetary, even television, and public interest in general. That has succeeded, in a way; the playing population has boomed. But mistakes do work their way in.

 

Go is an interesting model, because there has been a core of professionalism for more than four centuries. Bridge or even chess cannot compare to this. When this same debate comes up on the go forums, we see more players advocating ancient masters as greatest-ever candidates, and realtively fewer modernists who believe that the best players right now are the best players ever.

Hmm, I want to challenge that. Of course 3 hour time-limit games are played on a worse level than games without time limit. But on equal conditions, and playing with komi, I would take any of the Korean superstars against the oldtime masters.

(Just think about how much the level of go has improved in the last 25 years - it's not that the Japanese stars got worse, but they just got surpassed by new young players who are on a new level.)

 

Of course go is played at a much higher level than bridge anyway, so the difference between the 19th century masters and today is not very big.

(ducks and runs)

[hrothgar]

Of course, bidding is an entirely different story. Hamman was among the first American players to really emphasize having a coherent system, and surely the many methods designed (and adopted) by players since the 1960s are a significant advance. I find it easy to believe that Bob Hamman's bidding system is a lot better than it was in the 1960s.

This is almost laughable

 

The coaching staff of the Dallas Aces required that the players adopt well defined systems.

 

Some of the players - most noteably Bobby Goldman - responded by spending significant time / effort to develop a coherent systems.

 

Others, most noteably Hamman, decided that the path of least resistance was to copy, almost verbatim, a well defined system used by a dominant team.

 

Moreover, when I think about "Hamman", the words "innovative bidding system" don't spring to mind. "Brilliant declarer" does. Same with "Fierce competitor" and "Great Judgement".

 

It's entirely possible that the long term partnership with Wolff slowed down Hamman's ability to innovate and tinker. Even so, I really think that there are much better examples.

[cherdanno]

You forgot to mention "great defensive plays" in connection with Hamman. When I have read about a remarkable defensive play only found at one table of an important event (e.g. old World Championship finals) it was quite often next to the name Hamman.

[hrothgar]

On the sports front, there has been a phenomenal change in the size and speed of professional football players (American football) over the past 25-30 years.

 

Compare the stats for the average size of an offensive linesman in the early 80s with what it is now.

 

Then take a look at how fast these guys are able to run.

 

These folks are barely playing the same game...

 

I'm guessing that a middling foot team from this decade would crush any Superbowl winner from the 70s.