If you had 15 minutes for every play...

[bluecalm]

Assume your thinking time doesn't affect other players.

What about bidding ? Would it improve by much ?

[Rossoneri]

I would probably lose a lot less imps on declaring/defending that's for sure.

 

Bidding-wise, I don't think it would make much of a difference.

[Fluffy]

I would lose a lot in defence, how is partner gonna understand my tanking now? :D

 

Seriously, much much better I make a lot of mistakes for not thinking enough or missing spot cards, and I am good at double dummy so I guess I would improve above most (all) top national players and some internationals.

[Phil]

Is the inference that my opponents would also have the same 15 minutes for every play? One board over a 3 hour period seems a bit much. I think you could have made your point by saying 15 minutes for each board.

 

In either case, I would be mentally exhausted. In something important, I take plenty of time anyway, so an 'nth' minute wouldn't make a lot of difference,

[pooltuna]

Assume your thinking time doesn't affect other players.

What about bidding ? Would it improve by much ?

I would never play because no one would play with me!! I had one of these yesterday I suggested he change his handle to "Molasses in Winter." Of course he couldn't follow suit in tempo when it was clear he was going to lose the trick. Connection is only an excuse for a while especially if you have been proven to play/caught playing in tempo.

[Free]

I don't think I'd get much better results than I'm getting now. In some cases, definitely yes, but most of the time no.

[helene_t]

I think my declarer play would be quite good. My bidding would not improve much but sometimes I do make a bidding mistake which I wouldn't make if given more time. Most of my bidding mistakes at the table I would also make in a bidding poll and many of them are rather close decisions.

 

As for defense I am not sure. Being allowed to write down the cards played would certainly help but my defensive mistakes are just as much caused by failure to draw the logical conclusions. While that could often be remedied by thinking up to 15 minutes for each card, I would be so exhausted after a couple of hands that my performance over many board would go down.

 

Of course this is not a realistic scenario, if I were to think 15 minutes about each card, a board would take some 2-4 hours, so a 27-board club night would be 81 hours. Now if opps are not affected by this then surely they would play better than I, no matter who they are.

[gwnn]

my bidding would improve a bit. my defence and declarer play would improve a lot.

 

but mostly I'd just fall asleep and drool on the table.

[jdonn]

I know some players who already take 15 minutes a play. They aren't the best in the world.

[Phil]

Perhaps a more interesting question is how much your game would suffer if you were allowed a maximum of 10 seconds per bid / play?

[aguahombre]

at my age, I would forget what happened in the previous 15 minutes.

[awm]

It wouldn't help me much. I suppose that on rare occasion I forget which small spot card has been played (never relevant in terms of winners, but sometimes helps to interpret signals). And occasionally I could figure out which of two lines is higher percentage mathematically instead of going with a rough estimate. But neither of these things is really responsible for a high percentage of my mistakes at the table.

 

In fact, I'd say that the vast majority of my errors (barring those that come from hunger or lack of sleep or whatever) stem from "guessing wrong." These are tough to evaluate because obviously to some degree they are just luck. However, I suspect that a better player would "guess wrong" less often because of better ability to read the opponents bids, plays, tempo, spot cards, tendencies etc... or just because with more experience they are more easily able to estimate the odds of certain things. This is not something that having "extra time" is really going to help me with.

 

It's easy for me to believe that extra time would help an intermediate player get to advanced level or whatever, but I don't think it will close the gap between expert and world class.

[jjbrr]

at my age, I would forget what happened in the previous 15 minutes.

at my age, I wouldn't care to remember what happened in the previous 15 minutes.

[matmat]

i'd get worse.

[peachy]

That sort of bookkeeping would be disruptive to flow and merging of thoughts and clues of the hand. So the option of "a little worse than now" would be my opinion.

[MarkDean]

How do I vote for the first and last options?

[Jlall]

How do I vote for the first and last options?

haha I was so close to posting something like this

[nige1]

How do I vote for the first and last options?

:) :) :)

Even I would be somewhere in the middle. If, like me, you find it hard to remember what has been played, then you would gain considerable advantage. For example, you would become better at reconstructing opponents' hands from their plays and signals.

[vuroth]

My bidding judgement is so poor that 15 minutes wouldn't help, but 10 seconds would probably destroy me.

[Mbodell]

I think that if I had *up to* 15 minutes of "magic time" before every call/play (I.e., to my opponents and partner it looks like every play is smoothly in tempo) and could write down things (both cards played, bids, and "working notes") my play would definitely improve.

 

I sometimes miss card details (did they play a low odd spot on the discard or what) and sometimes forget a card somewhere miscounting a suit (oh they pitched a club already so they are all out) and writing would fix that.

 

It would help sometimes on figuring out the right way to attack a suit or the most likely patterns of the hand if I could write things down to count them.

 

And sometimes there are cases where trying to figure out should I duck or fly a high card doesn't let me "duck smoothly" where if my "magic time" was hidden from opponents I could think it through more without worrying about table feel. Likewise sometimes I have a hard decision on bidding and realize the right call is an in tempo invite or pass but that a BIT takes that away, and if my "magic time" hid that I'd be happier too.

 

Overall though I'm not sure it would be a huge difference.

[Jlall]

Surprised by these answers...I don't see how it would be possible to just make a dumb mistake with 15 mins per play/bid. Every mistake I made would just be based on a lack of knowledge/ability of the game, it wouldn't be a blunder. IMO bridge is a game of not blundering at all levels. Assuming I also never got tired from all the thinking then I think I would have a huge edge over anyone just based on that.

 

On the other hand if I actually got fatigued by the thinking it would make no difference at all since I wouldn't actually spend 15 mins on everything.

[CSGibson]

Assuming some magic "pause" where I get 15 minutes, and other people get nothing, plus I get a pad and pencil to fill in hands? Among the best in the world. My biggest bridge blunders are when I just play without thinking or analyzing the hands, or don't pay enough attention to the meticulous carding my partner is providing. I can figure stuff out, though, given enough time and information.

 

Subquestion: What made you ask the question?

[gnasher]

Would there be some sort of visual indication on the board to tell me which deals actually merited 15 minutes per play?

[Finch]

Would there be some sort of visual indication on the board to tell me which deals actually merited 15 minutes per play?

Ah yes, now that would make a big difference to my game.

 

Wasting mental effort on hands where everything breaks kindly and all cards are on side is quite tiring in a long match. Forgetting to think hard about bad breaks and then finding out trumps are 5-0 is immediately costing.

[hanp]

I think I would play quite a bit better than I do now.