chess openings vs bridge bidding systems

[Lobowolf]

As a some time Sokolsky/Polish merchant over the chess table, I do play my bridge in that fashion too. 4 card weak 2s and WJOs, opening 1 bids as bad as allowed etc.

Please! The "Orangutan."

 

Long live Susan!

[MFA]

The attempted comparison with Bridge just doesn't work.

I agree.

[Lobowolf]

Apart from "obscure" variations, though (at chess), you could pick reasonable variations to take your opponent out of his comfort level, e.g. a drawish opening line if your opponent needs a win, or a variation that locks the center if your opponent likes wide open piece play (or vice versa). Or for reverse psychology purposes, you could even go the other way, as when Lasker, needing a win, played the "drawish" exchange Ruy Lopez against Capablanca, one of the toughest players to beat...and won! You're not going to see the Latvian Gambit in a top-flight tournament, but you see lines that aren't considered "best" all the time, and lines that aren't the favorite of the player.

 

I think this has a slight bridge analog in terms of matters of judgment against non-top-flight competition. For example, against a pair that plays a big club but handles competition poorly, I might throw in an overcall on a hand that I would normally think doesn't warrant it. Or against a pair that overbids in competitive situations, I might compete higher than I would against a random pair, expect them to wrongly take the push.

 

In chess, the distinction is called "playing the board" vs. "playing the player." It "should" be more prevalent at bridge, as a game of incomplete information. It's probably more prevalent in the play of the hand - the 60% line vs. the 55% line that becomes a 65% line against a player who always covers an honor with an honor, or doesn't duck smoothly enough.

[gwnn]

In Chess there is no concept of declaring your openings.  The notion of pre-declaring your moves is in general contradictory to the nature of the game.

 

The attempted comparison with Bridge just doesn't work.

Why not? Even though you have to pre-alert your 8-12 NT system with universal canape, I will still not be prepared for it properly, i.e. when to double, when to pull it, how to draw negative inferences, how to modify my takeout doubles over suit openings, when to overcall semi-preemptive openings that promise two suits, etc.

If someone plays 1. g4 against me, again I will not be able to understand which places are crucial on the board and how to avoid the traps inherent to the unusual opening.

 

 

I don't know when I said anything about declaring my openings or so. I know chess and bridge have several differences, for example bridge is played with cards and no board, chess has no cards but there is a board, with black and white squares.

 

MFA: I am happy to see that you joined the discussion, could you perhaps attempt to answer my question in the opening post (why doesn't my analogy work)? I am sorry to address a question so directly but you are one of the posters whom I really like reading and I am curious.

[MFA]

MFA: I am happy to see that you joined the discussion, could you perhaps attempt to answer my question in the opening post (why doesn't my analogy work)? I am sorry to address a question so directly but you are one of the posters whom I really like reading and I am curious.

Thank you for your kind words. :)

 

I think the main reason for system restrictions in bridge is to protect the opponents' partnership bidding which is dependent on partnership agreements made in advance to function well.

 

Chess lacks the partnership element completely, and therefore I think that we can't really use the observation that chess openings are unrestricted in chess to anything in relation to bridge.

 

So I think we do better to accept that we are "on our own" and discuss system restrictions in bridge purely out of their own merits.

[the hog]

imho, there are no playing sponsors in chess, thus fide does not have to protect anyone

You have hit the nail on the head.

[zasanya]

In a game between 2 equal chess players The opening moves will seldom confer a winning advantage to either party.So the obscure opening will only give an edge at best.It will still need to be converted into a win.Between 2 unequal players say me and Anand this will not matter at all as He will easily beat me even if I have the advantage of a minor piece.

This is very different from bidding mishaps which nearly always give one side a huge advantage.The obscure methods in bridge will therefore lead to random results and the game will degenerate into a game of luck rather than a game of skill.

You mention an opening like g4 .As a chess player I know that this move cannot be refuted tactically but i also know that the present chess theory considers this a positionaly weak move and therefore I will be in a position to take suitable measures.Thereafter the game will become a battle between my positional/tactical skills vs my opponents corresponding skills.If I fail to see a trap which instantly confers a winning advantage to my opponent then it will simply mean that I failed tactically.

This is different from bidding contermeasures to obscure bids.For example if i open 2 nt and announce it as weak in any suit even worldclass opponents will need a lot of guesswork to reach the right contract.

[Cascade]

It seems wrong to compare the result of a chess game with the result of one hand.

 

My team might easily beat a world champion bridge team on one hand but I would never beat a world champion chess player.

[the hog]

It seems wrong to compare the result of a chess game with the result of one hand.

 

My team might easily beat a world champion bridge team on one hand but I would never beat a world champion chess player.

I agree with this. Comparing a 16 or 32 board bridge match to a chess game is much more reasonable.

[bluecalm]

.For example if i open 2 nt and announce it as weak in any suit even worldclass opponents will need a lot of guesswork to reach the right contract.

 

So what ?

If I open 3♠ and announce it as preemptive with spades then even word class opponents will need a lot of guesswork, probably even more than after your 2NT bid.

[Free]

I think the main reason for system restrictions in bridge is to protect the opponents' partnership bidding which is dependent on partnership agreements made in advance to function well.

Sorry but this is how you see this, it's not a fact. If you allow everything, then partnerships will have more work in advance to cover everything they've seen before. If they encounter something new they'll have to rely on agreements against similar methods (meta agreements), or they'll be screwed.

 

Similar to chess, if you haven't seen certain openings and you're not trained extremely well, then you might lose the match by walking into a trap. But ok, it's not a team game, so you can do whatever you want and nobody needs to understand you.

 

Look at soccer on the other hand. There are various systems that are applied there. It's a team game (11 players instead of 2), and the trainer can use whatever system he wants. If he wants to play 2-4-4 (attack-middle-defense), 3-3-4, 2-3-5, or even 4-4-2, 5-3-2 or 5-4-1, the opponents won't have to whine about a system that's too agressive, that's destructive (because they only attack),... They just have to cope with it. Look at Greece at the world cup, at a certain moment they had 10 defenders (I think 0-4-6)! It's not easy to play against, it's not nice to watch, but it's still soccer... And still the other team was able to score a goal and win the match. :D

[billw55]

I have played both chess and bridge competitively to a reasonable extent. I think I have seen enough to form an opinion on this.

 

Some good points have been made about the technical differences between bridge and chess, differences in the actual game: partnerships, variance, etc. All very interesting.

 

But I think there is a cultural issue overlying all of this. A few comments got close to this point, such as:

 

Nevertheless, I think one of the driving forces behind system regulations is that players don't like to be exposed to weird methods which they don't understand.

 

Now we are really in a period of lack of innovations. In my observations, in the past 10 years, there were not many new stuffs in bridge bidding theory at all. Also, few really have the ability and willing to promote creativity in this game, as Ely Curbertson did in his time. Now the law basically says that if your opps are unfamiliar with your method, your system have a good chance to be barred.

 

In my opinion, the primary reason for system restrictions is that the large majority of the bridge playing population is psychologically averse to change. This is not the case in chess where most players are interested in new theories and ideas. Furthermore I think that this difference is causally related to the age demographic of bridge and chess players.

 

Short but less tactful version: systems are heavily regulated because old people don't like new things. There, I said it.

[gwnn]

From's Gambit should be pre-alerted :rolleyes:

 

1. f4-e5

2. fxe-d6

3. Nf3-Nc6

4. exd-Bxd6

5. Nc3-Nf6

6. h3-Bg3#