Bidding is 80% of bridge

[JLOGIC]

The EasyBridge! lesson series is excellent for beginners in my opinion in that it says very early that if you get to the right contract, you don't have to play the cards so well.

 

 

Yeah that's a nice lie

[Foxx]

Also, bidding problems are more amenable to those types of contests; it's hard to pose play problems in a similar format (MSC will sometimes have an opening lead problem, but it's hard to go much beyond that in the play).

 

Richard Pavlicek managed to do it for 7 years...

[MarkDean]

I agree card play is way more important than bidding.

I am relatively better card player than bidder, but even so, going over my own results, many more MPs/IMPs are lost in play than in bidding.

I am interested if those saying bidding is more important go over their results over a large number of hands.

[Trumpace]

Why is there, a mention of ACBL in the title of this thread?

[blackshoe]

Because that's where the original poster is.

[cherdano]

Why is there, a mention of ACBL in the title of this thread?

In Australia, with its lack of system restrictions, bidding is actually 90% of bridge instead of 80%.

[TimG]

There are 2 reasons people like to think bidding is 80 % of the game.

 

1) As has been said here, maybe when the blue team played the aces, or the diamond team plays the fleisher team, 80 % of the swings were bidding because their card play was near perfect. I can accept that, but that is only because they are at the very highest level and they all play the hands very well. This does not apply to you if you are not on one of the top 10 teams in the country.

 

2) Cardplay is harder to improve in, and it is more boring and concrete. Bidding on the other hand you can change your system all the time, make a few things more optimal, and really feel like you are making big improvements to your game. It is also more fun. It is just people lying to themselves. It is the same reason that almost all threads are about bidding and not play, no one can be proven wrong in a bidding thread, and people can debate it endlessly. On a cardplay thread we just get rainer posting the solution and everyone nodding...not that conducive to discussion, or being able to hold a view and keep thinking that you're right! It is the same reason that bridge teachers even at the lowest level teach bidding classes rather than play classes, and *cringe* teach conventions. People want to come away from a lesson feeling like they learned something, like they made some tangible gain. Going home and saying "look, I know kickback, it's going to save me so much room!" is a lot more rewarding than saying "well we went over some hands and I counted winners and losers and figured out what to do with my losers, blah, basically the same stuff I already knew..."

 

As roger said, there is no shortage of people who WANT to believe that bidding is 80 % of the game, unfortunately it is more like 10 %.

I'd add a 3rd. If I'm playing a team (or a field) that is significantly better than I am, I can't hope to win by suddenly playing the cards better (I'm incapable). I can hope to win by bidding better/differently than my opponents.

 

Many years ago, after playing in the Open BAM at the Fall NABC, my partner and I went through the hands and determined that for our team the result was determined by the bidding well over 50% of the time (I don't remember the exact number and it would be a case of small sample size anyway). Whether this was a good thing or a bad thing, I do not know. I will say that he has gone on to form a "standard" partnership and won the Platinum Pairs, so it may be reasonable to guess that he preferred to remove the difference-in-bidding from his game.

[Hanoi5]

I think bidding is more than 10% important. I'd say about a 15% or 20%. The thing with bidding is that there are many more possibilities and it seems very important (being the first part of the game and having so many rules). Also, if you learn bridge and start playing and have bad results and go to a teacher s/he'll add some conventions to your repertoire and you'll feel happier using them, naming them than going to a class and learning about planning the hand, etc. Also, people can get away with playing bad sometimes, I've seen so many people making 'mistakes' in the play and being rewarded by a friendly lie of the cards; and of course they think they're doing great. But a mistake in the bidding is easier to spot ('partner I just played in a 3-1 fit, you'd better learn splinters').

 

I do agree with all the previous comments on the importance of studying play and defense. These are the base of the game. And the numbers provided by the OP just show this: dummy play and defense just accounts for the 20% of difference in scores, that only means that their ability is so similar that it doesn't affect the score that much. And if you think that's not what it means, just check the way hands are played at that level, a beginner or intermidiate would hardly predict what happens, and an advanced player would usually just understand it.

 

And if anyone still doesn't believe it, I guess a team match could be set up between the two factions (those who believe bidding is 80% important, those who believe is less than 20% important) to play ... minibridge. Only play and defense abilities will matter there.

[hrothgar]

I think that Justin and Fred both raise some very good points...

 

With this said and done, I'd like to raise a couple points:

 

First

There seems to be a general assumption that "natural" bidding equates to "simple" bidding; That's its easier to play a natural system and reserve mental energy for card play, defense, etc. I'm not sure that this is necessarily true...

 

Second

I believe that choice of bidding system can (significantly) negate differences in skill level in declarer play, defense, etc. If I am going to be playing against a world class team in a monthes time, I'm not going to beat them by studying up on squeezes or signalling. What I can do is make sure that there is a significant amount of variance in the contracts that get played and hope that Lady Luck will negate their advantage in card play and defense...

[mycroft]

If you are ever lucky enough to play a top 8 seed in the spingold, I think it will be painfully obvious to you that the reason you lose is because your opponents are not making mistakes in the cardplay, and it's winning them a lot of game (and maybe partscore) swings. That is the bread and butter of knockout matches. I find it laughable that anyone thinks they will come away from that experience thinking "Wow, I just got outbid!" or "80 % of the imps I lost were in the bidding :("

Heh. Last year, I played the 7th seed in the Spingold. The reason we lost was they made many more of the right decisions than wrong ones, and we made many more wrong ones than they did.

 

In other words, they bid to the right spot - and made it. We frequently did, at best, one of those two things. Minus IMPS, every time, whether it was our bidding that was substandard or our play that didn't rise to the level of our correct bidding. Lots of them, in total. In other words, you can be the best in the world at bidding, but if you can't make all your tricks, you're still -100 into the "bad" bidder's +170.

 

The one plus I had in that match (besides "I played in it" and "I wasn't a gibbering wreck or an asshole after losing by that much") was that we "made" all our doubled contracts (if it was a sacrifice, it was a paying sacrifice; if not, it made). On the other hand, they probably didn't need to double all that many contracts to beat us.

[hrothgar]

 

If you are ever lucky enough to play a top 8 seed in the spingold, I think it will be painfully obvious to you that the reason you lose is because your opponents are not making mistakes in the cardplay, and it's winning them a lot of game (and maybe partscore) swings. That is the bread and butter of knockout matches. I find it laughable that anyone thinks they will come away from that experience thinking "Wow, I just got outbid!" or "80 % of the imps I lost were in the bidding :("

 

 

One might argue that the rules of the Spingold - and most any other ACBL event - are rigged to eliminate high variance systems...

[gnasher]

I agree that for most players their relative interest in bidding over cardplay is the wrong way around.

 

Another curiosity is that people seem more interested in uncontested auctions than in competitive ones. Again, that's the opposite of how it should be - there is far more to be gained or lost on deals where both sides are in the bidding.

[mfa1010]

Not 80% or 10%, somewhere in the middle (at mps cardplay tends to be a little more important than at imps). Difficult to judge.

The level of the players probably means something. Not clear what.

[MrAce]

I think when you compare worldclass top pairs / teams with each other, as Justin said what matters will be bidding overall. But that doesnt mean bidding is prior to play, since one of the parameters are equaled (card play)

 

However, when u compare EXPERT players vs NON EXPERT players, the outcome will be deceptive also. Yes, non expert players will be outgunned when it comes to defense and cardplay BUT ! Is this a proof of card play skills being prior to bidding in bridge ?

 

I strongly doubt it. Because after all, u are comparing EXPERTS who by the way, bids AT LEAST as well as non experts (in reality much better imo), and definetely plays or defend better than non experts. Thats not a proof of PLAY being more important than BIDDING in BRIDGE.. This only proves that experts play/defend better than non experts.

 

If the topic was "Do experts win vs non experts mostly due to bidding or cardplay ?" Then i would accept this argument.

 

But the topic is about the importance of CARD PLAY/DEFENSE vs BIDDING in BRIDGE.

 

And in order to find that out we need to load one team with EXCELLENT bidding judgement and average play skills, and other team shd be loaded by EXCELLENT card play skills and average bidding judgement. Basically u will make one team bid hands by EXPERTS but the hands will be played by ADV players (or defend). While other team hands will be bid by ADV players and will be played by EXP players.

 

This would be more fair combat between BIDDING and PLAY SKILLS in bridge imo :)

[gwnn]

I think to bad players like me it's easier to ignore cardplay errors than bidding errors. What's even worse we sometimes just shrug and say "yes and what were we supposed to do? he had 10 tricks!" (defence) or "it was just a guess!" (declarer). In bidding I think even bad players tend to see the errors of their ways (even though it really makes no difference in the long run that they missed that thin game). Either way it never ceases to astonish me to hear people on my level (give or take a few imps) end at 50% or 0 imps after a pairs session and say "I made only one mistake in this session"! Sure enough maybe he didn't concede -1100 and all the games he bid were between 40% and 80%, but seriously, he defended 15 hands and declared 5!

[hotShot]

I done some experimenting comparing card play against DD play. The result was that experts lose about 1 trick in 4-5 boards to the DD-Solver while beginner lose about 1 trick a board.

 

If 2 beginner pairs play, the declarer will often get 1 more trick than the DD-solver, because when 2 opps lose a trick each and the declarer loses his average trick there is still an overtrick left.

The subjective impression is that they underbid and have to work on their bidding.

 

If an expert declarer plays 2 beginner opponents, his average gain will be about 2 tricks/ board, this is enough to compensate for being in the wrong partscore or game. Bidding is almost irrelevant.

[nigel_k]

When all players are world class, no doubt more IMPs change hands due to bidding than play. But this doesn't necessarily mean that differences in bidding skill have a larger effect than differences in card play skill. There is more luck in bidding.

[JLOGIC]

Even strong experts vs world class, or world class vs super world class, the difference is not going to be the bidding. I have played in the cavendish 5 or 6 times. I would say that you would be surprised at how many imps you win for making normal games on a good line. Many people even in that field just miss the play and go down. Why do Levin/Weinstein and Helgemo/Helness type pairs have a big edge in that field? It's because they drop very few tricks, it is not because they are bidding so much better IMO. Even in a field like that, it is mainly their cardplay winning them those events.

 

Also, I am typically about the 20 seed in the spingold/vanderbilt. Sometimes I get to meet a very high seed, and I usually lose. Why do I lose? I am confident it is because they play and defend consistently better than myself and my team. As Adam said, there might be more swings generated by bidding, but those are largely random/system swings. If our team gives up say 40 imps in cardplay, this is just insurmountable unless we get very lucky on slam hands/system swings. Giving up 40 imps may sound like a lot, but that is like 3 games and 2 partscores in 64 boards against one of the best teams in the world by 6 people combined, it is easy for even the 20 seed in the spingold/vanderbilt to give up this much.

 

I feel like people are understating the level at which bidding really becomes a bigger factor than cardplay, it is only between a handful of the best teams in the entire world.

[hrothgar]

I feel like people are understating the level at which bidding really becomes a bigger factor than cardplay, it is only between a handful of the best teams in the entire world.

 

Consider the following experiment:

 

Run two team matches using 8 copies of Jack, all running on identical hardware.

 

In the first match, all eight copies of Jack would play the same system.

The purpose of this match is to establish a baseline and determine how much variance gets introduced by various random decisions that Jack makes.

 

In the seocnd match, one team would play 2/1 Game Force

The second team would play something radically different (MOSCITO, Precision, what have you)

 

We could then examine whether the change in methods introduced a statistically significant increase in the variance of the board results...

If there was a significant difference, we could also categorize the magnitude.

[JLOGIC]

Then aren't we assuming completely equal cardplay? Obviously there will be much more variance with different systems, if they played the same system it would be a tie! (Unless jack is like gib in that it simulates and sometimes does different things in the same positions).

 

I think these are 2 different things though:

 

1) The edge to be gained in cardplay at pretty much every level is much more than the edge to be had in bidding, and increasing your cardplay skills a little bit would make you win more often in every event than increasing your bidding skills by a lot.

 

2) More swings are created in bidding because of system swings/luck.

 

Obviously #2 is just a function of what systems are being played. I totally agree that most swings will be CREATED by system swings if 2 teams play very different systems. I do not think this matters though, this evens out really quickly. I understand the high variance argument, but even in a 24 board match if you are getting out declared/defended badly, you are still very unlikely to win. And imo people who use that argument do too many wayy - EV things in the bidding that are just flat out bad, which hurts their chances to win. But that is a different argument.

 

I have been discussing #1, because I feel like that is what people are talking about. Being good in cardplay is just way more important, and is what wins events.

[MrAce]

I feel like people are understating the level at which bidding really becomes a bigger factor than cardplay, it is only between a handful of the best teams in the entire world.

 

I % 100 agree with this statement Justin, as well as all u said before about the difficulty of teaching/learning the card play/defense skills and of course finally the social amusement of bidding compared to play/defend stories.

 

 

I have been discussing #1, because I feel like that is what people are talking about. Being good in cardplay is just way more important, and is what wins events.

 

This is where i am confused. Depends on which event are u talking about to win, but i assume you are refering to biggest main events. Can we say "Being good in card play gets u to eliminate the % 90 of the field, but for winning an important event u need to outbid opponents " ? ( since the opponents you will face will be one of those handful teams and eventhough they can make mistakes in card play, it still wont be as much as mistakes that were made in bidding ? ) What do you think ?

 

EDIT : I am big time M.Rosenberg fan for example, and i believe he is the best card player ever. And he proved that in par contest individual. But it seems to me that, just like a lot of excellent card players, he makes his way all the way upto the line that seperates the winner from 2nd or 3rd, and fails there losing to those who has done much more work (or more accurate agreements) with their pd in the bidding. Not that he is unsuccesful, i just think he doesnt win as much as i think he deserves. (talking about teams )

[awm]

Perhaps bluecalm's thread gives some hard data on this.

 

He measured the difference in IMPs versus double dummy play in the same contract on a declarer-by-declarer basis. The difference between the best and worst declarers (but note that these are hands from top-flight events in the vugraph archives, so the "worst" declarers are still extremely good) was about 0.72 IMPs/board after accounting for the opening lead. The difference between the best and worst defenders was about 0.93 MPs/board after accounting for the opening lead.

 

He then tried to measure the best bidders, by looking only at the contract reached and computing what would happen on double-dummy play and defense (after the lead). This seems like a good estimate of IMPs picked up due to the contract reached (or contract the opponents reached) rather than due to play, which seems like a good measure of bidding acumen. The difference here between the best and worst bidders was about 1.06 IMPs/board.

 

Now obviously all of this is somewhat effected by small sample sizes... but it does seem to suggest that at the elite level of these vugraph events, bidding and play/defense are factors of roughly comparable significance. Bidding appears to be a little more important than play, but it's not anything like an 80%-20% breakdown.

 

Of course, adding in large numbers of somewhat weaker players might substantially change the results. Perhaps it'd be interesting to look through BBO tourney hands and perform the same experiments.

[hrothgar]

Then aren't we assuming completely equal cardplay? Obviously there will be much more variance with different systems, if they played the same system it would be a tie! (Unless jack is like gib in that it simulates and sometimes does different things in the same positions).

 

My understanding is that Jack's card play is non deterministic...

The primary reason that I suggested this type of test was to have some hard numbers to measure the variance that adopting a significantly different approach is able to impart.

 

As I recall, Gerben did some simulations a few years back describing the trade off between variance and expect value.

Don't suppose that you have that handy?

[helene_t]

My understanding is that Jack's card play is non deterministic...

correct.

[cherdano]

My understanding is that Jack's card play is non deterministic...

The primary reason that I suggested this type of test was to have some hard numbers to measure the variance that adopting a significantly different approach is able to impart.

 

As I recall, Gerben did some simulations a few years back describing the trade off between variance and expect value.

Don't suppose that you have that handy?

But even if two human teams adopt exactly the same system, there will be a lot of variance due to 50-50 judgment decisions or style decisions/opinions going one way or another. Bridge between humans always has more variance than the variance introduced by Jack's non-deterministic behavior in an all-Jack match. I think all your experiment would do is give an upper bound on the additional variance coming using different systems.

 

Anyway, I still think the original question was about the difference in IMP expectancy between in a match between a top team and a less good team - not about the expected variance.