Bidding is 80% of bridge

[Zelandakh]

I think if the 4H bid were below 3NT I could create a perfect bidding system! :)

[helene_t]

lol. Not this again. IMO any 4 card value raise can be adequately described as "jacoby" or at least "jacobyesque", if the opponents want to know about all the possible responses they have to ask. NOrmally they only want to know whether or not it promises support for the major.

Strongly disagree. If 2NT just means "gf 4-card raise" (or maybe not even gf), then you should say that. Calling it "Jacoby" strongly suggests that the agreement is more detailed than that. Now it may be true that "Jacoby" is a meaningless term in the UK because everyone mean different things when they use the word, but if that is the case then nobody should explain any agreement as "Jacoby".

 

Maybe when I call my partner's bid "Jacoby", opps ought to know that I am just spewing out a random weasel word so they ought to protect themselves, for example by asking "excuse me, do you speak English?". But if they know me to be reasonable well aware of bridge terminology and therefore assume that I use the dictionary definition then it is my problem.

[mtvesuvius]

When I describe any of my 2N as a raise type bids, I don't ever use a conventional name like Jacoby etc...

 

If it is a GF raise and implies 4 card support, I say so.

If it is INV+ and implies 4 card support, I say so.

If it could have three trump, I say so.

 

There are so many variations and twists on the standard "Jacoby", and my personal homegrown version is another weird twist on it -- I wouldn't want to give that I name too. If I had to, I'd call it Jabberwocky.

[kenberg]

That's pretty much my practice also. But I do not object to opponent's who just say "Jacoby" as long as it is. I would object to them saying "Jacoby" if it isn't. I can stand mild variants, for example maybe it's a strong three card holding, but if it's invitational instead of forcing I regard it as misleading to say "Jacoby".

 

Of course the rules stipulate, or I think that they do, that you should always describe the meaning. But for common conventions, the name is descriptive enough for me as long as it is not stretched too thin.

 

I probably don't want to say more. I won't be changing my mind about this.

[phil_20686]

Strongly disagree. If 2NT just means "gf 4-card raise" (or maybe not even gf), then you should say that. Calling it "Jacoby" strongly suggests that the agreement is more detailed than that. Now it may be true that "Jacoby" is a meaningless term in the UK because everyone mean different things when they use the word, but if that is the case then nobody should explain any agreement as "Jacoby".

 

In reality all the player over jacoby ever cares about is if it is a major suit raise. I cannot imagine a hand that would act over an invitational + raise but not over a GF raise. If it is after the auction when they ask you will really be summarising the complete auction to explain partners hand by which time you will know their strength fairly precisely normally. (also, more detailed seems like a terrible term. certainly my agreements and continuations are more detailed than that 2N is a gf raise.

 

When I describe any of my 2N as a raise type bids, I don't ever use a conventional name like Jacoby etc...

 

This is correct practice, according to the WBF.

 

That's pretty much my practice also. But I do not object to opponent's who just say "Jacoby" as long as it is. I would object to them saying "Jacoby" if it isn't. I can stand mild variants, for example maybe it's a strong three card holding, but if it's invitational instead of forcing I regard it as misleading to say "Jacoby".

 

Of course the rules stipulate, or I think that they do, that you should always describe the meaning. But for common conventions, the name is descriptive enough for me as long as it is not stretched too thin.

 

This is precisely the point. If you accept the name as sufficient disclosure, you are saying you really only wanted to know that it was a major suit raise. Also, the acbl describes two different response structures as "jacoby" 2NT, so the responses are never "well defined", even in your local. Obviously in EBU land where 4cM openers/weak nt are common, jacoby means something different again.

[jogs]

When I describe any of my 2N as a raise type bids, I don't ever use a conventional name like Jacoby etc...

 

If it is a GF raise and implies 4 card support, I say so.

 

 

I like the stronger version of 4 card support.

 

If it is a GF raise and promises 4 card support, I say so.

 

Would like to say guarantee, but am sure one day I would make a J2NT with less than 4-card support.

[mtvesuvius]

Would like to say guarantee, but am sure one day I would make a J2NT with less than 4-card support.

I hate when I'm misquoted :( Notice my careful use of the word "implies".

[han]

Here we go again. There is nothing careful about your use of the word imply.

imply (third-person singular simple present implies, present participle implying, simple past and past participle implied)

 

1. (obsolete) to enfold, entangle.  [quotations ▼]

* 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I.iv:

 

And in his bosome secretly there lay / An hatefull Snake, the which his taile vptyes / In many folds, and mortall sting implyes.

 

2. (transitive, of a proposition) to have as a necessary consequence

 

The proposition that "all dogs are mammals" implies that my dog is a mammal

 

3. (transitive, of a person) to suggest by logical inference

 

When I state that your dog is brown, I am not implying that all dogs are brown

 

4. (transitive, of a person or proposition) to express in a suggestive manner rather than as a direct statement; to state tacitly

 

What do you mean "we need to be more careful with hygiene"? Are you implying that I don't wash my hands?

 

 

Obviously you didn't intend meaning 1, 2 or 3. About meaning 4, when you open 1H and I bid 2D and then 3C, it implies that I don't have 4 spades or 3-card heart support. But 2NT directly suggests 4-card support, not implies.

[blackshoe]

I don't like to use strong words like "promises" or "guarantees" in describing bridge agreements. Sure enough, some day partner is or I am going to use judgement to "violate" the agreement, and if we've said "promises" or "guarantees", an opponent is going to go ballistic.

 

While I have used "implies" in the past as the volcano did, apparently incorrectly, I have no problem with changing that to "suggests" which, as you say, is probably a better word for it anyway.

[jogs]

Promises can be broken. 50% of marriages end in divorce.

 

Don't remember ever bidding J2NT without 4+card support.

[awm]

This thread has gotten off-track and rather silly (in my opinion).

 

Back to the original topic, there's a lot of perception bias in this sort of thing. For example, suppose Justin plays 3NT and goes down, but it's a push board since the same happens at the other table. Justin might notice some complex line that probably could let him make (since he's a good declarer) and chalk up a loss for his declarer play. If the person at the other table is a weaker declarer, he might not even notice this line after the fact... but perhaps he notices that he missed a 5-3 spade fit when he opened 1NT with a five card major (which Justin perhaps thinks is "just normal bridge") and that 4♠ is easy to make, and chalks up a loss for his bidding. A player who neither thinks much about bidding or play might see a problem on this board at all, since it's "just a push."

 

With this in mind, if we ever want a sensible answer to this question we need to have a quantitative approach to it. I think bluecalm's approach makes a lot of sense. With slight modifications, here's the idea:

 

(1) Suppose we want to quantify how many IMPs my pair won or lost in the play and defense. We look at the contracts we played on each hand, and we suppose that we were competing in a team match where the other table is always in the same contract. This effectively removes bidding from the calculation. We suppose that the other table always has double dummy best play and defense, and IMP my result against theirs. Obviously there are some hands where I can lose IMPs in this comparison without "doing anything wrong" (i.e. I took a safety play, or didn't drop a stiff king in a nine-card fit, etc). But in the long run these sorts of random things should even out with times my opponents had the same issue.

 

(2) Now suppose we want to quantify how many IMPs my team won or lost in the bidding. We look again at the contracts we played on each hand and suppose we are competing in a team match. Here, the other table will always play in the double-dummy par contract and obtain the par result. My table plays in the contract we reached in the auction, but we replace the actual play/defense results with double-dummy results. This eliminates the effect of play and defense. Again there will be random swings, but in the long run these should even out.

 

If we want to decide which is "more important" in some field, we should be comparing margins of victory in these examples. For example, suppose that there is a series of 50% games for each side, and all of them are bid. The total IMPs exchanged in bidding against double-dummy par will be high, because every time the game fails there is a big IMP swing. But the two pairs competing will end up roughly tied in the long run, indicating that they both "bid equally well" and there is no actual swing.

 

Anyway, bluecalm's actual experiment indicated that in a very strong field (international-caliber events) the IMP margins of the best players to the worst in the field were roughly 0.8 imp/board in play/defense and roughly 1 imp/board in bidding. Of course, using a weaker field might give a very different result, but the suggestion is that among strong players bidding is slightly more important (perhaps more accurately, the variance in play skill is smaller). However, it's nowhere near 80-20.

[jogs]

I was having a discussion with a friend / partner and she said 80% of bridge is bidding.

 

I said that since you spent 50% of the time defending how can that be.

 

First this assigning percentages to the bidding and play is both arbitrary and subjective. Speaking in terms of imp play. At the table I generally spent about 75-80 of the time on the play and the remaining time on the bidding. But still the bidding is clearly responsible for over 50% of the imp swings.

Bidding is disjointed sets. Take a team game. One team bid slam and the another doesn't. That means in most cases there will be a big swing. It's only a small swing or push when both contracts fail. The team in the 60% slam will lose imps 40% of the time.

Play is often subsets and supersets. Usually the superior line is a superset of all inferior lines. That means if you find the best line you will usually get as good or a better result than the player who took the inferior line.

Bidding is responsible for most of the big swings. Play is responsible for the consistent small swings.

 

Bidding is what separates the top top bridge player from the rest of us however I believe that intermediate players and even most good players can best improve their game working on defense and declarer play.

I believe these come first. They are the easiest to a person to work on by himself. Better bidding will follow and might be easier at that time.

I am assuming that the basics of bidding {Stayman, transfers, blackwood, etc] should be a top priority but other things can wait.

 

Opinions please!!!!

 

Good card play is rewarded immediately. Playing pickup sometimes you need to bid 'badly' in order to receive good results. Knowing Watson will bring more immediate satisfying results than all those bidding books.

[zasanya]

An excerpt from preface by BY Hugh Kelsey to Ron Klingers book 'Modern Losing Trick Count'

"In my own writing I have tended to concentrate on the finer aspects of play and defence, aspects of the game that hold an endless fascination for me .But in my heart of hearts I have to acknowledge that bidding is roughly three times as important as the play.In the upper reaches of the game standards are such that there is little to choose between the contestants in the matter of card play .At lower levels the situation is the same.It is accurate bidding that wins the matches. the tournaments the rubbers.If you consistently reach sensible contracts you will have few problems in the play of the cards."

[han]

This thread has gotten off-track and rather silly (in my opinion).

 

Back to the original topic, there's a lot of perception bias in this sort of thing. For example, suppose Justin plays 3NT and goes down, but it's a push board since the same happens at the other table. Justin might notice some complex line that probably could let him make (since he's a good declarer) and chalk up a loss for his declarer play. If the person at the other table is a weaker declarer, he might not even notice this line after the fact... but perhaps he notices that he missed a 5-3 spade fit when he opened 1NT with a five card major (which Justin perhaps thinks is "just normal bridge") and that 4♠ is easy to make, and chalks up a loss for his bidding. A player who neither thinks much about bidding or play might see a problem on this board at all, since it's "just a push."

 

With this in mind, if we ever want a sensible answer to this question we need to have a quantitative approach to it. I think bluecalm's approach makes a lot of sense. With slight modifications, here's the idea:

 

(1) Suppose we want to quantify how many IMPs my pair won or lost in the play and defense. We look at the contracts we played on each hand, and we suppose that we were competing in a team match where the other table is always in the same contract. This effectively removes bidding from the calculation. We suppose that the other table always has double dummy best play and defense, and IMP my result against theirs. Obviously there are some hands where I can lose IMPs in this comparison without "doing anything wrong" (i.e. I took a safety play, or didn't drop a stiff king in a nine-card fit, etc). But in the long run these sorts of random things should even out with times my opponents had the same issue.

 

(2) Now suppose we want to quantify how many IMPs my team won or lost in the bidding. We look again at the contracts we played on each hand and suppose we are competing in a team match. Here, the other table will always play in the double-dummy par contract and obtain the par result. My table plays in the contract we reached in the auction, but we replace the actual play/defense results with double-dummy results. This eliminates the effect of play and defense. Again there will be random swings, but in the long run these should even out.

 

If we want to decide which is "more important" in some field, we should be comparing margins of victory in these examples. For example, suppose that there is a series of 50% games for each side, and all of them are bid. The total IMPs exchanged in bidding against double-dummy par will be high, because every time the game fails there is a big IMP swing. But the two pairs competing will end up roughly tied in the long run, indicating that they both "bid equally well" and there is no actual swing.

 

Anyway, bluecalm's actual experiment indicated that in a very strong field (international-caliber events) the IMP margins of the best players to the worst in the field were roughly 0.8 imp/board in play/defense and roughly 1 imp/board in bidding. Of course, using a weaker field might give a very different result, but the suggestion is that among strong players bidding is slightly more important (perhaps more accurately, the variance in play skill is smaller). However, it's nowhere near 80-20.

 

Didn't you say all of this in your earlier post? I'd rather go off-track than repeat old posts using more words. I've read your posts, and except for the obvious simplifications that you've made, I agree with you.

[helene_t]

An excerpt from preface by BY Hugh Kelsey to Ron Klingers book 'Modern Losing Trick Count'

"In my own writing I have tended to concentrate on the finer aspects of play and defence, aspects of the game that hold an endless fascination for me .But in my heart of hearts I have to acknowledge that bidding is roughly three times as important as the play.In the upper reaches of the game standards are such that there is little to choose between the contestants in the matter of card play .At lower levels the situation is the same.It is accurate bidding that wins the matches. the tournaments the rubbers.If you consistently reach sensible contracts you will have few problems in the play of the cards."

Maybe Kelsey was right when he wrote that. Until some 2-3 decades ago, bidding theory evolved fast, and I can believe that there was a significant difference in performance between experts who kept their agreement up to date and more conservative ones. Today I think the difference is much smaller. Of course there is still difference in how good different tournament players are at judging bidding situations. But one source of variance, namely adequacy of agreements, has diminished, at least at the upper levels.

[JLOGIC]

Didn't you say all of this in your earlier post? I'd rather go off-track than repeat old posts using more words. I've read your posts, and except for the obvious simplifications that you've made, I agree with you.

 

I'm pretty sure Justin would notice if 4S was cold and 3N required a complex line that he missed to make lol

[xcurt]

 

(1) Suppose we want to quantify how many IMPs my pair won or lost in the play and defense. We look at the contracts we played on each hand, and we suppose that we were competing in a team match where the other table is always in the same contract. This effectively removes bidding from the calculation.

 

Same contract is necessary but not sufficient, since the players may have different information about the unseen cards -- the expectation of a final contract has path dependence.

[mikestar13]

This is of course nonsense (rather like the assertion "pitching is 80% of baseball"). I think that its is rather obvious that averaged over all levels over the game, it's about 50-50.

I agree that beginners should focus on play primarily--it pays off faster, including by helping your bidding judgement (not system). BUT..., it may not look like that's true to the average beginner (it didn't to me) and it is very possible that the choice is between new players whose game is worse than it might be and non-players. So is there a conflict between the best teaching methods and the real world?

[awm]

Same contract is necessary but not sufficient, since the players may have different information about the unseen cards -- the expectation of a final contract has path dependence.

 

There is some crossover in both directions. The auction may effect the defense, implying that the result of the play might not be wholly independent of the bidding. It's also true that the goal in bidding is not necessarily to reach the "best double-dummy contract" in the sense that if you know your opponents are likely to give you a trick on defense perhaps bidding more than you can make double-dummy is superior.

 

However, the approach I've outlined is unambiguous and (relatively) easy to evaluate. Trying to add this sort of crossover will muddy the waters without (I think) making that substantial a difference to the result. Note that double-dummy play/defense is obviously independent of the bidding, so if you want to somehow incorporate the effect of the auction on defense you have to move away from double-dummy, and further you can't even use GIB because it won't necessarily "understand" the bids well enough to take advantage.

[bluecalm]

This is of course nonsense (rather like the assertion "pitching is 80% of baseball"). I think that its is rather obvious that averaged over all levels over the game, it's about 50-50.

 

You call non trivial matter which some intelligent people who actually played a lot of bridge debate "obvious" and then offer moronic 50-50 (we don't know, so 50-50) as universal answer.

It's easy to think about games when one element is much less important than others so far there is no convincing argument that bridge isn't one of them.

[blackshoe]

Bidding is 80% of bridge. Card play is the other 80%.

[Trumpace]

Bidding is 80% of bridge. Card play is the other 80%.

 

And counting is the other 100% :)

[Finch]

This might be going slightly off-topic, but here's a true anecdote to demonstrate one reason why people underestimate the importance of card play.

 

In a pairs event recently I played a 3S contract and went one off. When we were chatting afterwards, my partner suggested I should have taken a different line in the end position. I disputed this, and after a brief discussion we agreed that both lines were 67% (well, 2/3) with some possible pluses and minuses depending on what we thought about lead tendencies etc.

 

That probably would have been the end of it - we had discussed the play, we're both generally decent declarer players, and we couldn't see that anything had gone wrong.

 

Then at dinner we went through the hands with another pair, and when we came to this one, one of the other pair suggested a third possible line from the same position. This line had a 5/6 chance of success, and we'd both missed it. So a hand that had been considered 'uninteresting' suddenly became 'misplayed', thanks to a third party.

[blackshoe]

The question is, why did he see it, when you and your partner did not? Experience? Intuition? Something else?

[mikestar13]

You call non trivial matter which some intelligent people who actually played a lot of bridge debate "obvious" and then offer moronic 50-50 (we don't know, so 50-50) as universal answer.

It's easy to think about games when one element is much less important than others so far there is no convincing argument that bridge isn't one of them.

I phrased that badly, I do apologize for my tone (OTOH, I don't particularly like "moronic") What I'm trying to say is that it is obvious that bidding can't be 80% of the game--not that the

topic is nonsense. If you read the rest of my post, I tend to agree that play is more important. But teaching may face certain difficulties about beginner's perceptions. Having now read the whole thread, I see the point is not original and I apologize for the repetition.