Bidding is 80% of bridge

[jogs]

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.

 

Sometimes and maybe even usually the best line of play is a superset of all inferior lines. Bidding doesn't work that way. Your team bids an 70% slam and opponents don't. You will lose big imps 30% of the time. Bidding is responsible for 80% of the imp swings. Only better bidding isn't always rewarded.

[aguahombre]

Well, all the great card play in the world cannot fix it when one is constantly in the wrong level and/or strain.

 

Way back, Alan Sontag suggested in his Bridge Bum book how important bidding is, and I think it still stands.

 

certainly card play is vital.....but, first things first.

[Free]

Well, all the great card play in the world cannot fix it when one is constantly in the wrong level and/or strain.

 

Way back, Alan Sontag suggested in his Bridge Bum book how important bidding is, and I think it still stands.

 

certainly card play is vital.....but, first things first.

Imo that's a bit short through the corner. It's like claiming that someone who can't play will go down if he bids 4♠ on a finesse. How can someone messure this difference anyway? There's no great bidder who can't play at all, and there's no great player who can't bid at all.

 

But if we'd look at it black on white, I'd say the player will outscore the bidder. No matter how ridiculous the contract, the player will sometimes manage to make his contract. The bidder will bid to the perfect spot and will go down every time.

[hotShot]

Let's say there are ~1% top bridge players, ~18% advanced player and lets hope we have at least ~1% player new to bridge.

This would mean that 80% of the bridge player are at the beginner or intermediate level.

 

At these level card play is the key problem, they don't notice that because if they miss a trick each board declaring and each opp misses a trick each board defending, they play 1 trick over par.

There are lots of intermediate player that play all the gadgets that the advanced player use, but usually they lose big to advanced opps.Good card player lose about 1 trick in 4-5 boards against DD-play and this includes those cases where the DD-solver drops a single K and makes perfect leads on uninformative bidding. A beginner will lose about 1 trick/board.

So the average over 4 boards is that the 2 advanced pair will declare 2 times winning an average of 4 tricks and defend 2 times winning 2 tricks and perhaps lose 1 of these 6.

This is a lot, because some of these tricks will be make the difference between win vs. lose, game vs. partscore, or even game vs. slam.

 

I would say that card play is the key difference between intermediate and advanced.

[matmat]

This has got to be one of the stupidest "serious" bridge discussions on this forum. It's like trying to put relative percentages on the importance of lungs and the heart in the human body.

[glen]

This has got to be one of the stupidest "serious" bridge discussions on this forum. ...

There's an 80-20 rule (the Pareto principle, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle) that applies to bridge discussions, but some consider that Sturgeon's Law (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_Law) applies the best.

[helene_t]

This has got to be one of the stupidest "serious" bridge discussions on this forum. It's like trying to put relative percentages on the importance of lungs and the heart in the human body.

Well you could ask the question of how large a part of the difference in life expectancy between different people is due to differences in lung disease risks as opposed to heart disease risk. That would be sensible. And some of the contributions to this thread are like that.

[hotShot]

This has got to be one of the stupidest "serious" bridge discussions on this forum. It's like trying to put relative percentages on the importance of lungs and the heart in the human body.

 

If you think it's stupid, why do your read it? :P

 

Most of us are here in the forum because we want to get better and we miss a measure that can tell us, if we are successfully improving ourselves.

And the big question is what to improve first and how to do it.

And to many in this thread, the question: 'What is more important to improve b or p? ', is vital.

[Rossoneri]

If you think it's stupid, why do your read it? :P

 

Most of us are here in the forum because we want to get better and we miss a measure that can tell us, if we are successfully improving ourselves.

And the big question is what to improve first and how to do it.

And to many in this thread, the question: 'What is more important to improve b or p? ', is vital.

 

To be fair, part of the thread earlier did take a rather poor turn.

[billw55]

My what a long winded thread for such a simple (?) question.

 

Anyway, my two cents. Over the table I would classify myself and my regular partner as intermediates. I can say with a very high level of confidence, that we drop tricks defending or declaring much more often than we bid to the wrong contract.

[jogs]

Anyway, my two cents. Over the table I would classify myself and my regular partner as intermediates. I can say with a very high level of confidence, that we drop tricks defending or declaring much more often than we bid to the wrong contract.

 

Again the OP has asked the wrong question. He should have asked, "Which would improve one's results quicker: better bidding or better card play?"

 

I think the answer is clearly better card play.

 

Good defense is tougher than good dummy play.

 

I happen to like Kantar's book on defense Defensive Bridge Play complete.

When you understand Kantar, then you can start reading Kelsey and Mollo.

[awm]

Again the OP has asked the wrong question. He should have asked, "Which would improve one's results quicker: better bidding or better card play?"

 

I think the answer is clearly better card play.

 

I think this depends on the person. At the upper echelons, the potential gains for working on the partnership aspects (defense and bidding agreements) likely outweigh the others. The reason is that all the top players have a huge amount of bridge experience, such that improvements to their declarer play (or bidding judgment) are likely to be in fairly small increments. However, they do not necessarily have a huge amount of experience playing in their present partnership, since partnerships form and break up all the time for a wide range of reasons. So a little discussion/practice with the present partner can go a long way.

 

For an intermediate level player, usually working on card play is good. The intuition gained from improving declarer play can also help on defense, and focusing overly on a particular partnership may be premature in any case. However, I think there are exceptions, with people who've spent a lot of time playing rubber bridge (and improving their card play, but not necessarily their bidding) being a good example.

 

Typically the best thing to do is to improve the weakest part of your game, whatever that might be, because it's easier to improve where you are weakest. Of course, deciding which part that is might be difficult but some quantitative analysis of results should suffice.

[matmat]

If you think it's stupid, why do your read it? :P

 

Same reason I read the Onion.

 

Most of us are here in the forum because we want to get better and we miss a measure that can tell us, if we are successfully improving ourselves.

And the big question is what to improve first and how to do it.

And to many in this thread, the question: 'What is more important to improve b or p? ', is vital.

 

I'll let you in on a little-big secret. Drawn out internet forum discussions of the exact percentage-worth of bidding (which happens to be fairly illdefined in this context) versus cardplay, whilst totally ignoring defence, will not help you get better.

[WellSpyder]

to many in this thread, the question: 'What is more important to improve b or p? ', is vital.

 

Typically the best thing to do is to improve the weakest part of your game, whatever that might be.

 

This says it all, IMO. It may be an interesting question in its own right whether Bermuda Bowl finals are won more often in the bidding or in the play, but for the average person wondering where to focus their immediate efforts in trying to improve their game it really doesn't matter what swings more points in general, because where they win/lose most points will depend more than anything else on the relative strengths and weaknesses of their own game.

[matmat]

Again the OP has asked the wrong question. He should have asked, "Which would improve one's results quicker: better bidding or better card play?"

I think the answer is clearly better card play.

Clearly? do you have ANY basis for "clearly?"

also, why use "quicker" instead of, say, "more significantly?"

 

Asking all of these questions is, once again, ridiculous. You're asking how to improve everyone's wardrobe without ever seeing the individual, or looking through their closet or chest of drawers. I just don't get it.

 

---edit---

for the American audience that happens to have seen some of those beer commercials, this reminds of "more taste! less filling!"

[jogs]

Clearly? do you have ANY basis for "clearly?"

also, why use "quicker" instead of, say, "more significantly?"

 

Asking all of these questions is, once again, ridiculous. You're asking how to improve everyone's wardrobe without ever seeing the individual, or looking through their closet or chest of drawers. I just don't get it.

 

---edit---

for the American audience that happens to have seen some of those beer commercials, this reminds of "more taste! less filling!"

 

Yes, try playing pickup. Good bidding doesn't help.

[helene_t]

Yes, try playing pickup. Good bidding doesn't help.

Well, good bidding is impossible if you have no clue what agreements partner assumes.

[matmat]

Yes, try playing pickup. Good bidding doesn't help.

 

 

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

so this whole thread is about pickup bridge? I get it now. In that case I propose 10% bidding, 10% cardplay, 10% defence, 20% lecturing, 20% profanity, 15% 'zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz', and 15% '?????????????'

---edit---

I got the percentages wrong a little bit... so i adjusted.

Edited July 5, 2011 by matmat

[jogs]

Nowadays 60% of all auctions are contested. Most partners want to devote a large percentage of the time discussing uncontested sequences. Many of those sequences don't occur more often than once in a blue moon.

 

Studying defense is always useful. Doesn't matter who your partner is.

[matmat]

Nowadays 60% of all auctions are contested.

 

60%. are you sure it's not 55%? maybe 65%? hey, maybe it's 80%... on the other hand, maybe it's 20%. Isn't tossing out random unsubstantiated figures fun?!

[aguahombre]

83.3 % of the time it is best to stay out of threads when Matmat is involved.

[matmat]

83.3 % of the time it is best to stay out of threads when Matmat is involved.

 

The number has got to be higher than that.

[chasetb]

Did y'all know that 75.6% of the time, if you give out a random statistic while saying it with a straight face and mention a reputable company (such as Reuters), that people will believe it (this goes up to 97.3% when a person is unable to do an internet search)? If you believe that, I have a bridge I would like to sell you...

 

Getting back to the point, in the 2nd Edition of Precision Today, on Page 5, bottom sentence, it says "Just about everyone [everyone being the USA's top bridge players] said they think bidding is approximately 80% of the game." I disagree about that immediately, because I would say that Luck alone is worth 20%. A simple case in point would be at a Regional a year ago, I was a fill-in for a morning two-day Swiss when one of the member was sick. Our team of roughly 5500 masterpoints (I had 30) came up against a team having almost 100,000 masterpoints (Mark Lair was on the team). In a 7-board match against them, they bid a good 6♣ that went down with me having ♣JTxx while my team stayed in 3NT making 5. I bid an aggressive 4♥ game Vul, making while they stayed in 3 making 4. I gave back some of that misdefending a 4♠ contract, allowing it to make when I could have set it.

[Finch]

60%. are you sure it's not 55%? maybe 65%? hey, maybe it's 80%... on the other hand, maybe it's 20%. Isn't tossing out random unsubstantiated figures fun?!

 

On the very limited evidence of boards 17-32 of the EC open teams final, it's 75%

At my local club it's about 20%

[helene_t]

Luck alone is worth 20%.

If luck is 20% of the variance in a 16-board match then it is 11% in a 32-board match, 6% in a 64 board match, 3% in a 128 board match etc. So you can't quantify luck without specifying the length of the event.