Where do you leak the most points?

[JLOGIC]

Also not sure if this has been said but I bet a lot of people (even experts) are leaking a ton on overtricks and undertricks and don't even think anything of it since they make their contract or beat the contract. Not taking a superior line or just cashing out to beat something one when you should clearly do something else and maybe beat it 2 risk free is a huge leak. Say you have a 50 % chance for an overtrick risk free and you lazily don't take it, you have blown have an imp of expected value which is a massive error. The worst is getting +100 instead of +200 or w/e when they are vul, that is massive.

 

Also at imps many people are blowing a lot of imps on undercompeting on partscore hands. Those 5 balls are very important.

 

Maybe I just think this because I think these are 2 of my strengths and I consciously try very hard to avoid doing these things. Many people don't even consider these to be errors or underrate their importance.

[mike777]

I don't know.

What is more, I'd lay odds that most of the answers here are wrong.

 

--------

 

 

 

I don't think that is the question or answer for 99% of most of us.

 

 

my point is you don't understand the THE Question ...when you do........you move to 99%

 

 

200,000-300,000 acbl players.....

[Mbodell]

If this is happening, your system is too complicated. When I'm tired I make every error under the sun -- except this one.

 

Not necessarily. I have more often forgets from "simple" systems that are different to what I'm used to with occasional partners than from "complex" systems that make more sense to me. The issue isn't simple/complex, it is familiarity. And the admonition to play a simpler system doesn't help if you play with multiple partners unless everyone agrees to play the same system (which is rare outside people learning together, or pros all playing the same system with a client).

[CamHenry]

While I agree with Frances' post in principle, and as an answer to the question as posed, I think it's less useful for improving. The fastest way I've found to improve is to schedule a full post-mortem the day (or two days) after the session. At the time I had the luxury of working in the same office as my regular partner, so after the Tuesday game we'd print off travellers on Wednesday lunchtime, and analyse each board including the good ones - OK, board 1 we got a misdefence and they let us make an extra overtrick for 90%; board 2 we gave it back by choosing 4M over 3NT; board 3 we defended well to keep the overtricks down; that was worth 65% because it wasn't fully obvious but wasn't a work of genius either; board 4 we stopped in partscore on a game board and got a deserved 0 - why? How can we fix it? - board 5 oppo were the only pair to bid the obvious grand, well, that's rub of the green...

 

Even if you can't do that, it helps to look at any board where you score 20% of the MPs or less (or -4 IMPs, or...) Do this on good sessions as well as bad, and know where your advantages are as well. There's no gain in deciding your bad boards all come from preempting too aggressively if all your good boards also come from aggressive preempts, for example.

[Codo]

Also not sure if this has been said but I bet a lot of people (even experts) are leaking a ton on overtricks and undertricks and don't even think anything of it since they make their contract or beat the contract. Not taking a superior line or just cashing out to beat something one when you should clearly do something else and maybe beat it 2 risk free is a huge leak. Say you have a 50 % chance for an overtrick risk free and you lazily don't take it, you have blown have an imp of expected value which is a massive error. The worst is getting +100 instead of +200 or w/e when they are vul, that is massive.

 

Also at imps many people are blowing a lot of imps on undercompeting on partscore hands. Those 5 balls are very important.

 

Maybe I just think this because I think these are 2 of my strengths and I consciously try very hard to avoid doing these things. Many people don't even consider these to be errors or underrate their importance.

 

I belive you that this is important in the field you play in, but I doubt that this is true for the rest of us.

If I spend my mental energy for a second undertrick or an overtrick, I may have some serious problems with hands in the second part of the match.

[rhm]

In longer matches (3 sessions or more), when you and partner analyse your bad boards, where do you find you are leaking the most points?

 

Bidding errors (read = forgot our systems notes) is where I find we are leaking the most points. Then we use mental fatigue as an excuse? Bunkham! You should know your own system!

 

What about you?

If that is your problem, you should simplify your system.

The net benefit of the latest over-complex gadgets may well be negative.

 

Rainer Herrmann

[nige1]

Years ago, our team all used the same methods (bidding and carding). After each session, we were able to enjoy a comprehensive post-mortem: call-by-call and card-by-card. The whole team were ideally qualified to arbitrate on any partnership dispute. We discovered that we averaged more than two mistakes per player board, even in in matches won against strong teams. We weren't double-dummy result-merchants. We crimed only genuine mistakes. Bridge is a forgiving game. Most mistakes go unpunished (sometimes because opponents make compensating blunders). When we added up the imps that our mistakes could have lost, however, they often amounted to over 100 per player, even in a 24-board match. Some of our most costly early failures were in bidding judgement. Later, once we had learnt our complex methods, we found they reduced bidding-stress and drastically reduced the scope for judgement errors. Anyway, mistakes in defence and play are more clear-cut and easy to recognise. IMO, careless and mechanical errors (e.g. misbids, revokes) are the worst because they're easy to avoid.

[helene_t]

They are magically generated by a wizard who lives on top of a mountain.

Does "they" refer to the posts which aquahombre doesn't understand?

[PhilKing]

Does "they" refer to the posts which aquahombre doesn't understand?

 

Tricks - I will fix the original post.

[Phil]

Trusting partner / partner trusting me in slam bidding was a big one last weekend.

 

Agree with JL about grinding a little more for overtricks, especially when time is not an issue, as well as his other points.

[Phil]

Also not sure if this has been said but I bet a lot of people (even experts) are leaking a ton on overtricks and undertricks and don't even think anything of it since they make their contract or beat the contract. Not taking a superior line or just cashing out to beat something one when you should clearly do something else and maybe beat it 2 risk free is a huge leak. Say you have a 50 % chance for an overtrick risk free and you lazily don't take it, you have blown have an imp of expected value which is a massive error. The worst is getting +100 instead of +200 or w/e when they are vul, that is massive.

 

Also at imps many people are blowing a lot of imps on undercompeting on partscore hands. Those 5 balls are very important.

 

Maybe I just think this because I think these are 2 of my strengths and I consciously try very hard to avoid doing these things. Many people don't even consider these to be errors or underrate their importance.

 

How about penalty doubles? In long matches, you just don't see a lot of these, and you hear a lot of "wow, I really wanted to double (guess I'll take my plus 150 and win 1)".

[barmar]

How about penalty doubles? In long matches, you just don't see a lot of these, and you hear a lot of "wow, I really wanted to double (guess I'll take my plus 150 and win 1)".

This is also a big problem in pairs. How many times have the opponents stolen your part score, going for -100 when you could make 110 or 140? Almost every time this happens, I end up saying "I was thinking of doubling...."

[dustinst22]

For me it's not being able to quickly get over a disaster/bad result and move on. I get tilted too much and then I make very bad judgment calls. Thus my bad sets are usually started by a disaster and then snowball. Having a policy of no discussion/commenting of hands during a set has helped get rid of some of this. The opps love it when you get upset over a disaster, so I try my hardest to not give them that edge/satisfaction, but it's incredibly difficult. In my opinion playing well is hugely psychological.

[cherdano]

Slams and opening leads imo. Probably not a coincedence they are the hardest to get right and also are super high leverage (lots of imps swinging on small edges, like whether you bid a 52 % slam or not).

 

Are you talking about total swings here, or EV lost compared to optimal bidding/play? Missing a 52% slam is s.th. like -0.4 IMPs EV. I guess that's not big but not really small either.

[helene_t]

I gain most points from opponents's bad defence and bad judgement in competitive auctions, and leak points by making the same mistakes.

 

Playing IMPs (which I don't do very often), obviously slam and game bidding costs relatively more.

[eagles123]

I am very much a new player to proper club bridge but would say at the moment my major weaknesses are

 

1 - letting my mood affect me: i.e. if a previous hand went 1 off i'll be far too negative on the next

2 - not bothering so much with over/undertricks. JLALL pretty much sums up my laziness in a post :lol:

3 - not planning properly as declarer: i.e. quickly taking the trumps out and then realising I needed a bloody ruff with the short trumps :lol:

 

Eagles

[jogs]

I'm convinced that no one, including the world class experts, fully understands how tricks are generated.

 

I am convinced that I will never understand that post.

 

Tricks are magically generated by a wizard who lives on top of a mountain.

 

Assume experts understand. Answer me this. Bidding contest.

Why are there often 6 or more different answers to the same

question? Sometimes regular partners are both in the panel.

And they give different answers to many of the questions.

Again this suggests there is no agreement to how tricks are

generated. What hands are worth.

[SteveMoe]

Seconding vote for defense - especially when setting tricks are left in play.

 

Adding - how fatigue makes us all less bold and less imaginative. It's not about being audacious but about getting to the aggressive edge that puts pressure on the opponents and staying there.

[sfi]

Every tournament (and the larger clubs) always distribute hand records at the end of the tournament. I always compare what actually happened at our table versus what the hand records say should have happened. I do it primarily to identify holes in our system.

 

Often we get a below average board through absolutely no fault of our own. This happens when e.g. the opponents bid to 3 of a major and made the 9 tricks that the hand records say they should make versus a large part of the field that bid to 4 going down 1. Alternatively, others that stopped in 3 but were allowed to make an overtrick.

 

Bad results such as this simply get discarded.

 

Many other good points have been raised here, but ignoring these boards is really bad. One of the key elements of the game is not letting your opponents play well, and these boards can be symptomatic of that. Why are other tables staying too low or getting pushed to high at other tables but not at yours? Why aren't you setting these contracts when the hand record says they can be made? Competitive part-score hands can kill you in events and the hand record analysis will often paint a false picture of what should happen at the table.

 

To answer the original question, simple lack of concentration costs me probably 95% of my negative results. Working out how not to do clearly stupid things would improve my game enormously.

[gnasher]

To answer the original question, simple lack of concentration costs me probably 95% of my negative results. Working out how not to do clearly stupid things would improve my game enormously.

 

Me too.

[32519]

In longer matches (3 sessions or more), when you and partner analyse your bad boards, where do you find you are leaking the most points?

 

Bidding errors (read = forgot our systems notes) is where I find we are leaking the most points. Then we use mental fatigue as an excuse? Bunkham! You should know your own system!

 

What about you?

Another area I have identified where we leak a lot of points is not bidding minor suit slams, instead opting to play in 3NT making 11 where the minor suit allows us to trump a loser for a 12th trick.

 

One of the larger clubs at which I periodically play seems to have more minor suit slams than major suit slams. From reviewing the hands and results afterwards it would appear that others are not finding the minor suit slams either, more so after either partner has opened the bidding with 1NT. And even more weird is that there are more ♦ suit slams than ♣ suit slams.

 

Partner and I have started focusing on jacking up our minor suit bidding agreements.

[Cyberyeti]

Another area I have identified where we leak a lot of points is not bidding minor suit slams, instead opting to play in 3NT making 11 where the minor suit allows us to trump a loser for a 12th trick.

 

One of the larger clubs at which I periodically play seems to have more minor suit slams than major suit slams. From reviewing the hands and results afterwards it would appear that others are not finding the minor suit slams either, more so after either partner has opened the bidding with 1NT. And even more weird is that there are more ♦ suit slams than ♣ suit slams.

 

Partner and I have started focusing on jacking up our minor suit bidding agreements.

 

This is a common problem with pairs who play short minor suit openings, you need some very good agreements to get round it. One of the side effects of the system that we play (4 card major weak NT acol opening the minor with 4M4m32 outside NT range) is that we are quite good at bidding minor suit slams.

[RSClyde]

This is an easy question:

For my partner it's forgetting systematic agreements.

For me it's definitely carding, not noticing signals and/or signaling incorrectly because I'm too busy thinking about the hand.

[32519]

This is a common problem with pairs who play short minor suit openings, you need some very good agreements to get round it. One of the side effects of the system that we play (4 card major weak NT acol opening the minor with 4M4m32 outside NT range) is that we are quite good at bidding minor suit slams.

Can you kindly supply as much info as possible as to how you go about getting to your minor suit slams? Rather supply too much info than too little info.

 

How do you find your minor suit slams after a 1NT opening?

[Cyberyeti]

Can you kindly supply as much info as possible as to how you go about getting to your minor suit slams? Rather supply too much info than too little info.

 

How do you find your minor suit slams after a 1NT opening?

 

A lot of our minor suit slams are bid after an inverted minor raise of the 4 card minor that only shows 4, is not GF and doesn't deny a major. This is much easier to handle in a 4 card major system where you can't hold a weak no trump because you'd have opened it. There are hands on which we give an inverted minor raise on where opposite a weak no trump with 2/3 of the minor you don't want to be anywhere other than 1N.

 

We also bid quite a few minor suit slams after 1m-2M which we bid on HHxxx in the major, Hxxx in the minor, decent opening hand+ (H=AKQ), and with the conventional response that 2N denies better than stiff J in partner's suit, anything above 2N shows it so if you hold KQJxx in the major, you diagnose the wastage immediately, but AKxxx is not bad.

 

Over 1N there are many schemes, but again, I suspect more slams are bid over a strong notrump than a weak one so we're starting with 1m not 1N which makes this easier.