Sanity check

[Vampyr]

I seem to remember in one of her books Rixi Markus saying that all bridge players make mistakes, but men and women often make different mistakes. I don't consider this particularly controversial.

 

It would be very interesting to know what she thought these different mistakes were.

[Cyberyeti]

It would be very interesting to know what she thought these different mistakes were.

 

All my books are packed away in boxes while I'm being redecorated, but as I recall she gave some archetypes for bridge players who make particular mistakes, and assigned some as mainly male, some as mainly female.

 

The only one I remember as female was "The tight fist" where you ruff with a low card when you could obviously afford to ruff high and get overruffed in the face of an unexpected break.

 

The one I remember as male was "The peacock" the guy who can't possibly be wrong and will analyse endlessly to "prove" this after he's done something strange.

[Zelandakh]

All my books are packed away in boxes while I'm being redecorated, but as I recall she gave some archetypes for bridge players who make particular mistakes, and assigned some as mainly male, some as mainly female.

 

The only one I remember as female was "The tight fist" where you ruff with a low card when you could obviously afford to ruff high and get overruffed in the face of an unexpected break.

 

The one I remember as male was "The peacock" the guy who can't possibly be wrong and will analyse endlessly to "prove" this after he's done something strange.

Are your books out of the boxes yet, Cyber? I would also be interested to hear of the other archetypes and hate to leave it at these two because it sounds like women make bridge mistakes and men make social mistakes, which I suspect was not the point.

[Cyberyeti]

Are your books out of the boxes yet, Cyber? I would also be interested to hear of the other archetypes and hate to leave it at these two because it sounds like women make bridge mistakes and men make social mistakes, which I suspect was not the point.

 

It was 20+ years since I'd read this, but those were the two she assigned to genders, the others (the Sado-Masochist, the Ethical genius and the doorpost) were unisex.

[GreenMan]

It's not the case so much anymore (as far as I can tell), but in the game's heyday women and men were effectively socialized differently; Patricia Sheinwold wrote in her memoir that she and her women friends were discouraged from bidding notrump ahead of their husbands to allow the men to hog the hands more easily. Once when her social bridge group broke up the usual couple-partnerships to put men at one table and women at the other, she expected that the men's typical auction would go

 

1NT 2NT 3NT 4NT

5NT 6NT 7NT 8NT

 

Even if this sort of socialization doesn't go on anymore (I can't say so with authority), the effects probably linger to this day.

[Zelandakh]

It was 20+ years since I'd read this, but those were the two she assigned to genders, the others (the Sado-Masochist, the Ethical genius and the doorpost) were unisex.

I am guessing the S-M is a player that gives their partner unnecessary problems - strange and undiscussed bids, pseudo squeezes, a signal rather than cashing and crossing, etc. And the doorpost is surely a player that does not bid enough. But what is the Ethical genius?

 

 

Even if this sort of socialization doesn't go on anymore (I can't say so with authority), the effects probably linger to this day.

I think it is worse in some ways now. Back then it was common for men and women to play together as partners. Nowadays it seems like nearly all pairs, even at club level, are 2 men or 2 women. This makes sense at international level due to the segregating effect of Ladies events running in parallel to Opens but why this might also be the case in clubs I have no idea.

[Vampyr]

It's not the case so much anymore (as far as I can tell), but in the game's heyday women and men were effectively socialized differently;

 

Quite. I recently read a book called Bridge for Women, which contained chapters by many of the top female players at the time of publication. One of the points Helen Sobel made was that women often fail to return their partner's suit when they are cross with the partner. I found this shocking.

[helene_t]

It is really hard to see how double can be wrong. Even if p has ♠x ♥KQxxxx, ♦xxx ♣Qxx, opps bidding make a bad split in hearts or clubs likely so slam isn't that great. Granted, if both hearts and clubs split 4-1, they may make 4♠.

[Cyberyeti]

I am guessing the S-M is a player that gives their partner unnecessary problems - strange and undiscussed bids, pseudo squeezes, a signal rather than cashing and crossing, etc. And the doorpost is surely a player that does not bid enough. But what is the Ethical genius?

 

 

The S-M is the player that makes an ambiguous bid then redoubles when partner gets it wrong.

 

There is a phrase "Deaf as a doorpost", the doorpost tends not to hear partner bidding suits so leads something else.

 

The ethical genius is essentially the secretary bird with attitude, believing he's the only ethical player in the world.

[CamHenry]

When I first read this thread, I'd wondered if the report was going to be "all men with the E hand chose to bid 5♥ here, where all the women doubled". That would at least have shown some gender correlation.

 

The only conclusion we can reach from "all the players with the E hand (all female) chose to double" is something like "None of the women holding that hand was in a coma at the time."

[Vampyr]

When I first read this thread, I'd wondered if the report was going to be "all men with the E hand chose to bid 5♥ here, where all the women doubled". That would at least have shown some gender correlation.

 

Yes, I was expecting something like this too.

[Zelandakh]

...

The ethical genius is essentially the secretary bird with attitude, believing he's the only ethical player in the world.

Interesting, although I think she needs more archetypes. Mollo's characters seem to be showing a better range of mistakes and surely the HH would be a male archetype (although Rixi could probably have been described this way by some); probablt the UE too. Sadly, I fear that I might be an EG myself. I see so much cheating unintentional UI in low level f2f bridge that it is hard to take it seriously sometimes.

[helene_t]

It always annoyed me (although it is probably easy to explain) that male is the default gender, i.e. if a person happens to be a woman her gender is much more likely to be commented on than if he had been a man. Partly this is because women invade male territory more often than v/v (a female nurse is just a nurse while a male police officer is just a police officer. However, there are more female police officers than male nurses).

 

But even in neutral territory (such as for example club-level bridge) it still holds. Would anybody have thought of asking if gender is the issue if all the players in question had been male? Maybe (because this was a mixed teams event so in a way gender is an issue for everybody) but in general I would expect not.

[Vampyr]

Would anybody have thought of asking if gender is the issue if all the players in question had been male?

 

I can just see it -- was this bid unlucky to have worked poorly or was it a mistake the players all made because they were men?

 

Some earlier posters in this thread disagreed that the OP was very insulting to women; this seems to indicate that sexism is so endemic that, for some, it doesn't register even when it is blatant.

[mycroft]

ObXKCD. And yes, I've seen this in lots of places, including bridge. I will admit the dynamics of married-or-equivalent partnerships are very interesting, however. I find they fall into about 3 categories, and I'm really trying to avoid all of them in mine.

[PeterAlan]

All my books are packed away in boxes while I'm being redecorated, but as I recall she gave some archetypes for bridge players who make particular mistakes, and assigned some as mainly male, some as mainly female.

 

The only one I remember as female was "The tight fist" where you ruff with a low card when you could obviously afford to ruff high and get overruffed in the face of an unexpected break.

 

The one I remember as male was "The peacock" the guy who can't possibly be wrong and will analyse endlessly to "prove" this after he's done something strange.

It was 20+ years since I'd read this, but those were the two she assigned to genders, the others (the Sado-Masochist, the Ethical genius and the doorpost) were unisex.

Have you now unearthed your copy, Cyberyeti, because you're spot on!

 

It's the short chapter "Characters" towards the end of "Common-Sense Bridge" (pp 147-153 in my hardback copy) for those who want the reference.

[CamHenry]

ObXKCD. And yes, I've seen this in lots of places, including bridge. I will admit the dynamics of married-or-equivalent partnerships are very interesting, however. I find they fall into about 3 categories, and I'm really trying to avoid all of them in mine.

 

Which ones are you thinking of? The "can't stand each other at the bridge table, complete with name-calling" is one of the obvious stereotypes. In my marriage I'm by far the stronger player (I notice ahead of time which rebids will be a reverse, and I don't draw superfluous rounds of trumps one time in 3, and so on...), but we try to save lessons for after the session.

[Cascade]

Would anybody have thought of asking if gender is the issue if all the players in question had been male?

 

I think they might. Perhaps a 'typical' male is too aggressive (or some other stereotypical male characteristic) in some situations. Probably this leads to bad results for those males in those situations. And so such a question might be asked.

 

In the present discussion I would just answer no this is not a gender issue and the opening poster was resulting but not think the opening post was insulting even if the genders were reversed.

[Vampyr]

I think they might. Perhaps a 'typical' male is too aggressive (or some other stereotypical male characteristic) in some situations. Probably this leads to bad results for those males in those situations. And so such a question might be asked.

 

But it's unlikely that it would occur to anyone to ask it.

 

In the present discussion I would just answer no this is not a gender issue and the opening poster was resulting but not think the opening post was insulting even if the genders were reversed.

 

Well, sure. It's not as if men are in danger of being widely considered the inferior sex when it comes to bridge. If anyone wished to insult men as bridge players, they would simply be directed to a list of the top 10 bridge players in the world. Or the top 100.

[mycroft]

Which ones are you thinking of? The "can't stand each other at the bridge table, complete with name-calling" is one of the obvious stereotypes. In my marriage I'm by far the stronger player (I notice ahead of time which rebids will be a reverse, and I don't draw superfluous rounds of trumps one time in 3, and so on...), but we try to save lessons for after the session.

I reiterate that this is stereotypical, and not defining any particular married pair.

• If the woman is much superior to the man, he ends up about 8 inches high by the end of the night.
  
• If the woman is somewhat or just a little superior to the man, he explains everything she did wrong. Including the ones he did wrong. This also applies when the man is somewhat superior to the woman, but he doesn't misanalyze quite as often.
  
• If the man is much superior to the woman, we get the "can't stand each other at the bridge table", or the belittle to the point of her never coming back as in the first case, or everything's very "quiet and tranquil", but the woman knows from body language every time she did something wrong. Not what, of course :-).
  
• In all the above cases, one admittance that you might have been wrong in this case means that you can never be right again.
  

 

There is one special case. For a year or so, my bridge partner was 4'10", 25-but-looked-18, dressed well to fit her shape and obvious beauty (and to not look 15), and smarter than I (although I think I was still the better player, but more by experience than skill). Married couples were worth at least half a board a round; either the man was looking at her and not paying attention to his cards, or the woman was looking at the man to make sure he wasn't looking at her and not paying attention to *her* cards. Add to that the points one gets when the opponents think "cute young thing, we can push her around", and we had our share of really over-our-skill sessions (plus, she took a beer off her partner while winning a (midnight, but still) match against Meckstroth).

[GreenMan]

• If the woman is much superior to the man, he ends up about 8 inches high by the end of the night.

 

My favorite married-couple story (secondhand) was when the wife was repeatedly telling the husband "I swear you don't have a brain in your head." The husband was a Nobel laureate in physics.

[Cascade]

But it's unlikely that it would occur to anyone to ask it.

 

I must live in a different universe. I relatively frequently hear people asking gender stereotyped questions in which the negative stereotype is what is commonly perceived as a male trait.

[helene_t]

I must live in a different universe. I relatively frequently hear people asking gender stereotyped questions in which the negative stereotype is what is commonly perceived as a male trait.

Absolutely. If anything I would say that male stereotypes are more negative than female stereotypes, on balance. Of course it depends who you listen to. And it is also a bit apples vs oranges.

[GreenMan]

Absolutely. If anything I would say that male stereotypes are more negative than female stereotypes, on balance. Of course it depends who you listen to. And it is also a bit apples vs oranges.

 

I would say the opposite: Male stereotypes are overwhelmingly positive. But we don't notice it because such things are ingrained in the culture. When a negative male stereotype appears, it receives disproportionate attention because it's unusual, and seems more common than it is; this is knows as availability bias.