Talking a good game of bridge

[el mister]

There's playing a good game, and then there's talking a good game.

Do you find that some people can speak with great fluency and clarity about a bridge hand, but are basically telling you five ways how they just failed to make the contract?

 

OTOH, do you know strong players out there who aren't very clear at articulating how they handled the position? It seems like if you understand the position (clearly), then you can probably talk about it (clearly), but maybe not in the immediate aftermath of the hand? I'm wondering if some of us have visualisation processes that just don't lend themselves to rapid translation?

 

Not a strong player myself, but find it interesting that I'm pretty poor at verbalising the play of the hand just afterwards, and used to get a bit intimidated at the way some players can immediately roll out a detailed analysis. Their apparent analytical rigour, however, is not matched by their results in many cases- they talk a good game.

[gordontd]

It is not enough to be a good player, you must also play well.

[nullve]

OTOH, do you know strong players out there who aren't very clear at articulating how they handled the position?

Yes, Magnus Carlsen:

But Kasparov says Carlsen's mastery is rooted in a "deep intuitive sense no computer can teach" and that his pupil "has a natural feel for where to place the pieces." According to Kasparov, Carlsen has a knack for sensing the potential energy in each move, even if its ultimate effect is too far away for anyone — even a computer — to calculate. In the grand-master commentary room, where chess's clerisy gather to analyze play, the experts did not even consider several of Carlsen's moves during his game with Kramnik until they saw them and realized they were perfect. "It's hard to explain," Carlsen says. "Sometimes a move just feels right." [from http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1950939,00.html]

Luckily, he doesn't play bridge:

If on dozens of relevant deals an expert player makes repeated extreme bids/leads/plays and has no rational bridge explanation, something is wrong. If they are unexplainable actions (“non-expert bridge”) then something is fishy. A world-class player (capable of winning Spingolds) might make an egregious error (perhaps one or two in an entire week). It is not possible for such a player to make 10-15 of those inexplicable plays in a week. Really. Beyond a reasonable doubt. And if you think there is a 0.0001% chance it could happen, and then the same thing happens at the next tournament, then it is 0.0001% x 0.0001% – which multiplies out to “impossible.” [from http://bridgewinners.com/article/view/catching-cheaters/]

[cherdano]

It really doesn't matter how good a game you can talk in the bar after the game. All that counts is how good you are at being a smartass on BBF.

[manudude03]

I would say I'm really bad at explaining myself most of the time, but it applies to everything, bridge or not. I'm not a world class player by any means, but I would like to think I would know what I'm doing at the bridge table though even if I have a hard time explaining what my thought process was. It also doesn't help that I would describe myself as an instinctive player.

[lorserker]

I often have a feeling, an intuition or a thought both at bridge and outside of bridge. I can get quite convinced by these thoughts, but they are not always correct.

If a thought happens to be wrong, i can usually immediately tell that it's wrong as soon as i try to articulate it into speech. It goes as far that if the thought is seriously flawed i start to stutter and can't really explain it :) The entire time the thought was not uttered, it was very convincing.

I think that speech is tightly linked to logic. I'm not sure how the brain works in general, but i think that it often doesn't use logic. Logic is computationally too expensive. If i was talking in my head all the time when playing bridge i could play much better, but it would take very long to play a board :)

[helene_t]

Helpful postmortems emphasize general principles that apply to this hand and are good to have in mind:

 

- "This auction suggests a trump lead because .... "

 

Not so helpful postmortems:

 

- "You miscounted the clubs"

- "My pet convention would have been helpful"

- "Trust partner" (but: when you have described your hand accurately, then you CAN trust partner's decisions).

[PhantomSac]

I am probably one of the worst at post morteming relative to how I play. I cannot even remember hands 10 minutes after I play them unless they are extraordinary or if someone tells me something about them... I also hate talking about bridge at tourneys.

 

It doesn't matter, some people can remember everything about deals 50 years ago, don't be intimidated...everyone is different.

[Fluffy]

In my case I believe I use multi proccessing, so I will reject lines of play without being concious of why I do so. This sometimes backfires as seemingly unnatural plays get discarded but they were the right one.

 

This also means I am terrible at claiming, I know I can make the hand foolproof by playing something now, but I don't know yet how.

[cherdano]

In my case I believe I use multi proccessing, so I will reject lines of play without being concious of why I do so. This sometimes backfires as seemingly unnatural plays get discarded but they were the right one.

 

This also means I am terrible at claiming, I know I can make the hand foolproof by playing something now, but I don't know yet how.

Also, you are awful at being a smartass on BBF, compared to your bridge success in the real world. Sorry, someone had to say it.

[billw55]

Also, you are awful at being a smartass on BBF, compared to your bridge success in the real world. Sorry, someone had to say it.

On the other hand ... http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif

[Siegmund]

Confining myself to OP's question...

 

No, I've never heard a poor player speak "with great fluency and clarity" about a bridge hand. People who can visualize the cards hours after the fact can usually also visualize the cards when they actually need to.

 

On the other hand there are some very good players who either don't communicate well or just choose not to explain themselves.

[helene_t]

I think of myself as a really good IRL smartass, much better than on BBF. But it is probably an illusion, probably most of the players at the club consider me just as annoying as all the other smartasses.

 

Seriously, the more I learn about bridge the more I learn to shut up because I realize how stupid my postmortems used to be.

[kuhchung]

It is not enough to be a good player, you must also play well.

 

Where is this from? I remember hearing it years ago, but forget the source.

[gwnn]

I thought Emanuel Lasker.

 

edit: Tartakower or Tarrasch, looked it up.

[OBSugar]

Mistakes are part of the game. Many accurate postmortem chats result in ATB to the opponents for your good fortune. A little rude isn't it? Next hand, please.

[zillahandp]

All the good players I have known over many years can remember all the cards more or less of in all the hands for 48 hours at least and often ages more, and the harder the hand and the line they took for weeks especialy if it did not work.

[fourdad]

You might find my standard rule helpful.

 

If any pickup partner discusses errors I may make while ignoring any discussion of ones I know they made, They go on my permanent ignore list.

 

When I learned to snow ski years ago an instructor told me not to go on runs that my freinds suggest because my friend were not eager to teach me to ski, they were eager to convince me how well they could ski.

 

Bridge is much the same.

[Fluffy]

I suspect I missed a thread where smartass became fashionable on BBF, anyone got a link?

[mgoetze]

I suspect I missed a thread where smartass became fashionable on BBF, anyone got a link?

That's the spirit!

[PhantomSac]

That's the spirit!

 

You must be great at bridge!

[Trinidad]

Whenever I play with a new partner, inevitably decisions need to be made about partnership agreements. I am fine with most of what my partners suggest, and I have only one request: AKQ. In my opinion, it is by far the most valuable agreement a partnership can have: It has yielded lots of MPs and IMPs and has greatly enhanced the fun in the game.

 

Oh, I forgot to tell. AKQ stands for Always Keep Quiet.

 

Rik

[Jinksy]

I am probably one of the worst at post morteming relative to how I play. I cannot even remember hands 10 minutes after I play them unless they are extraordinary or if someone tells me something about them... I also hate talking about bridge at tourneys.

 

It doesn't matter, some people can remember everything about deals 50 years ago, don't be intimidated...everyone is different.

 

That's kind of reassuring. I can never hold a complete hand in my head (even my own).

 

And as Calvin (of & Hobbes) once said - 'You know how Einstein got bad grades in school? Well mine are even worse'.

[The_Badger]

I used to get intimidated how quickly some people could analyse both bridge and chess scenarios. Good luck to them for having the grey matter and neuron speed to do this but...I believe the reality usually is that the speedier minds also have the capacity to make more mistakes in the long run. Not all but many. It'll be interesting to see some statistical research analysis proving whether this theory is correct.

 

I play speed chess regularly against the computer at the equivalent of international master level, and lose many games as I am playing too fast, but it has heightened my 'feel' for the game considerably. Maybe if I regularly played 'speed bridge' I would develop the capacity to feel instinctively what the correct line of play is. I have always been an analytical 'plodder' which seems to have got worse with age :(

 

However, I am thankfully reassured that the tortoise won the race against the hare :)

[rmnka447]

The comment about the erroneous detailed analysis called to mind a long gone player in our local games. He was a reasonably good player probably somewhere between advanced and expert. His bidding and play were a bit uneven partly because of the convoluted bidding and carding agreements he had. Yet, he always had these detailed analyses that inevitably were used to justify why what he did was right even if it got a bad result. But he was a sociable enough person that you sort of blew it away as "Well, that's just ______ doing his thing!"

 

I was lucky to get to go to après cards get togethers with some of the best players in the now defunct local Friday Night duplicate club. We'd convene after the game at a nearby all night diner/restaurant/pancake house to rehash the game, eat, drink, and socialize. The best players were all pretty much able to reconstruct hands from the evening's play. Quite often, someone would have a question about how to bid or play a particular hand. We'd all get to give our opinion. Usually, these questions were to help a player gauge how to do better on that hand. Everyone would freely admit if they made an error or misplayed a particular hand. Even as good as they were, they were using the rehash to identify ways to improve their games or areas that needed work. And all, though fiercely competitive, they were polite and rarely said much at the table. For me, it was a great education about the game.

 

Personally, I'm not able to reconstruct more than a few hands in any session. Usually they're ones that have been particularly successful or dismal failures. My favorite partner is often able to reconstruct hands several days after the fact. The important thing is not whether you remember the hands but whether you find the right bids and plays when playing them.