Play or Bidding?

[fourdad]

At the world championship level, perhaps.

 

At the club/local tourney I'd flip that... it's all about eeking out those overtricks in the obvious 3N/4M contracts.

 

eeking out tricks is irrelevant if you are in the wrong contract!

:D

[fourdad]

That's generally my impression, too, but in "The Rodwell Files," Eric Rodwell says precisely the opposite: that at the top levels, it's all about play and defense. He would know better than I.

 

Cheers,

mike

 

Of course he says that!! He starts fro an ASSUMPTION that his bidding system will produce the best contract!!

[dokoko]

If working on your bidding means learning new conventions, you should definitely work on your play (including defense).

[Kaitlyn S]

If working on your bidding means learning new conventions, you should definitely work on your play (including defense).

I need a "super positive reputation" key for this one!

 

A much better way to learn bidding is to bid pairs of hands (using only your current conventions, if any) with your favorite partner and discuss what went wrong when you don't like your contract. If you still disagree on what went wrong, there are plenty of decent players here to answer your questions!

[johnu]

Bidding is 80% of bridge if I remember correctly.

 

And play is the other 80%

[rmnka447]

If you say improve your bidding there's more to it than one would suspect.

 

Some people think "improve your bidding" seems to be about adding more and more gadgets to their bidding repertoire. That's not necessarily true. I recall seeing an article by Larry Cohen a year or two where his thesis was that most players would be better served by thoroughly learning how to use the tools in their existing bidding toolbox than adding more tools to it. It something that resonates with my experience a lot.

 

For example, do you thoroughly understand all the bidding sequences that follow from basic conventions like Stayman, Jacoby transfers, Jacoby 2 NT, etc.? When you do, you'll be in a significantly better place than most other players. As you start to compete against "real" expert players, you'll find that they are thoroughly conversant in such tools which leads to getting to far more right places than most. Yeah, they may have some additional tools they use, but mostly those are only add-ons only after the basic tools are thoroughly understood.

 

That leads to the second piece of "improve your bidding" which is improving your bidding judgement. This incorporates things like hand evaluation, reevaluating one's hand throughout the auction, and learning when to push or be conservative. Another piece of it is the "being on the same page" effect. You'll notice that the top expert partnerships seem to have hundreds of pages of note about their bidding. It's because they've been through and/or discussed just about every bidding sequence that could come up and have an understanding of what those sequences mean. So when those sequences come up, they've have an agreement or approach of how to bid them which most people don't have. Even more so, they learn how their partner thinks/approaches bidding and even if they have no formal agreement can sort out how their partner is bidding. In effect, they are both reading off the same page - which is a huge advantage and improvement versus most.

 

Finally, we come to adding tools or gadgets. Adding stuff to help solve specific holes in your bidding can be useful, but it needs to be at an appreciation of what you get for it and what you lose. There's always a trade off. One big consideration may be the burden on your memory of adding the tool. I'm not only talking about the burden as you fill out your convention card, but also during the heat of competition. I recall playing against a young pair in a regional 2nd bracket KO semifinal. They obviously were in their first semifinal and had this complicated 1 ♣ bidding system that even changed based on whether they opened in 1st or 3rd seat. After a couple good results for us and the resultant pressure it applied, their memories went out the window and they made fatal bidding errors on several remaining boards.

[Kaitlyn S]

Some people think "improve your bidding" seems to be about adding more and more gadgets to their bidding repertoire. That's not necessarily true. I recall seeing an article by Larry Cohen a year or two where his thesis was that most players would be better served by thoroughly learning how to use the tools in their existing bidding toolbox than adding more tools to it. It something that resonates with my experience a lot.

This reminds me of an experience that I had a few years ago when I was teaching a class and one of the players said she was playing with her friend (who was there) and her friend said they should play Jacoby transfers (which I was pretty sure neither of them were ready for.) "Oh no, it's really easy! She just bids 2D to tell me to bid 2H and bids 2H to tell me to bid 2S. We got this."

 

So I gave each one of them a hand and had them bid it. They got to 3NT with 16 opposite 2.

 

I gave them another hand pair. This time they played in their weak 5-2 fit in game.

 

Third time's a charm! They played in 3H (from the weak side!) with a 5-2 fit and 16 opposite 3.

 

My student suggested to her friend "Maybe we better not play those transfers. We know what we're doing with Standard."