Saturday, July 24, 2010

Aggression

"The most noticeable difference between the bidding of an expert pair and that of an average pair is the experts' ability in competitive situations. Experts are able to hop in and out of the auction on a high percentage of the hands and rarely get caught. Average players are much less aggressive in competitive situations and when they do butt in they frequently get punished." (Bid Better, Play Better: How to Think at the Bridge Table, Dorothy Hayden Truscott, 1998, p. 74.)

How true. And how frustrating it is when expert players steal our bid or push us to a level where we go down. And even worse, because the result is usually worse, when we try to do the same and it just doesn't work out. However, we are getting better at doubling when our bid is stolen and we are working on disrupting the opponents' bidding without getting "punished."

My hard-learned lesson this week was on the need to be more aggressive, whether there is competition or not. Twice on Thursday afternoon I had a ton of clubs. Instead of diddling around I should have just bid 5 clubs. Once I thought my bid was forcing and my partner thought it wasn't, and once I bid to show points and length instead of a different (forcing) suit. In both cases, my partner passed and we were in a partial contract. I think my hesitation comes from past games when bold bidding often led to disaster. But I've learned a lot in the past few months, and it is time to trust of my evaluation of the situation. So what if it doesn't always work out, it's just a game. Right?


Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Complex Bidding

Last weekend Julie and I played in our fifth tournament. There were two sessions on Saturday--the first went okay but not great (meaning we didn't place) and, as has been the case four times previously, our play went downhill during the second session. Exhausted but undaunted, we returned the next day with our friends Melissa and Jeanne to play Swiss Teams.

We knew going into Swiss Teams that it would be a long day, but somehow we hadn't realized that we were going to be playing seven rounds of seven boards each. We started at 11:00 am and finished around 6:00 pm. That's a lot of cards!

The most entertaining play came towards the end. Our opponents were a young couple (young, of course, being a relative term). They were 0-5, having lost all of the rounds up to that point. Our team was 2-3, which all of a sudden didn't seem so bad. Once we started to play, it quickly became apparent that these two had quite a complicated bidding system.

I wish I could replicate the bidding here, but that is impossible; it was just too complex. I'm still struggling with trying to remember the differences in leads when playing suit vs no trump contracts, so the esoteric meanings that flew across the table were beyond me. However, I can still picture this lively and friendly pair as they slowly and intricately worked their way to a slam contract. It took quite a while, since every bid was alerted and I kept asking what each bid meant. I just couldn't resist. For example, one seemingly innocuous bid--was it 3 hearts?--meant that the bidder had a certain number of "points" in her hand. These points were assigned to aces and kings, so she had either one ace and three kings or two aces and no kings (or something like that). I was happy when they finally reached a 6 no trump contract, since I was on lead and was holding two aces. That took care of that.

At the end of the day we were 3-4, which didn't seem very good. But then I found out that we had gotten silver--the first for Melissa and Jeanne--so I guess we did okay after all.




Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Crystal Clear

My bridge partner last evening is an A player with zillions of masterpoints (I have about 13). She is very friendly and kind, but for some reason I was a little bit on edge. Not nervous exactly, but more like I-really-don't-want-to-do-anything-stupid. I recognized only a couple of really awful goofs, which I guess isn't too bad, although I do realize that there were most likely more goofs that I didn't recognize. We were playing as A players and came in 4th with 55%.

A huge benefit of last night's play was that my errors were crystal clear. When I play with a less skilled partner, I am not always sure if my bidding was on target or if I could have made one more trick (or stopped our opponents from making one more trick). Yesterday I could see the answers to those questions (or get the answers from my partner).

My bidding is not perfect but is coming along and getting more precise all the time. My main problem is keeping my focus sharp throughout the entire match and giving my complete attention to what has been played. For example, I trumped my partner's good queen (one of my egregious errors). I have to whip my lazy brain into shape!

Friday, July 2, 2010

Tough Opponents

To the extent that playing bridge can be boring, yesterday afternoon's game was just that.  Julie and I played east-west, and we have never before had so few points.  Out of 27 boards, we got the contract a total of 6 times (all partial games or going down).  I was consistently looking at hands with an average of 2-6 points, which likely explains my rash bidding when we came up against a pair of our toughest opponents.

We traditionally get low boards against these A players, who are always on top with 60%+ games.  They steal our bids and make slams while smiling and joking, and then graciously explain what we should have done differently.  This day we again started out with few points, so they took the bid and made their 3NT contract (a very low board for us).  Then I made a 1NT contract, which seemed bad at the time although it turned out to be an almost average board.  Finally came the last board for this round and finally it seemed as though Julie and I had some points.  We bid toward game in spades, but our opponents were also bidding and topped our bid of 4 spades with 5 diamonds.  With unfavorable vulnerability and no way of making 5 spades (game was a stretch), I ignored the little voice in my head that kept repeating "pass" and out of frustration I boldly bid 5 spades.  Everyone passed and play began.  "I am tired of you two stealing our bids" and "It's only a game" were my defensive comments.  Plus, I didn't have to play it--Julie did.  

Well, we went down two vulnerable for -200 points and were instructed that a better bid would have been a double, since there was no way they could have made 5 diamonds.  However, while I am sure this would have been a better bid (it never crossed my mind, although apparently Julie had considered it), it turned out to be a good board for us.  Not a top one, but it was above average.  

The moral of the story is that I need to develop a better sense of when to sacrifice, since I had no idea at the time that this score was a good one.  I also need to think harder about doubling.  At the end of this "boring" afternoon, we ranked first in C for the session and fourth overall.  I guess it wasn't so tedious after all.