In any case, as I reflect on Friday's game, a familiar question arises. How can you start fresh with each hand while still learning from the previous one? For example, after a bad board my partner and I tell each other to "shake it off" and "a new board is next" and "forget about it, start over." But if there have been a few hands where we didn't bid game but made it, it is really hard to not bid game in the following boards (and fall short). If there are a couple of times that we make slams that we didn't bid, it is really tempting to take a risk later in the game if it looks possible (although it usually isn't). And after all, we want to learn from our mistakes, don't we? Unfortunately, this type of "learning" usually doesn't work out too well.
Maybe this quick fix mentality comes from not having enough time during the game for a real analysis of what happened. I don't know, what do you think?
I think you are right, there is not enough time at the table to figure it out. What we do is make a note on our score sheet, when we know we've screwed something up, and after the game we get the board and write down all the hands. We do this sometimes also when, after the game, we see we've gotten a bad board that we didn't even know was bad at the time of play. Anyway, we then go over all four hands and figure out where we went wrong. Sometimes, if we are lucky, Joanne, Jim, Chuck, or Bob, will sit down and tell us where we went wrong. Just last week, Mike and I wrote down 4 hands we needed to sort out from Wednesday, and Joanne kindly sat down and quickly showed us the correct way to bid these hands. Luckily, Mike and I equally messed up. I hate when it is just me!
ReplyDeleteDo you let a hand you just played influence what you do at the next table?
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