[FM75]

You have finally found a partner who is willing to work as hard as you are to improve. You are readng the same books. Debating ideas. You have committed 5+ hours per week just working on nailing down your bidding system for about a year. You are competing successfully online against your peers and slightly better players on BBO. You even met and competed for a couple of days at a nearby national event.

So what is the next step? You have some weaknesses, of course. You have some strengths. Time to come up with a strategic plan.

The idea is to focus on the areas that provide the highest marginal improvement. Both of you still work full-time. Your local clubs are for retired folks. Since your partner is over 100 miles away, even if the club had evening comps, it would not help.

At this point, most of the hands you are playing are not learning tools. Identifying the areas for improvement with the highest reward is not so simple. What is next on your "bridge improvement plan"? Is self-assessment enough? You and your partner have thick skins and open minds. So criticizing each other privately is not a partnership problem.

[CSGibson]

Obviously building a plan to improve depends on what your ultimate goal is, and ultimately there is no quick way to put in 10,000 hours of playing/thinking/whatever.

If your goal is to become as good as possible as quick as possible, then you should be playing against the best competition possible, and fairly frequently. Make goals, not just for 5 or 10 years down the road, but also for that night at the club/online - let's say that your goal would be to try to execute 1 squeeze, whether it works or not. Go over your games with a better player. Buy them beers & talk bridge. Get them to evaluate your game & give you some ideas of what they think you need to work on.

Buy the BridgeMaster Software. Strive to get good enough that you don't even have to think to get level 3 hands right. Think to get level 4 hands right. Applaud yourself when getting level 5 hands right.

Write down system notes (I'm not sure if that's what you mean when you say work on your bidding, but if not, do it). Don't just stop at surface level auctions - decide what your stayman continuations are for several iterations.

When you buy future bridge books, ignore the ones with bidding ideas for now. Instead, concentrate on cardplay, defense, and the experts who tell you how to think like an expert to solve problems. Terence Reese is great for that. The Menagerie books are surprisingly helpful for sparking creative problem solving. The Rodwell Files is a must. Mike Lawrence's book on how to find your opponent's high card points is a must. I'd also recommend Marshall Miles's Inferences at Bridge, Jeff Meckstroth's Win the Bermuda Bowl with me, Hugh Kelsey's Killing bridge defense books, and a subscription to the Bridge World.

Get in good habits. Count everything - distribution, HCP, everything. Ignore the people who are telling you that you are playing too slow for now. Visualize opponent's hands as best you can. Try to determine whether the hand you visualized is consistent with the bidding.

Before you make opening leads, put a picture in your head as to what the other 3 hands might look like from the bidding. Play the hand in your head for a second or two before choosing your lead.

Support your partner. The best way to improve your score quickly is to get a better partner - by which I don't mean to toss the bum you are playing with now out on his kiester, but instead to make the partner you are playing with comfortable and able to play his best. Go out of your way to anticipate his problems, and to try and find a way to make it easier for him to solve them correctly.

These are not just suggestions to become advanced, but also to progress beyond that level.

[mycroft]

1. Count.
2. Count.
3. Ensure that you're the player your partner most wants to play with, even after the third disaster and the second time it was clearly his fault. "Partner is the only person in the room that wants you to do well. It is very easy to turn him to the other side."
4. Count.
5. Try to do your partner's thinking for him. Do your best not to make torture bids or plays, and if you know what to do and partner might not, Just Do It. Don't hang your partner when he does the right thing.
6. You might think about practising your counting....

[ArtK78]

Play against the best competition available, and don't be discouraged if you don't do well at first.

It is almost impossible to improve if you don't play against players better than you are.

[ggwhiz]

Define your chosen style and goals precisely. A post here by someone who knows said that Levin-Weinstein will never top a Butler because they don't kill the fish, they just beat everybody. ie. tend to respect the opps bids like they own them and don't smash them just because you are pretty sure they don't.

If that was what you aspire to be you need to invest in balancing. It comes with disciplined openings and the need to back into the right auctions. No matter what style you choose, work on competitive auctions and pinpoint defence pay dividends.

On defence, it doesn't matter what quality of opposition you have to fine-tune your methods towards never dropping a trick. Well that's the theory.

[nigel_k]

You and your partner can't do it by yourselves. You will need the help and advice of stronger players and you need to seek them out. Ask lots of questions. This forum is one place to do that.

Mycroft's advice about counting is good, but I would extend that and say try to build up a picture of the unseen hands. Counting is obviously a big part of doing this, but drawing correct inferences from the bidding and play is also important. You should start building this mental picture of the hand during the bidding and be continually updating it as play progresses.

The ability to analyze a hand is really important and is a skill that takes a lot of practice to develop. When playing, there are multiple possible layouts where different plays will work, and in order to choose the play that will work most often you need to be able to identify and analyze those possible layouts without taking too much time and effort.

When practicing, use drills to develop agreements and judgment, not just bidding lots of random hands. For example, generate 50 hands where South has a 3♣ opening and bid the E/W cards.

[CSGibson]

You might also be interested in this necro - there was a lot of great advice on how to improve fast which I was and am very grateful for.

http://www.bridgebas...__1#entry219341