[eagles123]

I am very much a new player to proper club bridge but would say at the moment my major weaknesses are

1 - letting my mood affect me: i.e. if a previous hand went 1 off i'll be far too negative on the next
2 - not bothering so much with over/undertricks. JLALL pretty much sums up my laziness in a post
3 - not planning properly as declarer: i.e. quickly taking the trumps out and then realising I needed a bloody ruff with the short trumps

Eagles

[jogs]

jogs, on 2013-April-17, 18:18, said:

I'm convinced that no one, including the world class experts, fully understands how tricks are generated.

aguahombre, on 2013-April-17, 18:18, said:

I am convinced that I will never understand that post.

PhilKing, on 2013-April-17, 18:27, said:

Tricks are magically generated by a wizard who lives on top of a mountain.

Assume experts understand. Answer me this. Bidding contest.
Why are there often 6 or more different answers to the same
question? Sometimes regular partners are both in the panel.
And they give different answers to many of the questions.
Again this suggests there is no agreement to how tricks are
generated. What hands are worth.

[SteveMoe]

Seconding vote for defense - especially when setting tricks are left in play.

Adding - how fatigue makes us all less bold and less imaginative. It's not about being audacious but about getting to the aggressive edge that puts pressure on the opponents and staying there.

[sfi]

32519, on 2013-April-17, 22:53, said:

Every tournament (and the larger clubs) always distribute hand records at the end of the tournament. I always compare what actually happened at our table versus what the hand records say should have happened. I do it primarily to identify holes in our system.

Often we get a below average board through absolutely no fault of our own. This happens when e.g. the opponents bid to 3 of a major and made the 9 tricks that the hand records say they should make versus a large part of the field that bid to 4 going down 1. Alternatively, others that stopped in 3 but were allowed to make an overtrick.

Bad results such as this simply get discarded.

Many other good points have been raised here, but ignoring these boards is really bad. One of the key elements of the game is not letting your opponents play well, and these boards can be symptomatic of that. Why are other tables staying too low or getting pushed to high at other tables but not at yours? Why aren't you setting these contracts when the hand record says they can be made? Competitive part-score hands can kill you in events and the hand record analysis will often paint a false picture of what should happen at the table.

To answer the original question, simple lack of concentration costs me probably 95% of my negative results. Working out how not to do clearly stupid things would improve my game enormously.

[gnasher]

sfi, on 2013-April-18, 19:16, said:

To answer the original question, simple lack of concentration costs me probably 95% of my negative results. Working out how not to do clearly stupid things would improve my game enormously.

Me too.

[32519]

32519, on 2013-April-17, 05:05, said:

In longer matches (3 sessions or more), when you and partner analyse your bad boards, where do you find you are leaking the most points?

Bidding errors (read = forgot our systems notes) is where I find we are leaking the most points. Then we use mental fatigue as an excuse? Bunkham! You should know your own system!

What about you?

Another area I have identified where we leak a lot of points is not bidding minor suit slams, instead opting to play in 3NT making 11 where the minor suit allows us to trump a loser for a 12th trick.

One of the larger clubs at which I periodically play seems to have more minor suit slams than major suit slams. From reviewing the hands and results afterwards it would appear that others are not finding the minor suit slams either, more so after either partner has opened the bidding with 1NT. And even more weird is that there are more ♦ suit slams than ♣ suit slams.

Partner and I have started focusing on jacking up our minor suit bidding agreements.

[Cyberyeti]

32519, on 2013-August-24, 03:07, said:

Another area I have identified where we leak a lot of points is not bidding minor suit slams, instead opting to play in 3NT making 11 where the minor suit allows us to trump a loser for a 12th trick.

One of the larger clubs at which I periodically play seems to have more minor suit slams than major suit slams. From reviewing the hands and results afterwards it would appear that others are not finding the minor suit slams either, more so after either partner has opened the bidding with 1NT. And even more weird is that there are more ♦ suit slams than ♣ suit slams.

Partner and I have started focusing on jacking up our minor suit bidding agreements.

This is a common problem with pairs who play short minor suit openings, you need some very good agreements to get round it. One of the side effects of the system that we play (4 card major weak NT acol opening the minor with 4M4m32 outside NT range) is that we are quite good at bidding minor suit slams.

[RSClyde]

This is an easy question:
For my partner it's forgetting systematic agreements.
For me it's definitely carding, not noticing signals and/or signaling incorrectly because I'm too busy thinking about the hand.

[32519]

Cyberyeti, on 2013-August-24, 07:10, said:

This is a common problem with pairs who play short minor suit openings, you need some very good agreements to get round it. One of the side effects of the system that we play (4 card major weak NT acol opening the minor with 4M4m32 outside NT range) is that we are quite good at bidding minor suit slams.

Can you kindly supply as much info as possible as to how you go about getting to your minor suit slams? Rather supply too much info than too little info.

How do you find your minor suit slams after a 1NT opening?

[Cyberyeti]

32519, on 2013-August-24, 08:30, said:

Can you kindly supply as much info as possible as to how you go about getting to your minor suit slams? Rather supply too much info than too little info.

How do you find your minor suit slams after a 1NT opening?

A lot of our minor suit slams are bid after an inverted minor raise of the 4 card minor that only shows 4, is not GF and doesn't deny a major. This is much easier to handle in a 4 card major system where you can't hold a weak no trump because you'd have opened it. There are hands on which we give an inverted minor raise on where opposite a weak no trump with 2/3 of the minor you don't want to be anywhere other than 1N.

We also bid quite a few minor suit slams after 1m-2M which we bid on HHxxx in the major, Hxxx in the minor, decent opening hand+ (H=AKQ), and with the conventional response that 2N denies better than stiff J in partner's suit, anything above 2N shows it so if you hold KQJxx in the major, you diagnose the wastage immediately, but AKxxx is not bad.

Over 1N there are many schemes, but again, I suspect more slams are bid over a strong notrump than a weak one so we're starting with 1m not 1N which makes this easier.

[Vampyr]

RSClyde, on 2013-August-24, 07:25, said:

For my partner it's forgetting systematic agreements.

This should never be a major reason for poor results.

[RSClyde]

Vampyr, on 2013-August-24, 09:10, said:

This should never be a major reason for poor results.

It's not that common, it's just terribly costly when it happens.

[CSGibson]

Just a general comment - I think players at all levels of the game leak imps/mps through tempo. In the Spins vs Upmark and Nystrom, I was able to guess hands correctly simply because of the time it took for the Swedes to make decisions on defense - if they had the card I was going to try and guess, they would have not taken so long, or if they didn't have it, they would have had more to think about, etc. At lower levels, the tempo of a bid or defensive play is also frequently revealing. Personally, I give up some things by playing and bidding too fast at times, so I'd like to hit that happy medium of taking time when it doesn't matter, and playing quickly when tempo might be an issue.

[jogs]

RSClyde, on 2013-August-24, 12:49, said:

It's not that common, it's just terribly costly when it happens.

You should be reviewing your system notes before every session.

[sathyab]

Unforced errors in card play and defense as jogs pointed out. It takes a fair amount of diligence to review your record to identify patterns. When I reviewed my record from Atlanta, I noticed that my play in Notrump contracts at MP was poor and specifically because I was not playing the hands optimistically enough. Once you identify a problem, you can try to guard against repeating the same kind of error.

Bidding errors cost a bunch too. But quite often, it's a lot harder to understand that they are indeed errors or that you would want to do something different the next time you encounter a similar situation.

[DJNeill]

I can't begin to imagine all the point-leak in my game. Easiest things I find to shore up that make the most difference practically:

- practice with pd (pinpoint bidding practice, or random hands for a good sampling of common situations)
- keep care of myself physically or otherwise to facilitate good concentration
- be a good partner and not talk (huge)
- test my current thinking shape before the event
- psyche myself up

Thanks,
Dan

[TylerE]

Defense, opening leads in particular.

[aguahombre]

We pre-alert that they should want me on opening lead.

[Vampyr]

jogs, on 2013-August-28, 12:07, said:

You should be reviewing your system notes before every session.

No, that's not it. Some people seem to think that the question is "Why can't my partner remember our system?" when in fact the question is "Why am I playing a system my partner has trouble remembering?"

It's more than just that; if the system is complicated, partner will be using his mental energy trying to work out what the system bid is, instead of being able to evaluate his hand and use judgment.

RSClyde, on 2013-August-24, 12:49, said:

It's not that common, it's just terribly costly when it happens.

So what is "common" or "often"? Obviously this varies from player to player, depending on what size price you want to pay for having what you consider a "perfect" system. But system forgets are bad for partnership harmony, and put pressure on the player who is usually the one who forgets. It seems to me that once in every 20 sessions is too much, but as I said, YMMV.

Of course, in the OP he asks specifically about long matches (3 sessions or more). I can't speak to that question, because I have never played in a match that was more than 64 boards. I have no idea what the effects would be if I had to play the same match for two or more days in a row. It would depend, of course, on what the scoreline was overnight. Obviously very different from things like 4-session Swiss Pairs or Swiss teams, where you can still win matches no matter what your standing.

[aguahombre]

I have never seen 64 boards squeezed into two sessions.