[Al_U_Card]

inquiry, on Sep 21 2005, 12:59 PM, said:

How to deal with stress?

Take up something relaxing like bullfighting, mountain climbing without safety equipment, or bull riding.

A lot of "bull" in that post I prefer medication.....

[han]

luis, on Sep 21 2005, 10:12 AM, said:

Dealing with stress is hard.
There's no silver bullet, it depends on you and your pd to know how to handle the stress in a tournament.

Some tips:

- When pd does something unusual and it results badly encourage him/her to keep being creative, if you punish creativeness you will have a bored and worried pd trying to get average results.
- Try to find an excuse for your pd mistakes, when there is none and pd blames himself say something like "yes, that was quite terrible, lol". When pd knows he made a mistake you win nothing trying to give him a lesson he already knows about the mistake and he will not do the same twice so you don't need to dig deep in his already troubled mind.
- If your pd answers questions defensively then may be better not to talk to him, some players take comments and questions as offensive. Recognize if your pd is in such category and then talk only about non-bridge issues.
- From time to time praise yourself saying things like
"What a great double I found"
"If I bid 3♠ they bid 4♥ and it makes"
"I was inspired to pass if I overcall I can go for 1400"
"I preempted with 0 how crazy I am"
Even when those comments are silly pd will mentally think that you can create good results and pd will be aware that you are positive. This creates a good atmosphere in your partnership.
- Eat lots of sugar, sugar is fuel for the brain the more sugar you get the longer you can think about complex positions.
- Every time you get a normal average result that could be better with an unusual lead or very unusual bid or play say "sorry pd I could have done this and that". Even when it's not logical you will make pd understand you noticed a missed chance. Your pd wants you to be a winner.
- Try to make pd laugh, laughing decreases stress level a lot you don't have to be a clown but from time to time there're some funny things in bridge. Yesterday playing with screens an opponent asked me about a bid that his own pd made! I raised the screen and told "hey this guy is asking me about your own bids, can you give me some tips so I can help him?" :-). In another deal the cards were old and the king of hearts was barely recognizable so from dummy I called "The phantom of hearts please". Then in 3NT where declarer was able to make 13 tricks on good breaks I held a poker of 2s I cerefully kept my 2s and in the 4 card ending I claimed "all mine" showing the four 2s :-).
- At IMPs play squeezes for overtricks pd loves to see you play nicely even when it's only for 1 imp, I can bet you will make a thin game later after pd bids it and says "you are playing so nicely I couldn't pass"
- Consider the opponents bids and passes in all your comments and actions, sometimes pd is under pressure for example after 4♣ X pass your pd bids 6♥ and this goes down 1, don't say something like "why 6?" pd was under pressure and did the best he could say something like "nightmare hand, bad luck" or "I would have bid the same" you are not winning anything from saying thinks about bids that are due to judgement.
- When you know you have some conventions or agreements that are very clear use them to full extent and make comments about how confortable you were able to bid thanks to the agreement you had. You have to avoid an atmoshere were both you and your pd are afraid of a missunderstanding.

Etc etc :-)

This is all great advice. I love playing with partners who act like this, and it surely improves my game.

Humor and feel good are very important to me.

[Clinch]

1. I never keep score, unless I absolutely have to do so. This has helped me in pairs events - I used to find myself going back over past results, estimating and re-estimating quality of score. Complete waste of time, as I am never good enough to know whether we need extra-good scores at the end of the session.

2. Related to #1, even without the scorecard I tend to be overpessimistic and overemphasise bad scores. I try to remind myself that we are a good pair and if we play our normal game, the good scores should come. The bad results are just anomalies!

3. Don't forget that, over a multi-session tourney, everybody is suffering from fatigue. The final session is almost invariably a place to pick up speed, even if you are in a lowly position.

4. Easier said than done, but if something distracting occurs, ask yourself "could I have done anything about that?" If the opps get a lucky score or start arguing, or are late, then this is outside your control. Let it go. Amazing how many things can be rationalized away like this.

5. Think of practising the "Keller" approach, i.e. saying nothing related to bridge except what is mandated by the laws. No post-mortems, no speculation, no discussions of hands with the opponents. If you have a disaster and say nothing, this can unsettle any opponent. Incidentally, I've never succeeded fully in this one, but I find that for as long as I can keep it up, it works.

6. I agree entirely about eating too much between sessions. The food literally weighs down evening performance, and saps energy. I actually don't find that it helps to be in a group, discussing bridge; I prefer quiet time. But of course, for others, discussing the hands is very enjoyable - my personal feeling is that it doesn't help the evening session performance, though.

Peter.
New York, NY.

[mikeh]

I have played in a number of long, high pressure events. A turning point for me came in 1997 when we played as a 4-player team in the Canadian National Team Championships. Our partners were Allan Graves and Joey Silver. We played every board of the roundrobin (several hundred boards over 4 days) and then a 64 board quarter-final, a 64 board semi and a 72 board final.

Allan and Joey had 'been there, done that': Joey had reached the finals of the 95 Bermuda Bowl and both had won NABC events and previous CNTC's.

While I had known the 'theory' of being a good partner/teammate and something about endurance, these guys really educated both my partner and I (who were not exactly novices )

1. Eat properly. No heavy meals. Take fruit to the playing site, and eat fruit during the game.No chocolate or cookies: they give you a sugar spike, but then comes the letdown.

2. Relax after the sesssion. I probably take this to an extreme, but in a serious event I will not go out for dinner and will certainly never have a drink between sessions. I will have a beer (maybe 2) after the game to allow my mind to slow down, but I do not socialize.

3. Never, ever criticize partner during the game. Do not even review or discuss the hands between sessions unless there is a construcive purpose: say, to clarify an ambiguous auction. If you do discuss hands, do not try to improve your partner's defence or declarer play. However, esp on defence, you may want to discuss any apparent failure to communicate, but do so by offering to accept fault and offer your explanation for your play(s). A good partner will recognize and admit if he/she was equally or more at fault.

3. In team games, never ever admit to a mistake in the presence of your teammates. This does not mean pretending to be perfect. However, when doing the comparison, one player reads the results and another player (from the other pair) states the imps. The 'result' is the score, not the contract. I was supposed to write an article for our local newsletter after we won in 97, and almost all the hands were from my table because I only knew about 3 or 4 actual contracts, plays, or auctions from Joey-Allan Never come back to the table saying 'sorry, guys, we had a bad set' or anything like that. if you had a bad set, that will become evident soon enough

4. Never, ever criticize your teammates

5. If partner loses it at the table, tell him or her that you can discuss it after the session. This is not a violation of No. 2. After the session, partner may have cooled down so that you can remind him her of No.2. In 1997, in an early match in the round-robin, I pulled partner's penalty double. He was incensed (their contractwas making, but that was hardly the point: I went -500 and they would have been 530). I told him to take a walk: he got up, left the room and returned 6-7 minutes later and was relaxed. We never had another issue all week.

6. Stay as close to the playing site as possible

7. If travelling a long way, get there well ahead of the event. I find that even a 3 hour time zone difference can affect me for a day or two. This is not always possible.

8. I do follow the play when dummy. However, in serious events I am usually fortunate enough to be playing with fine declarers. So I follow the play to keep my focus on the game. If playing with an indifferent declarer, I would try not to folow the play, since watching partner make mistakes is not conducive to playing well yourself.

9. Never, ever, comment on the opps play or behaviour. Even if one asks you, offer a neutral comment.

10. Try to forget every hand as soon as it is played (easier said than done). If partner asks you a question about the last hand, tell him or her that you can discuss it after the session, but gently remind partner that the hand is over and neither of you can do anything about the result now. With luck, you will not need to discuss that board later.

11.. If partner cannot live with these rules, find another partner

[pclayton]

Great thread - I especially appreciate Luis' and Mike's comments.

[mikeh]

Jlall, on Sep 21 2005, 02:10 PM, said:

Mike if you follow all of those we need to play some time You sound like the perfect partner lol.

I always advise: 'Do as I say, not as I do"

[Al_U_Card]

Clinch, on Sep 21 2005, 01:33 PM, said:

1. I never keep score, unless I absolutely have to do so. This has helped me in pairs events - I used to find myself going back over past results, estimating and re-estimating quality of score. Complete waste of time, as I am never good enough to know whether we need extra-good scores at the end of the session.

For the statisticians in the crowd, back in the day I did a regression analysis of about 200 sessions to derive a linear relationship between hands declared, plusses scored and total points. Interestingly the correlation coeff. was around 99.5%

It translates thusly:

Over 24 boards if you have declared at least a 1/3 of them, for each plus score more than hands declared, add one board to your score (2 1/2 % above average).

Take the total score (yours plus the opps) and divide by the hands played. This value (often around 300) is worth another board for each 300 you are above the half total score.

The resulting % (or boards above average) is within 1% of your actual result.

try it with 1 or 2 rounds to go, ie you have 10 hands declared and 12 plusses (55%)

with 7200 total points scored by both sides so far, your total of 3950 is 350 above the half total score and adds another 2 1/2%. Your actual matchpoint score will be 57.5 % plus or minus 1% at that point.

This is also a good change of pace method to stay fresh near the end of the game.

[inquiry]

Al, are you serious? I assume not... I would have to be totally out of my mind to try to keep up with all that during a session.....

I do "estimate scores", I estimate on a 12 top, if matchpoints. IF it looks more or less normal, I average a six (a little more if it is normal with me plus, a little less if normal with them plus).

If it looks good for me, I estiamte a 9, bad a 3. Sometimes, I go all the way out on a limb and estiamte a 12 or 0. You don't have to be right.. you might estimate a 9 one time and get 6, you might estimate 9 another and get 11. But over 26 boards, the under-estiamtes and the over-estimates usually come out close to even.

The only thing I do in addition, is I keep a running total... First board I estiamte a 6, second a 9.... so after round run, my estiamte is 15 (average is 12).... This is not hard, and I don't "sweat" over the estimate and analyze every nuance of play. I am seldom off by more than 3 or 4 MP at the end (if top is 25, at end you have to adjust.... for that...after the round is over).

AT imps, I just keep rough estimate of +/- imps. History has taught me I am not very good at estimating the crazyness at the other table so I just try to keep track of our blunders... and decide if they were so bad that something despirate is needed.... sadly half the time I think there is a need, our oppoinnets had the same problems or worse. So mostly I try to just play each hand the best I can... and not worry too much aobut the "state of the match" (of course if there were quarters and I know I am behind or if it is barometer, then all bets are off late in the match).

[Al_U_Card]

inquiry, on Sep 21 2005, 02:49 PM, said:

Al, are you serious? I assume not...

au contraire, mon cher....at MP's this takes 30 sec to do and, as I said, is better than a "guesstimate". Try it on one of your session scorecards, you'll see.

[SoTired]

inquiry, on Sep 21 2005, 02:49 PM, said:

I do "estimate scores", I estimate on a 12 top, if matchpoints. IF it looks more or less normal, I average a six (a little more if it is normal with me plus, a little less if normal with them plus).

If it looks good for me, I estiamte a 9, bad a 3. Sometimes, I go all the way out on a limb and estiamte a 12 or 0. You don't have to be right.. you might estimate a 9 one time and get 6, you might estimate 9 another and get 11. But over 26 boards, the under-estiamtes and the over-estimates usually come out close to even.

I estimate just "+" for good, "-" for bad, and "0" for average. Then I just count the +'s versus the -'s. Each extra + is worth about 1/3 a board. My estimate is usually off by no more than 2 % points.

[inquiry]

SoTired, on Sep 21 2005, 05:00 PM, said:

inquiry, on Sep 21 2005, 02:49 PM, said:

I do "estimate scores", I estimate on a 12 top, if matchpoints. IF it looks more or less normal, I average a six (a little more if it is normal with me plus, a little less if normal with them plus).

If it looks good for me, I estiamte a 9, bad a 3. Sometimes, I go all the way out on a limb and estiamte a 12 or 0. You don't have to be right.. you might estimate a 9 one time and get 6, you might estimate 9 another and get 11. But over 26 boards, the under-estiamtes and the over-estimates usually come out close to even.

I estimate just "+" for good, "-" for bad, and "0" for average. Then I just count the +'s versus the -'s. Each extra + is worth about 1/3 a board. My estimate is usually off by no more than 2 % points.

This is in effect what I do, although I have lea way for a top (12) or bottom (0) for those hands when they happen. But there is one extra advantage of using MP instead of +/- and then total... You get to keep an actual running MP total. So you know easily if you are close to 190 or 200 or an 156 average for instance. That is the kind of information you need to decide if it is worth the gamble to maneuver late in a match... .but since methods are identical (I start wtih 6 and for a plus add 3 to get 9, and for minus subtrace 3 to get 3: while you start with 0 and add or subtract 3 for plus and minus), your assessment of the accuracy of the method closely matches that of my own... and amazingly I often miss a handful of boards by a mile when it comes to estimating, but these are random and tend to cancel each other out.

[pigpenz]

interesting post...sometimes bridge is a battle of attrition and other times the lemmings come to your table and want to jump off the cliff.

Alan Sontag in his book the bridge bum quoted Matt Granovetter back in the 70's that Matt like to have sex before imps cause it calmed him down and have nothing in his stomach before matchpoints cause there was so much intensity he wanted all the blood to go to his brain not his stomach for digestion.

Another thing is expectations: If your plaing in a world class field your expectations are alot different than if you are playing in Pocatello Idaho regional.

[42]

I am really thankful that you all answered Great advices!!
For myself I would claim to be a careful partner and teammate (I'm not talking about bridgeskills, I mean partnership behaviour). My problems start where my partner breaks those rules, not only with words, also nonverbal signals like headshaking or sounds of disappointment or so. I am not very selfconfident. And I learned that women in bridge are often victims of male power (ok, they accept perhaps that role...??)
When opps argue in zero-tolerance-manner, I could call for the TD, but I am already upset and out of the needed "trance".
A break during the session was not possible, even running to toilet was hard. The time schedule forbid that!
It was remarkable in this tourney: I had most of the time points and was either declarer or had the problems with lead or defense, so no relaxing as dummy. When I saw some (f)aces in my hands I just thought "oh no, not again"
The "forced" dinner: I ate just a little bit salad because I know that I would be more tired after a heavy meal.
Good that we can talk about that all here

Caren

[Gerben42]

I think the forced dinner is a terrible idea. I'd rather have a different setup for the whole thing.

[cf_John0]

Too big stress to play bridge for us.IMO,the most important for bridge is environment, a friendly and easier environment.

[pdmunro]

Linda Lee (Canadian Women's Team) wrote an interesting article "Be Prepared". You can find it on claire bridge links in the "Psycholgy" section.

[glen]

Even though I’m quite late replying to this thread I would like to make a few comments. First, I would like to say I concur with everything that mikeh wrote about, and Linda Lee's article.

My comments here will refer to playing in an event that one really really wants to win with a non-client partner. Other times one might be playing just for fun, or teaching somebody, or playing pro, or playing while waiting for an upcoming big event at the same tournament.

One of the more complex bidding systems books in recent years is “The Viking Precision Club”. At the end of the great book, the main author notes that while the system is helpful:

Glenn Groetheim said:

It cannot be stated more clearly, that mental attitude is of major importance.

So what can we do to prepare better? Here are some success factors:

Regular Work: If you have been working 70 hours a week in a mentally straining job in order to have time for the tournament, your brain will want to take a holiday at the tournament instead of working hard at the table. So somehow one needs to take it easy with the mentally straining stuff in the weeks leading up to the tournament.

Rusty: If you haven’t been playing much top notch bridge (either not playing much, or just practising bidding, or just playing against weak opponents), then you will need to put in some time just before the tournament or right at the start of the tournament to take the rust off.

Travel: Some, including me, don’t play well the travel day, so try to arrive the day (or days) before the really-want-to-win event.

Sleep: Intense bridge gets the brain going, so sleep gets lost running over hands and “what could have done”. So many players suffer from some sleep deprivation during a tournament. One has to try to let things go instead of dwelling on them. Read a good thriller, find a club to go out to where you will not talk over hands, play golf, see a concert or a movie, work out at the hotel gym, check out the hotel pool, visit the local art gallery, go shopping etc.

Now let’s look at how I handled these factors for the World Mixed Pairs. Start time was 10am in downtown Montreal. Here’s what I did:

- Being very busy at work, I played very little bridge in the weeks leading up to the event.
- I worked until midnight on a very complex work report that had to be done.
- I fought with the convention card editor for the WBF cc, from midnight until 7 am, preparing two cc’s.
- From 7 to 8:15 I packed, shaved, showered and grabbed a pillow and blanket to put in the car.
- At 8:15 I handed the car keys to my wife, and told her to drive to Montreal (two hours travel time) while I snoozed, which I did somewhat.
- I navigated the final 15 minutes to the tournament site, and we arrived a healthy 5 minutes before game time.

So after all that preparation, we did not qualify for the finals: not sure what went wrong.

Other factors:

Discussion: If one is playing in a really-want-to-win event, avoid discussion with partner, opponents, and, if a team event, teammates. Discussion is mentally draining – what could we, should we, might we have done etc. Discussion is great for learning, but you are now here to win, not learn. So no discussion unless needed to just get back on same wavelength as partner (e.g. 1430 right partner?), and then only as minimal as possible.

Bad Results/Good Results/Blah Results: Once the board is over, it’s over – not more discussing.

Eating/Drinking: Between sessions, eat lightly and don’t drink alcohol. Keep water levels up.

Let’s look at how I applied these factors in winning a regional pairs event. We had a big score in the first session of two sessions, so it was off to a restaurant for a big steak dinner with lots of red wine (within walking distance so no driving). Back at the second session, we both started to make some mistakes, so I started harping on partner every time we had a bad result. We both then made more mistakes, and we lost focus completely. Finally after I was certain we had no hope of winning the event or even placing in it, and the wine had finally wore off, I shut up and just played bridge. Suddenly our results started to improve, the gloom disappeared and we finished strongly to win. So key was to shut up and just play bridge.

In the same tournament we later ran into some nasty people in a knockout event. They were likely sleep deprived and thus generally irritable. Instead of responding them we shut up and just played bridge, and won the match.

Other factors noted in the original post:

Off-the-rails: When the partnership goes off the rails, either partner should be able to impose a period of getting back to normal: during this period both players do everything "by the book" as much as possible - no genius leads, no super-clever bids etc. - just solid bridge until the partnership is back on track.

System: Stick to what the partnership is comfortable with. Freeze system at least six months before the really-want-to-win-this event. Every time I’ve added a load of gadgets in order to optimize system, I’ve sunk a partnership.

First time at the big one: If you are playing in the Super Bowl for the first time, you will feel it, and there is no preparation to make it any easier besides playing in some Super Bowls beforehand. So if you want to win a big tourney, attend a bunch of big tourneys until you feel comfortable.

Stress: Relax by not playing and/or thinking bridge 24/7 at the tournament, and do some other neat stuff.

Fun: Don't just play big events - play for fun sometimes too!

Partners: Avoid partners who don’t know when to shut up and just play bridge. Be a partner who knows when to shut up and just play bridge.