[jmc]

I was kibitzing some good pairs one day and someone was commenting that how one might bid on certain boards would depend on their philosophy for pairs. Is it a war? Do we try and win every battle?

I would like to here people express their ideas about what this means and what kind of philosophies are out there. Do you know how most top pros approach the game? Has someone written about these ideas in a book?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

jmc

[gwnn]

fight for the partscore
double more often (with consideration, of course)
try to play in NT or M (if they make)
try to play 5m as seldom as possible (only as a sac or if you're 110% sure 3NT has no chance)
watch the colors!

defend more passively
as declarer, be sure you aim for the most tricks available (even putting the contract at jeopardy - within reasonable limits)

Were you looking for this sort of stuff?

[matmat]

Keep Partner Happy.

This is especially relevant when you're playing with me. You won't like me when I am not happy.

[Tola18]

jmc, on Dec 14 2006, 04:18 AM, said:

Is it a war? Do we try and win every battle?

The bidding is certainly more aggressive, especially in the contested auctions. The D is more frequently both for take out and for punishment; "Double for one down in pairs, double for two down in foursome"...

Why it pays to be much aggressive?: The occasionally misfortune dont cost so much. Bottom is bottom and no more. Next deal please. but in Imps, when misguessed phantom-sacrifice, -1100 against 420 or even 140 /(-50!) may decide the whole match.

A good pair also rely on their superior dummy play against weaker oppostion. And anyone can do a defence mistake, even World class players are known to do such now and then. But a good declarer has always a plus against good but not excellent defenders: shehe sees what they try to signal - and understand this often better then the partner who perhaps dont even notices which spot it was...

[glen]

Jean-Paul Sartre said:

A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.

Against the 1NT and 1 or 2 of a major contracts that the opponents will often score well with, compete often.

For Philosophy and poker players:

Jean-Paul Sartre said:

Life begins on the other side of des pair.

[Robert]

Hi everyone

It is a war. Matchpoints revolves around the scoring method. Beating a pair 'by any amount' gains you one matchpoint. Losing by any amount costs you a matchpoint.

Kit Woolsey wrote a very good book called Matchpoints.

To be a good matchpoint player you have to make some crazy bids. I have doubled contracts that I believed would likely make because our side rated to
get a very bad score if it made and doubling would lose few matchpoints. If it happened to go down, we rated to win many more matchpoints.

Regards,
Robert

[ArcLight]

>I really think estimating what the field will be doing is overrated, but sometimes it's obvious that you're in an abnormal contract and the normal contract will take 1 more trick.

Justin, you certainly have much more experience than I do, but what you say seems to be at odds with what Hugh Kelsey says in "Match Point Bridge".
Basically, he says if you are not in the "right" contrat, you don't do well. And you have to look at what the field will be playing to decide how to play the hand.
(play for down 1, or make a speculative 3/3 or penalty double)
Maybe he is basing this on play against a good field, not the typical weak and random one. I see other authors showing problems in this frame of mind as well (we need Z to score well, play for some unlikely combination)

[Elianna]

matmat, on Dec 14 2006, 02:11 AM, said:

Keep Partner Happy.

This is especially relevant when you're playing with me. You won't like me when I am not happy.

I hope that you follow this philosophy when you are playing.

[hrothgar]

From my perspective, your most significant choice is whether you want to go with the field or against it.

I'd like to contrast two VERY different ways to score well at Matchpoint.

Option 1: Do what the field does, only better.

Many players advocate that the best way to advance as a bridge player is to focus on declarer player and defense. Master the technical aspects of the game. Try to minimize the number of mistakes that you make in a session.

Having achieved this noble end, your goal should be to mirror the field during the bidding. Ideally, you want to get to the same contract declarered in the same direction. Your ability to consistently generate an extra trick or two on offense or defense should give you a nice score.

Option 2: Time to roll the bones

There is an alternative theory that the best way to score well is to take anti-field positions. Face it. There is only ONE best pair at the tournament. Odds are its not you. Why make it easy for the top pair to benefit from their superior skill?

If everyone else is playing 2/1 Game Force, play Precision or Polish Club, or any decent system just so long as it isn't 2/1 game force. You want to make sure that the bidding system that you chose will have the same expected value per board played but a MUCH higher variance. The strategy will ensure that you place in the money much more that if you played the same system as the herd. (It also ensures that you will come in dead last much more often, however, last place usually pay the same number of match points as 4th)

To some extent, the decision to adopt a high variance bidding system takes your results out of your hands. If you get dealt a series of boards that are especially well suited to your methods, you'll score well. If you get dealt a large number of hands that a poorly suited to your methods you'll score poorly. I'm not saying that its not important to improve declarer play or defense. However, the fact that you open a weak NT while the field plays a 15-17 is going to have a MUCH more significant impact on your score that the fact that you know how to exercise a stepping-stone squeeze.

[hrothgar]

Jlall, on Dec 14 2006, 06:47 PM, said:

Honestly, I think Richard is overstating the effects of playing an anti field system. Most of the time you will land in the same contract with the same lead and you will have to take tricks regardless of your system. Most of the time the auction will be competitive and you'll have similar decisions...do i bid, pass, or double. Sure you will sometimes have different information to base that decision on, but the good players are usually going to be getting these right in a natural system or an artificial one, so you need to be getting them right as well. And most of the time the system generated swings average out if the event is 2 sessions long. You would have to play a lot of 2 session events where you win 3 boards extra just based on playing system A instead of system B, and if you dont have good judgement and good card play those 3 boards aren't going to win it for you.

I agree with Justin's comment that improving your skill at declarer play and defense will help you regardless of what system you play.

As for his comments about the frequency with which an anti-field system will have a noticable impact on the final contract; I'll simply note that this is going to be a function of the extent to which the two systems diverge for one another. Lets consider the following simple case:

You're playing a Walsh response style over a 1♣ opening
I'm playing a transfer Walsh response style over a 1♣ opening

Some percentage of the time this will reverse the direction of the final contract. The change in the opening lead can create some pretty dramatic swings.

Assume for the moment that we contrast a couple radically different systems:

You're playing 2/1 game force

I'm playing MOSCITO which uses transfer opening bids, asusmed fit preempts, a weak NT, and a strong club opening. I'm guessing that differences in bidding will have an enormous impact on the declarer play and defense.

[barmar]

Justin's probably right about the field. Perhaps the only significant exception would be if you play weak NT, while most of the field plays strong NT (or vice versa). A common result of this difference is that NT contracts end up being declared from the opposite side, as well as different amounts of information being disclosed during the auction (an 1NT-3NT auction in one system will often translate to several suits being bid before deciding on NT in the other system). This will usually impact the opening lead, which can make all the difference in how many tricks you take.

[pclayton]

Echo what Justin says (as usual)'. Richard bring up some interesting points, but in an event that mattered, or where T walsh or Moscito would even be legal you arent going to win the event by playing an anti field method.

More to the point of the original post. Try for average plus on every board but keep in mind Simons advice - the best result possible not always th best possible result. In many events, especially long events, I will accept an Ave minus if I think thats the best I can do. For instance, the opponents bid what appears to be a tight 24 pt 3N and i can tell the cards are placed well'. I wont try to anything rash to beat the hand and play pard for a miracle holding. I will defend agressively, and try to hold down the damage and tie the pairs suffering the same fate.

I have more thoughts but i have this new PDA thats a pain in the rear to use'

[Cascade]

Jlall, on Dec 15 2006, 04:05 AM, said:

The overall matchpoint strategy employed by most top players is to go for average plus on each deal. If you bid a normal 3N for instance, you rate to get 60 % of the matchpoints in the play and you're never risking putting yourself in a zero position.

Along with this I think there is also a strategy of not turning your average minuses into zeros or near zeros.

Just like when you bid your games you rate to get average plus when the opponents have the cards and they bid their game you rate to get average minus. It is important not to turn these into complete bottoms.

I am continually noticing in my partnerships that the main reason that we do not do significantly better is we make too many mistakes. So I would put avoid mistakes way ahead of any fine tuning MPs/IMPs strategies as a way to improve your MPs (and IMPs) score(s).

[awm]

You have to play the opponents to some degree in a pairs game. Winning requires not just "doing okay against everyone" -- you have to seriously beat up on the weak pairs as well as holding your own against the strong ones. To some degree this just makes pairs more random -- you want to play the boards that are fairly flat against the strongest pairs in the field, and the difficult boards against the weak pairs rather than vice versa.

But to some extend you can still control your fate. Some guidelines for a weak to moderate field:

(1) Against weak pairs, you usually just want to let them "do their thing." Don't make wild preempts or psyches against them. If you have a close decision though, err in favor of doubling them or bidding game. If half the field is in game and half isn't, you want to bid the game opposite the pair who will probably misdefend and hand you the making trick. Also weak players sometimes get flustered when doubled and go down in an otherwise makeable spot.

(2) Against the strong pairs, it can pay to create some action. If they bid themselves to a normal contract you will often get average-minus because they will play it correctly and much of the field will not. So some aggressive bidding that gets them out of their comfort zone and possible puts them in a non-field contract can easily pay off.

(3) Keep in mind your expected score against this pair when you decide your actions. For example, suppose I can choose to open with a preempt one level higher than the field (like say opening 3M on a normal 2M hand). This is usually a top-or-bottom kind of action, and suppose I estimate it's close to 50-50 either way. Against a good pair my expected score may be below average, so this is a good risk. Against a weak pair I'm expecting a 70% board in any case so the aggressive bid isn't worth it.

In a strong field, the advice is actually somewhat different. There will be few to no weak pairs. So:

(1) Against most pairs your expected score will be around average (maybe a little better if you're among the stronger players in the field, a little weaker if not). It can pay to take any actions with a reasonable expectation. You definitely want to try to win boards in the bidding, since you're unlikely to win too many MPs by outplaying the field in a normal contract.

(2) Against really strong pairs, don't stick your neck out. Most of the time these pairs will "do something normal" and you have some protection from the field. If they bid a borderline slam and make it, at least a number of other people will be there. Don't worry about getting average-minus sometimes against the occasional really strong pair; your goal is not to let them give you a zero. When it's close it can pay to go conservative against these pairs, since avoiding a game that fails on an unlucky lie of the cards will always give you a good score whereas bidding a game that's tough to make is less likely to pay off against the good defenders.

[awm]

Another point in response to hrothgar's post. With one of my most frequent partners I play methods that are extremely anti-field, whereas with the other our methods are fairly mainstream.

I find that playing mainstream methods, there are still a lot of opportunities to take anti-field actions and produce swings when I want to. For example, I can preempt on a five card suit, or open a balanced 11-count, or decide to make only a single raise on a 4333 11-count opposite partner's opening bid. Any of these create a potential swing, just as much as if I had opened a 10-12 notrump or an intermediate 2♦ bid. The nice thing about playing mainstream methods, is that I can decide on the fly whether I want to create a swing. In general when we are up against weak opposition I usually would rather be in the field spot. Against strong opponents it could easily pay to create swings (but against really strong opponents I prefer to create swings by conservative actions rather than aggressive ones). If I'm having a bad game I can try to be swingier, and with a good score I can protect it. If you play weird methods you're pretty much handcuffed by the methods on a lot of boards, forced to be in an anti-field spot regardless of who your opponents are or how your game is going.

So why do I play non-mainstream methods with my other regular partner? Mostly for two reasons: we play almost exclusively in strong fields (national events only) where swinginess is more likely to work in our favor than against us, and because we honestly believe that on average our methods are substantially better than the field.

[Gerben42]

The road to victory is to realize that every board counts the same, including the first one (especially that one!). To win you must take risks that rate to win more MP when they are right then that they lose when wrong.

BTW do NOT bid 3NT as often as in IMPs. At IMPs, for 3NT to be right it needs to take at most trick less than the suit contract, at MPs for 3NT to be right it must take the same number of tricks as the suit contract!
For me, IMP is a game where you try to get to 3NT as often as possible, MP is a game where you get to 1NT as often as possible (declaring!).

Playing anti-field methods make some difference also, but most of all to the variance. In a strong-NT field playing a strong NT will get you perhaps ten averages from the bidding, the weak NT might get you 5 tops, 2 averages and 3 bottoms. However on a bad day you might get all the bottoms in one tournament, which then will press very hard on your score.

About bidding game: it's not worth it bidding any game that needs a finesse, independent of how many people are in it (which you cannot control or guess). And if they misdefend against you and then let you make 2♠+2, that is usually good enough (better than 2♠ or 4♠ making 3!)

[awm]

Not sure I agree with Gerben about bidding game on a finesse. If it's really exactly on a finesse, then you're even odds. He's right about it not mattering what the field does, but your expected score is the same regardless of whether you bid game or not.

The issue is that often there are chances in the play or defense for different things to happen at different tables. Suppose for the moment that half the field bids a 4♠ game and half doesn't. If everyone makes the same number of tricks, and it's equally likely to be 9 or 10, then you'll get a 75% board if you guess right (bid game when it makes or stay out when it fails) and a 25% board if you guess wrong, for exactly average in the long run.

But say you make one trick more than the field. Now if you bid the game you'll always get a top -- either you make and no one else can take ten tricks, or you make an overtrick no one else gets. If you don't bid the game, you only get a top if everyone else makes nine tricks and you make ten. If everyone else makes ten and you make eleven, then you get only a 50% board (losing to those who bid game). So you're clearly better off to bid the game!

On the other hand, say you make one trick less than the field. Now if you bid the game you'll always get a bottom -- either you went down (making only nine tricks) when everyone else has a plus score, or you went two down when no one else failed by more than one (and the partscore bidders were making). If you stay out of game and the normal number of tricks is ten, you also get a bottom, but if the normal number of tricks was nine then you tie with the people in the field who played 4♠-1 (you're in 3♠-1) and salvage a 25% result. So it's better to stay out of game!

Of course, these are extreme cases, but in general when you have a close decision of whether to bid game, you can break the tie by saying "am I more likely to take a trick more than the field, or a trick less?" Obviously this depends on what you think of your own declarer play skills relative to the field, but it also depends on the defense and (especially) opening lead skills of your opponents. In general if you think you're likely to take an extra trick, you should be bidding game when it's close, and if you think your opponents are star defenders it's better to stop low.