[Jlall]

ArtK78, on Jan 22 2010, 09:50 AM, said:

Jlall, on Jan 22 2010, 12:33 AM, said:

Oh partner might pass the X when it's wrong, I had no idea, in that case 4N must be clearcut, sry.

Thanks for the helpful reply. No doubt we are all very impressed.

lol

[eyhung]

ArtK78, on Jan 22 2010, 07:50 AM, said:

Thanks for the helpful reply.  No doubt we are all very impressed.

I would say almost any post where Justin writes more than 3 lines rates to be far more helpful than many of the posts on here. I am impressed he has the time and willingness to share. Maybe your ego is wounded because your arguments were repeatedly and summarily dismissed with sarcastic one-liners, but if your goal is to improve, I think it's best to check your ego in at the door and listen. I think the following was the most important lesson I've learned from here, which was taken from the 2/1 Gitleman (sic) thread.

Fred said:

I gave the problem to a much better and much more experienced player than me: Jeff Meckstroth.

His response was something along the lines of:

"If you are doubled in 1NT and you are thinking about running, my experience strongly suggests that you should run"

I suspect that if I asked him "why?" the best answer he could give would be something like:

"Because I have seen this situation many times and my judgment suggests that I would have lost more IMPs had I sat for 1NT doubled".

I suspect that if I asked him "why?" again he would look at my like I was an idiot, walk away, and not be inclined to answer any more bidding questions from me in the future.

...


The point is that such answers, even though they do not constitute "proof" are meaningful. There may not even be any "right" answers to questions like "should I run from 1NT doubled?", but if there are then surely it is the case that a strong opinion by a random top player is more likely to be right than the best guess of a random less experienced player.

And the more top players to have a given strong opinion about a given matter, the more likely that this opinion is "right".

Wouldn't you prefer to have an answer that is likely to be right than no answer at all?

Ever since this incident, when I have been in this situation I have thought back to what Jeff had to say and I have followed his advice. After such hands I tend to think about what the result would have been if I had Passed 1NT doubled. Now I can say that my experience also suggests that Jeff is right (big shock).

I don't know *why* he appears to be right and, frankly, I could care less - if your goal is to win the bridge tournament then it really does not matter that you understand everything that you do. What matters is that you make the most successful decisions that you can.

...

If you have little respect for bridge players who draw conclusions based on their experience, then I believe it is likely that you will never come close to realizing your potential as a player. There are simply too many things in this game that you can only learn by asking better players what they think (or maybe playing a TON of hands yourself and using your judgment based on this experience).

[Jlall]

Dearest Art,

I have respectfully considered your arguments on why bidding 4N might be better than doubling. However, I think that picking a few hands where bidding 4N works better than doubling is a bad way to go about deciding which is a better call, because there are many possible outcomes. If you wanted to do a simulation of thousands of hands, that might work, but cherry picking one or two hands where 4N works better than doubling is not helpful, since you could easily do the same and pick the worst case outcomes for bidding 4N, where doubling works much better, and advance that as an argument for doubling. Again, that argument would not mean much.

You have successfully proven that there are deals on which bidding 4N works better than doubling, but you have done nothing to prove that bidding 4N will work better than doubling in the long run. That is fine, because there is not much you can do, except maybe an extensive simulation, in order to do so. But to pick a few hands that you yourself created with the purpose not of finding truth, but simply of backing up your decision to bid 4N rather than to double, does not advance your cause much.

This is what the user "jdonn" was saying when he asked roger (sarcastically, in case you missed it), what parnter would do with KQT9 of spades and out.

This is what the user "rogerclee" was saying, when he very reasonably said " I wasn't trying to prove that it was impossible for 4N to work out better than double. I was trying to explain why it was less likely to work out better. "

In response to this, you created a couple more examples where bidding 4N is right.

What do you expect in response to this? Would it mean much to you if I said "yeah, but partner can have QJx xx xx QJxxxx!" Of course, you would then see that as a futile excersize to further my agenda of being "right" when I say that double is better than 4N, and that it is really quite meaningless. You might not see that I am doing the exact same thing that you did when you created some hands.

You might consider that people who think double is better than 4N realize that 4N can work better than double. Even if they LOL the notion of bidding 4N, it does not mean that they think 4N will never work better. They might similarly LOL the notion of passing with 20 HCP in 4th seat, even though you, ArtK, could create a layout where that pass would be a winner. You would probably then get LOLed some more, or perhaps be subject to sarcastic and snide comments though.

Luv,
Jlall