[jillybean]

Hi, I am wondering if anyone would have a set of hands designed for a Rookie/Master game tbat they wouldn't mind sharing with me for our units r/m games?

TYIA

[hrothgar]

What do you mean by "designed"

I strongly dislike events that filter hands, restricting the set of hands that have "interesting" declarer play or defense aspects.

With this said and done, I do think that there is value in providing some post mortem commentary that suggests how the bidding / play might go...

[jillybean]

Hey Richard.

Our unit runs a number of R/M games each year and now the responsibility to organize these has landed in my lap. The purpose of these games is to give Rookies (NLM) a chance to play with better players, improve their game, facilitate mentor/mentee connections and expose players who would normally play in restricted games, to the other members in the hope that they will find that not all of us are ogres and they will venture out to the open games.

As far as manufacturing “interesting” hands is concerned I agree, I dislike that approach however given the purpose of these games I think it is an appropriate use, even if only to have the rookies as declarer for the majority of the hands. Heck, we have “masters” masterminding the auctions to “win” and who are oblivious to the purpose of the game so if we are able to stack the deck in favour of the rookies, I think we should do so.

As far as I know, the unit has rarely provided pre dealt hands with analysis. We have only recently had access to a dealing machine and hand records so just the job of creating the hands would have been labour intensive. In future I am sure that I can get some of our experts to provide analysis but as of now, I am running out of preparation time and am hoping other units have done the work and we can share some hands.

I'm also happy to hear why setting the rookie as declarer is a bad idea and would also be delighted to get hands with analysis, set declarer or not.

[kenberg]

How does this sound?

Go to the vugraph records and take some hands. Rotate some of them if you wish so that the often the rookie will be declarer. I would not rotate all of them since you don't want a player thinking "well, I think I should support hearts but if I do that then my master partner will be declarer so that must be wrong".

You could select hands where the bidding that actually took place was mostly natural. Afterward, this information could be provided.

Perhaps some of the players in your area would be willing to discuss a few of these hands afterward. Not all of them, people want to go home. Preferably this would be players who are willing to look at how the hands could reasonably be bid without launching into a sales pitch for their favorite obscure convention.

I would hope that a master player who likes to hog the hands because, well, after all, he is the expert could be dissuaded. If he cannot be dissuaded from bidding in this manner perhaps he could be dissuaded from participating in the event.

[jillybean]

kenberg, on 2012-December-11, 10:46, said:

How does this sound?

Fine, if I knew how to do it! Maybe McBruce has some great idea's.

kenberg, on 2012-December-11, 10:46, said:

Go to the vugraph records and take some hands. Rotate some of them if you wish so that the often the rookie will be declarer. I would not rotate all of them since you don't want a player thinking "well, I think I should support hearts but if I do that then my master partner will be declarer so that must be wrong".

I don't expect every hand to be set to a rookie declarer, we can mix them up but I think a number of good hands for the rookies would be good.

kenberg, on 2012-December-11, 10:46, said:

You could select hands where the bidding that actually took place was mostly natural. Afterward, this information could be provided.

This may be more difficult to achieve.

kenberg, on 2012-December-11, 10:46, said:

Perhaps some of the players in your area would be willing to discuss a few of these hands afterward. Not all of them, people want to go home. Preferably this would be players who are willing to look at how the hands could reasonably be bid without launching into a sales pitch for their favorite obscure convention.

Very few players stay after a game, even a R/M game.

kenberg, on 2012-December-11, 10:46, said:

I would hope that a master player who likes to hog the hands because, well, after all, he is the expert could be dissuaded. If he cannot be dissuaded from bidding in this manner perhaps he could be dissuaded from participating in the event.

I would hope so too

[ggwhiz]

I would just ask the cbf (Jan Anderson) if they can provide the write ups from as old as possible National rookie master games.

It's not about cooked hands, it's about providing the analysis booklet.

[barmar]

We just had our sectional Pro-Am this past weekend. As far as I know, the hands weren't cookied in any way, yet the rookies still managed to declare a significant number of hands. My rookie declared one more hand than I did, although N/S was somewhat skewed towards the masters.

If you're worried about hand-hogging masters, I don't think you can really protect against it very much by cooking the hands. And even when you don't declare, there's plenty to learn from a hand: the correct bidding and defense are very instructive.

[mycroft]

If you're looking to mastermind the declarers, remember that that only applies to "standard" systems (whatever's standard in your area). Go ahead, cook the hands so that South is declarer twice as often as North. We're playing a 12-14 NT, or we're not playing transfers, or we're playing Precision. Or they're doing any of the above. Or, we're playing transfer overcalls of NT in direct seat.

If Rookie-Master in your area puts the dividing line at LM (which many do), there are *lots* of mentoring pairs that are teaching odd conventions that will "wrong-side" contracts, be it Transfer advances after 1M-X, XYZ, Rubensohl, all the various overcalls of NT, and suchlike.

Just let it go, and get a good analysis; if it turns out that the master is *minding, reading the analysis should convince the rookie that that was what was going on, and just maybe...

[jillybean]

barmar, on 2012-December-11, 14:45, said:

We just had our sectional Pro-Am this past weekend. As far as I know, the hands weren't cookied in any way, yet the rookies still managed to declare a significant number of hands. My rookie declared one more hand than I did, although N/S was somewhat skewed towards the masters.

If you're worried about hand-hogging masters, I don't think you can really protect against it very much by cooking the hands. And even when you don't declare, there's plenty to learn from a hand: the correct bidding and defense are very instructive.

Did you have HR's and analysis, can you send me the hands?

& thanks ggwhiz, I will contact the CBF

[barmar]

We just had normal ACBL hand records (set #89779), no analysis.

[ggwhiz]

A couple of years ago we ran end of course tourneys for kids and one of our clubs produced their left over analysis booklets from acbl wide games of various kinds that would do fine too.

I think rookie-master games are great but are very rare in the U.S. so maybe an inquiry to the acbl for these would point out the value of them.