[pilowsky]

I'm not much for kibitzing, but I just saw this hand bid and played by 4 experts.
Just wondering what you make of the bidding.

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Afterwards, I gave it to the robots.
Here's what they made of it.

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FWIW, it makes 6NT NS so the 'optimal' is 7Sx - Is there a scoring system that rewards bidding the optimal contract?

You can see what happened here.

Spoiler

http://bit.ly/Ep2Goren

[nullve]

pilowsky, on 2021-April-12, 04:16, said:

http://bit.ly/Ep2Goren

With music (my band):

https://www.youtube....h?v=Ry5cjTtgrEA

[mikeh]

I suspect these were self-rated bbo experts.

I don’t play much bbo bridge, other than with friends and in our team trials, but my recollection, from when I played more, is that the average ‘expert’ on bbo is anything but an expert. Certainly the notion that any real expert would bid 3H over 1S is laughable.

[pilowsky]

nullve, on 2021-April-12, 04:44, said:

With music (my band):

https://www.youtube....h?v=Ry5cjTtgrEA

Thanks, it was your link that led me to this match.

[pilowsky]

mikeh, on 2021-April-12, 06:16, said:

I suspect these were self-rated bbo experts.

I don't play much bbo bridge, other than with friends and in our team trials, but my recollection, from when I played more, is that the average 'expert' on bbo is anything but an expert. Certainly the notion that any real expert would bid 3H over 1S is laughable.

I'm not sure what a "BBO expert" is, but West is Kemp, East is Gerber, North is Murray (a friend of yours I think) and South is Frey.

I don't know what BBO names they use.

[mikeh]

pilowsky, on 2021-April-12, 14:10, said:

I'm not sure what a "BBO expert" is, but West is Kemp, East is Gerber, North is Murray (a friend of yours I think) and South is Frey.

I don't know what BBO names they use.

These are very old names. All, I think, long dead (though Murray recently). Bidding was very unsophisticated back then especially in NA where it was rare for experts to play in fixed partnerships. Murray did have a formidable long term partnership with Sami Kehela, and they were very effective in the 70’s and into the 80’s. But their bidding was, by today’s standards, crude.

Experts...yes. By today’s standards their methods were extremely crude. None of them ever had BBO names as far as I know. I think Murray was the only player still a little active by the time BBO was formed, but I’d be very surprised if he played.

I think it fair to say that there are probably scores, if not hundreds, of pairs today who would win everything in sight if they could magically go back in time 60-70 years ago (if one outlawed the then common habit of using tone of voice and tempo to convey nuances that the bidding methods of the day could not. While it predates my time, apparently it was pretty easy to tell a pure penalty double from a takeout double just from the way the double was announced...even with some ‘world class’ players).

Cardplay technique has also improved over the decades, though not to the degree that bidding has.

So, ok..back then they did use strong jumpshifts, lol. And they were experts. I’m pretty confident that my CNTC team would beat them handily....just on bidding alone. And we’re not that good by today’s standards.