[Winstonm]

Scoring: IMP



I watched this hand from the women's teams: Mildred Breed opened with a weak 2 diamonds; her counterpart opened 1D. In both rooms, LHO doubled. Breed's opponents were further preempted by Quinn's raise to 3D and landed in 3S on a 4/3 fit down 2. At the other table, they had room to discover the poor fits at the 2-level and played in 2H on a 4/3, making 2.

This brought to mind a question for debate: Has the pendulum for aggressive action swung too far?

25 years ago we were all taught to not give anything away, play solid, and catch our tricks. In the 128 board matches you would see scores like 124-118. Then along came Meckwell and the game changed.

Now it is not uncommon to see 476-355 scores in the Bermuda Bowl.

Seems to me that everyone since has been trying to "catch up" to Meckwell - but have gone too far.

Aggressiveness, to me, makes sense in the majors, where a 10-trick game is possible; however, I don't see the point in opening a minor hand such as this:
xxx, Jx, AQxx, KJxx

Yet I see this hand routinely opened by good and excellent players - and rarely do I see a good result for having done so.
The seemingly normal result is a poor game or an overbid slam.

I'm wondering if the time isn't ripe for a more "middle of the road" team to come along, aggressive in spots, conservative in spots, that could dominate bridge close to the degree of The Blue Team? This would swing the course of bridge back the other way to a more "Centrist" position.

Views?

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[mike777]

Winstonm, on Jun 12 2005, 12:56 PM, said:

Scoring: IMP



I watched this hand from the women's teams: Mildred Breed opened with a weak 2 diamonds; her counterpart opened 1D.  In both rooms, LHO doubled.  Breed's opponents were further preempted by Quinn's raise to 3D and landed in 3S on a 4/3 fit down 2.  At the other table, they had room to discover the poor fits at the 2-level and played in 2H on a 4/3, making 2.

This brought to mind a question for debate: Has the pendulum for aggressive action swung too far?

25 years ago we were all taught to not give anything away, play solid, and catch our tricks.  In the 128 board matches you would see scores like 124-118.  Then along came Meckwell and the game changed.

Now it is not uncommon to see 476-355 scores in the Bermuda Bowl.

Seems to me that everyone since has been trying to "catch up" to Meckwell - but have gone too far.

Aggressiveness, to me, makes sense in the majors, where a 10-trick game is possible; however, I don't see the point in opening a minor hand such as this:
xxx, Jx, AQxx, KJxx

Yet I see this hand routinely opened by good and excellent players - and rarely do I see a good result for having done so.
The seemingly normal result is a poor game or an overbid slam.

I'm wondering if the time isn't ripe for a more "middle of the road" team to come along, aggressive in spots, conservative in spots, that could dominate bridge close to the degree of The Blue Team?  This would swing the course of bridge back the other way to a more "Centrist" position. 

Views?

---

I am a bit confused here
bidding went 1D=x=p? and the opp do not have game?
The opp were able to make a bunch of bids and find misfit at 2 level?
Perhaps the issue is what is partner hand and bid?

I open 1D with both your example hands.

That does not mean your points are not valid or worthy of more discussion, only perhaps too narrowly framed?

btw for a 128 board match a score of 476-355 is terrible bridge by both teams, Horrible!
124-118 is unbelievable well played bridge, Wow when was this?

[hrothgar]

>Btw for a 128 board match a score of 476-355 is terrible bridge by both
>teams, Horrible! 124-118 is unbelievable well played bridge, Wow when was this?

I don't accept these statements. Good bridge is measured by winning bridge matches. The magnitude of the scores is meaningless.

Different pairs have very different styles... Some pairs turn in boards with a high standard deviation. Other pairs turn in boards with a low standard deviation. At the end of the day (particularly in long matches) its the mean that matters.

From my perspective, there are some interesting issues here. For example, is it possible to create a good bridge team that combines high an low variance pairs. (From my perspecitve, this can be a very significant issue... "Good" results from the low variance pair become almost meaningless. Equally significant, what happens when a high variance team plays against a low variance team?

Any argument that events with low scores represents "good" bridge seems to be projecting some kind of external prejudices...

[hrothgar]

>I watched this hand from the women's teams: Mildred Breed opened with a weak 2 >diamonds; her counterpart opened 1D. In both rooms, LHO doubled. Breed's >opponents were further preempted by Quinn's raise to 3D and landed in 3S on a 4/3 fit >down 2. At the other table, they had room to discover the poor fits at the 2-level and >played in 2H on a 4/3, making 2.

Odd example hand...

This hand illustrates that its more difficult to defend against a 2♦ opening than against a 1♦ opening. All fine and dandy. I'm perfectly willing to accept this.

However, its VERY difficult to generalize this one example into any meaningful comprasion between the two systems. At the very least, we'd need some kind of comparison between the relative frequencies of the 2♦ opening played by the pairs, along with the expect IMP scoare associated with each bid...

Hrothgar (Who opens 2♦ alot)

[awm]

A high scoring match does seem to indicate that a lot of wrong decisions were made. The opposite isn't necessarily true -- a low score could result from pushes in "wrong" contracts -- but at high level competitions a low score probably means few wrong decisions.

The modern aggressive style is designed to put pressure on the opponents. It creates more opportunities to go wrong, both for opponents and for partner. This will naturally increase the scores in a match, but most experts believe the opponents will go wrong more often than partner, and this is borne out by the results of pairs like Meckwell.

Now it could be that some of the actions people take are "losing bridge" in general; for example I agree that I haven't seen a lot of wins from opening balanced 11s with 1-minor. But I don't think anyone's in a hurry to go back to "old school" bridge where you only bid with good cards, and all of partner's decisions (AND most of the opponents') were easy.

[pbleighton]

"I'm wondering if the time isn't ripe for a more "middle of the road" team to come along, aggressive in spots, conservative in spots, that could dominate bridge close to the degree of The Blue Team? This would swing the course of bridge back the other way to a more "Centrist" position."

I doubt it.

Do you have any candidate pairs/teams?

I don't think that world class pairs bid aggressively because it's enjoyable for them (though it is fun - and that is MY (very non-world class) reason for doing so).

They bid aggressively because it works. They bid aggressively because if they didn't, their opponents would make too few mistakes.

Peter

[Winstonm]

A clarification. The hand used has no real purpose other than to show a light 1-level verses the opps opening it 2. Just a quick hand I pulled out and nothing more.

The question I was trying to frame (albeit poorly) is this: has aggressive style gone too far one way to be of value? In other words, has bridge gone so far to disrupt the opponents as to make constructive bidding almost impossible.

It would seem that the theory of opening light to disrupt the opponents would work better against sound bidders; their inherent style is to strive for accuracy; if one does the same against "looser" bidders, would it be as effective as they have "built in" doubt because they, too, are being disruptive rather than constructive.

I believe the point is well taken that 121-114 score is not indicative of good bridge any more than a higher scoring affair would be.

Quote

Different pairs have very different styles... Some pairs turn in boards with a high standard deviation. Other pairs turn in boards with a low standard deviation. At the end of the days (particularly in long matches) its the mean that matters.

I think this is an excellent quote, and disagree not one bit. I'm just wondering if when the main purpose of these super-aggressive 1-bids is to make it harder on opponents, thereby sacrificing accuracy, is this sacrifice too much? Bridge seems to follow a pendulum back and forth; I wonder if the future will find more of a "middle ground" between super-aggressive and tame.

Thanks all for you input.

WinstonM

[mike777]

Winstonm, on Jun 12 2005, 05:21 PM, said:

I believe the point is well taken that 121-114 score is not indicative of good bridge any more than a higher scoring affair would be.

OK If you can quote any top class players citing a poorly played match of 128 boards of 121-114 and a well played match of 450-350 I will concede. Until then I will stick to my guns that one was very well played and the other was horrible bridge.

As for one of your main points of constructive versus destructive bidding. I would argue opening 1D on your 2 example hands is a compromise. Destructive would open lighter...constructive would open stronger .

[MickyB]

I agree that opening light in the minors is fairly pointless, the gains from doing so are much less than in the majors due to needing an extra trick for game and being outbid more in the partscore battle.

As to high or low variance teams...is there such a thing? At the top level, high variance matches occur when players are given different decisions from their counterpart - two teams playing an identical aggressive forcing system, identical defences to their opps fert bid, etc would lead to a low variance match. If you know the opps are playing MOSCITO, then choosing to play 2/1 means you are going for high variance!

[hrothgar]

MickyB, on Jun 13 2005, 02:27 AM, said:

As to high or low variance teams...is there such a thing? At the top level, high variance matches occur when players are given different decisions from their counterpart - two teams playing an identical aggressive forcing system, identical defences to their opps fert bid, etc would lead to a low variance match.

This seems to assume that players are adopting pure strategies...

If you buy into my theory that opimal bidding strategies are mixed than this analysis goes out the window...

[mike777]

MickyB, on Jun 12 2005, 06:27 PM, said:

I agree that opening light in the minors is fairly pointless, the gains from doing so are much less than in the majors due to needing an extra trick for game and being outbid more in the partscore battle.

Here is another take on this "POINTLESS" issue.

The reason they work is for competive auctions. If our side has a 4-4 spade fit, we will find it when many other pairs will not. There will be pass-out deals at other tables where we are going plus because we have spades, or at the least the bad guys don't (and even if they do, they are breaking badly). And in general, on all competitive partscore battles, the side that opens has the natural advantage.

Responding in these situations requires no special additional thought.

Another point this emphasizes is that minor openers can be junkier than major openers. Because all flat minimum openers start with 1C or 1D. Unbalanced hands with less high cards need to have really good distribution...enough so that partner with 14 support points can expect to make 4 of your suit, and enough also that if partner has a balanced 14 hcp , there is some sort of play for 3nt or 4 of a suit.

[hrothgar]

I'll note in passing that this discussion reminds me of similar arguments involving style of play in Basketball. Some teams choose to emphasize tight defense while tohers favor a more wide open style of play...

There are even arguments whether or not Zone defenses should be permitted which seem to map onto discussion about bidding regulations.

[Double !]

Well, uh, let me say this about that.

switch the heart and the spade holding in the diamond hand (Kxx, x, AQJTxx, xxx,
now, do you think this might have made a difference?
I strongly suspect YES, now you have some spades, the master suit.
With the actual hand, especially if responder was able to inquire about strength and suit quality, if the partnership easily had game or slam in hearts, then it also likely had the abundance of the power. However, if this was an issue of missing a good heart fit and game on slimmer values then, well, the more we could make then the more the opps, presumedly with spades, could make.

[Fluffy]

Low score is normally based on everyone using same basic system.

[FrancesHinden]

Jlall, on Jun 13 2005, 09:12 AM, said:

I think you are reading too much into one example hand. I also think the result of opening this hand 2D would be a net negative against opening 1D if you simulated it (based on missing too many games) but obviously preempting style would affect that.

I disagree with this.
If you play a style where this is a down-the-middle 2D opening bid you will not miss too many games, because partner will know this is what you have to open 2D.

It is much harder to work out the benefit (cost) of playing a very conservative style of 2-bid, because the gains & losses come more from the hands that aren't opened at the 2-level.

If you play "conservative" twos (as effectively Fantoni/Nunes do) then
- your game & slam bidding will be MORE accurate, not less, both from opening at the 1-level and the 2-level (your 1-level openers are better defined)
- you will raise partner's opening 2-bid more often, particularly on a doubleton, making it harder for the opponents to compete successfully

BUT

- you will open fewer hands, and your opponents will have an easier time in uncontested auctions, and
- when you do open a 2-bid, the opponents will find the play/defence easier because your hand is better defined

By the way, if I'm going to open all balanced 11-counts, I'm going to play a strong club (or strong diamond, or forcing pass....) system with limited opening bids. I find it too tough if a 1D opening can be either Jxx Jx AQxx Kxxx or Kx AKx AKQxxxx x.

[mike777]

"By the way, if I'm going to open all balanced 11-counts, I'm going to play a strong club (or strong diamond, or forcing pass....) system with limited opening bids. I find it too tough if a 1D opening can be either Jxx Jx AQxx Kxxx or Kx AKx AKQxxxx x."

Agree with hand 2 I got to open 2clubs because of rebid problem.
I hardly call Nunes style conservative weak 2 bids. Conservative weak 2 bidders rolling over in grave.

[Fluffy]

FrancesHinden, on Jun 13 2005, 02:20 PM, said:

I find it too tough if a 1D opening can be either Jxx Jx AQxx Kxxx or Kx AKx AKQxxxx x.

I don't, but I instead find tough that a 1♣ opening can be either AJx Qx AQxx Kxxx or AKQxx Kx KQxxx x.

[hrothgar]

Fluffy, on Jun 13 2005, 10:54 PM, said:

FrancesHinden, on Jun 13 2005, 02:20 PM, said:

I find it too tough if a 1D opening can be either Jxx Jx AQxx Kxxx or Kx AKx AKQxxxx x.

I don't, but I instead find tough that a 1♣ opening can be either AJx Qx AQxx Kxxx or AKQxx Kx KQxxx x.

I find both annoying, however, I know which comes up more often...