[jdiana]

Now that the new year is well under way, how are you doing on your bridge-related New Year's resolutions, if you made any? What's your plan for improving as a bridge player this year?

This is going to be “TL;DR” for most of you. I guess I’m hoping that writing it down and posting might make it more likely that I’ll actually do it. But if you want to skip all that follows, feel free to just post your answer to the preceding questions. If you do make it through my list, any and all comments are welcome.

My partner went over to the dark side right after COVID hit (i.e., she decided she only wants to play online, whereas I don't really like playing online), so I haven't played in several years while she’s been happily playing on BBO with a former colleague. My main goal for the year is to drag my butt off the couch and back to the bridge club, planning to play with pickup partners, just playing their card and focusing on improving my card play.

This is something I've always needed to do, but I was bitten by the systems bug early and have spent too much time thinking about bidding. Not in terms of playing lots of different systems or the most complicated gadgets out there, but in terms of trying to come up with the ideal intermediate-level, as-natural-as-possible, 2/1 system that strikes the right balance between memory load and utility, covering as many common situations as possible. The goal is to have a good-enough system down cold, so the available bids are automatic (like driving a car) and I can focus on bidding judgment as opposed to remembering what the bids mean. Easier said than done.

During my non-playing days, I’ve been reading a lot here and on Bridge Winners, and watching some recorded online webinars, notably from Gavin Wolpert. So, I’ve picked up some ideas about how to improve my old bidding system. I’ve thought about rebuilding my system piece by piece on a website or something, inviting comment along the way. I think that would be fun, but I should put that on hold for a while and focus on card play, where I’m convinced many more matchpoints are won and lost at my level. (I did, however, recently finish going through the three booklets in "Larry Cohen Teaches Modern Bidding" to review what's considered standard basic bidding.)

Anyway, Adam Parrish has been posting on his Substack newsletter about his plan for the year, under "Leveling Up", which motivated me to make my own plan. It's pretty ambitious and I might not do it all, but here it is:

Bidding in Competition

This has always been a weakness of mine. I’m currently reading To Bid or Not to Bid (Larry Cohen’s book on the Law of Total Tricks). It’s a bit of a struggle but I’m plowing through. My plan is to continue after that with Robson & Segal’s Partnership Bidding at Bridge. I know from the times I’ve skimmed it that it will be even more of a struggle than To Bid or Not to Bid, but I’m going to try to tackle it.

Hand Evaluation

After that, I want to dive more into Losing Trick Count. People seem to either love it or hate it, but I think it’s useful. I’ve read up on it and have tried to use it but want to take a deeper dive and try to really internalize it, so it doesn’t take much time to apply it at the table. I’ll read Klinger’s book, The Modern Losing Trick Count, the Bridge World article by Johannes Koelman, A New Losing-Trick Count, and the first 69 pages of Jeff Rubens’s The Secrets of Winning Bridge (more for general hand evaluation than just LTC).

Card Play

My hope is to do all that in the next 2-3 months, then go back to the club and start playing. At that point, I’ll focus on card play. I asked BBO support to reset my history in Bridge Master so I can start over again at the beginning. While doing that, I’ll be reading (re-reading in many cases) some basic books on declarer play and defense. I’m specifically focusing on shorter books. I don’t have the patience anymore for something like Root’s telephone book on the play of the hand, as good as it is.

I have a specific order in mind, but I’ll just list the books here:

Planning the Play of a Bridge Hand, Barbara Seagram and David Bird
Planning the Play: The Next Level, Barbara Seagram and David Bird
Countdown to Winning Bridge, Tim Bourke and Marc Smith
Introduction to Defense (2nd ed.), Eddie Kantor (updated by Barbara Seagram)
Matchpoint Defense, Stuart Terry and Bo Asserson

If I get through all that, or maybe concurrently, I have some materials on card combinations that I think would be useful.

As I said, ambitious! It’s also possible that I’ll go back to the club and decide that it’s more frustrating than fun to start over again and just throw in the towel and move on to some other hobby for my retirement years. We’ll see.

[helene_t]

My plans will depend on what country I will be living in. As long as this remains uncertain, I will mostly focus on mining the vugraph data. So far I have written an article to the IMP magazine about effectiveness of preempt styles, but there are plenty of other things I can do with the data I have downloaded.

I do plan to attend at least one international bridge festival. Considering Turkey or Israel or Croatia or Sweden. In India I don't think there are any festivals scheduled but I might go for a congress.

[jdiana]

helene_t, on 2025-February-15, 12:55, said:

My plans will depend on what country I will be living in. As long as this remains uncertain, I will mostly focus on mining the vugraph data. So far I have written an article to the IMP magazine about effectiveness of preempt styles, but there are plenty of other things I can do with the data I have downloaded.

I do plan to attend at least one international bridge festival. Considering Turkey or Israel or Croatia or Sweden. In India I don't think there are any festivals scheduled but I might go for a congress.

That sounds like a lot more fun than reading bridge books!

I'd like to read your article on preempt styles. Is it available online?

[mycroft]

Heh, in answer to your question, Jan 1 is just a date for me - what counts is the turning of the seasons; 1er de octubre y beginning of April. The reasons for which are idiosyncratic, I agree, but also obvious.

This winter I had three bridge goals (and one sort-of bridge goal):

• play with my regular partner at least once a week. There are very good reasons for this, given who she is; but the most important one is that we play very well together and I very much enjoy it. Come Spring, I don't expect this goal to change, either.
  
• Learn SMP with another partner who is also working on "from 1990s Precision to...". Hard work, this has been; still working on it; we are doing a decent job however, and I have a biweekly game FtF and the odd online game. Still enjoying this one, too.
  
• Play with players I haven't yet from the local community, especially those I talk to outside the game. I've managed to get a game on the other weeks from 2. above so far; and probably have got about halfway through my "want to" list. This one will probably continue into next year.
  
• (sort-of bridge) Survive this. Context should be obvious; if not, well, I'm not going to *say* anything more than I have in a public forum. We'll see in a week.

I like your goals (it's nice that I can enjoy online play as well as FtF; of course my first login to BBO was when there were 4 players in the lobby. But I absolutely understand those who have a marked preference for one or the other.) For competition, if you are willing to deal with the eventual failures and have a receptive partner, I strongly encourage "compete until it's foolish" - if there's any time you're thinking of competing, do. You will go too far; you will get doubled; you will get a number of bad scores. But until you do, you haven't gone "too far"; keep pushing until you find the line and then, and only then, work out how far back to pull to safety. I find players in general are only willing to take baby steps in "more competition" and take forever to get halfway there.

(please note: I am too timid myself; as evidenced by the number of 800s and 1100s I have (nearly zero), and -110s and -140s and +100s that should be +200s (too many). But still)

[jdiana]

I think I need to add one more goal: not looking at these bridge forums until after dinner (or, at least, much later in the day). I have a limited capacity for thinking about bridge problems and mornings are my best time for this sort of thing. When I get caught up in the questions that are posted here (or on Bridge Winners) in the morning, I use up my best thinking time and often don't feel like reading the bridge books on my list after that.

I had hoped to start a little bit of a conversation about what folks are doing to work on their bridge game. I think it's interesting to hear about what other people are working on, get reviews on bridge materials, etc. But, so far, only two brave souls have spoken up. It's not too late for others to chime in, whoever you are!