BBO Discussion Forums: Where do you leak the most points? - BBO Discussion Forums

jogs, on 2013-April-17, 17:44, said:

I am convinced that I will never understand that post.

aguahombre, on 2013-April-17, 18:18, said:

Tricks are magically generated by a wizard who lives on top of a mountain.

FrancesHinden, on 2013-April-17, 15:55, said:

I generally agree with the second quoted half. However, I think you might be thinking along the lines of "if they compared you to the best possible Bridge player, where would the largest gaps be?". I think it's also useful to focus on egregious errors, as measured by the occasions you do something differently from similar-level peers, and that something either backfires or should've backfired.

Personally, I just look at boards I did poorly in and then ask others how they got a good result (or try to figure it out). It won't make me a Bermuda Bowl winner, but it can teach me why I lost a particular session. Moreover, you can see if types of mistakes seem to repeat themselves, and then you've found a leak. So far it's been working "pretty well", by which I mean I felt I was making progress and results within the context of that club improved.

Every tournament (and the larger clubs) always distribute hand records at the end of the tournament. I always compare what actually happened at our table versus what the hand records say should have happened. I do it primarily to identify holes in our system.

Often we get a below average board through absolutely no fault of our own. This happens when e.g. the opponents bid to 3 of a major and made the 9 tricks that the hand records say they should make versus a large part of the field that bid to 4 going down 1. Alternatively, others that stopped in 3 but were allowed to make an overtrick.

Bad results such as this simply get discarded.

Slams and opening leads imo. Probably not a coincedence they are the hardest to get right and also are super high leverage (lots of imps swinging on small edges, like whether you bid a 52 % slam or not).

Also not sure if this has been said but I bet a lot of people (even experts) are leaking a ton on overtricks and undertricks and don't even think anything of it since they make their contract or beat the contract. Not taking a superior line or just cashing out to beat something one when you should clearly do something else and maybe beat it 2 risk free is a huge leak. Say you have a 50 % chance for an overtrick risk free and you lazily don't take it, you have blown have an imp of expected value which is a massive error. The worst is getting +100 instead of +200 or w/e when they are vul, that is massive.

Also at imps many people are blowing a lot of imps on undercompeting on partscore hands. Those 5 balls are very important.

Maybe I just think this because I think these are 2 of my strengths and I consciously try very hard to avoid doing these things. Many people don't even consider these to be errors or underrate their importance.

I don't know.
What is more, I'd lay odds that most of the answers here are wrong.

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I don't think that is the question or answer for 99% of most of us.


my point is you don't understand the THE Question ...when you do........you move to 99%


200,000-300,000 acbl players.....

Vampyr, on 2013-April-17, 06:27, said:

Not necessarily. I have more often forgets from "simple" systems that are different to what I'm used to with occasional partners than from "complex" systems that make more sense to me. The issue isn't simple/complex, it is familiarity. And the admonition to play a simpler system doesn't help if you play with multiple partners unless everyone agrees to play the same system (which is rare outside people learning together, or pros all playing the same system with a client).

While I agree with Frances' post in principle, and as an answer to the question as posed, I think it's less useful for improving. The fastest way I've found to improve is to schedule a full post-mortem the day (or two days) after the session. At the time I had the luxury of working in the same office as my regular partner, so after the Tuesday game we'd print off travellers on Wednesday lunchtime, and analyse each board including the good ones - OK, board 1 we got a misdefence and they let us make an extra overtrick for 90%; board 2 we gave it back by choosing 4M over 3NT; board 3 we defended well to keep the overtricks down; that was worth 65% because it wasn't fully obvious but wasn't a work of genius either; board 4 we stopped in partscore on a game board and got a deserved 0 - why? How can we fix it? - board 5 oppo were the only pair to bid the obvious grand, well, that's rub of the green...

Even if you can't do that, it helps to look at any board where you score 20% of the MPs or less (or -4 IMPs, or...) Do this on good sessions as well as bad, and know where your advantages are as well. There's no gain in deciding your bad boards all come from preempting too aggressively if all your good boards also come from aggressive preempts, for example.

JLOGIC, on 2013-April-18, 00:12, said:

I belive you that this is important in the field you play in, but I doubt that this is true for the rest of us.
If I spend my mental energy for a second undertrick or an overtrick, I may have some serious problems with hands in the second part of the match.

32519, on 2013-April-17, 05:05, said:

If that is your problem, you should simplify your system.
The net benefit of the latest over-complex gadgets may well be negative.

Rainer Herrmann

Years ago, our team all used the same methods (bidding and carding). After each session, we were able to enjoy a comprehensive post-mortem: call-by-call and card-by-card. The whole team were ideally qualified to arbitrate on any partnership dispute. We discovered that we averaged more than two mistakes per player board, even in in matches won against strong teams. We weren't double-dummy result-merchants. We crimed only genuine mistakes. Bridge is a forgiving game. Most mistakes go unpunished (sometimes because opponents make compensating blunders). When we added up the imps that our mistakes could have lost, however, they often amounted to over 100 per player, even in a 24-board match. Some of our most costly early failures were in bidding judgement. Later, once we had learnt our complex methods, we found they reduced bidding-stress and drastically reduced the scope for judgement errors. Anyway, mistakes in defence and play are more clear-cut and easy to recognise. IMO, careless and mechanical errors (e.g. misbids, revokes) are the worst because they're easy to avoid.

PhilKing, on 2013-April-17, 18:27, said:

Does "they" refer to the posts which aquahombre doesn't understand?

helene_t, on 2013-April-18, 07:18, said:

Tricks - I will fix the original post.

Trusting partner / partner trusting me in slam bidding was a big one last weekend.

Agree with JL about grinding a little more for overtricks, especially when time is not an issue, as well as his other points.

JLOGIC, on 2013-April-18, 00:12, said:

How about penalty doubles? In long matches, you just don't see a lot of these, and you hear a lot of "wow, I really wanted to double (guess I'll take my plus 150 and win 1)".

Phil, on 2013-April-18, 08:26, said:

This is also a big problem in pairs. How many times have the opponents stolen your part score, going for -100 when you could make 110 or 140? Almost every time this happens, I end up saying "I was thinking of doubling...."

For me it's not being able to quickly get over a disaster/bad result and move on. I get tilted too much and then I make very bad judgment calls. Thus my bad sets are usually started by a disaster and then snowball. Having a policy of no discussion/commenting of hands during a set has helped get rid of some of this. The opps love it when you get upset over a disaster, so I try my hardest to not give them that edge/satisfaction, but it's incredibly difficult. In my opinion playing well is hugely psychological.

JLOGIC, on 2013-April-18, 00:09, said:

Are you talking about total swings here, or EV lost compared to optimal bidding/play? Missing a 52% slam is s.th. like -0.4 IMPs EV. I guess that's not big but not really small either.

I gain most points from opponents's bad defence and bad judgement in competitive auctions, and leak points by making the same mistakes.

Playing IMPs (which I don't do very often), obviously slam and game bidding costs relatively more.