[Fluffy]

How should you play against a superior team?

This question is often addressed on this forums, and some people think your approach should be different than others.

I recreated the close match played on NEC Cup semifinals 2008 between The Latin (Diego Brenner, Frankie Frontaura, Federico Goded and myself) against team Mahaffey (Bjorn Fallenius, Peter Fredin, Fredyk Nystrom, Peter Bertheau).

To do so I used the vugraph archives recreating all real boards. I then picked one of the 4 sits who had something interesting to do on the hand, and again recreated everything that happened on the board. This means that as long as you act the same as the player you are subbing on this hand did on 2008, your partner an opponents will act exactly the same way. When you make different decisions I have made my best guess about what would happen in that case.

The hands are real so don't expect hidden problem positions or something, there are partscore hands, games, slams, etc.

I made 20 hands only, corresponding to the first half, it took me quite a lot of time to do it, even had some friends test them to improve the quality of them. If people like it I will add the 20 hands from the second half later.

At the end of each hand you will be able to review the play on each table and compare scores with them, also you will see how other users performed on your same position.

To keep track on the database about your scores, I need a nickname, this means that registering/logging in is required. Registering is totally free and done in one step, not even a real email address is needed. If someone registered already but forgot his password please email me or send me a PM on the forums.

NOTE: If you perform poorly on a hand, your nickname won't show up to other users, it will be hidden as anonymous, so don't be shy and register.

To play the hands you just have to go to my webpage and click on NEC cup Challengue, or you can also click here directly if you are lazy.

[Cyberyeti]

Are there any system notes for the opps, like what their 1♦ opener shows ?

There are also 2 boards where I'm not allowed to do what I want and it matters. I've commented to you within the website.

[ArtK78]

I rely on the advice of Zeke Jabbour. He told me that the best way to deal with a situation where you are a significant underdog is just to play your best game and let the chips fall where they may. You might be surprised how well things can go when you play your best game.

[Fluffy]

They play natural, but open 1♣ on most balanced hands I think, I just used vugraph archives coping alerts, if there is no alert, they didn't alert it at the table.

[aguahombre]

Fluffy, on 2013-October-01, 10:16, said:

They play natural, but open 1♣ on most balanced hands I think, I just used vugraph archives coping alerts, if there is no alert, they didn't alert it at the table.

I found that the Bali operators rarely showed alerts and/or explanations, even though it was obvious that disclosure would have been made at the table.

This omission has been less prominent for other tournaments, but still ocurred often. IOW, the premise is unreliable for what you are trying to do.

[Fluffy]

Yes and no, I found the alerts of 1♣ to be very well explained at both tables, so no big issues. This match was very well covered with alerts. Not everything is there but the most important really is.

[aguahombre]

O.K. I overlooked that you were working with a specific match.

I was focussing on observations from the Venice Cup and from Levin/Weinstein vs Fantunes.

In the latter, we could see on live video the seemingly constant alerting, pointing, and sign language ---none of which appeared in the bidding diagrams.

[mikeh]

I admit to being not great on navigating websites so I may be missing something easy: but I was having great difficulty moving to the next hand when I finish one. I played no. 1, and couldn't get to 2. I came back later and was able to do so, but now can't get to 3!

[Fluffy]

you need to show scores at the end, and click on the green button

[mikeh]

Fluffy, on 2013-October-01, 11:52, said:

you need to show scores at the end, and click on the green button

I did and all I got was the results of the 2 hands.....did it three times, which is a pain since I had to replay bd 2 each time, and still when I click 'new deal' don't get no. 3. I am using internet explorer fwiw.

[Fluffy]

I see, I am checking.

[Lord Molyb]

Lost 45-53 after crumbling in the last 5 sets (I was up 45-28), I played rather aggressively compared to normal which led to good results for the most part.

[Fluffy]

There will be a second half to recover

Mikeh, the web logic makes you rotate through 2 different pages, one is teamset.php where the scores are shown, and the other is playprob.php where you play hands, playing a hand again should not do you any good. From the scores in the playhand page there is a green button that says "next hand" what it actually does is just send you to the scoring page. Where you can click on the link to next deal.

If the green button is making you replay the hand then somehow it is acting as the "Replay" white button, which is wrong.

[Cyberyeti]

I won 40-27 or similar, but on 2 hands I wasn't allowed to do what I wanted and it mattered, one of them definitely cost me 13 IMPs, not sure about the other.

[gnasher]

I like playing real hands - it means I can make a mistake and get away with it.

[Winstonm]

I've always found the best thing to do is check and double check dinner reservations followed by a review of which couples will be joining us and which will not. As I have usually been the underdog, I have found that it doesn't much matter because bridge is a high skill game and over a reasonable length of time the better team almost always wins.

Ergo, enjoy the experience and relax - just make sure you know where you are eating and with whom after the loss.

[Cyberyeti]

Winstonm, on 2013-October-02, 08:09, said:

I've always found the best thing to do is check and double check dinner reservations followed by a review of which couples will be joining us and which will not. As I have usually been the underdog, I have found that it doesn't much matter because bridge is a high skill game and over a reasonable length of time the better team almost always wins.

Ergo, enjoy the experience and relax - just make sure you know where you are eating and with whom after the loss.

That's defeatist talk, even good players are not immune from bad days, and you have to be ready to cash in. Example, in the UK's main KO in a team of no real names, last 16, we drew the #3 seeds, 2 current internationals, the rest senior internationals. They bid 3 poor slams in set 2/6 making none dropping 63 IMPs in 8 boards. We all played really well in sets 1-5, meaning that while they put on a few IMPs in those sets, they were still 40-45 down going into the final set, at which point there were some fireworks and they got most but not all of them back.

You have to take your absolute A game in and hope that your opponents don't. In the last 8, we played Frances's team, it was very close for a long time, and they pulled away in boards 49-64. If they'd not brought their A game, we'd have won that one too, but unfortunately they did (and won the trophy that year).

[akwoo]

Cyberyeti, on 2013-October-02, 09:12, said:

That's defeatist talk, even good players are not immune from bad days, and you have to be ready to cash in. Example, in the UK's main KO in a team of no real names, last 16, we drew the #3 seeds, 2 current internationals, the rest senior internationals. They bid 3 poor slams in set 2/6 making none dropping 63 IMPs in 8 boards. We all played really well in sets 1-5, meaning that while they put on a few IMPs in those sets, they were still 40-45 down going into the final set, at which point there were some fireworks and they got most but not all of them back.

You have to take your absolute A game in and hope that your opponents don't. In the last 8, we played Frances's team, it was very close for a long time, and they pulled away in boards 49-64. If they'd not brought their A game, we'd have won that one too, but unfortunately they did (and won the trophy that year).

This really depends on just how bad you are.

I don't doubt that me with 3 teammates at roughly my level could pull off an upset on a really lucky day.

But if you are the average club player who

a) doesn't have an agreement which suit to open with 4432 (interthread duality, Acol context)
b) doesn't know what a count signal is, AND
c) can't keep track of the cards remaining in your long side suit without losing count of the trumps out

then you don't have a chance.

(It's also true that you are very unlikely to enter an event where you'd play a long match against a top team, but facing one in a 7/8-board Swiss is not at all out of the question.)

[Cyberyeti]

akwoo, on 2013-October-02, 11:05, said:

This really depends on just how bad you are.

I don't doubt that me with 3 teammates at roughly my level could pull off an upset on a really lucky day.

But if you are the average club player who

a) doesn't have an agreement which suit to open with 4432 (interthread duality, Acol context)
b) doesn't know what a count signal is, AND
c) can't keep track of the cards remaining in your long side suit without losing count of the trumps out

then you don't have a chance.

(It's also true that you are very unlikely to enter an event where you'd play a long match against a top team, but facing one in a 7/8-board Swiss is not at all out of the question.)

In a swiss you just hope a series of good thin games don't make and you stay out of them, in short matches anybody can beat anybody.

[Fluffy]

I am very happy with how things are developing, nearly 100 people have tried in 2 days, and very few give up on first deal so they should be enjoying.

It took me 5 days to program the hands, and a couple of months to do some other stuff on the site, but that work is done, so I could do some matches more often, even better if I implement a couple of improvements for partscore defences.


Also happy that....

Spoiler

Some people have matched my awful scores on the first 2 boards, I was afraid nobody would.

On board 1 even 2 guys managed to beat me getting -500 in 4♠ and -470 in 3♦X

Board 2 was a lot harder, only 3 guys matched -670, (2 of them I'd rate as experts, the other is unknown to me). When slam is very good. This hand taught me the hard way why you need slow trump tricks to double partscores and fast tricks are better used for offence