[AL78]

DavidKok, on 2022-October-27, 07:08, said:

Just play bridge to the best of your ability, and your opponents will make enough mistakes that this will put you ahead of the field most of the time.

I try to do this but it hasn't worked that well for me over the last five or six years, hence why I tend to believe my bridge has regressed over the years.

[gwnn]

DavidKok, on 2022-October-27, 07:08, said:

I couldn't disagree more. The boards where I win the most are the ones where I have a standard, sometimes even boring, auction and my partnership agreements, methods or declarer and defensive play are simply better than those used by my opponents or throughout the rest of the field.

When you say "standard"/"boring", I guess you just mean standard auction for you, not for the field, right? In many fields, people are passing wayyyy too much and I win boards by overcalling "light" and just posing problems to my opponents that other opponents in the field will not face.

[DavidKok]

gwnn, on 2022-October-27, 08:51, said:

When you say "standard"/"boring", I guess you just mean standard auction for you, not for the field, right? In many fields, people are passing wayyyy too much and I win boards by overcalling "light" and just posing problems to my opponents that other opponents in the field will not face.

Yes, precisely. Define a partnership style and write a set of system agreements, then stick with them. When my partners felt the need to go 'anti-field' and (deliberately) deviated from the call they thought was best we frequently ended up in a horrible spot. Conversely, the number of times that we compared scores in teams where I opened with "all boring hands, probably very flat" and we ended with "win 18-2, I guess those competitive decisions were problematic after all" far outranks the number of times that anti-percentage actions gave us the necessary edge. Being a consistent bidder is extremely good for your score.

AL78, on 2022-October-27, 07:56, said:

I try to do this but it hasn't worked that well for me over the last five or six years, hence why I tend to believe my bridge has regressed over the years.

I think the solution to this is to reconfirm your style and partnership agreements, not deviate from them. It's a tough game, and every hand presents multiple decisions all of which may be critical. Also a lot of the bridge problems you've posted were simply the cause of incorrect action by your partner(s), which is difficult to fix.

[pescetom]

I'm afraid DavidKok is right. Even a good Director makes more than 2.5 errors per evening, many players will be well over 25.

[AL78]

pescetom, on 2022-October-27, 13:55, said:

I'm afraid DavidKok is right. Even a good Director makes more than 2.5 errors per evening, many players will be well over 25.

On a bad day my main error is turning up.

[P_Marlowe]

DavidKok, on 2022-October-27, 11:02, said:

<snip> Also a lot of the bridge problems you've posted were simply the cause of incorrect action by your partner(s), which is difficult to fix.

I agree, the way to do it, is
#1 play regular with the same partner, learning his system / way of thinking, not correcting / teaching him anything new
#2 trying to arrange the seq. in a way, that lead to common situations for him, that may mean scaling down the agressive
preempts (maybe with the exception with preempts to the game level)
If you have the better judgement, try to give yourself a chance to listen, let partner do the talking (and for that matter
let the oponents talk)

[gwnn]

DavidKok, on 2022-October-27, 11:02, said:

Also a lot of the bridge problems you've posted were simply the cause of incorrect action by your partner(s), which is difficult to fix.

Cattle prods and/or candy can do the trick.