Weekly Hand Analysis - February 14, 2022 - Vic Johnson - How can you Improve your bridge playing?

 Question 1:  What steps should a person in the Monday Morning Bridge group take to improve their bridge game? 

Question 2 follows Question 1. 

Question 2:  How do you know when you are improving?  I took this quote from a youth bridge website:

‘ Outcomes are your scores. Unfortunately, scores have a randomness factor. You can play a hand well and get a bad score. You can also play a hand poorly and get a good one. You can even play flawlessly for a whole session and get a mediocre score, or play mixed and get a great one.’

Based on this randomness how does one know they are improving?

Vic:

QUESTION ONE - Steps to Improve? 

Answer:  Play the Game 

No teacher/book/computer program/ whatever can “learn" you how to play bridge. Resources like those can only “teach” you how to play bridge. The learning is up to you. And the only way to “learn” the game is to play the game. It is that simple. 

Analogy: No teacher/book/computer program/ whatever can “learn" you how to ride a bike. They can teach you where to put your hands, where to put your feet, how to propel yourself forward, how to stop. They can give you helpful hints (the slower you propel yourself forward, the more difficult it is to balance). They can even demonstrate how it is done. But ultimately, it is up to you to summon up the courage to fail, then take a deep breath & get on your bike & shove off. And if you crash & burn, you need to bandage up or give the broken bones time to heal, then summon up your courage, take a deep breath, & shove off again. 

You want to improve your bridge? Then you need to dare to fail, summon up your courage, take a deep breath, & play bridge whenever you can. The more you play, the faster you will learn. The less you play the slower you will learn. And no teacher/book/computer program/ whatever is going to change that dynamic.  

At least half of the time you play you should endeavor to play with/against players who are better than you are. We call that “playing up”. A steady diet of playing only within a group of people at your own experience level will not pay dividends very quickly. Basically, you simply reinforce the faults you are all making & extend the status quo with little expectation of improving very much at all. 

I do NOT recommend online games against the robots, especially for inexperienced players. The robots are programmed to play a system which I believe is called GIB. You can read in detail about that system on the ACBL website, but I do not recommend you do so. It is bizarrely different in numerous ways from the Standard American or Two Over One bidding system you have been taught. To make matters worse the robots frequently do NOT have the hand that clicking on their bids tells you they have - sometimes not even close. They lie big time which can be frustrating to the extreme. 

I highly recommend a program available on line called “Bridge Clues”. You will find six hands that you can play for free that change daily (circa 6 pm). The hands will put you on the spot to make decisions about bidding or play of the hand, then lead you thru a critique of the decisions you make. Do the Beginner & Level One hands for sure. It is a great way to learn. Google: “Bridge Clues”  Choose: “Get Started" 

QUESTION TWO - How to Measure? 

Answer: Long Term Trends 

How frequently are you making your contracts? How frequently do you find yourself wishing you had reached a different contract? How frequently are you setting your opponents contracts? How frequently do you make games you did not bid? How frequently do you bid games that can’t possibly be made? Is the frequency of any of the above better this month than it was last month? 

In addition to the questions posed above there are many others. But you need to figure out a way to track them over time. One good session or one bad session can simply be luck of the draw.