Posted 2005-June-02, 14:58
Wow. Then there was a day when I had a discussion on-line about bidding system with Fred Gitelman. Goosebumps. I love this site.
OK, here's my view, which is that of a total non-expert.
Many people start playing kitchen bridge and don't really have any "system" to speak of. As a result, they get a lot of experience playing in atrocious contracts. And their playing develops to compensate.
When they begin to learn a system, they start actually playing in somewhere near the appropriate contract a lot more often. There is a sudden jump in their success.
This may be where the seed is planted. If learning a system made me get better, then super-learning a super-system will make me get much better.
The reasons the math for that doesn't work have been expounded.
The more complicated the system is, the easier it is to forget, confuse, be derailed by interference, get exhausted, get focused on the wrong thing.
If you combine that with the fact that:
- Most systems will take you to the same place almost all of the time anyway. The hands which fall in the seams are quite few.
- Of the ones where they differ, a percentage of them they'll be better and a percentage will be worse.
- Then there's the factor of how your system is understood by or interacts with the opponents and their system and play.
- All the other errors and the fog of war
I can certainly see where Fred can say that superior players are indeed that, superior PLAYers not superior bidders.
Again, I have no idea what the world looks like when the people playing are actually very good bridge players. No doubt at elite levels it's a whole different world.
For myself and my partner, we started with a very simple system. I mean VERY simple. We had to keep alerting because we were playing such a simple system. All strong twos for example. And we played it and played it until we felt we had it cold.
And as we were playing hands, we'd notice times when the "system" failed us. What's the answer to that problem? And after some discussion we'd decide to make an addition or modification to the system. So with each modification we would say:
- our system has this problem
- let's see what we could change to solve that problem
- then let's consider if we amde that change how it would change other things.
The result we keep hoping for is more hands in which we can make a rebid that "fits" as opposed to one we have "wedged in", causing our partner fewer rebid problems.
We aren't done of course, as has been said it maintains our interest, and again each time we add something it's with the idea that we are trying to address this problem or that problem.
You have to remember that a "system" is just a construct trying to place a randomly generated hand into a category that lets you arrive at the appropriate contract. A "perfect" system cannot exist. It is like theorizing a perfect language. Since the goal is communication the test is really whether you and your partner 1) understand each other and 2) can communicate complex thoughts clearly. I know there's no body language in bridge, but I swear there's intuition. And at the end of the day, the system is a way of describing this dialogue with your partner. It is an Australian accent more easy to understand than an American? Well, it is to another Australian. I hope you take my point. The partnership is what matters.
The very few times we have done what amounts in our world as "well", it was because our opponents seemed destined to impale themselves on our spears. We just sat back and watched them misbid, misdefend, and fired an occasional penalty double in to seal the deal.
As I say, I don't have anything of value to add to a discussion by experts (I probably shouldn't bury the lead like that) but I do think this:
Over 90% of the people I play with and against and observe playing on BBO are getting far smaller marginal returns working on a bidding system than they would gain working on their defense.
Just my opinion. I am probably wrong. Just ask my partner.
Help
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