Imps & Team Strategy
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Tom Bodett said “In school, you're taught a lesson, then given a test. However, in life, the test comes FIRST.” Here’s your test: A Quiz: Strategems for KO & Swiss Teams You are selecting your teammates from available acquaintances. List your preferences from 1-7? Their nicknames are: Mad Dog ____ Old Reliable ____ Lucky ____ Quick-Draw ____ The Rock ____ Slam-Bam ____ The Sunny Optimist ____ How many IMPs are available on each deal? ____ On average, how many IMPs change hands in a 7-board Swiss round? ____ In a 24-board KnockOut Match? ____ How many IMPs swing on your bid of 3NT making 4 versus 4H making? ____ How many high card points [HCP] in a bridge deck at team play? _____ Then expend the effort to ESTIMATE them during the bidding, then work to revise your count during the play of the hand! Which of these bidding maxims is MOST applicable to teams. If you have a choice of reasonable bids & one of them is 3NT, then bid it. [Hamman's Law] Prefer majors to minors. Bid a major suit before a minor suit. They can overbid opponents at the same level & score higher. Prefer length to strength. Long trumps will usually make tricks in the end & allow a greater level of control during the game. With a misfit bid cautiously; with a good fit be bold. 3NT, HQ led, you hold: AKQ AK 642 J8642 & dummy flops: 753 53 AKQ53 T93 ¿How do we count tricks & proceed at IMPs? After your LHO opens with a weak two in spades, you find yourself in 3NT. LHO leads the club 2 instead of a spade. How do you avoid RHO leading the spade Qx or Jx through your K64 KJ86 AT2 AK8? Your dummy holds: 82 AQ7 K853 9753. Is it too late to read a good text on declarer play? Must you be math-y to play well at teams? No, that’s why we are NOT emphasizing probabilities & statistics today. West North East South As South, you hold: AQ864 A64 KT4 J8. ¿Bid on, Pass or Double? With your flat 14HCP & 3 QT Bidding: 1S one should pass. Very unlikely that both 3H & 3S make; they MAY both go down. If we trade 100 for Pass 2S Dbl Pass 140, it’s just 1 IMP. The double swing if we bid 3S & go down while partners fail in 3H could be 5 or 3H Pass Pass ? 6 imps Helpful Bridge Quotes “I have always believed that your attitude toward your partner is as important as your technical skill at the game.” -- Rixi Markus, 1st women WBF GrandMaster “Bridge is essentially a social game, but unfortunately it attracts a substantial number of antisocial people.” -- Alan Truscott, bridge editor New York Times “A woman's inner sense of value tells her that bridge is not really a matter of life & death, but a man, whose ego is at stake, is a much harder fighter & treats bridge as a challenge to his mentality.” – anonymous observation on gender differences – Do we agree? “A man shouldn’t oughtta open his mouth, unless he got a hand to back it up. -- Cowboy on TV’s “Gunsmoke” Long-time world bridge champion & Dallas Aces member, Lovable Bob Hamman, put it this way contrasting IMPs & Matchpoints? Who do you think were the two best heavyweights who ever fought? I don't Now take the same two fighters, blindfold them & tie one hand behind their backs. really care who you pick, but take those two fighters, both at the peak of Divide the ring diagonally with a solid barrier & put a heavyweight on each side of their careers, put them in a ring & let them slug it out for 15 rounds. the barrier. Now go down to the local tavern & collect 20 drunks. Place 10 drunks on Whoever wins is the champ. That's IMPs. [Espec. KO Teams] each side of the ring & let the fighters go at it. Whoever knocks out his drunks first is Classic Bridge Quotes by Jared Johnson the winner. That's matchpoints! How to Learn & Improve More Effectively Hungarian László Polgár, interested in the proper method of rearing children, believes that "geniuses are made, not born". Before he had any children, he wrote a book entitled Bring Up Genius! Since he knew Chess (& Esperanto) he taught his 3 daughters. Judit (b. 1976) & her older sisters Sofia & Susan are the best women chess players, not just in Budapest but the world. They speak 4-8 languages. How effectively are we using our bridge practice time? I'll wager most of us, by our presence at the OTR & at THIS mini-lesson, have recently played more bridge than usual. Now, let's make the most of it! I will ask you this: Are you playing more than once per week? Are you examining matchpoint results & hand records? Do you dovetail reading about bridge with playing? Are you discussing bidding & defense with partners who are ALSO striving to improve? Do you use the hands in our monthly ACBL Bulletin to practice your bidding with regular partner(s)? Just sitting at a bridge table, numbly following suit, does not bring out our best. Science shows that "Deliberate Practice" is to be sought. [Psych Prof K. Anders Ericsson, Florida St Univ.] One of Ericsson's core findings is that how expert one becomes at a skill has more to do with how one practices than with merely performing a skill a large number of times. An adept learner breaks down the skills required to become expert & focuses on improving those skill chunks during practice or day-to- day activities Key ingredients for success are: striving to improve, failing, studying how to do better, & increasing frequency of feedback. Did you know that if feedback is not appropriate quality (either from an instructor or from self-reference to an information source), then the practice tends to be ineffective or may even be detrimental to learning? “If a student does not practise often enough, reinforcement fades, and he or she is likely to forget what was learned. Therefore, practice is often scheduled, to ensure enough of it is performed to reach one's training objectives. How much practice is required depends upon the nature of the activity, and upon each individual. Some people improve on a particular activity faster than others. Practice in an instructional setting may be effective if repeated only 1 time (for some simple verbal information) or 3 times (for concepts), or it may be practised many times before evaluation (a dance movement).” In a different & popular sphere, how do aspiring American Idols improve? How about “Dancing With the Stars" winners? There are 2 popular books built on Ericsson's research, citing many examples in practice. You may have heard that 10,000 hours or 10 years is needed to become expert in a given sphere. YMMV He writes: "People believe that because expert performance is qualitatively different from normal performance the expert performer must be endowed with characteristics qualitatively different from those of normal adults." "We agree that expert performance is qualitatively different from normal performance and even that expert performers have characteristics and abilities that are qualitatively different from or at least outside the range of those of normal adults. However, we deny that these differences are immutable, that is, due to innate talent. Only a few exceptions, most notably height, are genetically prescribed. Instead, we argue that the differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain." K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer. The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. Psychological Review 1993, Vol. 100. No. 3, 363-406[1] Geoff Colvin, Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, 2008 Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How, 2009 Most of us compete more often at matchpoint duplicate. Here’s a more detailed comparison to highlight preferred strategy: Topic Form of Scoring Matchpoints Pairs IMPs (& often Chicago or rubber bridge) Overtricks important Quite, in pursuit of overtricks for a top Not – 1 or 2 IMP swings are negligible. Safety Play Neglect, in pursuit of overtricks. May endanger Take any measure to ensure contract or increase odds of contract, take a 50%+ chance for overtrick(s) making. Bidding “skinny” games / slams Be careful, but optimistic. Strain to bid 40% vulnerable game. (45% non-vul) How to explain 7 off 1; other table only in game? Preemptive opening calls When in doubt, preempt. 4 vulnerability cases: Rule Tighten up those preempts. Pay close attention to suit texture. of 2, 2½, 3, 4+; pressure opponents; warn partner KJ8642: recipe for giving up a telephone #! Seek sacrifice bids Fine calculations pay off, especially when non- Don’t take risky save versus par result. Consider bidding 1 vulnerable more on distributional hands – match can hinge on a double- game swing. Against opponents’ sacrifice Use all your skill to estimate chances if you bid on. Take a sure plus (2+-trick set) rather than risk going set yourself if unsure. Part-score battles Balance rather aggressively, especially non-vuln. Push to the 3 level only if confident of a 9-card or greater Bid on with “quacks” (Qs & Js) in YOUR suits & trump fit. Special care when vulnerable. controls in theirs. Part-scores doubles 200 against vulnerable opponents is matchpoint Double with trump tricks, nasty surprises for declarer, GOLD compared to all part-scores expecting down 2.