The ZZZ effect

I am fortunate, I guess, that I get to play with, amongst and against some of the best players in Australia. I see firsthand some of their errors, some actions that a club player would be embarrassed to admit to. At one point, I considered writing a post listing some of our top players and a "memorable" hand featuring each one of them. There was no shortage of good data.

I decided against that write-up because other than the hands being obvious delivery issues, there was no unifying thread between them.

Now consider these three defensive exhibits.

Hand 1



North played 4S on the lead of a diamond to the ace and back won in dummy. Declarer finessed the spade, cashed SA,unblocked the DK and played a third spade. East won and returned a diamond, declarer pitching a club. Declarer played the heart ace and claimed as east ruffed.
A club return upon winning the third spade sets the contract.

Hand 2


South played 3NT after West opened 1H and led the SK. Declarer won the second spade and played a club to the jack. East ducked. And nine tricks rolled in.


Hand 3


North played 4H on a club lead won by the Ace. Declarer called for a heart and West played the ace of diamonds, which became a major penalty card. Soon declarer wrote down +620.

These three hands occurred in the last couple of weeks. The culprits on defence were players who have represented Australia on numerous occassions. For all these hands there was an underlying similarity which, to my mind, was the definitive cause for their error.

In each case, declarer took a disproportionate amount of time playing the hand. Over various periods, at least five minutes were taken by declarer just "thinking".

The cause of the delivery failure for the defence was a simple one :
Declarer put them to sleep !

Sitting on the dock of the bay....

Ben Thompson posted a detailed comment here.
Telling ourselves that we are capable of being world class is just classic amateur mental gymnastics to help ourselves be satisfied with our (lower) performance level.

The original quote was
"...best of Australia’s top players are pretty close to the best in the world but their worst is a lot worse...."

which I interpretted as
"best (performances) of Australia’s top players are pretty close to the best in the world but their worst (performances)(are) a lot worse"

With our liberal definition of world class (quarter finalists at a World Championship), I find myself in easy agreement. Not on the basis of any delusions but simply looking at the results over the last 10 years. Made the cut in the olympiad once, the bowl twice, 19th in the world pairs, 2nd in the PABF, 7th in the Cavendish.

No one claimed "We have a bunch of players who are world class"

And instead of running away from the possibility of making the ranks of the elite, my intention is to try and understand the reasons we fail to make the mark consistently. There are plenty of excuses floating around: not enough time to devote to the game; other priorities in life; if only I had the ozone million ...

I see enough who are capable, and have proven so on some occassion, in the big league.

The secret, to me, is in understanding the difference between those best days and the others. And to do something about it.

I do not intend to build some convenient little excuse and then sit on it for the rest of my life.

The mother of delivery

The psychological dynamic is a layer between our actions at the table and our consideration of them in our brain. It has the capacity of affecting either end.
Since it is neither an action nor a thought, its hard to be aware of it.

Delivery is the child of this dynamic.

The following factors impact it.

Before game
Ourselves
Personal station in life
Importance of bridge in life
Amount of rest
Motivation
Physiological state (food/alcohol/sugar)

Our partnership
Belief in partnership
Opinion of partner
Our perception of partner's opinion of us
Belief in teammates

Opponents
Impression about calibre of opponents
Psychological interplay with the opponents' personalities
Expectancy of result


During the game
Ourselves
Attachment to scoresheet
Analysis of completed hands
Tiredness
Motivation
Psychological composition
Preparing for the post-mortem
Analytic Residue
Physical distractions

Our Partnership
Opinion of partner and his actions
Vibes from partner


Opponents
Who is controlling the tempo
The Trend
Psychological interplay with the opponents' personalities
Likely Result


Every bridge player has his own special weighted dynamic. At any point in time, most of the factors will be relevant to our case, a few very importantly so. Some factors may be practically irrelevant.

The relative importance of these factors varies with time.

Next: Some real-life examples.

The psychological dynamic at bridge

In a recent online discussion,Khokan remarked

I reckon that the best of Australia’s top players are pretty close to the best in the world, but their worst is a lot worse, and the bad episodes happen more often (to them) than to world-class players.

In the same thread, he also commented

... I don’t believe there are three clear-cut picks to make the Australian Team – there are at least a dozen (pairs) that could perform creditably in world competition on their day ie make the quarters of a world championship.

I totally agree with him on these points. What is of interest is determining the reasons behind the inconsistency of australia's best at the world stage.And similarly the cause behind why those top-dozen Australian pairs dont have many of those golden days when they play at the level of world championship quarter-finalists.

Going by fundamentals, the solution is easy : Our top bunch has a sufficiently strong concept, but our delivery is inconsistent.

While there is an awareness about this assertion,unfortunately, not many seem to know what to do about it.

We continue (relatively) pointless discussions around merits/demerits of preemption, around four versus five card majors, around count versus attitude, around natural bidding versus relay. We continue to put in(relatively) pointless effort in improving our system, documenting our understandings. We continue to misguidedly attach our competitive ego to our concept.

What we need to focus on, for significant improvement is delivery. And, in the next few posts, I will try to understand, for my own benefit, what delivery is all about. Your thoughts are welcome.

BBO : The dark side

There are numerous ways to capitalize on BBO as a means of improving one's game : Watching international stars on vugraph, partnership bidding, playing against strong opposition.

However, the hope that we will improve by playing , say, 10-board team matches where one can see a live score is misguided. The psychological dynamic in bridge is at least as important as one's skill and the dynamic for such a match is a long way away from bridge. Add to it the fact that there is hardly ever an opportunity to build momentum in such a short match (even with hidden scores).

Eventually, bridge is all about optimizing your delivery and hampering their delivery. BBO play does neither. Hoping to win on concept alone is quixotic.

Hampering their delivery can be achieved by
a) Building momentum on your side by getting strong scores creating fear and uncertainty in their head.

b) Playing quickly and/or in tempo consistently to shake them out of their comfort zone. Strong declarers and defenders use the time when the opposition is thinking to work out their own strategies for various developments. So that when it is their turn to play, they appear to play "without thought". This builds pressure.

c) Physical and psychological intimidation. This is undoubtedly a big factor in the success of some top players, especially versus weaker opposition.

It all boils down to shaking them out of their comfort zone.

Warning: This Post MAY Wreck Your Life

At one point in the Ozone program, I set myself the goal "Every hand I defend, I shall not play to trick 2 unless I have given declarer a hypothetical shape".

At the end of each session then on, I started mentally recreating my thought processes at the table. It was easy to assess whether or not I was really clued into the hand at trick 2. I discovered that my hit-rate varied between 60 and 90 percent or so. There were a vast number of reasons for failing to crunch the numbers : from wondering about the previous hand to thinking about getting lunch; from a sense of being in a daze to semi-consciously skipping counting.

Intrigued about similar mechanisms employed by others, I quizzed some of the top technicians around. Not only did they count every hand, but they counted all the time. They started during the bidding, made the lead with a shape in mind, quickly reassessed at trick one and stayed on the ball all the way.

I found this strategy a lot easier to emulate. Some of the reasons are

• The mental burden is lesser as the effort is distributed over a period of time.
• It is easier to incrementally adjust previous beliefs than to start an exercise from scratch.
• The whole playing experience is smooth as one is continuously "thinking" .
• The is a diminished need to identify the key moment in a hand (to stop, think and count).

I wish somebody had told me about this years ago.

Inculcating this approach takes a fair amount of mental discipline but improving efficiency using this method is probably easier.The demands on the energy are greater but somehow our attitude and resolve drive the outcome a lot more than our perception of our own energy reserves. Reminds me of Rodwell.

Here is an example of counting-in-action :

We pick up
AJx
xxxxx
Axxx
A

LHO opens a strong no-trump.
"3334"
I find giving 4333 shapes to no-trump bidders to be the most flexible. Since we are short in clubs, we expect length in declarer's hand there.

RHO bids stayman.LHO bids 2H.
"3433"

RHO bids 3NT.
10 points in dummy, 15 in declarer's hand plus 13 in mine. Partner has two

LHO passes.
No four spades
"3433"


...................... (East)
...................... 9xxx
..................... AKx
...................... Jx
...................... Jxxx

(South)
AJx
xxxxx
Axxx
A

Partner leads the club 2.
Dummy has 9 points. Good. Partner can have 3.Since partner has four clubs (C2 lead),so does declarer.
"2434" or "3424".

I can see more spades between me and dummy (seven) than diamonds (six). So its more likely that declarer has fewer spades.
"2434"

Club - 2- x- Ace - x.

Declarer seems to be in good luck in the club and heart suits. Looks like a time to be active.
2434 declarer. Q10xx in spades in partner's hand should be enough to do the job. If I switch to a spade, that gives declarer 4 hearts, 3 clubs and 1 spade for eight tricks. I can rise diamond ace to get our 5 winners ( 3 spades and two aces) before he gets his ninth.

Here, it is important to control the impulse as chesss adage goes "If you find a good move, look for a better one".

What about the diamond switch ?
Partner needs to have only the diamond queen. If declarer's shape is 3424, we do not even need the diamond ten to beat this contract ! Our diamond switch would give declarer 4 hearts, 3 clubs and 1 diamond. We can hop in with the spade ace and get our 5 winners (3 diamonds and two aces) before he gets his ninth.

Are we really at the crossroads ?

There is a (relatively) simple answer to this problem which is......?

The dirty C word

A bridge player aiming to improve needs to grow on three planes : understanding, application and psychology.

Improving understanding relates to concept while improving application and psychology relate to delivery (terms originally defined here).

Today, lets look at one aspect of improving application : Count.

Once our bridge growth takes us to the stage of being advanced, we realise that counting shapes and counting points is not that hard. However, we tend to use this process only when we feel it is worthwhile. Some days, we diligently count away every hand while on others we get into the auto-pilot mode. Most days, our approach is a mix of the two ; stopping to fully count only when we feel either unsure or lost or sense that the critical point in the hand has been reached.

Let me quote Bobby Wolff from his book The Lone Wolff
"Much is gleaned about the other hands once dummy is tabled. I am not always exactly correct but I can approximate the distribution of the other hands at that stage and have a better idea than most players about where the high cards lie.Then, after the next few tricks, the distribution becomes a virtual certainty and the high card information falls into place.Is this unusual? No ! Not only is it not unusual, but there would be no way you could be among the top one hundred players in the country if you didn't do this on every deal. You must count each deal, which requires concentration, work and more work, and then you must possess the discipline to work some more after that. Envisioning the unseen hands is second nature to an expert."

And quote Bob Hamman from his Bols Bridge Tip
"If you are ever to amount to anything at this game, you must build up a picture of the unseen hands. The idea is to know what the problem is before you try to solve it."

True value from counting comes only we apply ourselves fully on each hand. Whether defending a slam or those overtricks in 1NT. We need to accept that a justification like saving energy is an excuse. If counting each hand tires us, we need to improve on our energy reserves.

Next post, I intend to share some thoughts and techniques on conditioning us to consistently count.
Meanwhile, am very interested in the thoughts of what works or worked for you guys.

Struggling for Objectivity : Emotion Part 2

A comment by Eric Rodwell in an interview struck a chord
"The key" says Rodwell, "is to use energy constructively.”


When I next saw him at the Yeh cup, I asked him to elaborate. He did not seem very enthusiastic about detailing his thoughts, possibly worried that they might be viewed as frivolous. After I prodded him a bit, he shared with me a great insight and I am quoting him (not exact words, but hope to have captured the intent) :

"For example, one drain on energy is emotion. I find that I play my best game when there is no emotion involved. Emotions based on the state of the match, being pissed off at partner, hatred for the opponents or a hand where we got a poor result are distractions. They hamper my game and I try to stay clear of them.

However, different things work for different people. I know some people who can not play their best game unless they have enough emotional energy coming out of the same factors that do nothing for me.”

And then the line that I liked the most
“I find that emotion distracts one from the process of being objective.”

Struggling for Objectivity : Emotion Part 1

In my last post, we started looking at a hand that I misdefended.
The full hand was



On a heart lead, declarer won the Ace to play a club. I won the CA to continue a heart as declarer pitched two diamonds. Now declarer unblocked the club queen from dummy and played a low spade.

Even though the apparent Suicide Point had been passed, Tony was on the ball and rose with the Spade Ace just in time for us to be in control. He continued a heart as declarer ruffed with the SJ (ruffing high does not work either). I overruffed and played a club for down 1. In a pure technical sense Tony's play is not that hard to find. But, at the table, it’s a play that will slip past many.

The reason being that our struggle for objectivity is hampered by emotion. Here, the emotion might be of dejection (at my end) or derision (at Tony’s end) or resignation(at both ends). The Suicide Point is nothing but an excuse for a bridge player letting emotion cloud the need for objective analysis.

There will be more on emotion in another post, including the views of Eric Rodwell.

Meanwhile, another example of this phenomenon occurred in the match between Team Lavazza and Australia-PABF. Sementa as West returned a club at trick three. The play progressed to the same juncture as at our table and Duboin stayed on the ball to hop with the spade Ace. But when he returned a heart, Sementa overruffed and tried to cash the Ace of diamonds.

Makes me look like a legend !

Struggling for Objectivity : Attachment

A very valuable skill in bridge is the capacity to be objective at the key moment.

Identifying the moment is the first step. This is not easy and many contracts are misplayed or misdefended by a lack of appreciation of the importance of the very next card. The stronger the player, the more adept they seem to be in identifying the time to stop and think.

Say we appreciate the moment and the depth of the situation is well within our concept. Ideally, a thoughtful, strong player would assess the evidence, examine the likely outcomes and then choose an approach that optimises his result. At the table, however, this is not how it always plays out.

Lets look at one of the causes for failure in this domain. Attachment.
Here’s a hand that I found myself defending in the Yeh Cup (Round 2 of the Swiss)



As West, I led the 3 of hearts (3rd/5th) to the nine – ten – Ace. Declarer played C6 at trick 2. I rose CA (partner played the 3, reverse count) and stopped to think.

It appears that declarer has either the singleton heart Ace or Ace third. At some early point in the thought process, don’t know exactly when, I decided that declarer’s hearts were Axx.

The rest of the thought went something along the lines of..
“That gives partner J10 doubleton heart, which fits in with his trick 1 play. If declarer had the singleton Ace of hearts, partner would have played the 2 of hearts, reverse count, as he knows for sure that the ace is stiff. So, yes, while on surface, I have a guess between the two heart layouts, I should trust partner and go for giving him the heart ruff.”

Developing this piece of analysis, I decided to try and create a layout which fit in with my conclusion. After some more thought, I came up with …

Yes, that fits in with the requirements, declarer can’t play trumps from hand. That would explain the need to cross to a club.

At this point, I was feeling very objective, very rational, very clear. All the good feelings one has on one’s good hands. So I continued a heart as declarer pitched two diamonds.

Right as I played the heart, the tension of the moment was broken and I saw the flaw in my assumption. From partner's point of view, I may have led a singleton so he was possibly making the natural play from JTxx.

And later thought reveals that the layout I created doesn't fit with the facts. If the diagrammed layout above existed, then declarer would win the HK in dummy at trick 1 and play a spade.

Post-Mortem

Superficially, I conducted a survey of the evidence, evaluated my options, came up with a solution and checked its validity. In truth, a weighted agenda was in operation. The J10 doubleton layout was non-traditional, the element of trusting partner’s play gave the idea a romantic twist and the validity check was hasty and erroneous.

It was more a case of wanting to believe in something, and then doctoring the evidence to go along with it than an honest search for objective truth. That is what I’ve termed attachment.

Attachment, however, is a practical reality for a bridge player. It is impossible for us to be number-crunching machines with no biases from our general attitude to life, our partnership history, our temperament and a host of other things.

What we can work on, however, is self-awareness. Our awareness of our biases can aid the pursuit of objectivity.

GM Jonathan Rowson again comments on the difference in attitude between weaker and stronger players in chess. Weaker players come up with a hypothesis and then seek to justify it by calculating variations that prove it right; the stronger players try to falsify the hypothesis by attempting to prove it wrong.

If you've grappled with similar issues or have some thoughts on the matter, please feel free to comment.

Still to come...What was the full hand and what happened ?

When you hear hoofbeats, think of Zebras

I've been working on a piece on improvement at bridge for this blog but while that comes together, here are some links you might enjoy.

Chess is a subject where the psychological issues have been explored in some detail. There is a lot of juicy material in the book Chess for Zebras by GM Jonathan Rowson.

While you wait to borrow/buy this book, you might like going through two interviews with the author that are more readily available here.

Around bridge improvement, Justin Lall wrote a thoughtful post here.

And back to the chess world, Phaedrus the great came up with a brilliant chart that translates almost bit by bit to bridge. One day I will try and make sense of this chart in a bridge context.

The Fifteen Thousand Dollar Question

A lively discussion about the merits of selecting the Australian team has been underway here and here. One item that has not been mentioned yet is the only time in recent history where Australia had a selected team. “Australia-Selected” (Nunn- Hans, Fruewirth-Delmonte) featured at the Yeh Cup 2009.

We had a good run in the Swiss to earn our place in the double-knockout. We lost our first life to the eventual winners, Netherlands. In our second avatar, we found ourselves in a three-way match with Meckwell Inc. and the Indian national team. 16 boards against each with only one team out of three to go through.

We won the match versus India convincingly but lost to USA-Hampson by 5 imps. There were three key moments ; if any of these three sway our way, the team qualifies for the semi-final and rates to make atleast 15,000 AUD(teams tending to split prize-money in the last stages of this tournament).

Hand 1 features who else but the imp chimp …..

KQx
KQ
xx
QJ10xxx

All vulnerable, East Deals

Rod --- Nunn --Meck--Chimp
West --North --East -- South
--------------------P ------1C
1H ----- 1S ------ 4H ------ P
P ------- X ------- P ------ ?

The ancillary context can be set by stating that we play 1NT as weak in this position. 1S shows 5+ spades and partner would have bid 2S (fit-jump) if he had 4 clubs in his bag.

Let’s start with some snippets from the smoking area.
“4S. Isnt it automatic ?”
“4S. In all these close decisions, I find it best to just bid.”
“4S. Surely you can’t pass. The chimp passed ? What a tosser” J

Moving on to the chimp, at the table. My thoughts (actual bids in bold)


(Picking up the hand) “ What to open ? Nah, 1NT (12-14) is too weird. We don’t do this shit. Its not even close. Easy 1C”

(1C – 1H – 1S – Meck hesitates for 4-5 seconds) “Meck hesitating. That doesn’t happen often. If he bids 2H, I bid 2S. If he bids 3H, hmm, am I going to get bullied into 3S. Probably. Don’t like it with KQ doubleton heart. Don’t know.”

(1C – 1H – 1S – 4H) “ 4 Hearts? Pass. Ha. You are not getting away with this one. 4S is a suckers’ call. I am not falling for it.”

(…. P – P – X) “Hmm.. The situation is practically the same as over 4H. T cant have 4 clubs so can rule out the double fit. The bit about 4S over 4H might apply with Kx of hearts but with KQ, no way. We are certainly not making 4S. (*) Pass”

(*) = flashback to a comment by Tony. “I like to bid when we have some chance of making our contract. Don’t like pure sacrifice bidding”

(Having pushed the tray through) “ This is a key moment. I can feel it. But I’ve already made my bid. Still standing with pass. Hope this goes down. No way are we making 4S”


The first key moment for our survival ends here. The whole auction took 30 seconds.
4H doubled made. 4S would be down 1 in practice.

Appraisal

An hour or two after the hand was over, I had filed this one under “My concept around these 4S-over-4H situations potentially needs to be reassessed. It was a conscious decision to pass 4H and that’s my concept. So this certainly wasn’t a delivery issue”

A more truthful assessment at a later date highlights the issues within the delivery
-- The realization that it was a key moment sunk in only after the bid had been made and the tray had been pushed back.
-- The emotional ego-agenda around “Wont let them bully me”.
-- The flashback to a comment by Tony which was in a different context.
-- Lack of awareness, at the table, of a historical personal issue with 4S-over-4H themes. Has bitten me before, ANOT 2008 hand versus Ed among others.
-- Considered the angle of partner denying 4 Clubs but did not consider the angle of extra offense in partner’s hand (6 spades or heart void)

If I had managed to break tempo for this decision (realize key moment, realize complex assesment required), wonder what decision would I have taken ?

However, in my attempted reassesment of concept, I polled some of the top players around who did not know about the hand. I have learnt that asking the opinion of someone who’s seen a hand-record is a meaningless exercise. We have an innate retrospective bias and when there exists a fine line between two actions, the influence of the succesful result is strong enough to hamper objectivity.

Helgemo : “4S”. It made an impression on me how quickly he bid 4S. “No doubts”, I enquired. “None”.

Brogeland : “4S”. A bit slower, if I recall correctly. But maybe it was someone else who answered that.

Versace : “ This is a difficult hand, you know…….(walks along with me)….In general, my style is to bid. But here it feels wrong….(walks some more)…It depends on partner’s clubs. We could have a double fit ..( I interject the inference about partner denying 4 or more clubs)….Oh well, I guess I pass, but I am not happy about this”

Me, I am the happiest chimp in the planet. Who cares about fifteen thousand dollars if Versace thought it was right to pass ? Who cares about the smoking area wankers ? Oh well, that’s a relief.

Anyways, a few hours pass. We are now playing the IMP pairs. There is a lot of prize money, but my heart somehow is not into it (delivery issue), we finish a round and I feel a tap on my shoulder.

Its Versace, fiddling with his hair as he speaks.
“You know, I have been thinking about that hand. I think its right to bid. Sometimes partner’s diamonds are Q third or something like that. (walks along to the smoking area). At pairs, I would pass. But at teams bridge, I think I should bid. If we go one off, they go one off, it will not be a disaster. Yes, at teams, I keep my teammates’ score into the equation. I think 4S is right. But passing is not an error. You passed? Yes, what happened ? What were partner’s diamonds? Oh, they made….Well….”

I am caught between the amazement of the way his mind works, that he thought it was worthwhile coming back to me to share this opinion, and the disappointment of not being to able to console myself that I had some august company.
By now, however, Lauria has walked over and I request Versace to ask him. He fires off in Italian. Lauria take half a second “I Pass” and walks off in a huff.

I decide to disappear from Surfers before Lauria changes his mind.