I admit it; I'm competitive. I want to be a better player. If I ever go to another tournament, I want to have good results against the top players. I watch curling championships. The announcers describe how different the game is at the top level; better ice, better rocks and more rock action. Because of that difference, local curlers who don't play at the national level, don't have the experience to compete effectively against the other top curlers with that experience. But can I learn to play bridge well at the regional and national level when I only play locally?

I think I can. I think you can too. By sharing my learning experience, I think we can all play better which will make our local game more challenging and drive me to learn even more. And as I learn, I plan to share what I have learned with you.

I have already showed you how to use the graph in personal results to track your performance and even gave some suggestions for quickly improving your results shown on the graph. Now I'm going to recommend what not to use. Don't use the individual and card analysis information in the results below your pair board results. It is misleading. No other pair will have the same average card points, because no other pair played exactly the same boards as you, but every other pair that played the same board as you had exactly the same points as you on that board. And don't use the declarer, dummy, lead and defense information to pat yourself on the back or to criticize your partner, it is misleading. Never criticize your partner.

The declarer, dummy, lead and defense information appears to suggest that is how you or your partner performed, but it doesn't. It hides the fact that the numbers are based upon the performance of your pair, the opponents at your table and the other pairs that played the same board. It doesn't break down whether you're in the right contract, you or your opponents played well or poorly, or whether the other pairs who played the same board at other tables bid or played well or poorly. So don't use this information to evaluate your or your partner's individual performance.

Because after a game, we have the actual hands with our results, we should not be discussing our pair's or our opponent's performance on any board during the round. No matter how good you, your partner or your opponents are, they have no idea whether your bidding or play is good or bad compared to the other pairs that played that board. Don't ask for a lesson. At the table, don't ask your partner or your opponents what you did wrong. That is resulting and resulting is bad. Also, no one should ever ask to see their partner's or their opponent's hands as that can be the first step toward giving an unsolicited lesson. Giving unsolicited lessons, badgering, gloating and intimidating are not acceptable behaviour and are not allowed under Zero Tolerance. The only bridge discussion that should occur at the table is with respect to your partnership agreements or your opponents partnership agreements for the purpose of correcting a misunderstanding.

In this blog, I have recommended what not to do; in a future blog, I will describe how to analyze your performance board-by-board.

OK, that may be an exaggeration. But I expected to do better. Why didn't I?

In order to answer that I'm going to tell you my story. When I first started playing duplicate, I would bid 3 and make 3, but when I looked at the results, I saw that everyone else was bidding 4 and making 4. I quickly saw what my problems were; I was only trying to make my bid and I wasn't bidding high enough. I saw that I didn't understand how to value distribution points when choosing how high to bid. So I learned a bit about distribution so that I too could bid 4 and I started making 4 for some contracts. I then realized that bidding 4 wasn't enough if I couldn't make 4 regularly, so I searched for books on the play of the hand and soon I was making 4 more often. While I was making these changes, I got lots of unsolcited lessons, which just made me feel uncomfortable, and didn't help because that is not how I learn. I then realized that some pairs were bidding 4 and make 5 or more. So I still had the problem of only making my contract. This problem is hard to overcome when you are still thinking rubber bridge scoring.

Because we play 24 boards with 12 rounds of 2 boards or 8 rounds of 3 boards, for beating everyone else a top for 12 rounds is 11 or for 8 rounds it is 7 masterpoints. If everyone bids 4 and makes 4 in the 12 rounds, then they get 0.5 masterpoints for everyone they tie for a total of 5.5 masterpoints (50%) for tying 11 other pairs. If one pair bids 4 and makes 5 or more, that pair makes 11 masterpoints (100%) for beating everyone else, while everyone else loses a half point making 5.0 masterpoints (45%). If you lose to one pair per board and tie everyone else, then your overall score will be 45% even though you bid and made your contract every time.

In the board shown, you are West in 3NT and North led the AH. How many tricks can you make? You have 7 sure tricks AK spades, KQ hearts, A diamonds, and AK clubs. You can give up control twice while setting up your tricks. How will you make 9 tricks?

Duplicate is a game of probabilities. If you have 9 cards in a suit, the probability of them splitting: 2-2 is 40%, 3-1 is 50% and 4-0 is so small as to not be considered. The formula for demonstrating this logic requires some statistics knowledge. Suffice to say, if you play enough boards, with no additional information, then a 3-1 split will occur nearly 50% of time. Making a play that is 50% means that 50% of the time it will work and you will get a good score and 50% of the time you will get a bad score. This is better in the long run than 40% of the time getting a good score and 60% of the time getting a bad score.

If diamonds are 3-1, you can play to lose only lose 1 trick and lose control once to get 4 additional tricks and make 11. There is a chance that the split is 2-2 with the KD onside and finessing means you lose 0 tricks increasing your total tricks to 12. That extra trick might give you a top. And there is still a possible finesse in spades to play for 13 tricks.

If you have 7 cards in a suit, the probability of them splitting: 3-3 is 36%, 4-2 is 48%, and 5-1 or 6-0 is small enough to not be considered. The reason the 5-1 or 6-0 is not considered is that making the safety plays here that you would make in rubber bridge costs you a trick when making an extra trick by not making the safety play may give you a top in duplicate bridge.

Same board, you are still in 3NT but in East and you get the lead of 6C from South. How are you going to make your contract? You have 4 sure tricks and can lose control once because there could be 5 losers: AH, KD and 3 club losers unless they are blocked.

Because of the extra chance to make 6 diamonds, you finesse the KD giving you 10 sure tricks still with the ability to lose control once. You can setup one sure trick in hearts for 11 tricks with the possibility for 12 tricks if the AH is in South hand. But how do you play spades? Do you play to drop a doubleton QS or to finesse? What are the risks and rewards? The QS will be a singleton about 1%, doubleton about 9% and tripleton about 27% of the time. If the finesse loses, you may be held to 10 tricks and a bottom. If the finesse wins and spades are 3-3, you will make 13 tricks for a top. What should you do? Caclulating the probabilities for these plays is beyond my skill. Anyone want to try? On this board, spades are 3-3 and the finesse works. But if you continuously make low probability plays, then over time, you will get more lower scores than you will get higher scores.

This board 19 was played Wednesday morning, March 11, 2020.

A squeeze is an advanced endplay and may be setup when you have one fewer tricks than your contract. Sometimes you won't know where the cards are that you need to be discarded and you will have to assume they are where they need to be in order for the squeeze to work. If they aren't you may go down two tricks whereas if you don't play for the squeeze you may only go down one. Squeezes may not be tried as often in duplicate where each trick down means you're closer to a bottom. But they are a useful endplay in IMP, BAM scoring or Swiss Teams where making unlikely games and slams is important.

The easiest squeeze is the automatic squeeze. Generally, you keep playing your longest suit and your opponents throw away one or more high cards that are keeping you from making your contract. The reason they do this is that as they discard sooner or later they can't protect all the suits. In order for you to make your contract, you need only pay attention to the opponents discards. Your inattention is not your opponents problem, but they are allowed to benefit from it.

The opponents don't mean to keep you from seeing the card they played, but they regularly hold onto that winning card they are discarding and turn it facedown as soon as possible. If you aren't paying attention, you may not see they have thrown away a card you were looking for. If you turn the card that you played facedown, you cannot then ask to see the cards that the opponents have turned facedown. So when you play a card, whether you are declarer or an opponent, release it and leave it faceup on the table until you have looked at all the cards played on that trick.

Final position - simple squeeze
North: S:K9 H:Q
West:  S:QJ H:K
East:  D:J98
South: S:2 D:5 C:J

South leads the last club. West is protecting spades and hearts and must discard one of those suits. If West discards a spade, North will discard a heart because the two spades are now good. If West discards a heart, North will discard a spade because the spade and heart are now good. South now leads a spade as entry to the two winners in North hand.

On the board shown, East will be protecting 3 suits. North is in 6NT and East leads the 3H. How does North make his contract? In order for a squeeze to work, North must rectify the count by giving up a trick so that there are only the tricks he must win remaining. For example, he wins the heart in South (dummy) and leads up to the KC hoping that the AC is in East and not the danger hand West. If you try play it again with 6NT by South, you can find out why West is the danger hand. Use play it again to see the 3 suit squeeze develop when North is in 6NT.

I am not an expert in squeezes, but there is no reason you can't be. This board 12 was played Thursday, March 12, 2020.

I purposely wrote the title that way to remind you that although you may be doing this analysis by yourself with the goal of improving your performance, bridge is a partnership game. You can only be as good as the weakest partner. I've gotten to play with a number of good players, so I have regularly been the weakest partner. My strategy for good results was to have my partner declare most of the time. Doubling opponents ensures partner picks a suit or notrump, while supporting partner's suit early when partner denies support for your suit are two strategies to have partner declare. Also when it appears you have game but no suit, make sure partner bids notrump first.

Bridge has a name for everything. When the opponents bid and make a contract that no-one else made playing that board from the same direction, it is called a Fix. In the old days, less than 3 years ago, we didn't have hand records or the actual contracts or even the lead, so Fixes were about the only reason we could find for poor performance, next to under-bidding or not making the best contract. With this additional information, we can accurately identify other types of reasons, for lack of a better name, some I will call Fixes as well.

One important piece of information still missing is whether the auction was competitive or not. It would be nice to have the whole auction, because you may be like me and can't remember exactly who bid what, but in order to know if an auction was competitive or not, I now record a "C" or "X" on my scorecard beside the board.

Take a piece of paper and write down a column of numbers on the left side representing the boards you played. Divide the rest of the paper into 3 columns. The first column represents what you did well or poorly, the second column represents what the opponents did well or poorly, and the third where your score was affected by the other pairs who played that board. 

Your result: Did you make the same score as most of pairs that played the same board? If not, why not? Some examples: were you in the best contract, did you bid high enough, too high, didn't compete because opponents bid; did you make your contract, did you make more or fewer tricks than other pairs; did you sacrifice and was it good or bad, did you get doubled but no-one else did, did someone else get doubled but you didn't; did you double the opponents sacrifice; and did you take all the tricks you could from the opponents. Write down the reason you believe is correct and the difference plus or minus between your score and the average score. In theory, a plus is where you did well and a minus is where you did poorly.

Opponents result: Sometimes, the opponents win the auction because there is no reasonable competitive action. Sometimes you take more or fewer tricks than the other pairs, not because of your skill but because of the skill or lack thereof of the opponents. Write down the reason you believe is correct and the difference plus or minus between your score and the average score. Don't write the same difference in your column and the opponents column. Give credit or fault to you pair or the opponents, not both.

Other pairs result: I've discussed previously where a pair playing the same board and getting a top or bottom can subtract or add 1/2 point to or from all the other pairs scores. There can be one or more pairs getting a higher or lower score than everyone else. For each of those lower, add 1/2 point and for each higher subtract 1/2 point. Sometimes the total might be zero. You might say, this is meaningless, because everyone else's score who played that board was increased or decreased, but every other pair played a slightly different (6 or more boards) set of boards. This difference in boards could mean an extra or fewer 4+ points over all the boards for you or the other pairs.

On February 24th, while sitting NS, my partner and I came first. Here is a partial analysis of that game.

Board 1: Two pairs at other tables made lower scores than everyone else and this pushed down the scores of everyone else by a total of 1 point. Put a minus -1.0 in the third column.
Board 2: We were in the wrong Slam contract, but I should have made our contract after the Ace Spades lead. I could say I cost our pair 11.0 points, but remember I'm measuring against the average 5.5, so I only record that I cost our pair 5.5 points. Put -5.5 in our column.
Board 3: I could measure my partner's performance against the double dummy result and say his poor play cost us an additional 2.0 points, but we had an above average score anyway and you never criticize your partner. We had an above average score because of pairs at other tables so write plus 2.5 (8.0 - 5.5) in the third column.
Board 4: The opponents stole the contract from us. We didn't compete well enough to get to our best contract of 4S, but we did double and got a good result, mostly because of the pairs at the other tables so write plus 2.5 in the third column.
Board 5: The opponents overbid and then didn't declare well so they gave us 5.0 points in the second column.
Board 6: We bid and won the contract and made all the tricks we could and shared a top score, so we could put 5.0 points in the first column. But we didn't bid our best contract (4S making 5) compared to the double dummy result. Our system would rarely put us into a Moysian fit (4-3), so we wouldn't bid the best contract but we got our best contract for our system. You could say that our shared top was because of the poor bidding or play of the other pairs and instead put the 5.0 points in the third column or divide the points between the first and third column. I prefer to recognize we our partnership did everything well.
Board 11: We competed well and won the auction making all the tricks we could. But we got a better than average score because the other pairs didn't compete as well so put 1.0 points in the third column.

When you finish analyzing all the boards you played, sum up each column. You can then see who made the greatest contribution to your result for that game.

You can see that my partner and I aren't perfect - no-one is. We have pluses and minuses in our column, but we have the greatest number of pluses in the third column. It was a good day for us because the pairs at the other tables made different and poorer decisions than we did. At another game, we may not get any points from the pairs at other tables. That is the main reason your results appear to be almost random.
 

This is my second time playing duplicate with this partner although I had played with her several times socially. Our convention card contains a number of empty spaces and we had only time to discuss the parts filled. She knew I bid competitively, but had little experience with how lightly.

I don't remember the exact bidding, but I remember a lot of passes. I think it went something like this:

N:1H E:1N S:P  W:3D
N:X  E:P  S:3H W:4C
N:P  E:4D S:P  W:P
N:4H E:X  S:P  W:5D
All pass

Once my partner supported my diamonds and then doubled the opponents 4H, I was afraid that any of her tricks in diamonds would be ruffed and that I had no tricks to contribute. So I pulled the double by bidding 5D.

On this board (see results), it appears that only the better players properly evaluated their hands and made it to game. But that could be an incorrect assumption. I don't know what happened at the other tables but a similar auction to ours may have occured forcing them to 5D as well. It is also possible that those pairs that didn't get to 5D, weren't pushed there by the opponents.

After the lead of a heart, according to the double dummy and play it again, declarers in diamonds could win all 13 tricks. Yet most of the declarers in game only took 12 tricks. It looks like experts don't know how to maximize their tricks either. 

I don't know the decisions made at the other tables, but I assumed that if clubs were 3-2, I could limit losses to 1 trick by leading the AC, whereas if I finessed, I imagined a possibility might exist where I would lose 2 tricks. 

In actuality, on a 3-2 distribution (68%), I could only lose one trick, but there was a chance that I could make all three (27%). On a 4-1 distribution (28%), I could only lose two tricks if I was out of trump.

I should learn to quickly evaluate the possible card combinations and how many losers they will generate.

This board 5 was played March 9th, 2020.
 

Having and following good partnership understandings and agreements are important for you to achieve good results. If your partnership agreements change after each game based upon your results in some number of boards, then you are resulting. Resulting is bad.

North American (NA) standard with 5-card majors has defined opening bids, responses, rebids and competitive bids as well as card play signals. Within the NA standard are lots of options for modifying the interpretation of some bids and to add conventions. This standard doesn't guarantee that you will have success on all boards, but on average you will be average, if your play of the cards is average as well. One advantage of playing the NA standard is that you can play with almost any NA player once you agree on the options available. 

Fiddlehead is going online at BBO. One of the rules of duplicate is that the opponents can ask the meaning of your bids and what meaning if any, the cards you play have. This is a good time for you to discuss with your partner what bids and signals you are going to use.

Everyone seem to like playing with the robots (GIB). The robot plays a certain way, decides on bids a certain way and uses a set number of conventions. You may not play that way, but the robot isn't going to change.

Below are links to explanations of the agreements and understandings you will have to use if you are going to play with a robot. I have extracted some statements that show how the robot "thinks" differently from a human. By reading these documents you will gain a better understanding of the discussion you need to have with your human partner.

Good luck. Enjoy your experience online.

GIB System Notes
http://www.bridgebase.com/doc/gib_system_notes.php

GIB Descriptions
http://www.bridgebase.com/doc/gib_descriptions.php

GIB Convention Card
Convention Card

GIB System Notes
Overview
2/1 Game Force with 5 card majors, strong NT, strong (17+) jump shift, weak 2 bids and a strong artificial 2♣.

How GIB Defends

GIB doesn't interpret your signals or make many inferences from the play, it uses simulations based on the auction. However, it's usually able to figure out that when you lead an honor, it's part of a sequence.

GIB usually leads passively against NT (read the book Winning Notrump Leads to understand why). Don't assume it's leading its longest suit. When you lead, it doesn't assume you're leading your best suit, which is why it doesn't always return the suit like a human would.

In suit contracts, GIB's opening lead is frequently a side singleton or doubleton, to try to get a ruff. When it leads a suit bid by the opponents, this is almost always the reason. Read the book Winning Suit Contract Leads for insight on the way GIB leads against suits.

If it leads an honor that's part of a sequence, it uses standard honor leads (K from AKx, A from AK doubleton). If it leads from a long suit, it leads 4th best (but see above: it doesn't always lead its long suit). When leading from 3 small, it leads low against both suit and NT contracts.

It doesn't use any signals when making discards, it just tries to make safe discards. In a suit contract it will frequently discard from a short suit while it has trumps left. Otherwise, it tends to discard from a long suit that's safe to shorten.

When it's following to partner's opening lead, it will usually give an attitude signal:
High spot card with an Ace or King
High spot card with a Queen behind dummy's Ace or King
Low in any other situation
Note that it doesn't give count in this situation, so it's hard to know when you can give it a ruff. 

GIB Descriptions

Hand features
GIB internally describes hands using the following features:
High card points, using 4321 count
Total points = HCP + short-suit points (void=3, singleton=2, doubleton=1 – subtract 1 for each short suit with HCP)
Length of each suit
Quality of each suit
Total losers
Stoppers in each suit
High honors shown or denied in each suit

Why doesn't the robot's hand always match the description?
When humans play bridge, they don't just follow rote rules for bidding; they often use their judgement to find better bids, or fill in holes in their system. We would love it if we could program judgement into GIB, but that would be pretty advanced artificial intelligence. As with many game-playing computer programs (e.g. chess programs that routinely beat grandmasters), we substitute brute computational power for thinking. Many of GIB's rules allow it to perform simulations.