A Philosophy

You've gotta have a bit of philosophy about the game, a look at the broader picture and at the long-range picture, along with a measure of acceptance of the fallibility of human beings. This is not just advisable for promoting harmony in a partnership, but I dare say will help one's game at the same time. I will start with the expectation of or at least wish for infallibility.

Now, nobody's claiming infallibility or explicitly demanding infallibility of a partner. But just as in the larger society around us where nobody's claiming infallibiity, but you sure don't find many people fessing up to specific mistakes and stupidities, so in bridge you sure do find an awful lot of people critiziing partners as if a total absence of mistakes were their due. As for demanding infallibility of oneself, I haven't seen it, though I would suspect that there are a few who berate themselves for inconsequential or impossible-to-foresee mistakes, and that can only do grave damage to their game. You've gotta know you're going to make a few missteps during the course of a bridge session, and certainly need be as tolerant of those errors as you need be of your partner's (which I'll get to in a minute). As for outright blunders, which I define those obvious errors that should have been avoided by virtue of what you should have known at the moment of the (serious) error, well even experts make them every so often. And as for the general run of players on OKBridge, it's unlikely that many players, skimming off a handful of the top players, can get by (26-board) sessions with fewer than two. And that's just a minimum, allowing for more.

A footnote I can't resist interpolating here: Richard Pavlicek has an absolutely mahvelous web site on bridge, here, and I would recommend any bridge player, budding or expert to explore it. I mention it because within an hour of penning the above paragraph, I was on his site, and found him writing, "Don't look for perfection." Italics his. I'm always a little intrigued by these coincidences where someone unwittingly corroborates something I've just written. In any event, the fact that he not only mentions the futile expectation of perfection but italicizes his advice made me 'spect that he must have seen a bit too much of this expectation himself. Just my belief.

But it's the partner relationship that would appear to be most in need of a little philosophy. Of course you're entitled to refuse to play with anyone whose level is not conducive to a pleasnt game for you (unless it's your wife). But you're not going to get that perfect partner, the one that makes just the bids you would make, the decisions you would have made, in effect, your clone on the other side of the table. Those errors that could not have been foreseen, could not have been worked out

The bidding of the slightly aggressive partner who has just taken you to an unmakable slam must be balanced against the times he's taken you to a slam only a third or quarter of the field is in. The same holds for the slightly conservative partner. He missed a slam? Well, what of it? Has he not keep you out of many an unmakable contract others were diving into? I would suggest that there's plenty of room in bridge for the slightly aggressive bidder and the slightly conservative bidder. The word "slightly" is vague enough, of course, that my thesis cannot be refuted -- or proved. But I think the point is clear: you just can't, there's just no percentage in jumping on an otherwise satisfactory partner for overbidding game to an unmakable slam, or vice-versa, for underbidding when slam was there. On a piecemeal basis. And if this partner is a chronic overbidder or underbidder, then as said above: you're entitled to drop any partner that just isn't in the ballpark, either too high or too low (or in the wrong denomination) for your tastes. That's your right. Of course, it's your right to be stupid, also, and drop a partner for missing one slam.

I have in recent years had two partnerships bust up over missed slams. In the first totally irrational case, a woman sprang a surprise variation in a convention on me, without having told me beforehand, and when we thereby missed the slam, since I couldn't read her mind, she proceeded to hector me online. I wrote her a later e-mail protesting that it was entirely inappropriate to hector me on-line, where I didn't have the space to defend myself, for not recognizing that she was using a variation. I never heard from her again. The other case involved a man who jumped on me, online, for a missed slam. I do believe he used the word "we", but since I knew he regarded himself as infallible, I took it as a person attack and responded, evidently more vociferously than he appreciated, that we could discuss our bidding later. Nor was that the first time that session that he'd jumped on me. By that evening, I was told that I was rude and that I was no longer his partner. And the funny thing is, we had been beating everybody that came our way. We could miss a few slams and still beat them. But that wasn't good enough.

Philosophy is also necessary, I would say, to counteract what I have called "The Fear Factor". By this Factor, I'm thinking of those declarers that get so uptight about the possibility of going down -- I don't say "failure", since that doesn't necessarily constitute failure -- that they fend off all risk until they've made sure they're going down. This is very common. My poster boy is the hand where declarer had a perfectly reasonable grand slam, needing only a finesse against the Q of clubs. Declarer stayed away from that suit for the first 10 tricks, perhaps inviting a 2-trick set, which might mean a little something, and then with three tricks to go and the possibility of a losing finesse staring him in the face, he put off that dire prospect of losing a trick two more tricks! He went to the A K of clubs, and surrendered a trick to the Q of clubs, sitting before the A K.

How do I know declarers are intimidated by the Fear Factor? If the above is my "poster boy", then the other cases are necessarily a little more subtle and tenuous, and the answer to that question is that I don't know and don't claim to know the cast of another person's mind with certainty. Nevertheless, I can only say that it often, very often, seems to be why a declarer has chosen that losing path. Indeed, I would say that of examples in the category "Finessing" almost all indicate a declarer who said (substantially), "I can't bear going down right now, chancing that setting trick right now. I just put it off." And that's a powerful number, not to mention the many cases I didn't enter since I already had so many.

The duplicate player should also have some knowledge of, a bit of philosophy about the scoring, indeed, I would say on three levels for the duplicate player, to wit: (1) Nobody's perfect. Okay, it's been said, but you can't expect to make every contract, set every contract by the opponents, no, not even every one that can be beat. (2) The scoring system invites "overbidding" from time to time. That is to say, the game and slam bonuses make up for several risky bids that don't pan out. More than make up. But don't get reckless, now. (3) And lastly remember that you are playing duplicate, so bad luck will be met by your peers, while at the same time, and not to be overlooked, they'll take advantage of unusual good luck, and you'd better be prepared to do so yourself. As for necessary risks, you've gotta take 'em. C'mon, now. Sometimes I wanna yell out, "It doesn't matter," (i.e., whether a finesse works or not). Oh, it's hard to find a pure "It doesn't matter," but there are a lot of cases, and ineed, the day before I'm first writing this, I decided to institute that category. It doesn't matter whether the finesse is off or not, because if it's off for you, it's off for everybody. But it does matter if the finesse is on and you're skeered to take it!

1. A defeated contract does not mean you have ipso facto bid or played poorly. The need, I might call it, to go down occasionally is built into the scoring system. That is to say, bonuses built into game and slam bids invite some dancing around these higher bids for those bonuses, accepting in good grace the times you go down. Al Scheinwold once said that if you're hitting about a 90% of your doubles right (he may have said 80%), you're not doubling enough. Now his point wasn't that it if you're at that high level you should go out and make some bad doubles to bring your percentage down, but that you should be chancing more doubles for the rich rewards awaiting you even as you see a greater percentage go wrong. I don't know if he said the same thing about ordinary contracts, but I would suspect that he did, and if he didn't, I'll say the same thing: if you're making 90% of your contracts, you're probably too tame a bidder, seeing many a game and slam bonus slip by. Of course in contracts, with recorded hands as in OKBridge, you can go back and note how many good contracts you didn't bid.

2. Nobody's going to get 'em all right. We'll all be a tad underbid here, a tad overbid there. Even with a number as small as 26 boards, I think it'd be tough -- I won't speak for the experts -- to get through without once under- or overbidding. Particularly irksome, I would say, are those who point to those magic hands where everything falls in place. How come you didn't bid it? Oh, come on. You can't anticipate those magic hands any more than you can anticipate the converse, where nothing goes right and the timid bidders who are in a partial come out ahead. Your goal isn't to beat those guys on every hand but on most hands, just as I might say your goal shouldn't be an unattainable perfection but rather to make fewer goofs than those other guys do.

3. And for duplicate players, it should be even clearer, more ingrained in their consciousness, that their task isn't to bring home a positive score, exactly, though you'd like to as often as you can, but to bid well and play well, period, to play as productively as you can with the cards dealt. I have seen any number of hands where I could say, "But it doesn't matter whether the finesse is off or not," meaning that they were in a fine contract, and if the finesse is off, well, it's off for everybody, but if it's on, you don't wanna be one of a handful who didn't take it. Yes, if a queen, for instance, could be dropped, then it does matter what you do, but you can't determine the minority of times a doubleton queen sits after an A K J. You'd do well to stick with the field on rather open-and-shut hands with the hope of pulling ahead on the tricky ones.
See my discussion here on the value of meeting difficult hands. See an anecdote for a long-winded anecdote