Do Bridge players ever improve?
I have been looking back at the scores in our annual Wednesday competitions over the past 3 years or so and have noticed that partnership scores over the period are remarkably consistent.
If you put pairs in order from the highest to the lowest averages the order hardly varies over the period. This seems to me to be a bit unexpected. You would have thought it possible to identify at least one pair who have improved their average by quit a lot year on year. I can not find anyone who fits this description!
You could possibly argue this is unexpected as relatively new partnerships should be able to discuss and improve their methods and their scores.
Why doesn't it happen? I have one idea that it is not enough for each individual to improve by reading books on technique and bidding-it must be the partnership that implements these improvements. This rarely happens, unless you are married to your partner, when there is much more opportunity for discussion! We all know there are other reasons why husband and wife partnerships don't always succeed!
Another reason may be that many of us play in only one level of competition i.e we play against more or less the same pair in the same clubs for most of the time. This leads to a kind of 'averaging down' effect as we don't test ourself against other (better?) opponents.
I have been trying out a little online Bridge recently and one big difference is when you are dummy, you get to see all four hands being played. This can be very instructive -and rather frustrating when you see your partner missing obvious plays for the contract. Maybe this is part of the answer-play with your regular partner on the internet! What is your theory-what is the best way to improve?
If you put pairs in order from the highest to the lowest averages the order hardly varies over the period. This seems to me to be a bit unexpected. You would have thought it possible to identify at least one pair who have improved their average by quit a lot year on year. I can not find anyone who fits this description!
You could possibly argue this is unexpected as relatively new partnerships should be able to discuss and improve their methods and their scores.
Why doesn't it happen? I have one idea that it is not enough for each individual to improve by reading books on technique and bidding-it must be the partnership that implements these improvements. This rarely happens, unless you are married to your partner, when there is much more opportunity for discussion! We all know there are other reasons why husband and wife partnerships don't always succeed!
Another reason may be that many of us play in only one level of competition i.e we play against more or less the same pair in the same clubs for most of the time. This leads to a kind of 'averaging down' effect as we don't test ourself against other (better?) opponents.
I have been trying out a little online Bridge recently and one big difference is when you are dummy, you get to see all four hands being played. This can be very instructive -and rather frustrating when you see your partner missing obvious plays for the contract. Maybe this is part of the answer-play with your regular partner on the internet! What is your theory-what is the best way to improve?
posted by Joe Ridyard at 6:02 pm
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