[helene_t]

Yesterday, my pd and I participated in the qualification round of the Open Dutch Pairs Championships

The playing director (yes, you read it) grunted at me when I asked him where table number 7 was (obviously it was not his job to answer such silly questions). He constantly shouted at his partner for making so-called bidding mistakes (of course, the TD was the one making mistakes), his face eventually turning red. I've never seen something like that.

He was not the only one. Once, my partner needed to think a few seconds about a discard. Declarer was obviously in a rush, so he grunted "Just discard something, for h.... sake". At another table, I made a tricky grand slam due to a friendly opening lead. The partner of the one who made the friendly lead spent (in my perception, well) minutes shouting at her how stupid it was to lead the jack of hearts. Then he realized that time was running out, so he pushed everyone to play fast while permiting himself to think a looooong time for every bid or play.

While we were waiting for the results, the room was one big cacofonia of aroused bridge players shouting at each other for making stupid mistakes. One player demonstratingly read his newspaper while his partner was shouting at him. It reminded me of the baboon cage at the zoo.

Finaly, our beloved TD was ready to read up loud the results, starting with "And at the last place, with 36.2%, ended Mr and Ms .....". Of course, the main purpose of a tourney is to humiliate the loosers.

How I missed all the typ♥, sr p, gl p, ntp etc. Yes, some of our "experts" here at BBO can be nasty, too, but in comparison ....

Btw, why is it that those who shout at their partners for making stupid mistakes are almost allways the one making the mistakes themselves? I see the same at BBO. Good players seem not to have this emotional need, even when their partners make realy stupid mistakes. Maybe, if it's evident that you are the better player you don't need to do something extra to convince yourself and your partner that it was not your fault?

[barmar]

helene_t, on Oct 17 2005, 07:33 AM, said:

Btw, why is it that those who shout at their partners for making stupid mistakes are almost allways the one making the mistakes themselves? I see the same at BBO. Good players seem not to have this emotional need, even when their partners make realy stupid mistakes. Maybe, if it's evident that you are the better player you don't need to do something extra to convince yourself and your partner that it was not your fault?

If you ever read articles that suggest what it takes to become an excellent bridge player, one of the recommendations that *always* appears is the ability to move on after a bad result. Thus, a corollary is that poor bridge players will post-mortem a bad result to death. And since they're poor players, it stands to reason that their assessment of the reason will often be wrong. Many of them don't realize just how bad they are, they've convinced themselves that their bad results are due to bad luck or partner failures.

Another thing they don't realize is just how much an effect it has on their partners to demoralize them with complaints. They think they're being constructive, but that's not how it's received.

At the Atlanta NABC I was playing with a pick-up partner, and one of the first things he said when we started working out our agreements was "no post mortems between boards, save them for after the round." But I made a few eggregious mistakes (in his opinion), and he couldn't stop himself from criticising, and it made the rest of the session extremely unpleasant for me.

[Blofeld]

barmar, on Oct 17 2005, 09:34 AM, said:

If you ever read articles that suggest what it takes to become an excellent bridge player, one of the recommendations that *always* appears is the ability to move on after a bad result. Thus, a corollary is that poor bridge players will post-mortem a bad result to death.

I think that the actual corollary is that those who post-mortem bad results to death [what a wonderful redundant turn of phrase!] are poor players.

[Al_U_Card]

GOOD partners realize that bridge is a partnership game and they cherish the potential that each partner holds. I have played with many people, some fair players, some good and some even excellent but I only continue to play with those amongst them that are good partners..

[joker_gib]

When I sit at a bridge table, I have only one goal : having a good time (of course by trying to play the best bridge as possible).

My partner and I know that we will make mistakes and we are not there to shout and to criticize each other.

Unfortunately, I think that there are more and more unpolite people at the tables and I have to agree with Helene that I often much prefer to play an friendly team match than any form of tournament !

Alain

[helene_t]

When playing with a pick-up partner I (almost) never comment on partner's play and bidding, expect wdp and ntp and "sorry p, I should ......". But I must admit that when playing with regular pd's, we frequently post-mortem the hands.

The problem is that virtually all bridge clubs devote all their time to the internal competition and nothing to training. So if you can't find time with your pd outside of club hours there is no time to partnership building.

I have a theory that it would work much better if we spent most of the time training with pre-dealt hands related to selected themes and lots of time to post-mortem and general instruction/discussion, and then some, say, eight evenings per year on a real internal competition with zero tollerance.

But for some reason it does not seem to be popular. Part of the problem is, I think, that small clubs have a very diverse audience in terms of skills, level of ambition and bidding systems. So it is difficult to arrange training sessions that are of interest for everyone. One thing we can all do is to play bridge. So that's what happens.

[mycroft]

My out east partner and I had a rule: You get to make one statement or ask one question between hands (as we were putting the hands back, scoring, and pulling out the next one). If it took longer than that, the only appropriate comment was "ok, mark it." Of course, we didn't get snarky, either - we didn't ask the "why did you" or "why didn't you" questions for which the looked-for answer is "yep, you're smarter than I am."

Of course, we made sure to know where the quiet bar near the tournament site was, for those "mark it" discussions.

Michael.