[khall56]

In regard to importance, what percentage should be assigned to bidding and what percentage to play of the hand?

[mtvesuvius]

97.564% irrelevant and 99.313% already covered in another thread.

NOTE: My percentages may not be exactly accurate. I rounded down for elements of stupidity, and rounded up for carelessness.

[aguahombre]

That reply by Adam to a first-time poster might single-handedly bring back downvoting.

I hope someone can find the other thread for him.

edit: I found it

http://www.bridgebas...__1#entry530457

This post has been edited by aguahombre: 2011-July-11, 17:35

[mtvesuvius]

I thought it would be fairly easy to scroll down. Apparently I was wrong.

[Bbradley62]

mtvesuvius, on 2011-July-11, 19:03, said:

I thought it would be fairly easy to scroll down. Apparently I was wrong.

You may or may not have been wrong, but you were most definitely rude.

[semeai]

Welcome to the forums, khall56.

As aguahombre mentions, this has come up recently. Notable in that thread, in my opinion, is this post by awm, which references this thread by bluecalm, which has actual data for this question at the expert level. There's also this post by jlogic (and more by him and others, which I'll leave you to find yourself) expressing the seeming consensus opinion that most of us who are at a point where we would be asking this question should really be studying cardplay over bidding.

[jmcw]

Bbradley62, on 2011-July-11, 19:35, said:

You may or may not have been wrong, but you were most definitely rude.

Rounded to 100%

[ggwhiz]

I have about 1/2 a life and so have not seen the previous threads on this legit subject. Who can have .113 of a life and round the percentage to a 3rd decimal place?

IMO, card play is where it's at. In my neck of the woods we have a lot of Polish players that bid like they are criminally insane.

They get away with more than 50% by playing the cards so well.

[Free]

X% to bidding and (100-X)% to play. Based on aproximately spent time on average, I'd say X = 28.57. But based on results, I'd say X is even less.

[rduran1216]

among really good players its almost 100% bidding IMO. And really its making judgement calls more than anything, which come up in cardplay and in the bidding phase. However I think bidding is more important, because you can often rewrite a wrong in the cardplay, but you've got no chance when u make a sac. which is gonna fetch -800, or 4H goes down and you're in 4S -1. or in partscores where u can set them 2 for +200 and u overbid to +140. This is especially true in matchpoints IMO where bidding is more important. In imps cardplay is way more important I think.

Humoring someone with your thoughts can't be that hard guys.

[Free]

rduran1216, on 2011-July-12, 16:25, said:

among really good players its almost 100% bidding IMO. And really its making judgement calls more than anything, which come up in cardplay and in the bidding phase. However I think bidding is more important, because you can often rewrite a wrong in the cardplay, but you've got no chance when u make a sac. which is gonna fetch -800, or 4H goes down and you're in 4S -1. or in partscores where u can set them 2 for +200 and u overbid to +140. This is especially true in matchpoints IMO where bidding is more important. In imps cardplay is way more important I think.

I'm thinking the exact opposite of every word you wrote here.

[helene_t]

In the other thread there was this very good post by FranceHinden, which explains why many people overestimate the importance of bidding:
http://www.bridgebas...ge/page__st__60

Different bidding decisions almost always lead to swings. This may give the impression that making the best bidding decisions is the way to win. But that is not true: sometimes the worst bidding decision happens to give the best result, say when you bid and make a 20% slam, or when you fail to bid an 80% slam that would have gone down because of an unlucky split.

On the other hand, different lines in cardplay often don't lead to swings even if one line is safer (and better) than the other. But when they do lead to swings it is usually (not always, of course) the player who took the better line that wins.

A similar thing can be said about opening leads, I think. The opening lead is very often critical so if you were a clairvouyant who always makes the winning lead you would be a world champ. That is not to say that always making the best lead would make you a world champ: sometimes it is just a guess and it could easily be that the opening lead that is "best" (in the sense that it has the best probability of setting the contract) works poorly.

[mtvesuvius]

Free, on 2011-July-13, 01:08, said:

I'm thinking the exact opposite of every word you wrote here.

Me too -- And of course Lurpoa upvotes it!

[rogerclee]

1) If you are an expert bridge player, it's very hard to make a bidding mistake that has no/little chance of working. However, it's still quite easy to make a play mistake that has no/very little chance of working. It's much more valuable to stop making the second kind of mistake than the first, since the second kind of mistake is much more damaging on average. If you think the first kind of mistake comes up way more frequently, it is probably because you are disproportionately bad at bidding and good at cardplay, or you are so bad at cardplay that you fail to recognize your cardplay mistakes.

2) At all except the very highest levels of play (late rounds of open world championships), cardplay is more important. Bidding is only more important at that level because the level of cardplay is already so high.

3) The level of cardplay in a routine bracket 1 regional event (supposedly "expert" level) is very low.

[rduran1216]

I think my rationale is a double dummy one. Assuming optimal play, there's no coming back from being in the wrong contract.

Yesterday for example, I took a r vs. w sac where both sides make 10 tricks, played in 3NT with a 5-3 major fit when suit or NT both make 11 tricks, competed to 4c over 3M when doubled down one was better than -140...etc.

Play mistakes are much more common. I agree that the nuts and bolts of winning at most levels is playing the cards well. But I'm responding on a theorhetic basis where we assume strong levels of both bidding and play.