Organised Chaos! > IAC Matters
Crazy?
kenberg:
Ok, I have an idea. The hand below was played by very good players. Here they are simply named South A, North A, West B, East B.
http://tinyurl.com/y7do7k2m
Imagine four IAC players, named South B, West A, North B, and East A.
Is it technologically possible for possible to to have a match where North, South, East West A are one team, and North, South, East West B are another team so that the play goes as follows?
The IAC players play the hands. At the other table the result is 3H down 1. The IAC players are then given an imp score just as if they were in a live team game.
For example, perhaps at the IAC table S plays 3D making 5, +150. The NS at the other table are +50. So that's 3 imps to the IAC NS pair.
Now, if this much is possible then I can imagine something like this:
Let's say we get 24 players, enough for 6 tables. Each IAC team of four plays 12 boards. Each board goes as above. We could rank the 6 teams by their imp scores, or not, that's not really the point.
Afterward, we could select a few of the boards and look at what the experts did, what the IAC players did, and see if there is something to learn. I could imagine myself helping some with this sort of discussion. The point is that players could look at what the experts did. They could listen to something I say if they wish, but I would recommend looking at what the experts did first. But we could discuss.
If the technological problems of setting this up can be solved, I think the rest could go pretty easily. If a player disappears, his pard could just see if he can find someone else. Or we stick in a bot. The matches would go on at whatever pace they go at (within reason). It's not like a movement where one late person screws up the movement.
My thinking would be we take some match and just choose 12 consecutive boards from it. I think most hands can have interesting features, and it can be misleading to put up a bunch of boards that require some special exotic gadgetry. I would try to find matches where the bidding agreements are not too exotic. Although exotic can be in the eye of the beholder.
As you probably can imagine, I like this more than some other things we have talked about because the primary learning experience would be from playing hands, and then seeing how experts played the same hands. The conversation would flow from comparisons.My goal would be to become superfluous.
onoway:
it's an interesting idea. Hoki does something similar in that the hands he brings to his play and discuss sessions are generally hands from Vugraph or some international tourney, or sometimes from a bridge text. I think they're great but it's frequently a battle to get people to sit.
What is the thinking behind all the players at a table being on the same team? Wouldn't that be likely to lead to some possibly questionably cooperative bidding and play?
kenberg:
i didn't mean for all the IAC players to be on the ame team. Let me illustrate with a hand, board 9, from the USBC
http://usbf.org/docs/vugraphs/USBC2017/html/USBC2017_F_1_s1.htm#bd9
Let's say you and I are at the live table, sitting NS, playing against yleexottee and whiterabbt as EW.
The open room result is at the other table.
Our partners would be the EW pair, Diamond/Platnick. Joe and Anne are partnered with Nickel/Katz.
We play the boards at the IAC table. At the other table, Nickel/Katz, blast their hides, have bid and made 6H.
If we bid and make 6H, it's a push. If we are in 4H making 6, Anne and Joe get 11 imps. At the actual event, it was 4H making 6 at the other table so there was an 11 imp swing, but that part of the history is irrelevant to us. We are simply the replacement team here, playing in the closed room aganist whatever happens in the open room.
So that's the plan, if it can be done. I have no idea whether we could set a match where one table would play live, and then imped against a hand from the files.
Yes, it is a lot like what hoki does but there are some differences. In actual play, Hampson and Greco (or Hansel and Gretel as I like to think of them) stopped in 4H. Now it is safe to say that they will not be calling me to ask my advice. But we have a hand where one very good pair reached 6H, the other very good pair did not, and we can draw whatever conclusions we wish.
Here it seems to me that the discussion is apt to be pretty straightforward. A trump trick must be lost. If we pick up the !S Q we make 6, if we lose to the !S Q we go down. This would be a hand where there is no reason for NS to fret about not reaching 6 !H . One could look at the play and see if there were clues as to how to play the spades, but basically I would say that 6 !H is about a fifty percent shot. No reason to apologize for not being in it.
Other hands will no doubt be more subtle.
So yes, it is a lot like what hoki does, but there is a difference that appeals to me, namely that my role is lessened. The hand is there as it was actually bid and played at the event, the IAC players see what actually happened, and at the highest level of play.
There was a hand I kibbed the other day where a pair reached a no-play 4 !H . No-play double dummy that is. But the defense, good players, did not beat it. Should they have? Well, they didn't. I may put it up to illustrate something or other. I don't have it handy right now.
Anyway, that's what I have in mind. If it can be done.
OliverC:
Nice idea, Ken.
The only concern I would have is only having IAC players actually "playing" and comparing the result with a vugraph hand from the archives. I think half of the "value" of this kind of event is having the "expert" table thiniking out loud and explaining their thinking during the bidding and play for the benefit of kibitzers. If your "expert" table is just what happened in the USBC, for example, you don't get that feedback from the expert pairs.
Maybe better just two tables as now you could play it as a regular TM. The Expert table plays as is, and the IAC table can swap around partnerships as we see fit. I know we now have only two scores to compare, but that enough to make a talking point afterwards (which is the whole point, after all. If you have 3 or 4 tables in play you either need two separate TM's (so the Boards won't be the same) or you have to filter out all the other scores (from other tables) which is more messy and the other scores will affect the IMP scores at "our" tables.
This would be, of course, a little similar to the "Play with the Experts" that was mooted a while ago, but which never took off. I like the twist of having two "expert" partnerships playing at the same table, and IAC partnerships playing at the other (or at other tables). Hard part may be finding expert pairs to take part who are prepared to (1) "think out loud" for the benefit of kibbers, and (2) to stick around for the hand discussion afterwards.
If the format seems to work, we could try to do it once a month, which hopefully would give us enough time to find a couple of decent pairs to participate in between each event.
kenberg:
Experts giving their time, playing hands and explaining as they go, would be great, but would they? A lot of work.
A lot can be done without that much help. A couple of hands.
Hand 1: This one I from above, the USBC hand
http://usbf.org/docs/vugraphs/USBC2017/html/USBC2017_F_1_s1.htm#bd9
I think it is useful for players to see that even though there was an 11 imp swing nobody really did anything wrong. Exert advice is not needed here to see that there are either 11 or 12 tricks depending on what happens in spades.
Hand2: This one I posted as an amusement it the sleight of hand forum.
http://iac.pigpen.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=54.0
This one is definitely more complex, and there are a lot of lessons to be gained from it, but still it does not require an expert.
Declarer needs 8 tricks. From where? If he can make two spade tricks, he will come to 8 tricks
Spades in dummy: K983
Declarer holds: J2.
It is known from the bidding and the play to the first two tricks that RHO holds most of the unseen points and he holds four spades. Ha. If LHO holds the spade T, we can develop a couple of spade tricks.
An important lesson: K983 in dummy is a lot better than K765 in dummy, but you have to take advantage of this or your good spots will be wasted.
However good I am or am not, I think that one good trait I have is that I can look over a hand later and usually see whether a bad result was due to bad luck or a failure of thought. Of course the hand is then over, but a person can learn to do better next time.
Guidance can help, no doubt. I think anyone can see, with hand 1, that it all comes down to picking up the spade Q. There are some carding issues for the defense, but generally I think that there isn't that much to say. In the second hand it might well be that someone needs to say "Hey, look at what can be done with those spades".
But I think a lot can be learned even without an expert on hand.
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