Strategic decision
Playing in an event called a Bracketed Round Robin Swiss, my team was placed in Bracket 3. In this event, the eight lowest masterpoint teams play each other in the bottom bracket, the next lowest play each other in the second bottom bracket, etc. For the third highest bracket in a mid-sized regional, you can categorize most of the players as reliable, but their judgment (and, often, skills) are not likely to be as well-hewn as players in higher brackets. The opponents are not unlikely to offer you the occasional chance for a big score on a board, and you need to be prepared to take advantage if you are going to score enough Victory Points to win the bracket.
With that as contextual background, I faced an interesting strategic issue on one board.
All vul, I am first chair with ♠A98xxx, ♥Qx, ♦x, ♣QJxx. I might try a weak 2♠ opening under some circumstances, but vulnerable I choose to pass. LHO opens 1♥ and partner overcalls 2♣. RHO raises to 2♥. With good club support, I choose to call 2♠, hoping that a 4♠ game might fetch if we have a two-suited black suit fit. I am hoping that partner reads me for at least some club tolerance on this auction, taking inference about the length and/or quality of my spades from my failure to have opened with a preempt. LHO now calls 3♦, presumptively a game try in hearts. Partner doubles 3♦, and RHO offers 3♥. I bid 4♣ now, and two passes follow. Quite surprisingly, RHO doubles 4♣!
I strongly suspect that 4♣X is making, “giving” partner something better than x, xx, KJxx, AKxxxx.
Should I go for the big number by redoubling (the scoring, after all, is converted to Victory Points)?
I recall a similar situation from a KO a few years ago, where the competition was one of the leading pairs in our district. We were doubled in a contract that I was pretty sure was making. I passed and the contract did indeed make. But in the post mortem I rued my failure to have redoubled. Against those opponents, I suspect that personal ego, perhaps combined with disrespect for us as opponents, would have triumphed and they would have passed. Not only would making the redoubled contract have increased our IMP score against a team that was strongly favored over mine, but, knowing the opponents, I suspect that the blame-game that would have ensued might indirectly have produced additional good scores for my team. We did lose that KO, by the way.
But in the instant case, the strategic circumstances are different. In Bracket 3, the less confident opponents might choose to respect my judgment more than their own. Fearing a run to 4♥X where the return might not be as good as making 4♣X, I chose to pass. 4♣X became the final contract and when partner turned out to have just about the minimum hand I put him on, plus the ♥K, he scored up an overtrick for an unusual score of +910. We won 14 IMPs on this hand, but won the match by only 12 IMPs when a nonvulnerable game made at one table and defeated at the other more than canceled out small pluses for my team on a series of partials. This was the last match of the Round Robin, and, while winning Bracket 3 is no great bridge achievement, the win did allow us to capture first in the event that we entered, and that is better than not being first!
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Answering an inquiry from my friend Barry Margolin, had we been allowed to play 4CXX (and if I am interpreting the scoring table correctly), the net gain from playing 4CX would have been only 2 IMPs and 1 VP.
How do you feel about bracketed Swiss? Does playing against your peers appeal more than not having the chance to win an open event? You pay the same $$, play the same # of hands, and have the same chance to win your bracket (1 of 8)as anyone, but can only win a %age of the MP’s the ‘big shots’ do. Does this matter?
I think you played it just right. No need to get fancy.
Steve,
In general I do not care for bracketed events. In a BridgeWinners thread about how one could be allowed to “play up”, I posted the suggestion for tournament directors to place two additional items on the sheet where a team submits the names of its players and the aggregate master points of the players. One item is directed to the team that wants to “play up”; the other item is directed at the team that does not mind being bumped down by the team that wants to play up. The first item was “requested additional master point placement”, which, by entering a number like 10,000 would allow a team with 6,000 mps to be (honestly) bracketed as if it had 16,000 mps, thus perhaps satisfying their wish to be placed in a higher bracket but maybe not a “too” high bracket. The second item was “willingness to be bumped down”, which by either affirmative or negative response would give the directors authority to allow a team that has been bumped up to take their place in the bracket. I know this would create additional work for the directors, and they might have good cause to reject some requests, but I think it complies with the principle to allow players who want to play against better competition to test themselves … something that should be encouraged.
Another somewhat new event that I do not understand at all is handicapped KOs. To the best of my knowledge, this allows a team that had lost a KO by less than the amount of handicap they receive to be rewarded with the same master points as if they had outscored their opponents without the handicap. How can that be right?
The events that I really like are A/X or A/B/C events. These allow the lower strata players to play against the elite, whom they might occasionally beat, and yet be scored also against their peer groups. But then many of the elite players don’t want to play the lesser players, and so that is a problem, too.
One last complaint — you should not have got me started on this –: at at least two recent D25 regionals that I have attended, I played in a regional open pairs game that was about the size of our local club game. Too many events run at the same, or similar times, produce fields that just don’t have the size one wants for a regionally rated event.
I agree with just about everything you said here! I am against ‘playing up’ as it forces someone to play down and that can be unfair to the whole field. MP’s is an imperfect indicator of true skill, but it is the only objective criteria we have so it should be adhered to. I enthusiastically agree with flighting or bracketing based on average MP’s for the pair or team.
The rise of the 2-session Gold Rush Pairs has had the happy effect of attracting lots of NLM players out of KO’s where they can only win modest awards for their lowly bracket and into pair games. This increases the awards for the open pairs run simultaneously. Compare results from regionals with Gold Rush to when the did not have that event and you will see significant increases in pair game attendance and MP awards in the open field.
Regarding handicapped KOs, it is not just that the team that loses by less than their handicap gets the matchpoints that they would have received outright, but also that they advance when they would otherwise have been eliminated.
I have seen the handicapped KOs as a trap for weaker teams at sectionals, When there is a huge differntial in team master points, the handicap rarely makes up the difference in skill levels and the weak team never really has a chance, even with the handicap.
At our local regional, we only have a handicapped KO if there are 2 or fewer brackets. Only once in the few handicapped events that I have played in have I seem the handicap make a difference. In a 3-way (eliminting one team), one of the matches had the stronger team up by 1 IMP, but they were giving up 1.2 IMPs and thus lost by 0.2 IMPs. In the later rounds, the handicaps were less than 1 IMP and served only as a possible tie breaker.
Personally, in a KO I would prefer to be without a handicap.
I think that complying with the request of a team not to “play down” is more important than complying with the request of a team to “play up”. But … I think that many/most teams are perfectly OK with “playing down”. Elsewise, how to explain the choices of so many pairs/teams — even pairs and teams with good records of general success — to continue to play in Flight B and similar events for as long as their cumulative mp holdings allow? If I were King, I would include on the team registration slips a box for the team to affirmatively choose not to “play down”, and I bet that not too many non-elite teams would choose to check that box: most, I suspect, would rather be the top-rated team in, say, Bracket 3, than a mid-rated team in Bracket 2; avoiding playing a Bracket 2 team that is really good but has not been playing enough to have accumulated the masterpoints to be placed in Bracket 1 would be just fine with most of their masterpoint peers.
I have had some undeservedly large master point awards for relatively mundane results that produce high placements in the X strat of an A/X pairs that is run simultaneously with Gold Rush or other limited mp game. The awards are a little embarrassing, but I find that situation much more justified than would be winning large master point awards for finishing high in an event where I am playing almost all against players whose cumulative masterpoint holdings are less than even mine. At least I tried to compete with the A players … and sometimes I succeed against them.
All in all, I think it is fine for the ACBL to give the players who want to avoid playing against “better players” their wish, so long as satisfying that desire is not at the expense of preventing the players who do want to play against “better players” from doing so. Improving bridge play is, to me, an OK part of the mission of ACBL.