Your mental toolbox to a better game
It’s playoff and finals season in Australia and the last month or so has presented a plethora of events for me and some truly interesting hands. Often as players when we watch these events on vu-graph, or look at the results later, we often wonder how good players could go wrong on some of the […]
A few months ago, I wrote about momentum swings in matches. It is funny how crazy bridge can be at times and a recent pennant match in Melbourne showed just how fickle the game can be. Bridge in Melbourne is still recovering from the downturn in numbers following all the lockdowns and restrictions we experienced […]
New bridge partnerships often have a ‘honeymoon’ period where the pair performs well in the early stages of their time together. The pair seem to take care to bid carefully and to think about how their bids will be interpreted to avoid misunderstandings. As one friend said, you try not to do anything crazy, […]
My reading list for this month has included ‘Battling the Best’ by Sartaj Hans which was an IPBA Book of the Year winner a few years ago. The book describes Hans’ journey through the US Nationals and provides a terrific insight into the thinking and play of those at the very top of our game. […]
Recently I have been listening to the podcast series Sorry, Partner™ put together by Catherine Harris and Jocelyn Startz. It is surprising how frequently the top players interviewed talk about how treating your partner well is an important skill to acquire. Top bridge players often talk about the ‘critical point’ in a hand. This is […]
Bridge rules can become like ‘dogmas’ – something that is so entrenched in a player’s mind, it is considered incontrovertibly true. We often hear bridge players speaking about specific rules they have about bidding and card play. Some rules are so entrenched in the player’s psyche that the rule is followed religiously without pause for […]
A few years ago, I ran a survey of Australia’s top bridge players asking them to rank bridge skills. In that survey, concentration was ranked most highly as an area that players wanted to improve. This finding was confirmed by a great many of the leading players who were interviewed in Samantha Punch’s recently published […]
One of my coaches gave me this article along with a number of others. Unfortunately I don’t know where it was originally published, but I would guess either the American Rifleman journal in the 1960’s or perhaps in one of the US Army Marksmanship Unit’s guides. I hope they won’t mind my reproducing it for […]
In competitions, we sometimes get off to a shaky start, have a good middle and struggle to finish. At other times we get off to a good start, fall away in the middle and then finish well. On other occasions we get off to a good start and middle, but finish poorly. And on still […]
Deciding whether to take a save or defend on a board can be one of the more difficult decisions in bridge. For example, calculating whether your 3♠ contract vulnerable going 1 off is going to be better than their 3-level contract making requires good judgement. When it comes to the game zone and the decision […]