Saturday 3 May 2014

Drills vs Skirmishes at bridge - a bleg

So, I seem to have gone the entire month of April without writing a single post to this blog. There were a few hands I kept meaning to write up, but never quite got round to it, and then I broke the screen on my Chromebook, so I didn't have a reasonable means of writing anything. I'm writing this with a new Bluetooth keyboard which I bought to use with the iPad as a stopgap before I get a new computer.

In the month I haven't been blogging, I've had a disastrous showing the National Pairs qualifier at the Buchanan, had a spectacular -600 in a vulnerable 3NT at an aggregate tournament, and a famous victory at the Melville Congress teams with Danny, Martin and Jake. There were a few interesting hands in those sessions, and in particular one hand where I'm fairly sure Martin andI should have bid a grand slam but didn't - I might well get to writing those up at some point this weekend. However, the title of this post is not about that.

The title of this post is taken from a concept which I read in the book Practice Perfect, which is written by some teachers who have spent a long time trying to figure out how people should practice something if they want to get good at it. One of the key distinctions they make is the difference between skirmishes and drills as a form of practice. A skirmish is something that accurately represents (or sometimes takes to extremes) the activity that you want to practice. So in basketball a skirmish is playing a game against your team-mates in practice, or even playing 2 on 2. A skirmish at bridge is playing a hand or even (in my opinion) solving a problem in a book. It very nearly simulates the entire experience of playing a bridge hand. A drill is an exercise that isolates one particular skill that you might need and allows you to practice it until you're good at it. So in basketball a drill might be shooting shots from a particular point on the court, or faking passes, etc. I've noticed a distinct lack of drills related to bridge. 

Here's something close to a complete list of all the drills I think I've ever come across explicitly described as drills:

1. starting with a number between 4 and 13, repeat all the possible divisions of 13 cards into groups of 4 where that is the longest suit. ie, commit to memory all the patterns such as 6331, 7222, 8410, 6430. Do this until you can instinctively complete the hand pattern given the first three numbers in the sequence. 

erm... that's it

There's also another book I own which I can't remember the name of (and can't find at the moment - I think I might have leant it to someone) which consists mostly of double dummy problems with 5 or less cards. This is also pretty close to a drill, as it teaches those patters in isolation.

Clearly the line between drill and skirmish isn't quite as clearcut as I might have suggested. For example, solving problems from a book, while I would regard it as a skirmish, is clearly not quite the full experience of playing a bridge hand, and if solving problems with a common theme, could well come closer to a drill. However, I think that my personal bridge education, and probably those of most people I know, has been quite heavily skirmish-biased. That's something I'm thinking about how to fix.

Luckily for me, I have a series of quite competent opponents who are happy to indulge me in whatever nonsense I may decide to throw at them. I'm talking, of course, about GIB. With the ability to play never-ending games against opponents who don't complain, there's lots of scope for designing good drills. Here's one I've been trying lately. Playing with GIB, I defend every hand (pass throughout, and re-deal when partner is declarer), and I make my sole mission in every hand to count declarer's shape. (I've also, incidentally, started doing this with the suits in order, so that a 3541 shape is different from 4531 - not sure yet if this is useful, but I figure it can't hurt). I think I've probably made more progress in my ability to count in defence in the 2 hours or so that I've been practicing this drill than in the 10 years or so that I've been playing the game.

Anyway, I was mostly wondering if anyone has any suggestions for other drills to improve specific bridge skills, suggestions for specific bridge skills that it would be worth designing drills for, or suggestions for other good sources of drills that already exist (or books that are more drill-like than skirmish-like). I'll probably be posting some more ideas for drills in future posts.

2 comments:

  1. Playing's more fun than drills. Does partnership bidding count? Me and Anna once spent half an hour on Bridge Base with GIB set to constantly open a Multi 2D. Sometimes I look at suit combinations too. There's some good exercises here and maybe elsewhere on Richard Pavlicek's website: http://www.rpbridge.net/rpar.htm

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  2. http://bbi.bridgebase.com/game/game.html

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