[Zelandakh]

I thought it might be helpful to give a list of hands for each poster where I have no final result. It may be that this is intentional; otoh it is likely that in some cases a deal was missed out accidentally or that questions raised/changes of conditions were not spotted.

antonylee - Polish Club: none
awm - IMPrecision: none
benlessard - chapi: 10-25
dake50 - (no name): 4, 6, 8-15, 18-25
FM75 - OCPrecision: none
CamHenry - Homebrew Diamond: none
Free - MW Precision: none
Hilver - HK: none
hrothgar - Moscito: 10, 25
jack502 - Moscito: none
JLOGIC - Meckwell Lite: none
Kungsgeten - Pass 2000: none
Lord Molyb - Molybdenum: none
Mobodell - TOSR: none
mr1303 - Icelandic Relays: 8-25
mycroft Precision: 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15-25
nige1 - Jasmine Club: none
rbforster - Silent Club: none
relknes - (no name): 12
Siegmund - AUC: 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 13, 24
Siegmund - Malfoir: 1, 2, 3, 5-10, 12, 13, 14
sieong - IMPrecision: 4, 8-20, 25
straube - SCREAM: none
the_clown - Precision: 2-6, 9, 12, 15, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25

There are a few additional results posted but I will ignore those for now. Also, I found the comparison between Mbodell's "at the table" and "by system" results extremely interesting. The initial deals were not done this way and it would be great if you could add the missing "with partner" auctions Mbodell. In particular, I am very interested to know if your partner would respond 6♦ to your 2NT opening on Hand 3.

[Free]

Zelandakh, on 2013-February-26, 07:30, said:

Free - MW Precision: 13

I gave my auction to 6♥.

[Lord Molyb]

Finished mine

[Mbodell]

Zelandakh, on 2013-February-26, 07:30, said:

I thought it might be helpful to give a list of hands for each poster where I have no final result. It may be that this is intentional; otoh it is likely that in some cases a deal was missed out accidentally or that questions raised/changes of conditions were not spotted.

Mbodell - TOSR: 25

I added it. We bid to 3nt S.

Zelandakh, on 2013-February-26, 07:30, said:

There are a few additional results posted but I will ignore those for now. Also, I found the comparison between Mbodell's "at the table" and "by system" results extremely interesting. The initial deals were not done this way and it would be great if you could add the missing "with partner" auctions Mbodell. In particular, I am very interested to know if your partner would respond 6♦ to your 2NT opening on Hand 3.

All of my hands were bid with partner (except 25 which I just did now, and the one that had hidden stages and didn't give us the hands). Where I didn't call out by system and at the table was when our blind bidding matched system agreed post-mortem discussion of how it should be bid. And I did comment in that thread, although maybe I didn't make clear the process I followed, that when I gave hand 3 as a blind hand to my partner where I bid 2nt with the 2nd seat hand he bid an immediate 6♦ with his hand (we don't really have good methods after the preemptive 2nt opening, so going slow wouldn't have helped much).

[Zelandakh]

Free, on 2013-February-26, 13:28, said:

I gave my auction to 6♥.

Oops, sorry about that. I had it listed as having open questions but looking back I see there were none.

Lord Molyb, on 2013-February-26, 20:42, said:

Finished mine

Not so fast young padawan. The conditions on Hand 24 were changed so you need to go back and re-do it. I suggest leaving the auction with the 1♥ overcall too since I am sure that is also of interest to many readers.

Mbodell, on 2013-February-26, 23:28, said:

I added it. We bid to 3nt S.

Thanks Mbodell. I found your set of responses particularly interesting because of the comparison between the 2 auctions. Without giving any numbers away, I observe that TOSR is currently ranked second on my Total IMPs list, while TOSR+partner is second last. The difference is 59 IMPs. I do not believe either position and think this illustrates better than anything why the (numerical) results are meaningless from the point of view of comparing systems (although they may be a good guide for comparing the personalities of posters).

The truth is that small decisions on the critical boards (8, 16, 19) make large differences in the IMP results - 42 IMPs just on these 3. Naturally, posters make the right decisions on these boards in an excerise like this. I did too on 2 of the 3. In practise, almost everyone would get some things wrong; it is only that Mbodell showed his working, so to speak.

To offset this, I am going to pick out FM75 as an example of completely the opposite. He guessed wrong on 2 out of the 3 above, plus on boards 12 and 13. Is it because his system is bad? or because he is a poor bidder? Not in my opinion. I think he has just been incredibly and refreshingly honest.

As for the exercise as a whole, I know I have gained something from it. And it has been great to see other systems in action. Hopefully others have gotten something from it too, and esepcially that my occasional "picking holes" has been useful to the system designers that are still optimising their methods.

[Kungsgeten]

Zelandakh, on 2013-February-26, 07:30, said:

Kungsgeten - Pass 2000: 10, 15, 16

I think these should be finished/changed now.

[antonylee]

Zelandakh, on 2013-February-26, 07:30, said:

antonylee - Polish Club: 5

I have it at the bottom of page 1 (1♣-1♠; 2N-3N).

[Lord Molyb]

Lord Molyb, on 2013-February-26, 20:42, said:

Finished mine

[Mbodell]

Zelandakh, on 2013-February-27, 07:51, said:

Thanks Mbodell. I found your set of responses particularly interesting because of the comparison between the 2 auctions. Without giving any numbers away, I observe that TOSR is currently ranked second on my Total IMPs list, while TOSR+partner is second last. The difference is 59 IMPs. I do not believe either position and think this illustrates better than anything why the (numerical) results are meaningless from the point of view of comparing systems (although they may be a good guide for comparing the personalities of posters).

I think that is unsurprising and maybe points at the different conclusion that it matters much less (for nearly anyone) what "reasonable" system people play and much more "how well they play it". Kind of the 99+% of a 80% system is better than 80% of a 99+% system syndrome. I think partner and I did worse in these hands than we usually would do at the table, but we'd definitely make some mistakes that "the system"-robot wouldn't, and it certainly doesn't take too many disasters to neutralize a lot of 60/40 or 55/45 or whatever narrow edges a slightly better system might give. For us we've gone from playing F2F 3 times a week for a couple of years to playing ~3 times a month online thanks to non-bridge real life changes and it is a lot harder to keep a complex system fresh without the repetition (and with us only having a few disparate incomplete notes).

But that's one of the reasons I liked bidding these hands blind, since it was good practice of "interesting" strong club hands.

[PrecisionL]

Thanks for this thread. I apologize for being late to the party as I am recovering from an MI event.

I have also kept a file of hard hands for strong 1♣ systems and hope to post some day when I am feeling better.

[CamHenry]

Finally finished mine off - I need to pay more attention around here!