pilowsky, on 2020-October-03, 02:31, said:
My only meagre moral victory is that I got the bidding right.
Sometimes that's all I have to feel good about but its a start
In fact when playing a tourney if I bid approximately 11/12 correct contracts irrespective of score/result and exactly how many tricks
I do like your categosition of failures - I am going to go through my recent hands and classify them now
- although my priority these days is to play IMPs and target the few big negatives that make the difference between being mediocre and approaching reasonable
For me there is a missing classification - when looking at the hand afterwards "How did I miss that" - I don't know if its stupidity or something else - I almost feel like its some kind of cognitive problem that can never be addressed no matter how much I try. Some days you do it some days not. Forgetting a plan, Realising you made an error. Maybe it all fits into Rank stupidity but its a brutal classification
I don't know how you feel, esepcially regarding views on learning and teaching, but I feel personally that we all have strengths and weaknesses and maybe some things that will never gel. That is waht separates us in all our different fields and specialities from nt being world champion at tennis, football, bridge or maybe a Nobel prize winner as another "equivalent" I have come to terms that you cannot learn everything, its an illusion, we can keep cramming and trying and despair. That sounds negative but its a case of learning strengths and weaknesses and playing accordingly. As I said, much of my "failure" could be regaded as "stupidity" in my mind, or losing my way, not planning, forgetting what I was doing. But what I feel is lacking from so muc teaching (or maybe it is learning) is that next level up - the meta level - the plan - whateevr level that assists you do what you need to. But that in turn requires a particular stuctured mindset and not everyone has the same mindset. I constantly despair but realise I am too old to learn many new tricks and console myself with what I can delude myself as flashes of what I call inspiration or briliiance amongst the disasters
EDIT Although, before anyone gets the wrong idea I have often found that bidding a totally different contract to everyone else can also be a very
successful strategy
EDIT 2 As an example and as a question relating to your classification. Here is a hand that made a huge difference in a 12-hand IMPs tourney - essentially a vulnerable game missed by 1 trick (as often occurs) - 12.3 point swing and the difference between being in the middle versus the top of the whole tourney. I hope you dont mind me asking and you dont have to answer of course.
It looks obvious but how would you classify my failure to plan, or making a plan and forgetting, leading the wrong spade when things were on track. Lets put it in the ask Pilowsky category
- or the so near but so far category or ..... the "I had it all worked out but something went wrong" category, the "how did you mess that up" category, the "its easy in hindsight" category, the "you had a few plans of attack and messed both up" category etc
Sometimes I feel there is too much of an emphasis in teaching/learning environments on learning the wrong things or the wrong approaches and too much of the "make people feel syupid" kind of approach - not suggesting that of you Pilowsky, at all, but of learning environments in general. Thats why I am asking your valued opinion - and that is not sarcasm either
Its the fact we place things into the "stupidity" category when that is word often used to demean, it becomes instilled in us, some of us didn't all come from the same backgrounds with genrations of skills passed down, they often were not taught, they still often are not taught. Despite my relative success ful life and achievments I ahve still faced that type of prejudice from educators and others - purely based on relative levels of privilege in our backgrounds and professional expectations, intergenerational advantages etc
In my view some particular skills are excessively valued in terms of the amount of power, authority and esteem placed upon them - taking no account of all the other differences we may have - including possible disability or should I say differential ability
Where do people learn that stuff - at school, at home, at university (if they get there), by doing, by being taught. And if it requires these higher evel conceptual skills and ways of looking at problems (maybe from being very young) how many are actually competent to teach them. Most of those who would understand it are out there at the highest level actually doing - its a bit of a problem
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