Bob Mackinnon

Hooray for Matchpoints

In the Dec issue of the ACBL Bulletin a letter writer, Bob Chambers, took exception to the statement by Joel Wooldridge that ‘matchpoint scoring is not real bridge.’ Bob pointed out the many technical challenges that a matchpoint game presents, in particular the need to play to the hilt in order to maximize the score on each and every hand. Conceptually this is true enough, but matchpoint players do very well by bidding towards the middle of the field and taking their tops where they come, either through clever play or gifts from the opponents. It’s the scoring that Wooldridge refers to, and I think he is wrong on that point as well. At matchpoints it is up to the individual whether or not he wishes to follow the field and bid like a dozo.

At IMPs one can get lazy and toss away overtricks without much concern. Recently I misdefended against 3NT, making 520, which was a tie board. My partner and I bid to 6, making 940, losing 1 IMP to the pair in 6. The punishment for declaring in clubs and missing this cold Grand Slam was a pittance. It would have scored a deserved zero at matchpoints. There are rewards for bad bidding. Over 28 boards my partner and I bid 3NT on 5 occasions, going down 3 times, but gaining 9 IMPs overall, because one of the games lucked through. At matchpoints these terrible bids would receive scant reward.

Recently my Precision partner and I achieved a score of 70%, which clearly represents a miracle by Enrico Fermi’s statistical standard. As we were the only Precision players in the field, one can claim that we were bidding against the field on many hands, even though we never opened with our strong 1 bid. We played in 3NT 3 times, achieving a score of 34 out of 36 without the benefit of an overtrick. I put this down largely to superior bidding methods, not to wild gambling such as we encounter in Teams. Of course the advantages of 3NT are ever present. We defended 3NT 6 times and achieved a 55% average on those boards, thanks largely to one occasion when the contract was set 7 tricks for the rare score of 700 when declarer tried frantically to make 9 tricks.

The strategy in a matchpoint game is like the strategy of a major league baseball team trying to make the playoffs – tie on the road (when defending), win big at home (when declaring). One won’t score many tops against the good pairs, so we have to make up ground against the others. Against the 4 best pairs in the field, we scored a miserable 44% over 8 boards, but against the lesser lights we did exceedingly well. One may talk disparagingly about ‘gifts’, but errors are a part of the game. One must be in a position to score well against the errors that inevitably occur, which means one must push to the limit on every hand possible, especially against the weaker pairs against whom an average result is tantamount to falling behind the field.

Many players think they are playing at IMPs where a penalty double of a partial is all but unheard of.  We scored 45 out of 48 matchpoints by doubling part scores: 1, 3, 3 and 4. At Teams we wouldn’t double any of these, and the results would have been insignificant on the Victory Point scale. Of course there were risks, but when we push to the limit and beyond we have put ourselves in the position of maximizing the gain when we are right. This is one of the weaknesses of IMP scoring – there is little punishment for overbidding outrageously. The most interesting matchpoint double came on the following combination and it didn’t depend on an overbid for its success.

N
Bob
AQ4
10652
K52
A108
 
S
John
K972
4
J10864
KQ3
W
 
N
Bob
E
 
S
John
1
Pass
Pass
Dbl
Pass
Pass
Pass

My reasoning may have been faulty but it worked. My book bid is 2NT, going down 1. Even an underbid 1NT doesn’t look profitable as it won’t score well on the marked heart lead. As partner might have balanced with 1or 1NT, we can assume declarer’s points lie largely in the heart suit, leaving partner with stuff in the minors. Playing to put declarer down 1 is especially risky, but as the opponents are vulnerable +200 would be a great score for us. So it transpired: declarer had 6 tricks off the top and we had 7. It would have been a bottom for us if declarer’s shape had been a more suitable 3=5=3=2 instead of 3=5=2=3. However, one zero is tolerable, and we would still have scored 70% out of our 4 doubles of part scores. Partner was understandably perturbed by my pass, but we can only hope this doesn’t deter him from balancing doubles in the future.

It is worth noting that the division of sides was 8-7-6-5 with a Total Trump count of 16, a exact predictor of the Total Tricks available. If partner had had 1 more club and 1 less  diamond the division of sided would be 7=7=7=5, a Total Trump count of 15, but declarer would make 7 tricks unless we were smart enough to cash 2 top clubs before attempting a trump promotion on the 4th spade – not an easy defence – impossible after my trump lead. I think this illustrates the excitement one may create in a matchpoint game. The requirement is there for accurate play and defence that would not be a factor at Teams, where I would be obliged to grope for a game just in case one of them was making. (In fact, a Moyesian 4could come home, but no pair achieved that result.)

The Adventure of the Four Nines
There is no great merit in playing to avoid disaster. It is akin to converting your paper money to gold coins and burying them in the backyard, as Samuel Pepys did during The Great Fire of 1666. Very often at Teams one declares a hand in a plodding fashion which appears to represent the safest route to making a contract. Here is an example of a hand that was turned into an exciting adventure, not always the best approach.

N
John
9
KQ10
AJ87432
A9
 
S
Bob
QJ1085
A52
10
QJ74
W
 
N
John
E
 
S
Bob
1
1
Pass
2
Pass
3
Pass
3NT
All Pass
   –Lead ♣ 5
 
 
 

After partner’s 1 overcall, which promises good value, I explored alternative contracts with a cue bid of 2, not guaranteeing a fit with diamonds. The jump to 3 was unwelcome, and I was endplayed into bidding the ubiquitous 3NT. When the dummy appeared I noted the absence of the 9, the curse of Scotland. Not being superstitious and keeping in mind that at matchpoints one should play for as many tricks as may be made on a good day,  I planned to set up the diamonds. I had the entries.

At Teams I should ignore the scant possibility of setting up diamond tricks and play to make 3 tricks in spades – win the A and overtake the 9 and plug away expecting to have an entry both in clubs and hearts. Boring!  At Matchpoints I put in the 9 hoping that would provide an additional entry to dummy from which to play a low diamond towards the hidden hand. No such luck as the 9 was covered by the T and my Q. Maybe the 7 would provide some protection.

The next step was the lead a diamond towards dummy hoping to drop the 9 in 2 rounds. The quick appearance of the K gave me pause. I ducked and a club put me back in dummy. I played the A pitching a spade, but the 9, not the 9, made its unexpected appearance on my left. Interesting card. The bad news was that the RHO had diamonds to cash, but hopefully with no entry. So now we had to revert to overtaking the 9 and hoping for some help from the LHO who seemed to have all the opposition’s points outside diamonds. Here is the full deal.

 
Both
South
N
 
76
J64
Q965
1032
 
W
 
9
KQ10
AJ87432
A9
 
E
 
Q1085
A52
10
QJ74
 
S
 
AK32
9873
K
K865
 

Here was the position when South took the first spade.

 
Both
South
N
 
76
J64
Q9
2
 
W
 
KQ10
J8743
 
E
 
Q108
A52
J7
 
S
 
A32
873
K8
 

South, who scored 50% on the session, went for the quick kill by cashing the K hoping to drop the J from either hidden hand. The uninformative cuebid added to the confusion as I might have been dealt a 5=4=1=3 hand. When that failed she found she had endplayed herself. If she had exited a heart I would have played 3 rounds ending in my hand before playing another spade. The play of the hand had turned into an adventure akin to Around the World in Eighty Days full of misadventures and suspense but with a happy ending albeit one lacking the bracing presence of Shirley Maclaine.

There are 2 points to make.  If I had played safely from the start I would have achieved the same top score that required a defensive error and a double thrown-in. With half the field in 3NT it had appeared initially that overtricks were important. Not so. This was a difficult hand to play, so being competently careful would have been enough. Secondly, resting in 3 making 130 would have scored 80%, so there was no need for heroics. One needn’t imitate the field in its errant ways. It’s like the stock market: by getting it right one profits when the market is going down as well as when it is going up. Proper hand evaluation is the key, and bidding solely according to HCP is not it, but when all’s said and done the contract was fun to play, which is what counts most.

When compared to Matchpoints Team equals Tame. One must be careful if for no other reason than consideration for one’s teammates. Bidding with abandon without fear of punishment, never doubling contracts on the off-chance they might make, playing as safely as possible in anticipation of bad breaks, avoiding good slams, all these practices make for a boring game. A long match against experts can be a good test in which psychology plays a part, but a matchpoint game against variable opponents requires a finer judgement that varies with the circumstances. Hooray for Matchpoints.

What Happens When We Increase the Retirement Age
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17 Comments

Jeff LehmanDecember 18th, 2012 at 4:36 pm

I support your support for matchpoints. Just because it is different from IMP scored events, does not mean that it is less challenging or that success requires less skill.

I would contest a couple of commonly articulated attributes about matchpoint play and about IMPs play (though, as an aside, one should mention that short-match IMPs, such as Swiss teams, is really a hybrid between long-match IMPs and matchpoints). One attribute that I would contest is “bid with the field, gain from the play”. If I think I can judge the auction better than the field, why should I give up that advantage? Now maybe I think that because I am more confident in my ability to outbid the field than I am in my ability to outplay the field, but the principle remains valid: why should I give up what I think is any advantage? The second attribute that I would contest deals with “never double partials at IMPs”. Bringing back to teammates a couple of +300’s on partials is a great way to produce lots of IMPs. There might be an occasional disaster, but, unless I judge my team to be far superior to the opponents’ team, I am willing to make penalty doubles that I expect to work, even while recognizing that some unexpected distribution or the like might cause me to regret my decision on a particular hand. Stated more pithily, I do not subscribe to the bromide that matches are lost (by making mistakes) and not won (by making exceptional decisions); matches can be won.

Steven GaynorDecember 18th, 2012 at 5:57 pm

I am also a fan of matchpoints. Pairs and teams are different, one is not superior to the other.

I love the Gold Rush pairs when an Open event is played at the same time. It is attracting players away from KO’s as the MP awards are closer to the KO levels in both events and you only have to play 2 sessions rather than 4.

I like the short-term team games also and I agree with Jeff’s assessment that matchpoint strategy is important in a 2 to 4 board match.

Marty DeneroffDecember 18th, 2012 at 6:26 pm

Bob,
Joel’s statement has been made many times before, by many experts and non-experts. I won’t claim to know what he meant by it, but as I see it there are a couple of points that I don’t think can be reasonably argued:
1. “Real Bridge” is presumably the original game , Rubber Bridge, that was around before there were bridge tournaments. IMPs is more like the original game than matchpoints, in terms of strategy. However, it is not that same, so in some sense, it is also not “Real Bridge”.
2. Both matchpoints and IMPs (and BAM) have challenges and provide satisfaction to players. Some like playing one more than the other. There are plenty of opportunities to play whichever you like at most tournaments. BAM has nearly disappeared except at NABCs, so if you like that you are somewhat out of luck.
3. There is no particular virtue to playing (and winning) any one of the forms of the game, nor any other game, except for your personal satisfaction. Play what you enjoy most, and don’t disparage others for playing what they enjoy the most (Not that I think Joel intended to disparage anyone by his comment. I have played against him on many occasions and know him to be a gentleman who would never wish to do anything like that.).

Scott NeedhamDecember 19th, 2012 at 5:36 pm

My problem with mps is field protection: I’d much rather rely on my team mates than a pairs field. Case in point: At recent Palm Springs two-session pair events, each session there were 5-6 boards where our table achieved the par result for average 30% boards. Can someone explain how to counteract this dynamic? what to look for in analyzing why the boards scored so poorly? how to translate that analysis into winning table strategy?

Bob MacKinnonDecember 19th, 2012 at 9:37 pm

Hi Scott:
I know the frustration of which you write. You have to look closely at those boards to see, not what you did wrong, but how you could have done better. One tendency I have is to bid too informatively, giving the opponents an easy opening lead. The opening lead is critical in many cases, and if one gets the optimum opening lead one is often destined to get a bad result. So one has to develop a style that gets you to the normal contract in a way that gives away the minimum information in that regard. There is value in uncertainty.

Scott NeedhamDecember 20th, 2012 at 2:57 pm

Thanks, Bob: Yes, I find that the better the opps, the more revealing our auction can be. OTOH, the boards of which I spoke were usually boards where opps either (1) took their tricks on a relatively obvious layout or (2) bid and made when others weren’t there or somehow — ? — went down. Sometimes I wonder whether more experienced mp players have developed strategies to deal with this kind of field. The same sort of problem does not occur in, say, the LM Pairs….

Steven GaynorDecember 20th, 2012 at 5:35 pm

A lot of the programs for the pre-dealt hands with dealing machines give ‘par’ results that are totally unrealistic. You regularly get tops or bottoms scoring what the sheet says is ‘par’. Sometimes you have to study all four hands for a while to see how you get the result the sheet says is ‘par’.

I would think as this becomes more sophisticated we will get better analyses on those sheet, but until then someone would actually have to look at a set of deals hand by hand to figure out what par would be when played by a section of human beings. Even then….

Jeff LehmanDecember 20th, 2012 at 9:10 pm

A broader way of articulating the reason proposed by Bob for possibly finding that field protection works more against you than for you, would be to ask “are you failing to be a ‘tough opponent’, one who makes it difficult for the opponents to achieve their ‘normal’ result?”. Bidding your hands uninformatively is only one aspect of being a tough opponent; getting in the way of their hands is another. On defense, discarding or otherwise playing so as to paint for declarer a misleading picture of your hand is another way of being a tough opponent. And the same — maybe even more so since you have no active partner — goes for declaring in a way that masks your holdings or actual intentions.

Focusing just on bidding for a moment, it’s funny how we develop from bad bidders to good bidders and then, as we develop further, we learn the times when it is probably rewarding to make a “bad bid”.

OTOH, maybe you are just experiencing a run of bad luck. Or are practicing selective memory, where you remember only the poor scoring boards where the field protection worked against you while you forget the good scoring boards where you “just sat there” and avoiding mistakes of the field worked for you.

We’ll never really understand this game. And we wouldn’t enjoy it any other way!

Jeff HDecember 20th, 2012 at 9:27 pm

What a couple of the poster have referred to as “Par results” are often the computer generated possibilities from a program like Deep Finesse. Deep Finessse is a double dummy solver. It knows all 4 hands, makes the best possible defensove plays, always knows which way to take a 2-way finesse and when to drop an offside singleton K or doubleton Q. This is not a true “par result” in that may of these plays are not those that a real person whould be likely to make.

RyanDecember 27th, 2012 at 3:21 pm

Hi Bob, interesting article.

Is it me or have you changed seats from the bidding to the play… ? Also, North and East have only 12 cards each.

Is it really right to finesse the 9 of clubs on the first round ? The rule of 11 suggests East must have one card higher than the 9 so it seems pretty hopeless.

Bob MacKinnonDecember 29th, 2012 at 9:35 pm

Thanks Ryan for the correction. I guess it was a senior moment! (I hate that phrase – I never could count properly.) North has an extra spade: 764 and East has an extra spade: QJT85, making 13 spades in all around the table.

I think the club 5 lead could have come from KT65. I would have gone passive and led the top heart from 9873.

RyanDecember 31st, 2012 at 3:16 pm

Yes, that’s true, it could indeed be from KT65.

Paul HardyJanuary 4th, 2013 at 5:30 pm

I think Matchpoints is more luck and agree with Joel. Just look at all the NABC’s. Winning the Spinggolds or other like team events, you see the same teams over and over. Looking at the Life Master Pairs and you see different players winning, rarely the same one over and over. nuff said.

bobbywolffJanuary 18th, 2013 at 3:48 am

Hi Bob,

If you’ll excuse my interruption, I may be able to shed some light on what is meant.

Many of the top players prefer IMPs because some of the original best parts of the game (in their opinion and I agree with them) are emphasized.

1. Addressing bidding to the best contract, keeping in mind the scoring system, but only to the making of that contract, not what could be called the lesser competition of playing for overtricks.

2. Playing safe because of the amount of gain principle present in rubber bridge and IMPs against the frequency of gain present in matchpoints, which, in turn creates a game which is simply too hard to play correctly. For information sake, Auction bridge is the father of what we play, contract bridge, wherein all one side need to do is buy the contract at the lowest level possible and then get maximum credit for everything they make.

Auction bridge is definitely inferior to contract because of that fact alone (and also the overall scoring system which is not weighted properly plus honors in the trump suit which became a major factor on all hands played, yet only was determined by luck) but nevertheless Auction took over from Whist (contract’s grandfather) simply because there was no dummy and the game simply could not be played intelligently because it was too difficult with much total guesswork involved.

Since contract puts emphasis on where many of the top players see the skill, in safeguarding contracts, not trying to guess between 3NT and game in a major where often luck determines overtricks, on the sometimes blind choice of opening lead which often results in a lucky result for one side or the other, usually in the form of overtricks or sometimes undertricks, but the mathematics tend to show that the game or slam making trick is not as often determined, thereby eliminating some of the random chance no top player is likely to embrace.

Simply put, the biggest difference is to say again, matchpoints is just too difficult to play and causes more intimidation at the table by certain “gotta win” players who try and make up for the difficulty by needling their opponents with their manner and possibly a complicated, not fully explained system, into not playing their best and only wishing for that particular round to get over.

I could say more, but I will let the reader’s imagination take it from here and begin to understand to what Joel was referring to.

Bob MacKinnonFebruary 5th, 2013 at 9:02 am

Nicely put, Mr Wolff.

Thanks.

Personally I would rather play just 2 boards against ‘the operators’ than 26.

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