[riverwalk3]

I have noticed from the hand records that I'm averaging about 58% in every other Daylong Tournament (BBO MP 1 to 4 as well as ACBL), as well as ACBL/BBO Robot Duplicate. In all the Robot Duplicate IMP or Daylong IMP tournaments I average about 1.6 IMPs per hand (and often get over 2 IMPs per hand when lucky). However, I'm averaging only about 50% in Zenith Daylong Tournaments. This makes me wonder if the Zenith field is abnormally strong.

The other explanation is that I'm just better with best hand (which is the case for the other daylong tournaments and Duplicate boards). This is because I have a huge edge in bidding (especially slam bidding), and the edge disappears when you have a weak hand (since everyone else with your hand passes throughout). Furthermore, I'm weaker at defense, and since I'm defending far more often with weak hands, this becomes problematic when I don't always have the best hand.

Here is my recent results for example:

I'm consistently like this.

[LBengtsson]

At least you are honest about yourself. I personally find these forums a bit over heavy with bidding and declarer play problems and hardly any defensive hands. I think it is far easier to be successful at bidding (with opps. silent) and declarer play generally than with competitive bidding and defensive play. To my mind, competitive bidding requires far more judgement, especially at the higher levels. And as for defense, well my theory is that players tend to 'switch off' slightly from a psychological perspective as they have not won the bidding on the hand.

I know that as a chessplayer that if I have white I will succeed more than black. Already I have put myself under psychological pressure by choosing the wrong color black before the opening. I guess this also applies at bridge given that a series of defensive hands may make players feel they have lost scoring points on a regular basis, and so they step back from finding the right defensive moves at the bridge table also.

Only my theory...

[riverwalk3]

 LBengtsson, on 2022-June-02, 06:42, said:

At least you are honest about yourself. I personally find these forums a bit over heavy with bidding and declarer play problems and hardly any defensive hands. I think it is far easier to be successful at bidding (with opps. silent) and declarer play generally than with competitive bidding and defensive play. To my mind, competitive bidding requires far more judgement, especially at the higher levels. And as for defense, well my theory is that players tend to 'switch off' slightly from a psychological perspective as they have not won the bidding on the hand.

I know that as a chessplayer that if I have white I will succeed more than black. Already I have put myself under psychological pressure by choosing the wrong color black before the opening. I guess this also applies at bridge given that a series of defensive hands may make players feel they have lost scoring points on a regular basis, and so they step back from finding the right defensive moves at the bridge table also.

Only my theory...

The thing is that what matters is how you compare to everyone else, so by definition half of the people are better at bidding/playing and half the people are better at defending, even if a majority of the people suffer from a psychological disadvantage on defnese. Although your theory on defense is especially pertinent on the TP reward tournaments, where it is frustrating to see the other side in game.

[cherdano]

I think the Zenith definitely has a stronger field.

But you're also right to consider that you spend a lot more hands defending than at Best Hand. You could try to keep track of how you are scoring on these.

Finally, competitive bidding with weaker hands is also important at Zenith - maybe you are too passive on these?

[riverwalk3]

 cherdano, on 2022-June-02, 12:09, said:

I think the Zenith definitely has a stronger field.

But you're also right to consider that you spend a lot more hands defending than at Best Hand. You could try to keep track of how you are scoring on these.

Finally, competitive bidding with weaker hands is also important at Zenith - maybe you are too passive on these?

I've noticed that Zenith players always open light - it seems like 11 points is enough for an opening bid in Zenith whereas I usually have 13 in 1/2nd seat (could be weaker in 3rd seat and in 4th seat I open if and only if my hand is above average - 10 HCP with 4 spades is enough for example). I got a bottom for passing a hand with 11 HCP (12 with distribution) and 5 clubs/2 spades in first seat. I think my greatest source of loss is blowing an overtrick while defending however.

Slam hands are far less often when you don't have the best hand, but it still seems like slams usually get above average. Even then, if the Robot has the strongest hand and you have the second strongest hand the slam usually doesn't get you that much since the robot is the one pushing for the slam. So the bidding advantage is worth closer to 1/4 as much when you don't have the strongest hand. In best hand slams are usually free points for me since the player is the one making the slam bidding decision. However, when you don't have best hand slam only occurs around 3% of the hands (about 6% of the hands are slams and ), and probably only about 2% of the time are you able to profit (since the Robot puts you in slam).

Similarly, when you have the stronger hand you're the one pushing for game. This advantage no longer exists when partner has the stronger hand.

Robots don't double as often as they should, so probably competing more aggressively is a winning strategy.

[riverwalk3]

I tested it using yesterday's results using code. Out of the players who played both the Zenith Tournament and Daylong MP (1) tournament, the average Zenith score was 50.35% and the average Daylong MP (1) Tournament score was 53.13%. The sample size was 373. 2 days ago the Daylong MP (1) average was 52.80% compared to 49.83% in Zenith with a sample size of 432. This suggests that the Zenith Tournament is about 3% harder.

The standard deviation for MP (1) is 10.4% while the standard deviation of Zenith is 7.3% out of these overlaps. suggesting that getting a 64.5% in Daylong MP (1) is about as hard as getting a 57.6% in Zenith.

Similarly for the players who played both the Zenith Tournament and Daylong IMP (1), the average score was 50.25% for Zenith and 2.22 IMPs for the IMP tournament, with an overlap of 265. The standard deviation for the Zenith tournament was 6.9% and the standard deviation for the IMP tournament was 13.3 IMPs out of the players who played both, meaning that a score of 15.5 IMPs is about as hard as getting 57.1% in Zenith. This suggests that it's abnormal to frequently get 20 IMPs in the Daylong IMP tournament but get in the 40s in Zenith.

Out of the players who played both Daylong(1) and Daylong(4), the Daylong (1) average is 50.20% and Daylong(4) average is 51.16%, suggesting that Daylong(4) is ever so slightly easier with a sample size of 191. However, this is probably within the margin of error of chance. The standard deviation for Daylong (4) is 12.39% in these overlaps while the standard deviation of Daylong (1) is 11.27%.

For the people who played both the Free (MP) Tournament and the Daylong (1) Tournament on 5/30, the average for Free was 52.50% and the average for Daylong (1) was 48.50%, suggesting that Free is about 4% easier than Daylong (1).

[riverwalk3]

Ouch: