Overview
In the Real World Bridge series, Charlie and Val walk you through deals that made a big difference in matchpoint scores, in actual play. In these deals, players like you sometimes made the winning decisions and sometimes made the losing decisions.
Deals like these are the ones that matter, to players like you. If you consistently make better choices on these sorts of deals, your scores will improve, as will your enjoyment of bridge.
The Deals on Which the Real World Bridge Series is Based
Starting late in 2017, Charlie wrote a summary, twice a month, highlighting interesting deals he saw at the table. Then and now, most of Charlie’s bridge is played with intermediate and advanced partners, at matchpoints. Initially, the summaries covered deals where Charlie noticed particularly good or bad bids or plays from anyone at the table. Over time, the focus shifted to deals on which lots of matchpoints were won and lost across the field. In a typical month, the deal summaries cover 75 to 100 deals.
Back in 2017, Charlie’s bridge included some online play, mostly on Bridge Base Online (BBO), but after face-to-face bridge clubs shut down in the spring of 2020, Charlie (like many other bridge enthusiasts) switched completely to online bridge and was impressed by the additional information that was available in very large games (typically 50+ tables). One advantage was that one or two outrageous results had relatively little impact on the matchpoint scores; another was that it was possible to identify accurately the types of decisions that won and lost lots of matchpoints across a large field.
One deal in particular stands out: it was played in three notrump, in the BBO Day-Long game (the other three players were BBO robots) on October 29, 2022. Charlie had been looking for a guard squeeze for years, and this deal featured a guard squeeze. Charlie noticed the guard squeeze, played for it, and made twelve tricks when it worked. But the deal was played at 70 tables, only seven declarers took twelve tricks, and only two of the seven took the best line of play (the other successful declarers benefited from defensive errors). Eleven tricks scored 78% versus 96% for twelve tricks. The bottom line is that the guard squeeze – fascinating as it was – didn’t matter in terms of practical bridge. Here is what did matter: (1) the opening lead (against less-revealing auctions, the opening lead was more favorable for declarer); (2) whether declarer was careful to avoid entry problems; and (3) whether the defenders took advantage of available clues.
Accordingly, starting in mid-2020, the deal summaries developed into a collection of situations in which lots of matchpoints were won and lost, by typical players rather than by experts. The summaries currently cover over 2000 such situations.
How We Choose What to Write About
The Real World Bridge publications are based on decisions that won or lost lots of matchpoints in “real world” bridge. To learn more about matchpoints and the scoring system, follow this link. By contrast, we do not cover these types of decisions:
- Decisions that – like Charlie’s guard squeeze — are technically interesting but that had relatively little impact on matchpoint scores.
- Decisions that won lots of matchpoints through luck but that weren’t technically correct.
- Decisions that produced a great matchpoint score but that were made by only a few players.
Similarly, if a topic didn’t appear in the deal summaries, we don’t write about it, no matter how interesting we think it is. That is, we cover those decisions – and only those decisions — that occurred at the table in “real world” bridge, that made a big difference in the score, and that were technically correct.