[32519]

Some time ago there was a thread on areas to improve on in your game which gives the greatest return on your overall results. Opinions were diverse but IIRC most felt that declarer play is an easy area to improve on. Good defensive agreements were something else that got a lot of support. System came in lower down the scale.

Partner and I have finally put together a system. Now we are trying to keep record of where things went wrong at the table and why they went wrong. More often than not a poor result came about due to ineffective bidding. Our latest par or below par result came from missing an easy grand slam at a 12 table club match. Only 1 pair bid the grand, the rest stopping in 12. All made 13 tricks. We need to up the ante on our current slam bidding methods. So now we afterwards analyse all hands where the bidding let us down in an effort to improve our overall results.

Maybe, just maybe…when we get the bidding right…our overall results will dramatically improve?

[wank]

errors in bidding are just more visible than errors in play. that's why you think it's where you're leaking all your points.

consider a 2-way finesse. you take it the wrong way and go off and just shrug your shoulders and say you were unlucky. a better declarer might well have spotted more clues to get it right, or else found a line which didn't require a finesse at all.

[FrancesHinden]

There's also a difference between improving bidding and working on system, they aren't the same things.

Anyway as wank says bidding is easier to see, because you can tell if you missed a slam which had 12 top tricks, but you won't necessarily realise that you went off in a cold contract that you should have made.
Look at the results in detail when you get a very good pair playing in a weak club field. They don't win by out-bidding the field, they generally win by taking more tricks than anyone else in 1NT or 4M

[32519]

Partner is actually a pretty decent player, both as declarer and defender. Her biggest shortcoming is in the bidding. With her previous partner they had some silly agreements such as, “never play in 3 of a minor, bid 3NT instead.” I don’t care about other partnerships agreements, but I do care when they partner me. It never took long to convince her that the above agreement was stupid in more than one way, the obvious one being when 3NT fails but 3m makes. The more important one was pointing out to her that the minor suit slams were being missed. To think you did well making 11 tricks in 3NT is just dumb when you missed 6 in a minor.

Didn’t someone say, “Bidding isn’t a philosophy, it’s a science.”

To succeed in this game at the higher levels you need to be able to bid to the optimal contract. If you can’t, you will ALWAYS be eliminated during the round robin matches no matter how good your declarer or defensive play is.

LOVE: For the game
HOPE: That we will learn to bid properly
LONGSUFFERING: I have no idea how long this is going to take

[ggwhiz]

One of the old time greats said something like "Don't sweat the superstar plays so much, there aren't enough of them. Try not to blow the routine ones."

In that sense it would follow that accurate bidding will impact many more hands.

[32519]

Recently BBO News had an article saying that the BBF Team versus JEC had yet to record a win.
Is the JEC Team -
1. Bidding to better contracts?
2. Better declarers?
3. Better defenders?
4. Using a better system?

Chances are good that the bidding features somewhere here as well.