Am teaching Mark & Henry to play bridge, so Yun & I can play with them. It's been awhile & I forgot how fun it was. 'Cept, Henry approached the thing orthogonally--like a gambler actually--with no regard for convention. He would always enter the bidding no matter what hand he had, and always pushed it to the 4 or 5 level, which meant we were always competing to see who could go set the least. Well it kept people from ever making game & I started to wonder: what's wrong with the scoring that it rewards this method of brute force bidding and not-so-fun gameplay? Because like it or not Henry was on to something...above the line points mean nothing until someone makes two games.
So, at nearly 4 in the morning, we wound up in the following ridiculous situation. Yun & I were not vulnerable. Mark & Henry were vulnerable and had a leg on. Because Yun & I had racked up so many points on their undertricks (which cost twice as much as ours), if they would have made their bid, they would have won the battle but lost the war. That is to say not even the 750 pt bonus could have saved them. So it was actually in our interest to lose the hand. Similarly, it was in their interest to lose the hand, and then let us make game and become vulnerable, in the hopes of setting us enough to dig themselves out of their hole.
So we played a bridge hand in which both sides deliberately tried to lose. It's actually a lot harder than it seems. Every card laid down was hilarious; often people would sluff off aces in non-trump suits when they clearly could have trumped. Oh, inverted world.
In lieu of a better scoring system, the next time we played I scored as follows. No concept of game, just play as many hands as you have time for, and total above & below the line points. To encourage people to bid up to the right level, I made tricks under the line worth twice as much. All other above the line scoring related to bonuses, undertrick penalties, and doubling remained the same.
It worked out okay. Henry had to adjust his bidding style to communicate information--which meant learning the conventions--and the bids were within bounds, so gameplay was typical & a lot more fun. Every once & a while you need to be reminded why there are conventions in the first place, and why they evolved the way the did. The best way is to play against a fresh mind. Just like in chess...remember how your little brother would somehow manage to beat you even if you knew what you were doing, and he didn't have a clue?
Posted by Alan at July 26, 2004 01:30 AM