[blml] Encrypted signals (was: nearest card)

[Adam Beneschan]

Eric wrote:
 
> At 11:16 AM 7/19/06, Adam wrote:
> 
> >Konrad wrote:
> >
> > > When I was a student I played regularly in tournaments on my
> > > university. Plus, naturally, I participated in Junior Championship
> > > of Poland. In the university tournaments more than 50% of pairs
> > > played some artificial (not necessarily strong pass) system
> > > of their own. Most of these systems were unplayable from
> > > a professional point of view, very often the pairs in question
> > > had no clue how to use them etc. but it was A LOT of FUN.
> >
> >This doesn't sound like fun at all to me.  My strength is in
> >problem-solving, and that's what I find fun; I think a game where
> >there's a lot of random and wild bidding leading to ridiculous
> >contracts would take away a lot of the aspect of the game that I find
> >fun.  Or so it sounds like.  Maybe that's not the case in practice.
> >But the difference between the game I'm used to and the game you
> >describe sounds a little like the difference between playing a game of
> >chess, and putting the chesspieces on the board and having fun with
> >the pieces.
> 
> The other side of the coin: if the cards were dealt exactly the same 
> way every time, bridge would sound a lot like chess.  Chess is a game 
> of "perfect information", meaning nothing is hidden.  Bridge is a game 
> of imperfect information, in which psychological strategies and tactics 
> can mean as much as pure "problem-solving".  Convention restrictions 
> make bridge more like chess, by reducing the variability of the 
> available information, bringing it closer to a perfect information 
> game.  

That's grossly overstating the case, I think.  You could have a
tournament where everyone is required to bid exactly as Goren told
them how to bid---and there would still be tons of hidden information.
In fact, back in the old days everyone pretty much bid the same way,
and there was still a need to try to reconstruct the hidden hands by
logic, and there were plenty of opportunities for deceptive carding
and other psychological strategies.  And before that there was whist,
which didn't have any bidding at all but was still very much a game of
imperfect information.  (Moreso than bridge, perhaps, since there was
no dummy.)  So *this* argument, I think, doesn't hold water.

Anyway, I want to make it clear that I am *not* saying that bridge
should be more like chess.  My point here is that my idea about what
makes the game fun is different from Konrad's, or Richard Willey's, or
some other people; and that when bridge organizations decide what
restrictions to impose or not to impose, they need to take into
account that different people like different things about the game,
and thus need to figure out what the right balance is or find another
way to cater to different tastes.  I certainly am not of the mind-set
that bridge should simply structure its rules around what I find fun;
it seems to me that often, those who argue for elimination of all
restrictions *are* of that kind of mind-set.  That is, they really
enjoy the experimentation aspect of the game, and are peeved when they
find out they can't do it because the other players around them don't
really want to play the same kind of game.  That's probably too harsh,
and it certain does not apply to everybody that argues against
convention restrictions.  But that kind of mind-set does seem to
exist, to some degree.

                                -- Adam