[Chamaco]

Hi all,
I would like to hear about techniques for improving skills in counting the hand, remebering cards, etc.

I have started playing bridge 2.5 years ago, and I had never played seriously card games before.

However, I took advantage of my chess player's experience (I am a Master) in studying the "right books".
I studied a lot of books, and this certainly helped me improving my bidding knowledge and hand evaluation faster than other players who played only 2 years.

Improving bidding skill is - in general - something very conceptual, and I found it very natural after years of studying chess strategy.

Yet, card play is another story.
I identified my greatest "black hole" in card play even since the beginning, and therefore tried to cope with it the same way I did with bidding: reading tons of books (almost everything by Lawrence, Kelsey, Roth, Reese and more authors), and playing a lot, at the table and online.
Thgis certainly helped developing a sense for the *strategy* in playing cards (dangerous opponent, endplay strategies, percentage plays, safety plays, etc).
But what is still missing is the basic *technique* = REMEMBERING the cards, which is different from tactics and strategy, simply vbecause it lays at their foundation.

Yes, I have trouble remembering the cards.
At trick 5 I have already forgotten some key cards that went out.
Or, after an opp fails to follow suit the first time, at his second or 3rd discard, the distribution becomes already very "foggy".

When I play live at the club, most of the time, such skill is not crucial, yet I know that if I want to really improve, I must develop this. After the hand, other players discuss how the hand wd have gone with another switch or discard; I cannot, because I do not have a mental picture of the hand.

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This brings my questions:

1) how long did you take before remembering the hand well ? 1 year ? 2 years ? 5 years ?
I guess this is also dependent on the age when you start, so I will add that I am 36 years old.

2) Did you use (or do you suggest) techniques for developing this skill - except the obvious "play, play, play" ?

I read the following advice in Karpin's "The art of cart reading".
He presents a hand where declarare should make 7NT. The hand has a mirrored distribution (4333 by 4333), with a 2-way finesse position on a Queen. The contract can be made only by guessing the queen, so the key is play off the oter suits to get distributional infos useful to count the hand and finally make the percentage finesse.
He suggests that the same deal (or similar) is replayed dozens of time shuffling opps cards and keeping declarer and dummy's hands the same.

I am doing this with GIB, and it seems ok as a practicing technique.

But any other tip, or experience will be greatly appreciated !


Thanks

Mauro

[csdenmark]

Hi Mauro - I have your problem too but normally I explain that to aging process.

I just fetched 2 books by Ron Klinger I have bought some years ago - BUT FORGOTTEN TO READ.

"Improve your bridge memory"
"Better bridge with a better bridge memory"

Page 13 he has a chapter called 'memory improves with age'. I certainly hope he is right - I dont have that much time left I think. I hope time will work better for you.

Here a rhyme for beginners(page 20)

If you would avoid a fight,
Place the cards upon your right.
If of sense you are bereft,
Put them wrongly on the left.

It is all about Mnemonics - techniques for remembering.

I think I need to carry on with my personal approach - only to discuss deals if based on log files.

Good luck Mauro!

[fred]

Try this:

Next time you are doing something that doesn't
require much thinking (ironing or mowing the lawn
for example), think of 3 small numbers (ie 5,3,3)
and then try to come up with the 4th small number
(2 in this example) such that all 4 add up to 13.

Keep doing this until you can always come up with
an accurate 4th number immediately.

This will help you learn the possible hand patterns.
Once this information is hard-coded into your brain,
I think you will find it easier to count the hands because
you won't have to do any addition or subtraction anymore.

One other tip: count EVERY hand even if you know it
doesn't matter on a particular deal. The more practice
you get the easier it will become.

Eventually you will find that counting the distribution of
the unseen hands becomes a completely automatic process.
This happened to me after I had been playing serious
bridge for about a year, but I was very young at the time
and I also have some natural talent for the game. I suspect
that for most people it would take several years to become
proficient at counting.

"Counting at Bridge", a program that we created with
Mike Lawrence is an excellent product that is designed to
help to teach you to count. For more info visit:

http://www.bridgebas...e/counting.html

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[mpefritz]

Nice question.

I played pinochle and hearts for years, and counting is inherent in those games as well as every card game.

When I started playing bridge, I had a tough time counting. I agree with Fred's suggestion of the software for Mike Lawrence's "Counting at Bridge"

I played bridge for about a year before being able to count well at the table. My card play suffered immensely during the month when I decided I was going to count every hand. I think for most peole who get over that hump, counting just becomes natural without thinking. You also realize which hands you don't need to count (but will end up counting anyway without thinking).

2 subtle comments on how to practice. I agree with Fred's 4 number to add up to 13 comment. But also realize that all the possible suit distributions are also all the possible hand shapes.

The other small aid is that each hand (or each suit distribution) will have an odd number of odd cards and an odd number of even cards. This may seem abstract and goofy sounding, but after a bit of time helps condense how much thinking you need to do.

Figuring out hand shapes becomes easier when you observe the bidding and note people showing out. Counting is now easier in bridge than the other card games, because I always know half of the cards.

Good luck and warn your regular partner(s) that your play is going to suffer when you start counting every hand. Once you can count well, you will wonder what game you were playing before.

Better yet, stop reading these replies and play!

fritz

[EricK]

On top of all the excellent advise in the previous replies, I would recommend reading "Countdown to Winning Bridge" by Marc Smith and Tim Bourke. I think it is a brilliant book.

Eric

[Chamaco]

EricK, on Feb 22 2004, 08:53 PM, said:

On top of all the excellent advise in the previous replies, I would recommend reading "Countdown to Winning Bridge" by Marc Smith and Tim Bourke. I think it is a brilliant book.

Eric

I have that book
And I have "Counting at bridge", a very nice CD (I recommend it )
And I have "Dormer on deduction", "All 52 cards" (Miles), "How to read your opponent cards" (Lawrence), and many similar others.

The problem is that all these books describe to the reader *how to make use* of counting, but not *how to count and remember*.

Actually the book that came closer to what I need what exactly Karpin's "The art of card reading".

I love the above books, they are great, I read and reread them often (I commute to work every day by train so I have the time to do it ).

But my problem right now *how to count and remember cards*, not *what inferences and decisions make of the result of counting*.

Thanks anyway !!

[Trpltrbl]

I started playing bridge at fairly early age, 12, and I never had any problems counting and remembering things. I would say something that many people don't do, is watching spotcards. They stop watching after the honnors have shown up.

Mike

[csdenmark]

I understand you Mauro - I would also like to have such help to be able to remember. I have given up!

Your last comment encouraged me to look a bit closer to the Klinger books I informed of. Sad to say - it really looks like it is mostly the known - but valueable - thumb rules for what to do instead of what I assumed and the titles tells: techniques for remembering.

[irdoz]

One other book on counting I found useful was Countdown to Winning Bridge by Tim Bourke and Marc Smith, because it does have some suggestions for how you gradually work up to counting hands fully and how to focus on the key information you need depending on the hand.

[luis]

Fred's advice is excellent but please try not to be ironing :-) It can be dangerous...

I have an excercise that resulted for some people who asked me about this: in every hand you play when the hand finishes:
- if you are delcarer tell LHO his distribution and ask him if you are right
- if you are defending tell pd his distribution and ask him if you are right
This makes you count every hand and find out why you miscounted when you err. You then learn by yourself how to count better and make it an habit.

Luis

[inquiry]

This is an interesting topic. Needless to say I totally agree with Fred's advise on practicing the distribution/suit patterns while doing mundane task... The mundane task I used was when trying to go to sleep... it was better than counting sheep, and no risk of burning my clothes while ironing or running oversomething I should avoid while mowing the grass.

For anyone interested in this topic, it has been discussed in a number of threads in the beginner/intermediate forum in the past. Two interesting threads worthy of looking at are, the one started by Laird entitled, "Counting the PIPS"
http://bridgebase.lunarpages.com/~bridge2/...findpost&p=2630

And one by the Beginner/Intermediate lounge manger, hallway, entitled, ""Counting at the table"
http://bridgebase.lunarpages.com/~bridge2/...p?showtopic=558

Of course, the first post in each of these thread just raise the issue, look for thoughtful replies by Yzerman, Cave_Draco, mishovnbg, Luis, JRG, and my own humble attempts as well... you even have Laird making one of my favorite bridge quotes.. which I will not complete here (you will have to go find it if you don't know it, is worth the hunt), it begins... There are only three kinds of bridge players: ......

Now for your specific question....

Quote

1) how long did you take before remembering the hand well ? 1 year ? 2 years ? 5 years ?

Start playing a game like Hearts - for money, where spot cards to avoid being endplayed and fear of the spade queen being thrown onto you, and you will develop the nack of counting fairly quickly. One can learn to count the hand in well less than a year, take a look at hallway's first reply in counting at the table where after just a few days, she adequately applied techniques suggested in another hand. Counting is actually easy, but what happens at the table is that while we can count every hand if we had the mental discipline to do so, what is hard is actually keep it up hand after hand. This is because it may look like that counting is not always necesssary. But nothing can be further from the truth... if you are going to be a good player, you must count everyhand. This is the most important lesson, to do it everyhand... developing the mental attitude to count each hand is what is hard, not to count a hand.

Quote

2) Did you use (or do you suggest) techniques for developing this skill - except the obvious "play, play, play" ?

My suggestion for learning to count is in response to thread by laird given above, so I will not repeat it here (hallway found it useful apparently). However, I will add, maybe a few days of serious play at the card game hearts might help too. While I learned bridge from my family at a very young age (my mom and dad played a lot, and my sister was much, much older than I and she was playing about the time I was born, so as soon as I could hold the cards i was the emergency 4th)... it wasn't until I started playing hearts that the importance of counting and remembering the pips became very, very important to me... the reason in hearts, is you have to watch big cards as well as little ones.. and you have to conserve big and little pips to stop runs by opponents or to control when a suit is played, as well as to duck out of the lead or a trick.

Ben

[Chamaco]

luis, on Feb 23 2004, 01:39 PM, said:

Fred's advice is excellent but please try not to be ironing :-) It can be dangerous...

Alright, what about cooking ??

Thanks, I think these concrete advices should be useful, I'll try them !

[Free]

I'm still pretty young (23), so I guess I'm still learning pretty fast. The way I started counting (and still do for a part - other part is some sort of photographic memory of cards and a good short term memory) about 8 years ago was as follows:

Count your own HCP and distribution. It's easy to remember you have like a 5-3-4-1 distribution with 14 HCP. While playing, substract your HCP and dummy's of 40, and calculate how much HCP partner can have. Still easy, not much work, and should actually be a standard procedure... Now lets play some cards. First few tricks are easy to remember, and everybody follows most of the time. Try to remember which honours partner has shown, and you'll know what he can have left. If he can only have 2HCP, don't give him a King...
After some carding, it might be difficult to know how many cards of each suit are gone. Now your little counting in the beginning gets back in: count your remaining cards, and you'll know how many times the suits are played. If however someone didn't follow anymore, you should try to remember that specificly. You can also try to find out how his hand looks like, distribution wise, in that case.

This will help you a lot more to find out in the end if your ♥J is the 13th or not. When practissing this, doing it EVERY game, you'll become a descent player pretty fast. I developed this method, and it worked best for me.
In about half a year I knew when my card was last one or not, wheither or not my partner had some honor card in a specific suit,...

Next you should also try to remember which high cards are gone (A, K, Q, J). Then you'll know when your 10's are high. A little while later, try to remember 1 more high card (the 10's), ...

After a year, I knew when my 8's and 9's were high, and these days I usually 'see' the complete game in front of me. Playing is pretty automatic for me, but I sometimes still make some counting mistakes ofcourse.

The best method imo is still some trick you develop for yourself. This worked out for me just fine, and I never even read it somewhere. If you can better count suit per suit, why not? One thing is sure: IF you count every hand, it'll become an automatism, but I'm not saying you'll never have to think about a hand If I lose count of a certain suit, I go back to my old trick: my distribution, how many time the suit was played, how many times someone didnt follow, how many times I discarded one of that suit, and I know the exact number again Luckily, my short term memory works just fine for these situations.

I hope it will help someone.

[badderzboy]

As a relatively new player, counting was the hardest thing to learn and I got the hang of it by really concentrating on 1 hand usually where opps are declarer at first and counting everything spots, shape, pts etc (declarers shape/pts from bidding if poss) and then not trying so hard again that session to determine all and then in the next session to fully count 2 hands and gradually increase the number and stop my brain from numbing after 10 hands+. Suggested in a book by Ron Klinger I believe.

I also found using the ASCII format in BBO helped me start counting much easier (including the last hand display)

I've just returned from a trip where I played relaxed "holiday" bridge with a pretty inexperienced partner so no real pressure lol and found all of a sudden it was almost automatic to count and remember the hands and far less effort than it had been previously so I could concentrate on trying to play the hands better!

The answer is practice and also setting reasonable goals and expectations for yourself in a session

Good Luck

Steve

[lenze]

This is an interesting subject. And I don't have an answer. I have no problem remembering hands or cards played or even hands played in the past. I've been at it, however, for over 35 years. My good friend, and doctor, who also plays bridge can't remember the previous hand played. However, he is an avid golfer, and he can recall EVERY shot he made during any round of golf. It's just a matter of your interest.