Subway Stations

I once heard someone say that, as you start to improve in bridge, you feel like you're moving backwards. Whereas innocence bring ignorance, when you start down the road to enlightenment, you start to see all the mistakes you're making. While your play is no worse that before, it appears to be worse, because now you're starting to understand when you make a mistake.

Maybe, just maybe, I'm starting to come out of that. Oh, sure, I'm still making my share of dumb mistakes, but the frustration level seems to be dropping.

(Case in point for dumb mistakes - hand 1 in last night's ACBL against 4 spades, I lead my singleton heart, which holds. Trying to get to partner's hand for a ruff, I chose a diamond rather than lead to dummy's AKQJxx in clubs. Sounds reasonable, except that I also had 6 clubs....)

Granted, it might just be that I'm playing a bit less than before, and my overall card sense is slipping. Triathlon training is starting to suck a lot of my time and energy, and spring allergies are taking most of the rest. Still, my game feels ok.

My biggest problem by far seems to be that I'm too eager to shut my brain down. Having a partner or two who signal all the time is fantastic when you haven't always had it, but signalling is not a silver bullet. Sometimes, partner is going to have to drop the 8 of clubs or the 2 of clubs regardless of what they really want. If bridge logic dictates a certain action regardless of the discard, then blind adherence to signalling is wrong. All too often I shut my mind down when I shouldn't.

I need to really focus on counting and reasoning all the way through the hand.

The rest of the stuff, like forgetting what a certain bid means in a competetive auction, a rare application of Gerber, and not being afraid of the red card, and proper card combination play (for example) will all come with time and repetition.

EDIT: One more thing - I think I'm starting to rely a little too much on poor defensive play by my opponents. For example with Kxx opposite Qxx, I can almost always squeeze 2 tricks out of this if I can find the ace, because holder will never duck if I lead small towards the honour. In general, relying on poor defense is making it tougher to think about what the right line should be.