Defensive hands. What was your focus ?

The king of diamond was lead and partner discouraged. What is your continuation ?
I found this hand interesting because 2 experts chose a continuation which was a "big play" and switch to the club 9. Where was their focus at the time, I don t know, but I suspect that their choice of switch was influenced more by a desire to win than the information available to them. External wide focus on the auction, alternating with internal narrow focus to assess declarer's hand. Declarer has shown spades, his partner has shown hearts, declarere therefore also has clubs and diamonds. That leaves partner with hearts. Partner will know what to do on a heart switch and the club king entry will remain in your hand. You should always punish poor bidding.

What were your focus during the bidding. Possibly on the current state of the match, maybe on the room temperature, or possibly how you had a bad week last week. Or, despite the lack of high cards in your hand, did you focus on the bidding, switching between external and internal focus to assess the possible hands types for partner and for the opposition. Partner has any points that is not in the opponents hands . He has an opening hand. Yet he did not take one bid over 1C. Easy lead club ?

I included this hand more as an illustration of how the focus can be influenced by emotions. I was given this as a problem and my choice was a diamond lead. My choice was governed by only one factor. A previous experience where my partner made a bad double, more out of frustration for being taken out of a making contract. Fear made me lead a diamond. In fact, trusting the double, I think in retrospect that the spade lead is pretty much automatic. Partner has spades and he has points. Dummy is likely short on one of our suits. Trust partner and lead a spade

On the road to improvement

The next few posts will focus on improving one's focus styles and the steps involved that journey.

Step One - Know yourself

Determine your personal focus style . Get yourself a little red book.

To do that, you have to take the first step: you need to know when you’re focused.

During your next several practice games, try devoting time to observing yourself . Possibly just after a hand has been played. (this may well have a negative impact on your performance) or just after a match.

Using the table on focus style from my earlier post, make a note of the things you focussed on during each stage of the game (bidding, declaring, defending, dummying) focus styles

Make also a note ofthe things you focussed on after each game. Also and just as important, make a note of the things you miss.

Notice when you felt focused, and remember everything you can about the sensation. Is it a lack of thoughts? A single thought? A feeling? A sensation of being consumed by driving power into the pedals? After each match, make a few notes on the topic

Stop digging

Regaining focus - RRR

If you want to climb out of a hole, the very first thing you must do is stop digging…

Once something happens that affect your focus, there are 3 basic steps to regain focus. This must be practiced actively in training games until it becomes automatic.

Recognise

To ensure you regain your focus when a distraction does interfere with your state of mind, it is essential that you are consciously aware that you are at a distraction point. Through experience, you learn what situations are more likely to infer with your mental state. You mind may feel restless, your breathing changes, your body temperature rises. Or if a game is not going well, you may feel overwhelmed, despondent. Make a list of them and learn to recognise your mental reactions.

Refuse

Create a trigger to interrupt or stop the counterproductive thought(s). This trigger can be a:

• Verbal cue – Develop a few key words or phrases that you will use to stop your mind. Examples words are: Cards, stop, switch on, 7NT ( J ), I love this game…

• Visual picture – the moon, water..



• Physical action – Put down your cards, pick them up and re-arrange them, hit your fist against your hand, stretch, get up and get some water, throw away the distraction by putting it in your pocket ...

Relax

You now need to get your mind back to the bridge focused state. This is equivalent to a mini repeat of your pre-game routine. Use a focusing technique that you are comfortable with

• Count backward from 10
  


• Take 5 to 10 deep breath. It may help to count each breath you take



• Imagery – This is something you will have developed and practiced before hand. You may have a few images that can be used depending on how much time you have. Between games, you may bring back the image of the last word championship, or one event where you performed well. Or instead of bringing back the image, bring back how you felt at that time.


• With less time available , try to find your center, or imagine yourself bending all your energies toward the game

Now the world is your oyster

PS : Just remember that RRR must be used in practice matches. It must become second nature

Focus - Interlude

Three dimensions of focus:

1. Intensity
2. Duration
3. Breadth

And only one road to improvement ===>

Even then, if we do not train these mental skills every match we play, instead of improving our bridge mental skills, we are only maintaining their current state. Some famous person said:

A practice match should always include deliberate practice directed at improving focus styles and concentration
If we play practice matches without directed attention to our focus styles and concentration, we are only reinforcing out ability to remain unfocused !

5,4,3,2,1 Golden Rules

F = Five More Rule
The set may not be going well, or you are doing some practice bidding/playing and you have had it. Get your second wind by the conscious decision to just play FIVE MORE hands right. In practice, continuing to concentrate when your brain is tired is the key to S-T-R-E-T-C-H-I-N-G your attention span and building mental endurance.

C = Cards
Car, cards and nothing but cards should be your mantra

O = One Think At a Time After a bad result, or distracting event, make your mind a deal it can't refuse. Instead of telling yourself NOT to worry about something. I will list a few techniques in the next post

U = Use Your Hands as Blinkers
Picture your mind as a camera and your eyes as its aperture. Be aware of the various focus styles required throughout the game. If you need to switch to narrow focus, cup your hands around your eyes so you have "tunnel vision" and are looking solely at the cards. Placing your hands on the side of your face blocks out surroundings so they are literally "out of sight, out of mind." If you cup your hands around your eyes every time you want to switch from wide-angle to telephoto focus, that physical ritual becomes a Pavlovian trigger. ( You know, Pavlov rang the bell, fed the dog, rang the bell and fed the dog, until the dog started salivating as soon as he heard the sound of the bell)

S = See As If For the First or Last Time
You mind will work best if you know how to be "here and now" and fully present instead of mindlessly rushing in your mind through a millions other concerns. Looking at something as if for the first time will bring your mind back to the task

Styles galore

Before I move on to the journey of improvement, I must delve a little more into the concept of attentional styles.

I have summarised the different focus styles that we all use to varying degrees a various times:

• Broad external focus - taking in our surrounding, taking in a multitude of cues from our environment
• Broad internal focus - time for strategies and planning, selecting relevant cues
• Narrow internal focus - time for problem solving and processing complex information
• Narrow external focus - time for execution, playing the card, looking at the cards

While everyone is capable of using and developing these different styles, we each will have a preferred or a more developed focus style - whether we were born that way or due to our education or occupation. The CEO of a company is more likely to be a "strategic " thinkers, a programmer is more likely to be a problem solver...

Along these difference in focus styles, are also differences in how likely we are to become distracted and by what:

• "external distractability" = how easily we become distracted by task irrelevant external cues, using a broad external focus when it is inappropriate
• "internal distractability" = how easily we become distracted at critical times by their own thoughts and feelings, failing to narrow our attention and/or shift to an external focus when we should
• A third element is our "degree of flexibility" = how easily we can shift from one mode to the other

It is important to understand that under stress, or a times of mental fatigue, we tend to revert to our natural style - even though it may not the most appropriate.

Ohhh ...this is such dry topic, how about a quote from Dalai Lama to finish the day

We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm

CO Square

FOcuss COncentration and COnfidence

As you have guessed, the third element closely linked to Focus and Concentration is Confidence.

..

Clearly, confidence is an essential part of high performance, so it should be worthwhile to look at the relationship between focus concentration and confidence.

Now, unlike focus styles and concentration, confidence is not something that you prepare training exercises for. It can - and needs to - be developed however and I will dwell on this in a subsequent post.

The following 2 diagrams illustrate the interconnection between focus and confidence:

{Diagrams with small modifications come from a presentation by Dr Nideffer}

High confidence Level

With a high level of confidence, the performer is aware early in the recovery process. He can let go of internal thoughts and concerns to remain focused on relevant external cues. Look at the Tiger woods example in the previous post. (Here is he story)

Low Confidence level

...

Due to the lack of confidence, the recovery process slows downs and results in a vicious circle. The longer it takes to recover, the more the internal tension remains or increases, the more the mind is occupied with internal emotions and and less with relevant cues. As a result the performer fails to anticipate. The problem increases and so does the anxiety.

The CO of FOCOCO

Concentration as "Fascination of the mind for the object upon which we focus"

Attention is the process by which we uses our senses to perceive the world. Focusing our attention means that we become aware of one thing or one set of things at the exclusion of others. As discussed before this Focus can be internal or external

Concentration is something else. It is when we sustain our attention on selected stimuli for a long period of time. That is the attention span.

You cannot concentrate by telling yourself: Now, I will concentrate! (And concentration does not mean staring at something). There is also a clear link between concentration and switching focus styles. If we use of lot of mental energy to select the right focus style and to switch between one style and the other, our concentration will fade.

Top performers sustain a degree of concentrated focus. Their mental game allows them to retain balance and the belief that “it ain’t not over til it’s over” . They trust the process.
Someone said of Tiger Woods: Apart obviously his immense talent, what he has is a total commitment to his mental game. Not just once in a while or only when things are going good but on every shot his attention is focused

Here is a story:
One time, Woods missed a short birdie putt on a par 5 hole. In disgust, he whiffed his putter thorough mid air. He tapped the next one in, but he was now four shots behind the leader with four holes to play. A tough task to make up.
On that next hole, Tiger went to the tee and went through his pre-shot routine. (All good golfers have a pre-shot routine of lining up the shot, envisioning what they want to do and the flight of the ball.) Then they step up and address the ball. Tiger did this. As he started his back swing, a car full of hecklers drove by screaming and honking the horn. Tiger froze, right in the middle of his back swing, stepped back from the ball, smirked a smile, regained his composure, and went through his pre-shot routine all over again. He then stepped back up to the ball, took his swing and knocked it right in the hole for a hole-in-one.

Handball and Bridge ... continued

Focus styles used in a bridge game

And now looking at the focus styles used during a game of bridge. It is definitely getting tougher

Switching focus styles requires a great deal of mental energy.
Errors are more likely to occur then we have to change the width and the direction of our attention. We may change to slowly or too rapidly and miss relevant cues as a result.

If declarer plays a card quickly at trick one, we need to change focus from broad external to broad internal for analysis. If we react too too quickly, we may miss the step or make it too late, after our card has been played or after tha game has been played !
Or declarer plays an unexpected card. This may call for a shift to broad internal focus as we consider declarer strategy. If this thinking was not done before, we will switch to broad internal focus too slowly and our tempo will give a cue to the opponent

In addition to the cues relevant to the hand being played, there are a lot of sources of distractions that can call upon our focus if we are not careful. Some external, such as:

• the attitude of partner,


• the attitude of the opponents –say they begin an argument at the table,


• the heat and the noise in the room,
  

Some internal such as:

• a bad result – or even a very good one - on the previous hand,


• the bad feeling we have made a bad play or that partner has taken an unexpected action,


• worrying that our teammates had a tough time on previous round


• or plain simple that we just had lunch and feel sleepy, wishing we did not.
  

Adding to this, the skills used during a game of bridge are mental, not physical like in a soccer game.

• In a ball game, the physical skills are practiced over and over again. When you are playing, your focus is practically always external except for those rare moments when you shoot a goal and even then, it is pretty much only at the moment you actually throw the ball.


• In bridge, it is your mental processes that are at play. You need internal focus to solve problems. And you need to tune in to external cues. Alas, internal focus is also the stuff of emotions, so it is a pretty tall order to stay tuned.
  

For those players whose technical knowledge is still lacking - (say what is the percentage play with ATxxx opposite 9xx for 3 tricks) - , additional internal focus is required to solve the problem at the table, taking your focus away from the game to a potential internal worry (Do I really know what I am doing?)

It should be no surprise that adding this to the need to constantly shift of attention, our mental energy is severly taxed and bridge players all over make mistakes that they should not make. It can then be pretty tough to keep our concentration levels they where they should be. (more on this later - Concentration )

Witness the final of Italy versus USA during the bridge championship in Monte Carlo. If dummy had not been a source of distraction by leaving the table (causing declarer to momentrarily switch to internal focus), would the result have been the same?http://www.worldbridge.org/tourn/MonteCarlo.03/Monaco.htm

Handball and bridge

Focus at work

Time to look at the focus styles used during a game of bridge.

Bridge is a team game - even though some of us may have a tendency to play solo - so I will first illustrate the concept of shifting focuses with a ball game before applying it to bridge. I have always been a keen sportswomen and tried many sports, but my first choice was - and still is - European Handball which I played competitively when I lived in France. So this is what I know and will use it here

(For those not in the know, team handball is a cross between soccer and basketball. If you want to be in the know, look at http://www.handballaustralia.org.au/handball_rules.html )

Brief summary of the game

• A cross between basketball and soccer. Same size court has basketball, 6 players (plus goalie for handball), a goal net for each side, like in soccer, but use of hands instead of feet. A line 7 meters away from the goal is the last defense line. This line cannot be crossed.
• Each team: 3 back positions: left back, right back and center back. 3 front positions: left wing, right wing and pivot and the goalie
• The aim or course is to score more goals that the opponents
  

Focus Styles used during a game of Handball

..

Focus Pocus - the Theory

First the Theory

Along the theory of Attentional and Interpersonal Style by Dr Nideffer
Attention comes in 2 dimensions:

• Breadth: At any given moment, our attention will be Broad (focus on multiple cues at the same time) or Narrow (focus on one thing)
• Direction: Similarly, our focus will either be External (focus on information outside of yourself) or Internal (focus in your own head). Internal focus is also the stuff of emotions

The appropriate style are used for different situations:

We must use broad external focus when we drive if we want to avoid the many obstacles that can get in the way of our car. If we are in narrow focus style, we are at great risk of missing one of the many external cues relevant to driving and crash into an incoming car for example.




A sports coach will use a broad internal focus to analyse and plan a strategy for the next game.



A goalie uses narrow external focus as he prepares for the soccer play to take a shot. If his mind is on the defender who arrived too late, he will miss the shifting of the shooter at the last minute



The bridge player uses internal focus as he reviews possible card combinations and the inferences he can make from the lead before he decides on the best line of play. Right at that moment, it is no use thinking about the state of the match at the other table the system agreements that we have with partner(The pic is a bunch of bridge players in the north pole, check it out: http://www.woodboro.co.uk/NorthPole.htm

Now, people are a bit like a televisions (well, the black box of the olden days anyway) . We can switch to all channels, but you cannot have a picture within a picture. We can all use all focus styles but we can do only one at a time.

But unlike televisions, we all have a preferred style of focus. This dominant style is relevant because it is what we tend to fall back on when the stress level is high.

In the next post ..... handball and bridge

A game of focuses

Mistakes and focuses

While there is a degree of complexity in the game of bridge, there are many who would say other games, such as Chess for example, are infinitely more complex than my favourite card game. And I dare say there are plenty of mistakes made throughout a game of chess.

Here what Kasparov had to say about mistakes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2KKfOGaR_w

But I suspect that there are not many other competitive endeavour where a team of the highest standard can lose a match (even if by 1 Imp) against a team of a much technical skills, be it in mind games or sports. Or we see examples of “stunning” errors in bridge world championships. The people who participates in these events are presumably among the best. They may not be perfect but they really know their stuff. You don’t expect obvious errors from them.

. . Aside . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The reason for me delving in this is personal of course. I found that the few times where I have played in tough events, there was always a match where I ”lost” it. And I made “stunning” errors.
After the fact, I could always ponder on the whys, analyse, increase my self-awareness and resolve to “try harder” next time. But trying harder at the bridge table does not really work. When you try hard, your focus is internal, where it must not be.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Looking for answers, I came across a lot of material in the field of sports psychology and research on excellence in performance. Of course, there will be many aspect to this and it would take much more than one blog to try to digest it all. But I found one thing that made me tick and seemed so particularly relevant to the game of bridge.

Some very useful and interesting research by a sports psychologist by the name of Nideffer (and many others like him) in the area of attention and concentration. My next post will try to regurgitate the theory, try applying it to the world of bridge and examine the postulate:

Bridge is a game of errors because it is a game of focuses

Dealing with arousal

The inverted-U relationship: Arousal - Performance

Before dealing with my main topic of interest, I must put to bed the issue of arousal (in a very superficial manner).

The Yerkes-Dodson law defines a relationship between arousal and performance was originally developed by psychologists R M Yerkes and J D Dodson around 1900. The law dictates that performance increases with physiological or mental arousal, but only up to a point. When levels of arousal become too high, performance decreases.

• When the arousal is too low, our focus becomes broad. At the table, we will attend not only to the game being played, but also to irrelevant cues, such as the other other players in the room, our partner, the state of the match, our own feelings, and a number of other cues unrelated to the game.


• Inversely, when the arousal is too high, our focus narrows until we can start losing track of relevant cues. Our focus changes from external to internal in a bid to manage the excitement.

The level of optimum arousal is not fixed. It varies based on the sport or activity that we engage in. Typically, complex tasks require a lower level of arousal.

As far as individuals, everyone operates best at their own level. The people who enjoy a quite evening to relax will tend to perform better at a low to medium level of arousal, while others who prefer a loud concert to end a hard week may require a higher level of arousal for peak performance.

It seems to me that the game of bridge must qualify as one of these complex activities that require arousal on the low side. And those people who need to be psyched-up for best performance must find ways to reconcile the two.