Anxiety - the third worse cause of poor perfomance.

OK the first cause of lackluster performance is an easy one. Lack of preparation, lack of hardwork
The second one is the lack of concentration, or the lack of focus - or an misdirect focus.
...

Will I survive ?

But in bridge, like any performance sport, when you compete in high level competition, state anxiety is our own first enemy. For a competitor who is unprepared, the anxiety may simply because the stakes are higher, be the competition is tougher etc

For example, it is seen frequently in athletes who participate in team sports. It is common to hear athletes talk about the fear of mistakes and the fear of not disappointing a coach or a teammate. In the same way as no one wants to miss the last shot to lose a game by one point or miss a winning field goal attempt on the last play of the game, noone wants to give a game swing away.


So one of the most obvious source of anxiety for us would be in bridge the fear of coming to team mates with a big minus. Try going back to score up with a minus 800 against nothing. You know noone will ask (Well in a reasonable team anyway:) ) but you also know that they wondering.

Anoter fact in long matches is the "leading by a number" syndrome. And one or more player on the team develop the fear of losing that lead, because it has been known to happen in a big way.
So marginal games are bid - because what if the other pair bids it! - , the fear of the -800++ is at an all time high.

And there is the knockout format. The one mistake and you are out anxiety.

In fact, I would say this is a big factor in long matches, where one of the team is leading by a reasonable number. The leading team will avoid "big number" and will bid marginal games because what if the other pairs bids it.

In my previous post, my question was why did the north player not convert 4D to 4S. Well I did ask.
His answer was that 4S could have gone for a big number. And in that, full credit must be given to the opponent who read the situation acurately and created the situation. Try not to feel worried about
after this auction.

1D    X     1H   3C
3S   3NT   P     P
4D   P        !

Since anxiety is  difference between a successful player and the guy next door....  the way a player deals with anxiety  is an essential step toward best performance. 

So how to go about doing that? The firts step is understanding.
In the mean time, if you become aware that anxiety is at work in your game, you could try this kit:

To be continued.....

  

Was it fear?

"

Nothing to fear but fear itself

(Rosevelt said at his inaugural speech)

 It is well understood that anxiety is a big undermining factor in performance. A few of my posts touch on the topic. But anxiety itself must be better understood to have a chance to counter its negative effects.
Anxiety could be a personality trait but it is not that which I am addressing it. Best to leave that topic to the life counselor. This post deals with the short term state anxiety caused by a specific event.
One of the things that can lead us out of The Zone.

• Stress - A state that results from demands being placed on someone such that he or she must find coping mechanism.
• Arousal - The recognizable physiological signs that tell a person that they have entered a stressful state.
• Anxiety - A result of someone who doubts his or her ability to cope with the situation that is causing stress.

Anxiety comes in different variety that may not even be recognized by the person who experiences it. You cannot fight what you cannot see. At the same time, it is a  very useful mechanism without which you can easily become fool hardy.
Clearly a lot more to be said on this topic but to illustrate the point, I saw a few hands during the last Australian Playoffs that could well have been a direct result of anxiety. If you play bridge in Australia, you do not get many opportunity to be challenged, excluding maybe professional players who must at least face a different kind of challenge. So it is easy to get lulled into a sense of  greatness and find youself anxious in a more difficult situation.
But enough talking and back to a bridge hand. I have been called an overbidder so maybe my perception is shaded by my own view of the game.

Dealer, you open 1D
Double on your left and partner responds 1H.
Your bid?

Well one south player elected to show his spades and the pair ended up in 4S which is a lucky making game.
At the other table however, the dealer bid of 4D which passed by partner for 1 off.
Now, it is lucky indeed to be in 4 spade making in a 5/2 fit. However, I believe that you have to be there to be lucky.

So why would any player bypass bidding a 5 card suit which such a shapely hand?

At the time, the score was about 20 imps ahead in favor in south. But there is little doubt that the double by the left hand opponent triggered the chain of mental state anxiety that led to the suppression of that nice spade suit. After all, the opening bid was not the strongest in terms of HCP. The player may well have been thinking (and still thinking) that he was dealing with a situation with logic when in fact cognitifve anxiety was hard at work but unrecognized. (Well I will not be asking! Maybe 4 diamond was a bid to show 5 spades on the side)

To be continued ...........

Well the hand is worth showing since the bidding was recorded incorrectly. Give due where due is du and sack the vugraph operator!

Lucky works for me

I was musing some time back on the topic of luck, the fickle mistress of the bridge player: She comes when she pleases. Along of the side of luck.

My club game was going along, not very well at all. I had been sitting iddle for a while, and I was waiting for the cards that gave me an opportunity to raise our score.

Then came this hand. Not worth to give as a problem.  It is not partificularly difficut, though I guess our opponents did not think so at the time.

The play was

S5 S2 S9 ST

S4 S8 SK C2  (upside down attitude signal as it turned out)

For lack of a better plan

D7 4 6 9

C3 5 K A

And that was the end of the hand. I played DA and a D and W returned JC but  had to give me a major suit trick in the end.

Well I could not wait to see where the C9 was to tell you the truth.

So the morale of the story is: luck come in all sorts of shape, defensive errors, lucky lie of the cards... But you have to be there to collect it. And then being there, make sure you give it the opportunity.

Adventures at the club

Bridge can be fun at the local club.
I was dummy on the hand, and partner tried her best to make the hand.  It was certainly highly entertaining.

The contract is 4♥ . Your go:

♣ J 6 3 A

♣ 4 T 9 7
♦ 3 8 5 2    

☻ (This is what happened at the table so I am going along. But if you put up the T, that will hold)

As for me, I will be maybe doing some vugraph for the Australian playoffs in a couple of weeks.

I also did that last year for the women  playoff . You would never know that counting to 13 could be such a challenge. Australia seems to have lost its touch. (Well apologies to my australian audience, but think about it before getting offended).

I must say that playing in any final can be tiring and players are bound to make a higher number of mistakes then.

Which comes back to my earlier post:

Have plenty of sleep when you play in a tournament, because if you end up fighting for the top spot, you want to be the one who is still awake.

(There is a this fun post on bridgetopics. worth a read for sure What Bocci has to say)

The best advice I have received

My earlier post brought 2 things to mind: 2 things that were at play on that club game, on the hand I posted in the previous post.
In quest my quest to become a better player, I have always welcomed the advice of others, especially if the others have demonstrated serious performance skills.

The first one was given earlier in my bridge life. It made sense then, but nowhere like it does today.
So that most important advice was given by Tim Seres, at the matchpoint pairs event in Surfers where my partner, after making a great deceptive play, lost his focus and played the wrong card.
Tim said:
"Concentration is the most important thing to improve. It takes work, it takes practice. Learn to concentrate on the cards, to not let anyting distract you, practice at every game you play, until it become second nature. It took me years of work, day after day."

Those whose have witnessed Tim play can vouch for it ability to remain unruffled. His talent was immense but most noticeable was the fact that he never wavered. His deameanor remained the same regardless of outcome.

The second advice was not given directly to me. It was more a case of a player telling me about something he had done systematically in a bid to improve his performance. Nonetheless it  made its mark and the impact on me has been huge.
For every hand you play, whether you are defending or declaring, assign a hypothetical shape to the opponents. If you are defending, assign a shape to declarer. If you are defending, start by assigning a shape to tle player on lead". This is something that you have to keep doing until it becomes second nature

And of course, be sure to readjust your thinking as more information becomes available :)

Hello again. It has been a while

Well it had been a while that I had held a bunch of cards in my hand. Life got a bit complicated and bridge had to take a back seat.
But it is like driving a bike, you don't forget.
While my interest in what drives outstanding performance still remains, having spent an afternoon at a pleasant social game at the local club, I realised how much I like the game even if I don't get to play it. I will get back the topic of performace but in the name of fun, here is a hand.
 We are back at the club. Not a difficult hand, but not a hand I can talk to my partner about so I had to find a place to vent a little, What better place than here.
OK you are my partner , we are playing matchpoints (my favourtite part of the game) and we are defending 2 Spades
Here are the cards and the bidding:

.
The plays goes as follow:
C3 C2 CK CA
HQ HA H2 H5
DK D4 D2 D3
C5 C4 CQ C7
What is your play?


My last game before that was the fun I had in the playoff last year. Not the strongest event I have participated in but the most motivation for me. I was happy to be there (even though the team was expected to be a no-win team) Having looked at the results later, I realised that while I was far from card perfect, it was one of my best performance. Since I had not taken any magic potion to improve my bidding or card play, clearly some other factor was at play. In that order, I would say.

I had the confidence I could perform better than anyone else there (call me cocky)
I had the best of partners. Her capacity to stay solid and to stay on her side of the table was second to none.
I slept well, ate well, and did not do late night drinks (except on the last day)
Since the team was not that strong, my only focus was be to play well so that the captain would play us a lot :) :)  which was achieved :) :)
So I do hope that the opportunity to play comes again.

Practice is over - Win Ugly

Practice is over

We can certainly strive for perfection - or try to be perfect - during your training and practice sessions. However, one of the main goals is to accept that we can’t be perfect when we play sports. We are human and will make mistakes. Even the best in the world mess up or goof up from time to time.
You have worked hard, trained hard, and practiced up to this point. Hopefully in the process. learned things, practiced the things you learned and improved what you were not doing as well before.
It doesn’t help to continue to work on or master these skills just before a game or competition.
The most important goal is to perform with confidence, focus and trust. The zone can only be reached by confidence in you own skills and absolute focus on the game.


Win ugly

Practice is over. Now is not the time to think about perfect form.
Maybe you will not make the most elegant play or look like a star if went down a contract because there was a hole in your knowledge or because your thinking was not optimal.
You may trip over your own feet, make a mistake because your thinking was not optimal, mess up the timing of a play, get a good score out of a poor action.
Play to play great today, which means get the job done, even if your game looks and feels imperfect or ugly. This is what we call “winning ugly.”

1 to 10 before the game

Have you ever heard of an Olympic medal winner who never trained at least 6 hours a day. Has a chess world champion won a championship match without hours after hours of serious work.

If we do not train, how realistic is it to expect to win anything significant. More likely, we will only ever been a Wanna-be and one day a Has-been.

But assuming that we take our training seriously, there is the competion aspect. So here are 10 pre-game tips for the May-be:

1. Practice is over
2. Win ugly
3. Get-out-of-jail cards
4. Performance mindset
5. Forget expectations
6. Process goals, not win goal
7. Strive for success, not avoiding failure or mistakes.
8. Go For It!
9. Kiss
10. The performer.

 Soon more details. After all, the devil is in the detail



A winner



A peacock

Out of action for a while

I have not updated this blog in ages.
For those of you who come back to check on things, the babe is temporarily out of action, as my french teaching endeavours are taking so much of my time.
Plan to start again at year end, things will be quieter.
Catherine

The hallmark of a great captain is the ability to win the toss, at the right

The main job is to be the team leader of the team on the day/week of the event

Team representative: Represent the team in all official matters, including the appeals

Team leadership: No cheerleader but instill confidence in all players by maintaining positive attitude throughout the tournament.

Work with team and players to set performance target.

"If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever". So a captain must be prepared for a losing day and support team in refocus if poor initial performance. Consistent atttitude whether things are good or bad

Organisation:

Ensure best conditions for tournament (appropriate accomodation, foodstuff, getting early, plenty of rest...)

Ensure apppropriate pre-game and post-game routines.

Game plan:

General sitting strategy, based on knowledge of competitors and players, supported by coach pre and during tournament.

Keep track of performance on the day. Decides who plays when and against whom.

Makes clear decisions and equally important is clear communication of the overall plan to players.

Event report:

Keep track of team performance and report on performance of the team, including thoughts/feedback from players, lessons learnt...

A winning team is a team where all have the ability, and all know it. They support each other , pick each other up, and they never never quit.

The player, the competitors, and the game strategy

The role of the coach will be along 3 lines:

1. Players/partnership Development: Assessment - Learning- Development -Remediation
2. Tournament preparation - Knowlege of competitions - (system, style, skill level, application, apparent strength, weak points)
3. Tournament support - provide input to captain as to sitting strategy
4. Tournement performance review - input into captain report

Players development:
The first step will be to assess the current skills set. The first step of any improvment is the active knowledge that something needs improvment. The assessment will be based on

• Past performance
• Self-assessment
• Peers assessment

The assessment is partly partnership based as a player alone can never win a world title all by himself.

Technical skills - (not fully based on past performance as other factors interfer on technique)

• Technical knowledge - %, combinations, deceptive play.. techniques. Assessment based on a set of constructed hands to be played in training sessions. This may well be mainly targetted to the developing players.
• Partnership system - Completness and efficiency
• System knowledge
• Partnership defense skills

Performance skills - (this is primarily based on observation of past peformance and self- assessment)

• Competitive style
• Focus style
• Competitive strengths & weaknesses
• Demonstrated level of commitment
• partnership skills
• Full assessment of performance in last 10 major tournaments:

• Efficiency of system in a competitive arena

  System usage

  Application of technical skills

  Number/type of unforced errors - bidding

  Number/type of unforced errors - defense

  Number/type of unforced errors - play

  Missed opportunies

  Displayed areas of strength

  Behavior outside game time

  Tournament preparation

  Refocus skills

  External relevant factors

The defense rests

Ever played in a tournament where you lost the title by an imp or 2?
Well, this is not the story here but we would do well to remember that every imp count when we play a game anywhere. Here is a hand where the importance of appropriate focus would have come in handy.
The result on the board was to tie instead of us taking an couple of imps.
You LH P RH
1C(1) 1D P(2) P
P
(1) 16+
(2) less than 5hcp
I was so buy thinking about the auction and my failure to bid that I did stop to think about the defense for more than 10 seconds.
Dummy
T9xxx
xx
Qx
KJxxx

Your hand
Ax
AKx
J9xx
AQxx

HJ led.
How do you defend ? Why?

No more excuses !

Often when a player makes a mistake, he is quite prone to offer by the way of justification:

"How I was nervous" or "I was tired from last nite" or "I was psyched out" or any other excuse that seems relevant at the time. The excuse is likely to be a good one and to the point. Then the issue is put to rest and forgotten until the next time.

ButI fail to see how it makes anything better. Whether an error is due to due to lack of knowledge, faulty logic or faulty thinking or whether it is due to a lack of attention, the result is the same. What is the use of being clever if we do not capitalise on our talent.

If a player does not takes as much care improving his performance skills as he works on improving his technical knowledge, the gold will always be eluding him.

So next time you want to pull out the good old excuse card, remember: What are you going to do different to ensure it does not happen again.

No two ways about it

When you look at all the aspects that need to be right to win a major tournament, you realise that there is not 2 ways about it:

A winning team needs a coach. A winning team needs a captain.

While the roles can overlapp, they are distinct requirements.

The coach focuses on the development of the players skills and performance. Clearly bridge knowledge is important, but more important is the understanding how one goes about achieving best performance, both technical skills and performance skills. The coach knows the players, their strenght and weaknesses. The coach also knows the strength and weaknesses of the opposing players.

The captain is in charge of the team on the big day. The captain ensure that the team gets there in good time, ensure optimal conditions, decides on the sitting strategy, observse performance on the day, decides who goes in, who gets to sit out, who plays whom. The captain goes to the appeal, and mabe most important of them all, the captain has/shows a winning attitude and keeps the spirit up throughout.

In both bases, bridge knowledge is necessary. But while knowledge that is required, it does not require the same expertise as what the players themselve needs (appeals aside maybe).

Next post will then be the jobs for each of these mythical people.

Quest for the "zone"

As bridge is a game where the learning never stops, it is important to understand the various stages of learning in our quest for self-improvement.
There are 4 stages through the learning process and understanding how we move though it and how our performance will very accordingly is important if we are not to be discouraged when we get a setback.

Another aspect is to look at all the factors that we need to get right. No wonder it is a tough game :

• Comfort Zone
• Emotional Control
• Expectations , that can lead to fear of failure
• Focus – both intensity, duration and style
• Mental Preparation
• Motivation
• Perfectionism
• Self-Confidence , lack or excess of it
• Self-Esteem
• Stress Reduction
• Psychology of Recovery
• Team Dynamics
• Game Strategies
• Goal Setting
• Mental Imagery
  
  Now start making your own list.

Arousal - too much or too little

As discussed in previous posts, our arousal (excitement) level has a direct impact on our performance. Performance does increase as arousal increases up to a certain point, then it begins to decrease somewhat dramatically.
http://ababe-in-the-woods-of-bridge.blogspot.com/2009/04/dealing-with-arousal.html
If arousal levels are too low, motivation and desire may not be optimal to support a quality performance effort. On the other hand, higher than optimal arousal levels for a particular skill may cause us to become too anxious and begin to worry too much about the results rather than focus on the required task. As anxiety increase, mental flexibility becomes hindered.
Successful execution of a complex task also demands unconscious and automatic thoughts about action.

The level of arousal required depending on
• Our own personality
• The task performed.

For example, in baseball, a batter requires lower levels of arousal to perform the skills necessary to execute on hitting the pitch. They should have very low anxiety levels when they step into the batter’s box.
On the other hand, a basketball player on offense will need a higher level of arousal, as the situation requires them to be more active, yet they still must be able to run the desired offense effectively.

What about bridge
In the same fashion in bridge,I expect that the play of a hand would require a fairly a low level of arousal. Now is not the time to develop high level of aggressivity
On the other hand, today’s competitive bidding means that a higher degree of arousal will be required as the competition to ‘win’ the bidding war will be high. In defense, the mix will be more subtle and the player with incorrect level of arousal may not find the right mix of defense. You would expect a player with level of arousal too high will find too many aggressive defense while a player with a level of arousal which is too low will too many passive defenses.

In this aspect as in everything, one step at a time, practice makes perfect.

High performance teams – Does it apply to bridge partnership and teams?

The essence of focus.
Teams that feel directed toward achieving a clear and commun goal are happier and more energized, filled with a sense of purpose.
The basis of trust.
Teams tap into a natural instinct to form clans. People come together , vow to protect each other, engage in altruistic behavior with one another.
the "cheater meter."
If team members feel that the others do not appreciate the team's efforts, or that team members aren't pulling equal weight, their "cheater meters" will go off , they no longer trust one another and start losing focus on the goal
Low Focus and Low Trust (Lose/Lose)
• Fear
• Confusion
• Self-interest
• High turnover
• Failure
High Focus and Low Trust (Win/Lose)
• Focused on self, tasks
• Lots of early
accomplishments
• Longer-term disloyalty
• Turnover
High Trust and Low Focus (Lose/Win)
• Few conflicts
• "We are family"
• Lack of coordination
• Resigned to failure
High Trust and High Focus (Win/Win)
• Collaborating
• Self-directing
• Mission driven
• Loyal
• High success

So looking for the ingredient to achieve succesful teams :
• Don't gloss over performance, but talk about it.
• Hold each other accountable for each other performance.
• When someone under-performs, tells them immediately in direct, honest terms.
• Adopt a common goal or set of goals and commit to achieving them.
• Define goals simple enough to be easily grasped, specific enough to be actionable.
• Ask tough questions of one another and challenge each others assumptions. Probe an argument until all are satisfied.
• Admit your mistakes, weaknesses, concerns without fear of reprisal.

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

Seach for excellence

Before tackling specifics like the ways to identify and improve focus styles, I thought I had better review my improvement plan. Bridge is fascinating because it involves some many different aspects of performance.

Here are the components of what I think would be a good performance improvement plan.

Bridge Performance Training

Mental skills

Confidence
Focus - maintaining intensity
Focus - use appropriate styles
Focus – regaining
Intuition – appropriate use

Endurance
Unforced errors – reduction of ...
Pre-game preparation – maximize potential for entering “The zone”

.

Knowledge

Probabilities – knowledge of card combinations
Probabilities - Statisticallly winning bridge actions (bidding)
Bidding system – appropriateness and correct usage
Knowledge of opposition strength and weaknesses
Predictability of actions by opponents based on study of international experts games

.

Technical skills
Spatial skills (thinking in patterns)
Logic – use of ( all the card play techniques we love)
Inferrential skills (*)
Memory
…
.
Training versus practice

Acquisition of technical skills (technical/mental)
Acquisition of knowledge

Acquisition of mental skills

Targetted practice of application of skills and knowledge
Exercises/drills
Hands Analysis (own)
Hands analysis (experts)
Targetted practice of mental skills

Here in OZ, there seems to be a fashionable trend that playing online is not a road to bridge improvement. At best, I think this is misguided. Thanks to the internet, you are not restricted to playing with people from your geographical area.The internet gives us access to resources that cannot be obtained in our little island. Playing against strong opposition from various countries is something we lack much here.

(*) A dog story

Dog-logic: inferential reasoning in a two-way choice task and its restricted use
Experiments were designed to test whether adult pet dogs are able to show inferential reasoning when searching for their toy in a series of two-way choice tasks. The experimenter placed a toy under one of two identical containers and then provided some information by manipulating the covers: either both containers were lifted or just the empty or baited one. There were other trials when the experimenter not only revealed the corresponding container but manipulated also the other one without showing its content. In the second experiment the same conditions were used except that the content of the containers was revealed by strings without any human manipulation. Results of the two studies show that dogs are able to use inferential reasoning by exclusion (i.e. they can find the hidden toy if they have seen where the toy was missing). However, dogs were able to solve the reasoning task only when they could not rely on social-communicative cues (directional gesture and gaze cues) or could not use any other simple discriminative stimuli (movement of a container) for making decisions. This suggests that dogs are often prevented from showing reasoning abilities by pre-existing biases for social or movement cues. Results of the third experiment also support the primary importance of social cueing because in another object-choice task, individuals preferred to choose the ‘socially marked’ container (touching, gaze alternation) to the remotely moved one when they had no visual information about the location of the toy.

Defensive problems for a change

Was busy doing some work on focus pocus theory, when some hands jumped at me as illustration of the concepts. Well, they were given to me as problems that is!

Three defensive hands that the experts will get right no doubt, through the appropriate use of focus. Here is your chance to get them right too.

Exhibit A

You lead the diamond K and partner discourages and the King holds

Your play?

Exhibit B

You are on lead. Choose it

Exhibit C:

You are on lead. Choose it.