[mikeh]

doobygilis, on 2025-October-28, 09:10, said:

The current score shows up on the left side of my screen, halfway down. I have a number and suit showing the bid, and just below it is the current trick count.

One of the ironies, maybe, is that when I play online, I not only refer to the BBO Double Dummy tool on almost every hand to see whether better lines of play exist. ALSO, I have the BBO Helper App that, after the hand, gives me par score, par bid, and a full grid showing the maximium makeable bid for each of the possible bids (1C-7NT(.

So while I'm bidding and playing, I'm also analyzing the past hand to see the possibilities. And despite that, when I was sitting at the live table I was a mess.

ALSO, also, playing live I realized I couldn't see my partner's cards after the hand, to see whether our bidding and play is working.

You are making what is a common mistake. You think that the double dummy analyzer tells you a ‘better line ‘. It doesn’t There is very little correlation between the best line single dummy (as in you start with only your hand and dummy and the bidding) and the best double dummy line. In fact, thinking that double dummy means ‘proper play’ is guaranteed to harm your game.

Say my bridge skill allows me to count out a hand where the key issue is playing a side suit where we have 8 cards and acted way finesse for the queen. I now know that the suit breaks 3-2, so absent other clues I will and should play the hand with 3 cards for the queen…that’s a 60% line of play. But 40% of the time the queen is in the short holding. DD analysis will tell you that the ‘best’ lines are either to finesse against the Qx or play for the drop.

This sort of misleading analysis occurs n many, many hands. DD never makes a normal lead if it works poorly as the hands lie. It never fails to drop stiff honours offside. It always picks up bad trump breaks if possible, even if no competent human would do so. Ad infinitum.

I’ve used DD analysis on occasion but never to ‘learn’ how to play a hand.

[DavidKok]

doobygilis, on 2025-October-28, 09:10, said:

The current score shows up on the left side of my screen, halfway down. I have a number and suit showing the bid, and just below it is the current trick count.

One of the ironies, maybe, is that when I play online, I not only refer to the BBO Double Dummy tool on almost every hand to see whether better lines of play exist. ALSO, I have the BBO Helper App that, after the hand, gives me par score, par bid, and a full grid showing the maximium makeable bid for each of the possible bids (1C-7NT(.

So while I'm bidding and playing, I'm also analyzing the past hand to see the possibilities. And despite that, when I was sitting at the live table I was a mess.

ALSO, also, playing live I realized I couldn't see my partner's cards after the hand, to see whether our bidding and play is working.

I would attempt to discard all of this. I find the obsession with running scores and the past deals to be harmful, not helpful.

[jillybean]

pescetom, on 2025-October-28, 11:05, said:

But when playing F2F, here we *do* usually have the hand diagram and double dummy matrix available on our phone immediately after entering the score, together with the scores at other tables.

I never ceases to shock me just how Bridge in North America is so far behind, on many levels.

[doobygilis]

mycroft, on 2025-October-28, 10:40, said:

But, almost everywhere, you have hand records, so you can (and should!) do that after the session. And, if you're stressed out by "I can revoke and make insufficient bids with cards I can mis-sort in my hands", delaying the extra energy use of analyzing the hands during play will help with that. Frankly (and despite what I do playing online, too - it's really seductive!) it's better if you wait until after there, too.

I completely forgot that I misplayed a card, out of suit. Not a disaster, but never a problem online. And in fact when playing online I occasionally try to tap the wrong card.

The upshot is that I have to start putting a little attention to making sure that I am following suit. Not a big issue, but it will take some practice playing live hands, like the rest of this I expect.

Also, I need to study the rules. I've only skimmed them.

[blackshoe]

doobygilis, on 2025-October-28, 11:52, said:

Also, I need to study the rules. I've only skimmed them.

To be honest, most players haven't even done that much.