It was the cricket season and India was having a great time defeating all teams on home turf. It was Kingo who initiated conversation this time saying, “Our team is really a great team. Not showing any nerves at all and winning match after match.” It was Kaushik who interrupted Kingo and said, “Why should we be nervous? We are Kings on home turf”. Kingo had a smile on his face and said, “Kaushik, you may be the king at the bridge table, but when it comes to psychology, I am better than you. It is always the stronger team which is nervous. The weaker team plays carefree.”
Padma and Prabha listened to the conversation with rapt attention, and it was Padma who spoke first, “I tend t agree with Kingo. While the weaker team can have nerves like you have in any match, it is the stronger team which is scared of losing and the weaker team has nothing to lose.”. Kaushik said, “Let us extrapolate this logic to Bridge. Unlike other teams, a couple of bad decisions can result in a loss for any team. Bridge is supposed to be a sport in which on a given day, any team can defeat the strongest opponent in the field”. Prabha agreed and said,” Look at the match we won last month against the top team, a slam decision and 5 level decision went in our favour, and we won the match.”
Kaushik went into his professor mode and started talking and everybody was listening, “It is true that a couple of decisions can cost you the match if other boards are flat and weaker team made no unforced error. This is what makes the game interesting. If you will look at knockout in international level competition, the reason they have large number of deals is to minimize the luck factor. It can be critical in a 8 to 10 board match but not over a long haul match of 48+ boards where skill will matter.
Padma loved short duration matches as there is a good chance to beat any team. Prabha and Kingo were indifferent while Kaushik wanted to paly long-haul matches. According to him, one of the reasons for the team’s poor performance in knockouts was due to lack of stamina and inability to play error free Bridge in the long run.
Kingo supported what Kaushik said and said, “If we want to become champion players, we need to do well in knockouts. Just qualifying is not enough. Everyone thinks we need stamina only for outdoor sports, but Bridge drains your mental energy resulting in loss of concentration which results in loss of match.”
Prabha queried; “How does one build stamina? We can’t play 48 deals a day.” Kaushik said that there is no need to play 48 boards a day. When you are sitting out, just switch off Bridge and relax. You will be fresh for next round. Everyone moved out saying that this was a really good discussion.
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