Exactly, and he has almost 100 Phd’s in mathematics that work for him that have all become wealthy. He testified before Congress about the poor level of mathematics education in the United States. He said that he simply cannot find Americans that can do mathematics at the level his company requires. He has had to hire from Asia and Eastern Europe to get enough capable talent.
Ironically, there is an item about him in today’s New York Times.
So if E-W was getting all the good cards and you were assigned by random draw to play N-S, that would be pretty bad luck, right? E-W may not have any better or worse “luck” in relation to other E-W pairs but their “luck” in comparison to the N-S teams is obviously better.
No, not at all. It may be that N-S consistently gets beat by E-W; teams playing N-S will be ranked in reverse order of how badly they were beat. Top on board might be the team that “only” gave up a small slam.
If they’re not being ranked against the N-S pairs, how does it matter how lucky they were, relative to them?
Look, all I’m saying is that the contention that there is no luck involved in any card game is silly. I really don’t feel like getting into a big discussion about the intricacies of duplicate bridge tournaments. Card games means there’s luck involved, even if it isn’t very much luck. That’s all I’m getting at.
I’m sorry if I didn’t explain very well, but there is no luck in Duplicate Bridge.
(And I’m disappointed you don’t want your ignorance dispelled! 
)
In Duplicate, each hand to be used is dealt before the event. The cards are stored in ‘boards’ and passed to the players. During the hand each player keeps his cards separate and at the end they are returned to the board.
The cards (in the board) are then passed on to be played again.
In a team event there will be 4 players per side. One pair of a team plays the cards N-S; the other plays E-W. The scores are then compared and totalled over (say) 32 boards.
The team who does best with identical cards wins.
In a club event, there may be e.g. 16 pairs competing. There are two main (mathematical) methods for saying who plays who and with which board.
The Mitchell method is simplest and produces two winners: one for all the N-S pairs and one for the E-W pairs.
The Howell is more complicated, but ensures that each pair can be compared with every other pair. So there is one winner.
Sometimes world-wide events are held, with 30,000 pairs competing. To get the best result on one hand world-wide is a special feeling - and there was no luck involved!
Thank you, I am aware how to play duplicate bridge. I even have a half a master’s point lurking around on some database somewhere. The fact still remains that the cards are randomly distributed. If you choose to believe that a game which involves 52 randomly distributed variables has no “luck” involved, that’s fine. No skin off my nose either way.
Unless every player plays every other player, then luck exists in the opponents you draw. A good player can win against an average player, but will lose against a great player. Imagine a chess tournament, if you draw Kasparov as your opponent you’re going to score poorly even if you are a grand master.
And even in a game where no random events happen, there is still a luck factor.
Suppose you’re playing Diplomacy, and you want to attack a province. There are two ways you can attack the province, and two ways your opponent can defend the province. One of your attacks will beat one of his defenses but lose to the other, and the other of your attacks will lose to his first defense but beat the other.
At this point, it’s a matter of luck whether you choose the correct attack. You have no way of predicting his defense, he has no way of predicting your attack, so you’re essentially flipping a coin. So even though there’s no random event in the game, there’s still a luck factor because neither player can predict who will win the round.
Have you ever played in a bridge tournament? The concept is pretty simple.
The only time luck comes up is when your ops make a ridiculous mistake.
Excellent explanation, glee. Thank you !
That’s because you refuse to consider what glee has said. It’s just a different way of playing cards, that has been around for a long, long time. It’s about how the points are scored. Get used to it.
That was a supposition, and it’s not possible to give a mouse potato cite. Jesus.
On the other hand, do you play two over one or precision? Or natural? Oh, and do you bid weak twos?
Actually, have you ever even played bridge? Probably not.
I think the confusion here may be clarified by the following example.
Imagine duplicate “guess the color”. It’s just like duplicate bridge, except the team has to guess what color some single unseen card is. Every team in the tourney plays the same sequence of cards.
While no team has an advantage over any other, I’d be hard pressed not to say this game has luck in it.
Bridge has analogous situations. (“Which opponent has the singleton heart?” “Where does the king of spades lie?”) The duplicate format means that luck provides no advantage to any team, but it doesn’t mean there is no randomness in the outcome (as opposed to, say, chess, which has no luck of any kind.)
I thought this was GQ, suppositions are supposed to have a bit of evidence behind them, particulary big claims like yours. I’ve never played bridge. I don’t know much about it. That’s why I asked for a cite.
That’s correct. But while declarer is uncertain about splits, etc., declarer can make plays to compensate for that. And all the players are confronted with the same uncertainty.
Okay, fair enough, but the OP question in and of itself was a little nebulous. My point was just that bridge requires a lot more mathematical thought than poker, and might appeal more to mathematical thinkers. For that, you can just look at the two games themselves.
And it really isn’t such a “big claim.” It’s not like I’m saying the world is flat.
Indeed. But, if optimum play ever leads to a situation where there are two lines to take, with one good one and one bad one, and there is no information to distinguish the lines, then the outcome will be random. I’ll leave it to the bridge experts to say whether such a situation ever arises. (I recognize that there is often some information or strategic approach that breaks the symmetry of the two lines, and thus there is very little card-induced randomness in the final results, but I don’t think the duplicate format alone eliminates it entirely.)
I know nothing about bridge. Never played, probably never will.
That said, here’s a quote from Alan Truscott, multiple winner of the North American Bridge Championship and bridge columnist for the New York Tiomes for over 40 years until his death in 2005:
Just FYI.
Yes. I mentioned that in post 49.
I am truly astonished that a chap with master points (I have quite a few myself 
) still thinks duplicate bridge involves luck, when the 52 random variables are carefully duplicated to remove any variance.
You’ve probably heard of ‘Fischer random chess’, where the back rank pieces are shuffled before the game.
According to you, this makes chess a game of luck. But it’s not.