Pianola User Guide
For club members
How to analyse your own results and find a partner with Pianola
Use the left and right arrow keys to navigate
Pianola is a tool to help club owners and managers to run bridge clubs, but it also gives club players - like you - new ways to analyse your results and find partners.
Pianola gives you a personalised history of your own results with your average score over time, and with each of the different partners with whom you play.
We also calculate what is your average on all the boards where you were declarer, dummy, defender-on-lead and defender-not-on-lead and show you these statistics as an average over time and on a game-by-game basis.
You can also get analysis of your bidding accuracy and card play ability by subscribing to Pianola Plus, an optional upgrade. When you’re a Pianola Plus subscriber you can also play hands again with card-by-card guidance about how to achieve the most tricks possible.
Results
The first page shows you a graph of all your most recent games (in the past three months).
The main menu to access results, member list, the partner finder, and Pianola Plus
Your scores. If you subscribe to Pianola Plus you will see extra data on this graph to represent your bidding accuracy and card play ability
Your average score on the boards where you were declarer, dummy and defender
Your bidding characteristics - how often you are on the declaring side and what percentage of the time you bid part score, game and slam contracts
Change date range, partners, scoring type
You can see your averages over different time periods, with each of your partners and for different scoring methods (matchpoints, VPs, IMPs).
Click on a game on the graph to view those results. For each game, there is a screen for rankings,
travellers, scorecards, session report, and hands.
Pianola Plus
Pianola Plus is a set of additional analysis tools that you can add to your account. They give you analysis of your bidding and card play, and provide you with a tool to replay hands with card-by- card guidance.
When you have Pianola Plus you will see additional data on the results history graph. These show your bidding accuracy and card play in comparison to the double dummy (or makable contracts), which is the theoretical optimum result for any given board.
Bidding Accuracy
For both sides - declarer and defender - Pianola will assess whether or not the pairs bid to the right level, taking into account their vulnerability and whether there was a profitable sacrifice available. This is represented by the red line of the graph. The bidding accuracy does not take into account how many tricks you actually won. It looks purely at whether you were playing in a good spot.
Example
On this board, vulnerable EW can make 4H with an overtrick to score 650.
However, non-vulnerable NS can afford to bid to 6CX, which would score -500 when they go off by three tricks as expected. This is cheaper than allowing EW to make their game contract in hearts.
In actual fact, the optimal contract (or par) on this hand is EW bidding 6HX-1 to score 200. This is because neither side has a bid available to them that can improve on this score.
Card play
The yellow bars on the results history graph show you how many tricks you won above or below what you were expected to, according to the double dummy. This statistic ignores whether you were in a ‘good’ contract or not. It simply compares how many tricks you won as declarer or defender to how many tricks you should have won when playing in that denomination.
For example, if NS bid 6CX and go off by three tricks, Pianola will report that they made all the tricks they were expected to - i.e. good card play. If they only go off by two tricks, Pianola will say that they made an extra trick over the expectation (and that EW made one trick fewer than they should have done).
Session report
The session report gives you a complete breakdown of the game:
A text summary of the game's results
The boards you have played in each role and what was your average score in each case
Representation of your bidding accuracy and card play ability for each board
How the best in field did in the bidding and card play so you can compare your performance with theirs
Board-by-board breakdown of your score, bid, and analysis
Interpreting the charts
Pianola Plus provides three charts for your bidding accuracy and card play. The first chart shows your boards divided into four areas. When Pianola says “good” or “bad” it is only in comparison to the double dummy - it’s not making value judgements about your game.
The top right are the boards you bid well but played badly
Bottom right are the boards where both the bidding and the card play were wrong
The top left quadrant are the boards your bid well and played well
Bottom left are the boards you bid badly buy played well
The next two charts show your bidding accuracy and card play for each board:
Bidding
We show you for each board whether you bid “correctly” (ie in line with the double dummy) or whether you underbid, overbid, failed to double, or doubled incorrectly.
Card play
For each board, we show you whether you made all the tricks you were entitled to or whether you made more or fewer than you should. This is compared to the double dummy analysis for the suit in which the contract was played and provides data whether you were declarer or defender. So if the double dummy says NS can make 2S, they are expected to make eight tricks (even if they bid higher or lower) and their opponents are expected to make five tricks.
Best in field
This data is only useful in the context of the best in field.
In this example that my partner and I bid better than the best in field (the blue section of the left hand pie chart).
However, it’s our card play with was significantly worse and the reason we got a poor score. The best in field made extra tricks on far more boards than my partner and I did.
Remember - these are extra tricks compared to the double dummy - not compared to the contract they were in.
Summary table
In the table at the bottom of the session report page, you will see a board-by-board breakdown of each hand. It shows the score, the bid and actual result, the frequency of that bid, the bidding analysis, card play analysis, and the role you took on that board.
Pianola Replay
Ever wondered how to make the extra tricks that other people took? Can’t see how to make the contract that the hand record says you should? Pianola Replay will show you. It lets you play any hand again, with card-by-card guidance.
To launch it, click the “Replay this hand” button that you’ll see alongside every hand record. The hand will open up with the contract that was played at your table.
Turn guidance on or off
Your contract (click pencil to edit)
Click a card to play it
The labels on the cards show the outcome for the contract of each card played, assuming best play from that point on. So in this example, the opening leader will either set the contract or give declarer up to two overtricks, depending on their choice of lead.
You don’t play the hand against the computer. Instead, you play all four hands and can choose to follow the advice or ignore it so you can see how the whole hand plays out. Regular use of Pianola Replay will help you understand how to play the hands better.
Competitions
If your club uses Pianola to calculate the results of any competitions, you will see those listed here.
Members
The members page is a list of all the members of your club. Find a member by typing a name in the search box at the top.
Click on a member’s listing to see more information about them. What you can see will depend on how much they have chosen to share. Each member can choose whether or not to share their contact information and / or the results history. They may also add information about their preferred system, a biography and a photo.
Partner finder
You can see who's looking for a partner and create an advert for yourself when you need a partner. This number shows how many people are looking for a partner and how many are new since you last looked.
If you see someone you'd like to play with, send them an email or give them a call using the contact details shown on their advert.
If you’d like to post and advert yourself, click on the ‘Create new advert’ button. A pop-up window will appear. Click on the date you want and then select from the games available on that day (if there’s more then one). When you’re done, click ‘Save and send emails’. This will send an email notification to anyone who’s opted-in to receive them.
Notify: means you will receive an email when this player is looking for a partner
Neutral: means you will not receive an email but they will be able to see any adverts you post
Block: means this player will not see any adverts you post
Click on the 'Preferences' link to select who can see your adverts. You can choose the default setting and then make individual selections for specific players.
Pianola User Guide
By James Ward
