jimbelk

I have about a year's worth of experience teaching bridge to small groups of college students. (We play every week in the math lounge, and beginners often participate.) For a complete beginner, it is not really practical to teach ANY bridge bidding system to start with, except for the basic understanding that all bids should be natural. Of course, there needs to be some "hidden system" that you have in mind to advise players on how to bid. I would definitely suggest a strong 2♣, with other two-level bids being weak, but there's no particular reason to mention it until they try to open a strong two, or until an experienced player tries to bid a weak two. Beginners tend to enjoy opening weak twos once they learn about them. My experience is that beginners find five-card majors confusing, especially since they don't yet understand the importance of major suits over minor suits. I would stick with 4-card majors to start with, and there's no particular reason to give them a specific rule on which suit to open with 4-4. (Say something general like "try to plan ahead and think about what you will bid next".) Don't switch to 5-card majors until they're ready to learn an actual bidding system. Strong notrumps will work fine, although they will come up so rarely that the beginners won't ever learn how to bid over them. Most beginners will try to open 1NT the first time they get a minimum balanced hand, and you will have to tell them that a 1NT opening actually shows some extra strength. (It's possible that weak notrumps would work better, but I haven't tried.) The one artificial convention that they will need early on is takeout doubles. This will come up the first time one player has a strong hand after another player opened. It's really hard to get beginners to invite or bid game. Instead of giving them ranges for invites, my experience is that it works better to tell them that game requires 25 points total, and then let them work it out for themselves. It also helps to provide them with some very simplified version of the scoring, so that they can see a clear advantage in bidding game. I like to use the following: * 2 points for making a partscore * 5 points for bidding and making game * 10 points for bidding and making slam * 20 points for bidding and making grand slam * 1 point/undertrick for setting the opponents These numbers have been chosen so that it makes sense to bid game with a 50% chance of making, etc., and so that sacrifices work about the same way as they do normally. (For a doubled contract, just double the bonus for setting the opponents, or add a flat +2 for making.) I haven't tried teaching precision to beginners, but I think they would find it somewhat confusing. Also, the ACBL's Learn to Play Bridge software is so good that it would be a shame to teach them a system that isn't compatible with it. Finally, try not to get into the habit of telling them how to play contracts, how to defend, or what to bid every time. If you always answer questions of the form "What should I bid with this hand?", then they will never stop asking. Of course you will need to help with bidding a bit to start with. But as soon as possible, they need to start making decisions on their own, so that they can experiment with what sorts of bids lead to good or bad results.

#5451 ACBL Robot Duplicate, board 4: http://tinyurl.com/2fukpcu GIB opens 1♦ in second seat, I respond 2♣ (described as "forcing two over one"), and GIB passes! The same thing happened at 13 other tables.