johnstell

I would consider myself to be an expert as I can hold my own against world class players such as the Hackets and many other grand masters. I've been playing for over 20 years since i learnt to play in college...i just grabbed a simple book on cards that was 7 pages long that described the rules of the game...after that i was hooked. I've always been good at cards and clearly Bridge was the ultimate card game - so i had to learn how to play it! When i went to university i joined the bridge club there and continued to play in various bridge clubs around my UNI. We discussed systems and plays with other like minded people. After a couple of years I would describe myself as being a good player. After finishing university I came back to live around Manchester and got a regular partner who played with me, I then had a couple of others partners who were more serious - one very and we played in a lot of green point tournaments together - every weekend we would be playing in a tournament together. I also played in league matches...I vastly reduced my club playing time as the standard is very mixed and now I play just in the league or private games where I know the game is going to be a good quality as I'm playing against Grand Masters and people who have represented England etc. I don't think it is essential to learn all the systems...most of the time it comes down to judgement whether you should bid one more / pass / double etc. I think hte more natural you can play the better as over sustained periods of time - if you are playing 100 boards over a couple of days then you will get very tired - therefore I would advocate playing at a decent tempo and keeping it as natural as possible...some systems people play for the sake of playing systems - quite often they give all the info to the defence and they know exactly where everything is and the distribution.