Thymallus

I started playing the game 2 years ago and would offer the following, entirely based on UK experience. Buy Mendelson "The right way to play bridge" which will teach you ACOL. You should then concentrate on learning card play. It seems to me that bidding dominates discussions because it is easy to set problems and talk about them. However for the beginner that's no good when you still don't know how to make or defeat the contract you get into. The biggest problem of all are the Master points. In the UK the club players see a rabbit like me coming along and see a bunch of MP's up for grabs. I wish there were a culture of experts teaching the willing beginners in clubs (the BIL lounge is a good example) rather than seeing them as bunnies to bash. At the end of the day all the Master Point's in the UK do is give people grandiose titles which mean nothing and just flatter their self-importance. I'd get rid of them :rolleyes:

Thanks all for your replies. I was taught that double negatives were bad, but in this context it seems that don't DONT is the consensus. We'll have a think about which system to choose and I'll note how we do and perhaps make another post to let you know how we get on. Incidentally why is it that the weak NT seems so reviled at the top level? It seem to me to be very pre-emptive and Mike Lawrence & co are very much in favour of pre-emptive bids in every other context. John

My partner have ventured forth into club bridge for 18 months or so and in that time we have used out defence to 1 NT (Landy) precisely once only. I realise that DONT was conceived to mess up the strong NT systems but is it a convention that works well against weak NT, which is a universal system (almost) on this side of the pond? I am frustrated watching all the opps having comfortable NT auctions while Landy (Godot) never comes! Thanks John

Is there a piece of software that can make the BBO .lin files digestible for some other bridge playing software, ie "Jack"? Please accept my apologies if this has already been answered and I missed it. Thanks John