Bridge in schools

[mike777]

We started out with like 12 kids, and it basically died.

Like I C which class you spent most of your energies on dude! ;)

[Double !]

Indeed if Bill and Warren were truly interested, they might give a million to Fred & Co. to develop a co-site with learning software to teach beginners (a la Jude Goodwin) the fundamentals and get them started. Every school and kid has access to a computer and the internet so wtp......

ya know, this ain't such a bad idea at all.

 

run it as an after-school (or before school) program, and all you need is a certified teacher who knows how to operate the computers in the room and the software program even if the teacher doesn't know how to play bridge. Market it as an instructional program by a highly qualified teacher with international credibility.

 

DHL

[Guest Jlall]

I'm sure Fred wouldn't mind a million bux ;)

[ArcLight]

>We started out with like 12 kids, and it basically died. There was no interest because the learning curve was so steep.

 

My wife likes to play games, including card games. But she looks at the number of Bridge books I have and says "I play games for fun, I wouldn't want to invest a lot of time studying to improve at a single game".

 

For new comers to Bridge, I would think the idea would be to teach a simplistic bidding system (maybe 2 conventions Stayman and Blackwood), and a little bit of technique (finesse, hold up play, loser on loser). Forget about Trump Coups, Squeezes, and maybe even End Plays and Avoidance plays for the moment.

 

If the learning curve is too steep at the start many wont continue. But if its a "fun " game, then those who enjoy it after 6-12 months may want to move up. There will certainly be more of them.

[pigpenz]

I'm sure Fred wouldn't mind a million bux :P

I bet Jlall would rather have a girlfriend like Gavin Wolperts ;)

Add both of their ages together and they were still 10 yrs younger than anyone else in the last acbl bulletin pictures except for jrs :(

[Guest Jlall]

I'm sure Fred wouldn't mind a million bux :P

I bet Jlall would rather have a girlfriend like Gavin Wolperts ;)

Add both of their ages together and they were still 10 yrs younger than anyone else in the last acbl bulletin pictures except for jrs :(

Jenny is great but I like my girlfriend just fine :) Since she doesn't read the forums, I can say I'd take the million bux over her though, lol.

[pbleighton]

"I bet Jlall would rather have a girlfriend like Gavin Wolperts"

 

Justin thinks Gavin is cute?

 

Peter

[Guest Jlall]

"I bet Jlall would rather have a girlfriend like Gavin Wolperts"

 

Justin thinks Gavin is cute?

 

Peter

his last name is Wolpert... so the s on the end of his name is possessive and implies Gavin Wolpert's girlfriend. Anyways...off topic.

[awm]

One thing that's often been overlooked about teaching bridge in schools is the benefit of having young bridge teachers.

 

The game of bridge has an image problem -- most kids (well those who know the game exists) view it as a game their grandparents would play. This makes it a lot harder to get kids involved in bridge than in other games such as chess, go, or poker.

 

One way to help with this might be to recruit younger bridge players (say in their 20s or 30s) to teach bridge at schools. Having someone younger than your parents show up to teach bridge might help break the impression that it's "just a game for old people." High school students also seem to get excited when they have a young teacher (say just out of college).

 

I'd like to suggest Los Angeles as an area for teaching bridge in schools. This is obviously one of the biggest metropolitan areas in the U.S., and there's some advantage to having many school districts in close proximity to each other. It might be easier to start with a smaller school district (like Burbank or Pasadena) and then branch out. There's definitely enough of a population to have a meaningful "high school bridge championship" within the Los Angeles area. We also have a fairly large number of young bridge players living in Los Angeles; these are not necessarily "juniors" (the only member of the US junior teams to live full-time in the Los Angeles area is Josh Donn) but we have a lot of people in their 20s and 30s who could be interested in teaching bridge.

[Elianna]

Not to mention Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Culver City, and (I believe) Torrance, which all have their own school district, and are within a twenty/thirty minute drive of each other.

 

If we wanted to do something in LA, we'd have to get people willing to teach, not just lists of people who could possibly teach. Frankly, I don't see that happening soon. I'm willing to teach, but I'm not willing to do any of the organization (contacting schools, etc.), and while teaching bridge in schools has been discussed frequently, I have yet to see anyone volunteering to run this and contact schools. A local person would be much more likely to be successful talking to schools than out-of-town billionaires.

 

The other problem with getting younger people to teach bridge is that most of us work during the school day. I can only think of one youngish person who is free anytime during the school day, one who is free in the afternoons, and several who are not very adept bridge players who may be free once or twice a week.

 

But all of the strong young bridge players (including Donn and yourself, I might add) work during the school day.

[Sigi_BC84]

started out with like 12 kids, and it basically died. There was no interest because the learning curve was so steep. I think that somehow that needs to be dealt with before people will be interested in learning bridge.

In Germany we have a teaching system that greatly simplifies Bridge in the beginning, by replacing the bidding phase with something much simpler (which basically boils down to counting HCPs, distributional values and comparings lengths, looking for a fit).

 

This has been imported from France where it has been used to great success. It's called "Minibridge".

 

For very young players there are also competitions offered in this kind of game.

 

IMHO this practically solves the problem Justin has mentioned. It doesn't solve the LoL image problem our game has, however...

 

--Sigi

[pigpenz]

I have tried for several years to get my wife interested in having competition between schools, but it will take someone from outside the schools and other facilities than the school to get this done.......Now an interesting idea would be using BBO as the venue to get this done, i think some kids would like the idea of using the computer at first as opposed to f2f to start with.

[pdmunro]

Judit Polgar (the chess grandmaster) has been actively involved in promoting chess to children in the US. She and her manager, Paul Trong, have some interesting ideas about marketing games to children.

 

In an article on "Marketing Chess" by Paul Trong http://chessville.com/Editorials/MarketingChessInC21.htm, two ideas stand out:

 

1) Girls play games to meet friends; boys play to win. Games have to be marketed differently to the two groups. Girls want a social experience; boys want a sense of achievement, of getting better. Males have dominated the organization and aims of games to an extent that many females find off-putting.

 

2) "Another must-do activity is to create a comprehensive and easy to understand universal/standard chess teaching system to introduce people of all ages to chess. It should be readily available, for free, to download or view on the web."

 

Judit Polgar writes, http://www.chesscafe.com/polgar/polgar.htm

 

"The chess format on TV has to be shortened. It can be done with faster time control or via excellent editing, exciting commentaries, thorough explanations and simple to understand tips. However, there has to be a good plot."

 

"The relationship between the fans and the professional players is an incredibly important part of promoting chess. That is why I have traveled across the country to meet countless chess fans of all ages."

 

Here in Australia, chess is having a resurgence in schools. Bridge has never really got a foot in the door. Perhaps chess has something to teach us.

[Free]

Chess is imo a lot easier than bridge! You just study the movements of every piece, add the special moves, and you can play. For bridge you need to know what to do after every bid, and the standard systems these days are pretty complex for complete newbies to enjoy the game immediatly. To get to a decent level in both games, you'll need to study and practice ofcourse, but to start playing chess is plain easy. That's probably also one of the reasons why bridge doesn't get popular...

[Gerardo]

OT: Not Judit, Zsusza (Susan now that she lives in the US)

[Sigi_BC84]

Chess is imo a lot easier than bridge!  You just study the movements of every piece, add the special moves, and you can play.  For bridge you need to know what to do after every bid, and the standard systems these days are pretty complex for complete newbies to enjoy the game immediatly.  To get to a decent level in both games, you'll need to study and practice ofcourse, but to start playing chess is plain easy.  That's probably also one of the reasons why bridge doesn't get popular...

This is not the case!

 

Reread what I have said about Minibridge above. Playing Minibridge is easy and can be taught to reasonable intelligent people withing a few hours.

 

As soon as they know how to play the cards, you can start with scoring and bidding, the two complicated parts of the game (regarding rules and agreements, not technique!). Bidding should be kept simple at the beginning, improving later when there is a basic feel for what it is about. Of course one should not spend too much time with oversimplified systems as to not ingrain "bad" methods into the new player's mind.

 

In my opinion one of the real struggles with Bridge is that it's hard to find a game. Compare it to chess: you only need one opponent, and a chessboard with pieces, which are to be found in about every household.

 

To play Bridge, you need:

• a deck of cards (not the problem)
  
• FOUR people with agreements
  
• bidding boxes (by mouth is too hard for beginners I think)
  

The main difficulty is to find enough players. Right now my flatmate is sitting in the kitchen, playing chess with a friend. Maybe they would want to play Bridge, if they knew the game, but there still was one person missing if I'd count myself into the equation (of course I would want to play ;-).

 

Mind you that all four players need to know the game, as you can't simply introduce a fourth person to the rules if you are only three. This is a vicious circle: not enough players -> not many games -> not many opportunities to teach new players (or have people watch others play, thereby raising interest in the game) -> not enough players -> etc.

 

Playing Chess, Go, or any other of these two player board games, you (as an individual) only need one interested person to get somebody knew into the game (potentially). Playing Bridge, you need three.

 

--Sigi

[pigpenz]

just curious as what the progression is for most to start playing bridge....I came from a card playing family. On holidays my family used to have 2 day poker games....then some of them moved to bridge.

 

For me the transgression was

1.hearts

2.spades

3.bridge

[Badmonster]

You see. The school day is so short and they can't afford to waste one minute playing bridge when they could be endoctrinating children to love the state, obey authority, accept moral relativism, and always use condoms. There are some fascinating quotes by the originators of the US public school system how the purpose of education is to turn 95% of people into mindless happy drones that don't mind doing the same repetitive task over and over. The other 5% will be their liberally educated masters.

You've never been to NY. No, the reason why they said no in NY is (I'm guessing here, I don't work for the mayor or heaven forbid that govener) they cannot afford to keep the metal detectors on, to pay the security guards over time. And they cannot afford to buy tables, and seeing has how they hold classes in stairwells and bathrooms, because our schools are so overcrowded, and it's hard to fit more than one bridge table in a stairwell.

 

While our schools are an embarrassement, and while our government is greedy, corrupt, biassed, racist, elitist and morally bankrrupt, they don't indoctrinate us. We are free to hate them, and vote them out of office, so they can be relpaced by another politician who is also greedy corrupt, etc. Also, we don't teach morality in school, we plan too, right after we figure out how to teach basic literacy.

[pdmunro]

OT: Not Judit, Zsusza (Susan now that she lives in the US)

Oh boy, thanks Gerado, not the first time that I have got in trouble for calling a women by the wrong name.

[pdmunro]

I am about to start high school teaching tomorrow. It is the start of the school year here in Australia. I am a contract teacher who is returning to the classroom after a number of years in other employment.

 

I know that the school has chess. There is an inter-school chess competition. The students basically run it themselves.

 

I doubt that I can introduce bridge. For me, the basic problem is that teaching science and maths will take all my time and energy.

 

But just in case an opportunity arises, I keep thinking about how to make bidding simpler for beginners. The simplest bidding system, I can think of, involves counting your aces, kings and queens as winners.

 

Say, each player wrote down the total number of aces, kings and queens that they held on a bidding slip in the middle of the table.

For instance, this hand,   K x x x    K Q x x    A x x x    x,   would write AKQ = 4. The total round the table would sum to 12.

 

How could the players use this information to bid?

[hrothgar]

But just in case an opportunity arises, I keep thinking about how to make bidding simpler for beginners. The simplest bidding system, I can think of, involves counting your aces, kings and queens as winners.

 

How could the players use this information to bid?

I echo earlier suggestions regarding mini-bridge....

 

They've come up with an easy way to eliminate bidding altogether.

[Sigi_BC84]

But just in case an opportunity arises, I keep thinking about how to make bidding simpler for beginners.  The simplest bidding system, I can think of, involves counting your aces, kings and queens as winners. 

 

How could the players use this information to bid?

I echo earlier suggestions regarding mini-bridge....

 

They've come up with an easy way to eliminate bidding altogether.

Thanks Richard ;-).

 

Check this out: http://www.minibridge.co.uk/ (Minibridge at schools)

and this: http://www.cacbf.com/MINIBRDG.htm

This also looks good: http://www.ebu.co.uk/publications/Teaching...iBridge%201.pdf

 

Mind you that there are special "coded" decks available, which allow you to deal prepared hands. This works by having arrows on the backs of the cards, pointing into the direction where the card has to be dealt (N, S, E or W). Every deck has a collection of 24 arrows on each back of the cards, making for 24 teaching hands per deck.

 

There are several decks available for basic technique, bidding, etc. At the moment I can only find German retailers selling these. I don't know if you can get them in Oz or the US, but it would be a shame if not...

 

René Steiner has made a tool with which you can print out sheets to make coded decks yourself out of deals you specify: http://www.trsteiner.de/bridge/en/magic.shtml

I think this is an invaluable tool for the bridge teacher if you can't get pre-made minibridge decks.

 

--Sigi

[pdmunro]

Here is what I might try with some students, if I get a chance. I have restructured the mini-bridge system in terms of Aces, Kings and Queens (AKQ). I want to prompt the students to picture each other's hands.

 

Mini-AKQ Bridge

Adapted from mini-bridge. http://www.cacbf.com/MINIBRDG.htm

 

Dealer announces how many AKQ he/she holds, followed in turn by each of the others. For example, a player with ♠ A K x x x ♥ K Q x x ♦ K x x ♣ x announces, or writes down, "5". The total for the four players will be 12. The partnership with the higher AKQ count wins the contract, and the individual in the partnership with more AKQ's becomes declarer. (Need a rule for the case where the counts are tied: my feeling is that the person who has had least to do should be declarer in that situation.)

 

Dummy now goes down, before the first lead is made. With dummy visible, declarer announces the contract: number of tricks, trump suit or No Trumps. The opening lead is made and play proceeds as in bridge.

 

The scoring is simplified. As usual, only tricks in excess of the first 6 (the book) score points. In ♣ or ♦ they are worth 20 points, ♥ or ♠ 30 points. In NT, the seventh trick is worth 40 points, subsequent ones 30.

 

The part-score bonus is 50 points, game 300, and slam 300 plus an extra 500. Undertricks score 50 points for the defence.

 

Each deal is scored independently and the game lasts for a fixed number of deals.

 

A possible analysis

 

Dummy    ♠ x x x      ♥ A x x      ♦ x x        ♣ A x x x x

Declarer   ♠ A K x x x    ♥ K Q x x    ♦ K x x    ♣ x

 

Consider the hand with long trumps to be the master hand. Lose to the ♠Q. Expect to lose a ♥. The problematic suit is ♦'s. Lead from dummy towards the ♦K and hope the ♦A is onside. Ruff the third ♦ in dummy. Lose just one trick in ♦'s. Contract to take 10 tricks with ♠'s as trumps.

 

With dummy visible, declarer is learning to think through a line of play.

 

And, if say 4 of the missing AKQ are on his left, he knows that the ♦A is most likely to be there, and may choose to contract for only 9 tricks. He is learning to make an adjustment, similar to what he would have made if that player had bid diamonds.

 

Could the defence learn to signal to let their partner know where their AKQ are?

 

Could some players learn common suit distributions such as 5332, 6331, 5431, 7321 and keep track of what declarer has left in their hand? Maybe declarer should be required to announce how long the trumps are in his hand. This would be known from the bidding in normal bridge.

 

Let's see what happens.