Reverses

[pclayton]

I suppose if I was teaching a BIL class I would advocate a 1♣ opener followed by a 2♣ rebid.

 

If an 'enlightened' student mentions that:

 

1) 2♣ usually shows around 11-15 and the subject hand has 16;

 

2) 2♣ also usually shows a 6 card suit.

 

3) Perhaps a 1♥ (followed by 2♣) or a 1♦ (followed by 2♣) or even a 1N opening might be a 'lesser lie' than a 2♣ rebid.

 

I would respond in private: You have an excellent grasp of the concepts of basic bidding by anticipating your rebid later. This class is probably too basic for you.

 

In public chat, I would say, the alternates are certainly possible, and the rationale behind these strategies is beyond the scope of this class. If you wish to discuss these ideas, talk to me later.....

[han]

People who discuss whether intermediate players should be handed simple rules or not are missing the point of my critique. I suspect that these people have not visited Bob's lessons.

 

Here is an excerpt from Bob's first lesson on game tries. The lesson was well planned. He had people bid hands, every auction was supposed to start with 1S-2S, after which opener would make a natural game try.

 

I sat down and picked up Jxx KQ109x xx xx. Partner (a good player and recent Vugraph commentator) opened 1S, I bid 2S, partner bid 3H, I bid 4H, partner bid 4S.

 

Bob: "You cannot bid 4H here, 4H is a slam try."

 

Han: "Oh, I intended 4H as a place to play, the 5-4 fit.."

 

Bob: "No, when the auction starts with 1S-2S then you are going to play in spades,.."

 

Other student: "But 4H is a much much better contract"

 

Bob: "Stop!"

 

Bob: "People, listen to me, you might actually learn something!! When the auction starts 1S-2S then you are going to play in spades, this is SET IN STONE. So 4H is a slam try, and this hand is not worth a slam try."

 

 

This went on and on. The audience consisted for about 50% of people who called themselves advanced (including myself). Every time someone disagreed with Bob's opinion (not unlikely, since his opinions can be quite controversial) we were told that his opinion is Set IN Stone and that we should listen to him.

 

Bob used a similar tone in his post on this thread, read it again and perhaps you can hear it too.

[Sigi_BC84]

Bob: "People, listen to me, you might actually learn something!! When the auction starts 1S-2S then you are going to play in spades, this is SET IN STONE. So 4H is a slam try, and this hand is not worth a slam try."

 

This went on and on. The audience consisted for about 50% of people who called themselves advanced (including myself). Every time someone disagreed with Bob's opinion (not unlikely, since his opinions can be quite controversial) we were told that his opinion is Set IN Stone and that we should listen to him.

That doesn't sound like much fun. An explanation for his behaviour might be that he was afraid to lose control over his carefully prepared lesson if other people (or students even) start to propose different methods to approach the hand.

 

It would certainly be interesting to hear his own position.

 

--Sigi

[bobh2]

Well, one issue at a time:

 

Chamaco has it about pegged. If you really get into the game, and the people you become friends with are trying as hard as they can to understand, just as you are, all of you will be reading, talking, arguing, pushing, and pulling, trying to get just one thing right, out of several kabillion. You'll try to pick the minds of people who seem to know what they are doing, and you'll spend tons of money on books. All of that. What you will learn after going through the same process but different situations, is that the "middle-of-the-road" conclusions will work almost all of the time, and once in a while, out of the corner of your eye, you'll spot something wierd...a way to deal with an odd problem that doesn't quite fit the mold. What you do about it depends on how big your curiosity bump is. Nobody, me in the forefront, says that working out how to deal with the small percentage situations is wrong. There is a problem, however. You may be able to spot those, and determine that they are "different" from the norm.

 

What I am dealing with is a lot of people who want to learn to play. I want them to learn to play, too. (I started to type this, but in the interest of harmony...lol..) In my opinion, for whatever that is worth, when Joe Bridge Player, a beginner/intermediate/advanced(try defining that one) player, is trying to get a real mountain of information so he can use it to feel comfortable, as opposed to a wrung out dishrag, he needs to know what usually will work and what he won't look like a bumbling idiot doing. As he reads and starts to understand, there are a whole lot of ways to skin a cat at bridge, but he needs to have that middle ground solid. That said, all you have to do is hang around people trying to get there and if you are paying attention, you are going to see some things you won't believe. This has to do with practical application of knowledge. Example: Hannie was talking about the bidding drill I was overseeing, with the auctions starting 1s-2s. Yeah, I know, as well as you do that if opener now rebids 3H and responder rebids 4H, there is a good chance that Hearts, not Spades is the best trump suit. On the other hand, suppose one of these folks has just read about "advance Q bids", more likely here, Joe doesn't really know what 3H means? Or he is totally unclear about when to bid 3H as a long suit game try or rebid 3S as a general power game try? All of this stuff gets wound up in a knot. Joe doesn't know, he hasn't got a good enough grasp on the basics to know. My response: (some things understood, without being nitpicked). Spades are trumps (understood to mean: at your skill level and experience). The quote, "Written in Stone" (understood to mean: at your skill level and experience). Hyperbole is a classic way to make a strong point. (Exceptions understood...there are exceptions to exactly everything at bridge). Joe needs to understand that he can count on something, spades being trumps. This his partner is not going to strand him if he trots out a Q bid on a void. (The question here is not when the last time this happened to you, but how many times has it happened when you were sorting this stuff out?). Joe doesn't realize yet, that for certain sure, 1s-3s-4H is a Q bid. If he learns that 1s-2s-3H-4H is a way to find a different trump suit, what about 1s-3s-4h?

 

All I try to do is get people "about right", when they are all over the lot. Down the road, they can explore the odd things, it's certainly a treat waiting for them. Getting bent out of shape about the way I make a point is strange...you say middle-of-the-road isn't always the best place. I agree. But how about getting them "on the road, at all" before worrying about worrying about skirting the edges?

 

Re: Cherdano's note: I learned to play in a different world than that. My ears, in f2f games or online, tell me nothing has changed. What I see (and hear) is people catching hell from more experienced players because "they were too stupid" to make "normal" bids. Do you really think that most bridge players have the good humor, patience, and understanding to appreciate a lesser experienced player trying to figure out a solution to a problem at the table, getting a zero (or losing 12 IMP) because that inexperienced player spotted one of those non-middle-of-the-road hands and did his best to deal with it? Yeah, right! Dreamer. IMHO (see? there I go again), get 'em up and running...pointed in the best direction with all the wheels touching the ground, we'll teach 'em how to deal with the hairpin curves later. If they are off target to start (and how many teachers do you know, online or off take the time to reach critical depths before going on to the next item of business? If you try teaching, it will dawn on you that your students or you might die of old age before you get enough covered for them to have any fun at all), they will never need to know the nifty little things, they will wipe out on the flat, dry straighaways.

 

Re Hrothgar's note: You try flash analyzing 50 hands an hour, while monitoring bidding woes, and answering questions at the same time. See how perfect your analysis is. Again, a way to get it close to right, that's all.

 

On the example you gave, we obviously have a different concept of how good those bids are. We also have different opinions about how much Q's and J's contribute to game contracts as well as how little 4333 patterns contribute. There seems to be a problem, too, with which partner should be aggressive when needed, too. Those problems are certainly debatable, and while from a "pure bridge" standpoint, I am not saying that this is the Word, from a "teaching folks how to get close" standpoint, this is my best opinion. Frankly, I wouldn't bid game on that hand if you held a gun to my head. That said, and that strongly, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that 30% the time, it made. And, if it made 50% of the time, my best opinion is that you are missing games by not making aggressive enough games with opener's hands, far too often.

 

 

re Lukewarm's input: I think he is right, about the world view. I "know" this because I play with the folks who attend my lectures, I watch them play, all of that. Want an example: I put together a team game of attendees. I kinds just stuck them in slots, no real organized partnerships. 6 boards. They swung a ton of IMPs...seems like 60? Yeah, I know, brilliancies can occur...opening leads, slams, etc. Guess again. Virtually all were mistakes, easy to spot and easy to avoid with full control of "The Basics".

 

re Sigi's note: First I dont like "rules". Reason why? A newer player cannot remember 'em all. They get lost in the deep blue of all the other rules. People get things muddled together, misremembered, messing with rules. My approach is to pick one subject....Hannie mentioned he was there with game tries over major openings. We have first discussed how to evaluate cards, one at time, then how to evaluate hands, where the cards are residing (go read the notes) exhaustively. Then we discussed the how's and whys of a 1-2 raise, and finally got to game tries, a logical next step. Using what we learned before, we discussed game tries until I just ran out of things to say, and we went to the partnership bidding room, where I had set up constraits for the random hand generator. The object was to put all this theory to work, and the key to that is see a lot of hands go by. We applied this as best we could, under the idea of "experience is the best teacher" and I pointed out, while whizzing by hands, admittedly. There's not enough time in any one session to hammer in the points about game tries, and discuss defense too...just not enough...you try it, it's impossible. You gotta narrow your focus and get one thing right...next time, another thing right, and right to me doesn't mean memorizing rules. It means digging down real deep and truely understanding why. It also means, that for now, without the experience to grasp it all, my students can get it right most of the time, and in particular, not shooting their own toes off.

 

 

Last comment: I missed responding to this, and Hrothgar commented on it, as an example of something wrong I said, I suppose, but didn't go into any detail. He correctly reported that I said that the auction of 1s-2s precluded slam possibilities. I did, and here is why I said that:

 

1. I'll mention one more time the concept of getting newer players in position to do reasonably well. With practice and time, they can get to pretty decent. If their basics are strong, they have a chance of getting beyond that. Any step beyond that, however, they will see that there are strange things lurking about the edges of what they have worked so hard to learn...little exceptions to exactly everything.

 

We both know you can concoct "magic hands" that the hands that start an auction of 1s-2s can make a slam. That is true, no problem at all with that. The problem I have is the math, and your use of it to take potshots. So, like luke said, let logic prevail. In my not real humble opinion, you either are being a s***-disturber or you just haven't thought about this at all. Consider: A 1s bid is not a 2c bid. Therefore, it is limited, by your defination of the strength/loser count of 2c. My concept of standard bidding is, after a few years of playing, that 2c is not a game force, but with a one-suiter, being within one trick of game, and as the hand gets better, in terms of losers and high cards, it's more and more likely to be opened 2c. So, for arguments' sake, let's assume a 1s bid is limited to...er....21 points...say maybe even 22 if mostly soft values. Let's say that a 2s raise is limited to 9 high cards, that's about standard, I think. Do the math. 30-31 highs, total. Did you notice that, without extraordinary distribution, along with both partners having all they can have, the very most, you don't have a slam. It takes something rare and special for this to occur over 1s-2s. I think, so far, this is hard to argue with, after all, it is sorta a basic of the "approach-forcing" concept of bidding, a very old term dealing with how we bid standard and 2/1, today.

 

Why is that? Because very, very good bidders, with today's modern tools, probably won't be able to bid more than 1 of 20 of those hands. Don't like that estimate? Go to a Regional, and read the score sheets. Add up the 480's and 680's where that score is consistant and see how many times the obviously making slam got bid. So, 1 of 20, 1 of 10, who cares? 1 of 20 might be high, I donno. Now, take all the other times the bidding got started 1s-2s. How many times is this auction going to produce 12 tricks? My experience says about 1 in a thousand, maybe worse. Let's get real frisky, and say 1 of 500. So, being very conservative with my argument, 1 of 500 hands work and of those 500, one of ten has any shot at getting bid......my math says that 1 of 5000 occurrances, what does yours say? So...I tell beginners/intermediates/advanced players to forget the slam over 1Major-2Major? Why, it's got a shot, once in 5000 hands...how remiss of me. And that's assuming players who can play the shine off a ceramic plate. Hmmmmm...and you think I ought to retract what I said? Not on your life. This leaves me with a question, Hrothgar. Do you ever really consider what you say, or do you just babble something out there and see if anybody pays any attention to it?

 

Let me make a suggestion: Rather than making this personal, how about saying, "Bob said thus-and-so". I disagree, and here's why". Is that too tuff? Then, if I chose, could rebut your argument, and you could clarify, if you chose, and at some point, we'd probably run out of logical stuff to say. At that point, any interested parties could read both of our positions and think hard and decide what makes the best sense to them. Regardless of which side they took, they'd learn a whole lot about the subject, which is, after all, the point, I think.

 

A bonus might be to stop the counter-productive stuff, which I am willing to do, and which I resort to when pushed on. The bonus for you might be that you aren't doing too well with it, messing with me, and you could stand a break from the verbal drubbing (See what I mean, I say crap like that when irritated?). (All of that is tongue-in-cheek, just trying to make a point...debate is fine, shovelling crap is just a waste of time).

 

Bob

[HeartA]

I find reversing with this hand to be disgusting. Stiff in partners suit and a horrible anchor suit. Sometimes we must reverse or jumpshift with a subpar anchor suit, but I would not stretch to do so.

 

As for passing a forcing "but weakish" bid, that does not exist. Forcing is forcing. I would rebid 2S on KQJxxx AQx AQx x for instance. Passing a forcing bid opposite an unlimited partner is not bridge and you will be out a lot of partners if you bid this way. Next time partner has a good hand with 5 or 6 spades he will wonder whether he can afford to rebid 2S or if it will be passed.

agree with Justin.

[Guest Jlall]

Bob, I agree with (almost) everything you said. Gotta learn the rules before you learn the exceptions.

 

I think perhaps something about the tone of your posts rubbed some people the wrong way.

 

I think you are doing a great service to new players by giving your lectures for free. Keep up the good work.

[han]

Bob,

 

After visiting your lesson I wrote a very angry post here, but I never pushed "add reply" because I figured that this was not the correct place for my critique, nor was I the person to say something about your teaching.

 

I think your lessons are well thought out and you clearly invest a lot of time teaching students. I know from several of your students how much they gain from these lessons, and that your extensive lesson notes are a great help to them. Your style of teaching is working for them.

 

I only have a problem with the condecending tone that I found very offensive during the lesson I visited, and your post in this thread brought back the same feeling.

 

At least I now understand why you said things the way you did.

[hrothgar]

I think that my objection with the lesson style is the notion that anything should be "Written in Stone". I'm skeptical regarding the benefits of a "rules based" teaching style for novice players. I think that its actively detrimental for an Intermediate / Advance audience. In theory, players at this level should be capable of thinking and reasoning rather than relying on rote memorization to solve all of their problems.

 

More significantly, using a "Set in Stone" rules based approach is going to cause enormous difficulty if some people happen to disagree with your rules. Case in point: You are teaching that the auction 1♠ - 2♠ precludes slam. You justify this by assuming that a 1♠ opening is limited to 21 points or so. This might be reasonable if we limited ourselves to considering balanced or single suited hands. However, there is another school of thought that believes that two suited hands should be opened with a natural bid rather than 2♣ whenever possible. Some of those 5-5s have enormous playing strength. I think that its a big mistake to resolve this problem by sweeping it under the rug and asserting that "my way is set in stone".

 

Please note: When your "Set in Stone" rule set simultaneously maintains that

 

1. Slam is impossible after 1S - 2S

2. The auction 1S - 2S - 3H - 4H is a slam try

 

People are going to question your credibility

[whereagles]

Bob, I agree with (almost) everything you said. Gotta learn the rules before you learn the exceptions.

There are, I believe, two schools of thought about this.

 

School 1 says you should learn things are they are. That is, include exceptions from the beginning.

 

School 2 says you should make things easy on people before indulging into more complicated matters. This means teaching rules and only afterwards deal with exceptions.

 

I don't know much more about it, though. Personally I prefer the ways of school 1, but can understand other people fare better learning through school 2 methods.

[Sigi_BC84]

[...]

experience).  The quote, "Written in Stone" (understood to mean:  at your skill level and experience).  Hyperbole is a classic way to make a strong point.  re Sigi's

[...]

note:  First I dont like "rules".  Reason why?  A newer player cannot remember 'em all.  They get lost in the deep blue of all the other rules.  People get things muddled together, misremembered, messing with rules.  My approach is to pick one subject

[...]

Alright, you don't like rules but you present stuff as being "written in stone". At that very moment you are presenting a hard-and-fast rule to your students (which they might keep as a nursery rhyme for a long time, especially since you seem to know quite well how to hammer things down).

 

So you are clearly contradicting yourself here. I think that rules are good for the beginning player, if they are presented to him/her in a context that explains the whys and hows and (importantly!) hints at possible exceptions from the rules that may be made. But we do not disagree in that point if I understood correctly what you said about teaching a single topic in depth and then make the students apply their knowledge (== the new "rules").

 

ought to retract what I said?  Not on your life.  This leaves me with a question, Hrothgar.  Do you ever really consider what you say, or do you just babble something out there and see if anybody pays any attention to it?

I think it's obvious that Richard (hrothgar) is a very smart and considerate individual; most of his contributions to this forum are of tremendous insight and quality in my eyes. Same applies to the system notes he has published (well, publish might be an exaggeration :-). Most importantly he usually gets straight to the point where it is due (i.e. most of the time). You are doing him very wrong with your remark.

 

Hannie, please apologize my brown-nosing...

 

--Sigi

[pclayton]

Bob, I agree with (almost) everything you said. Gotta learn the rules before you learn the exceptions.

There are, I believe, two schools of thought about this.

 

School 1 says you should learn things are they are. That is, include exceptions from the beginning.

 

School 2 says you should make things easy on people before indulging into more complicated matters. This means teaching rules and only afterwards deal with exceptions.

 

I don't know much more about it, though. Personally I prefer the ways of school 1, but can understand other people fare better learning through school 2 methods.

I think the masses benefit from Method 2. Most bridge players don't spend 2-3 hours a day playing, reading, and studying. They merely want to learn to play a little better in their local duplicate and someday get their gold card. Bridge doesn't play a huge role in their lives, it is simply a pastime.

 

For a non-serious student, I can't imagine having an intelligent discussion about a 1345 23 count (You shouldn't open it 2C because of yada yada, 1C is better. OTOH, perhaps a 2C opening followed by 2N is perhaps best, :blink: :unsure: :angry: ).

 

Once a player learns to think in a non-linear mode, then method 2 doesn't work.

[Blofeld]

We both know you can concoct "magic hands" that the hands that start an auction of 1s-2s can make a slam. That is true, no problem at all with that. The problem I have is the math, and your use of it to take potshots. So, like luke said, let logic prevail. In my not real humble opinion, you either are being a s***-disturber or you just haven't thought about this at all. Consider: A 1s bid is not a 2c bid. Therefore, it is limited, by your defination of the strength/loser count of 2c. My concept of standard bidding is, after a few years of playing, that 2c is not a game force, but with a one-suiter, being within one trick of game, and as the hand gets better, in terms of losers and high cards, it's more and more likely to be opened 2c. So, for arguments' sake, let's assume a 1s bid is limited to...er....21 points...say maybe even 22 if mostly soft values. Let's say that a 2s raise is limited to 9 high cards, that's about standard, I think. Do the math. 30-31 highs, total. Did you notice that, without extraordinary distribution, along with both partners having all they can have, the very most, you don't have a slam. It takes something rare and special for this to occur over 1s-2s. I think, so far, this is hard to argue with, after all, it is sorta a basic of the "approach-forcing" concept of bidding, a very old term dealing with how we bid standard and 2/1, today.

 

Why is that? Because very, very good bidders, with today's modern tools, probably won't be able to bid more than 1 of 20 of those hands. Don't like that estimate? Go to a Regional, and read the score sheets. Add up the 480's and 680's where that score is consistant and see how many times the obviously making slam got bid. So, 1 of 20, 1 of 10, who cares? 1 of 20 might be high, I donno. Now, take all the other times the bidding got started 1s-2s. How many times is this auction going to produce 12 tricks? My experience says about 1 in a thousand, maybe worse. Let's get real frisky, and say 1 of 500. So, being very conservative with my argument, 1 of 500 hands work and of those 500, one of ten has any shot at getting bid......my math says that 1 of 5000 occurrances, what does yours say? So...I tell beginners/intermediates/advanced players to forget the slam over 1Major-2Major? Why, it's got a shot, once in 5000 hands...how remiss of me. And that's assuming players who can play the shine off a ceramic plate. Hmmmmm...and you think I ought to retract what I said? Not on your life.

I disagree with your estimates of the likelihood of slam by orders of magnitude.

 

First, the point count approach. Laying aside the fact that there certainly exist hands where I would open 1♠ on more than 22 points (for fear of being unable to describe them properly after a 2♣ opening), we reach the maximum of 30-31 HCP. This is, I agree, unlikely to be enough for slam unless one player or other has a shortage somewhere. But singletons (even doubletons on the right hands will suffice) are hardly "extraordinary distribution".

 

My instinctive guess is that the proportion of hands starting 1♠ : 2♠ where one would like to be in slam is much higher than your suggested one in a thousand. I generated a few dozen hands which would start with this auction, and a cursory inspection suggested that around 6 made slam odds-on: around one in 10. Quite probably my method was biased towards slams, but I don't think it could be tremendously so. Could anyone with the means run a proper simulation here?

 

Then I would think that proper bidding can find a decent proportion of these: is half too optimistic? (incidentally your measurement technique of looking at the travellers is flawed; everyone may be making 12 tricks because two finesses are both on: this doesn't make the slam a good one).

 

Possibly my intuition is out on this. I'd like to hear others' opinions.

[Sigi_BC84]

My instinctive guess is that the proportion of hands starting 1♠ : 2♠ where one would like to be in slam is much higher than your suggested one in a thousand.  I generated a few dozen hands which would start with this auction, and a cursory inspection suggested that around 6 made slam odds-on: around one in 10. Quite probably my method was biased towards slams, but I don't think it could be tremendously so. Could anyone with the means run a proper simulation here?

I'd be happy to run a simulation, but please tell me what contraints you want for the hand and for the raises. This is not as easy to specify as you might think (the opener is not the problem as long as you assume everything above x HCP will be opened somehow differently, but if you start to talk about borderline 2♣/1M openers things get quite nasty -- you have to be able to quantify every important aspect you want to consider).

 

What contraints did you use for your quick survey?

 

--Sigi

[mikeh]

I would think, without running a simulation, that the frequency of there being a decent slam available after the start of 1♠ 2♠ would be quite a bit more than 1 in 1000, and quite a bit less than 1 in 10: maybe 1 in 40-80 would be my subjective guess.

 

Of course, much depends on methods. My experience over the past 10 years or so has been largely in partnerships using the single raise as 'semi-constructive'; defined as a raise on values that would accept at least one help-suit game try.

 

if we played standard, as we would in a BIL lesson, then the chances of slam become less significant but still, I would guess, somewhere in the range of 1 in 100.

 

I think that Bob's attitude that he should not trouble BIL students with such low probability hands is reasonable, but I think that his (apparent) insistence that the students be told that the sequence 1♠ 2♠ rules out slam is very, very wrong.

 

There will be students who are so ill-suited to the game that their only hope to become even bad players is to memorize certain overly-simplistic rules. My belief (my hope) is that these are few in number, and that one should frame one's teaching methods so as to cater to the larger group with greater potential.

 

Is there anything wrong in telling students that we are focussing upon the basics, while alerting them to the reality that there are low-frequency hands that would warrant a different approach? Tell them that the context of the lesson limits how far we can go in exploring these topics.

 

As has been observed before, far too many students memorize rules, fed to them in rigid, absolutist dogma. Then, as they become more experienced, they encounter hands where faithful application of the rules yields a horrible outcome, while seeing other players apparently flouting those rules with varying degrees of success.

 

Why not tell people that the game is beautiful, subtle and complex. that most players find that the more they learn, the more there is to learn, but that the best way to begin their exploration is to make some simplifying rules. Tell them that these rules will be enough to allow them to begin playing the game with some success, but that as they become more experienced, they will learn that more subtle approaches can be even more effective. Add a caution that the more sublte approaches depend upon a mastery of the basic rules.

 

Maybe, when discussing the 1♠ 2♠ auction, tell them that there can be hands on which the 1♠ bidder may be interested in slam, but that these hands are rare: far less common, and so far less important, than the game try hands, so we are not going to look at that rare class: that that would be a subject for an advanced course.

[Sigi_BC84]

Maybe, when discussing the 1♠ 2♠ auction, tell them that there can be hands on which the 1♠ bidder may be interested in slam, but that these hands are rare: far less common, and so far less important, than the game try hands, so we are not going to look at that rare class: that that would be a subject for an advanced course.

Curiously enough, I think that these two issues are related, since often the 1♠ hand with slam interest opposite a 2♠ raise will make some kind of game-try first in order to see if the hands fit well enough for slam.

 

--Sigi

[han]

Mikeh said:

 

I think that Bob's attitude that he should not trouble BIL students with such low probability hands is reasonable

 

Just to clear up a misconception, this was not a BIL lesson. This was a lesson for the intermediate-advanced club, intended for players who think that they have outgrown the BIL, and players that never qualified for the BIL to begin with. In the audience were people like blofeld, mickyb, luke warm, echognome, hrothgar and myself. As this was an open lesson, there were also many beginners present, but that was not the focus of the club lessons.

 

So all this talking about what to teach beginners is completely besides the point imo.

[luke warm]

han is right as to the makeup of the audience... most of the ones he mentioned by name have in reality or in their own minds (that would be me) reached the point where they can recognize slam potential after a 1s : 2s start... as sigi said, most would make some game try first, just to see if the hands fit (if even slightly unbalanced).. if not, they'd then just bid game

 

otoh, i do understand where bob is coming from... i used to teach on the operation of refinery process systems... using a bridge analogy, the ones being taught ranged from intermediate to expert, with one or two world class tossed in.. it can be disconcerting (i use a mild term) to have a stuctured class, one sometimes weeks in the making, be interrupted by folks who don't know that the points they're dying to make will in fact be made on day two (or three)... the hard part for some of them to recognize was that not everyone attending had attained whatever level to which they had risen... it can sometimes make the instructor defensive, whether it should or not

 

in bob's lessons, whether he says/admits this or not, he is asking the students (implicitly or explicitly) to accept him as their authority, at least until such time as he or they feel they have 'graduated'... it isn't always easy for the advanced to expert player to accept this authority (the true world class player wouldn't accept it either, but this fact would not usually be made public - at least not to the people who *might* accept such authority)... but there must be an authority else what's the point?

 

i don't have anywhere near the experience of mikeh or bob or any number of other posters here... but i can't imagine the odds of a slam after a 1s : 2s start being anywhere near 1 in 100... so i personally would welcome a simulation, just to see... heck, make responder's hand 7-9 (as most 2/1 players would) with exactly 3 card support