Which Precision Club?

[hoolie]

Hi,

 

I used to be a good and avid player, but dropped out for 35 years. I came back

to find many people playing 2/1. So I started reading Hardy's book which gets

rather involved, and Lawrence has a different version. I decided that if I was to

learn something rather convoluted, if might as well be some big Club system.

I'm leaning toward the Berkowitz book? Any of you play the Viking precision

club originated by Alan Sontag? Did most of you play 2/1 and then switch over?

 

Regards,

Stephen :P

[pclayton]

Berkowitz / Manley is good so is Barry Rigal's.

[Robert]

Hi everyone

 

Terence Reese's "Precision Bidding and Precision Play" is sound. It points out the weakness areas and often offers 'his' solutions to Precision type bidding.

 

Barry Rigal's "Precision in the 90s" is a favorite of mine and I currently follow many of his ideas using my Big Club methods.

 

If you found the Viking Club interesting, I strongly suggest that you get a copy of "The Power System" by Ron Klinger. It uses relay methods, however, they tend to follow the same set of replies. Hand shapes follow the same path so you only have to learn a limited number of bids.

 

Precision in the 90s also has a short summary of "Symmetric Relays in the Precision System.

 

The Meckwell Precision type methods are posted on bridgeFILES and are also highly recommended just to see what one of the leading Precision pairs play.

 

Regards,

Robert

Edited June 26, 2007 by Robert

[helene_t]

Berkowitz/Manleys book is an easy read and is based on a sensible Precision style, but it is certainly not "convoluted". Alan Sontag's book "Power Precision" covers some more advanced methods. Jannersten and Viking may be options as well, but I don't know those books. Antipodean Club is the state of the art as I understand it, but I haven't read the book about it.

 

If you're going to learn a new system from scratch and you're open to anything, you might consider Moscito.

 

You can also try to look in the "book reviews" thread in General Bridge Discussion". I admit I have no idea how to search a single long thread for specific keywords, but a query like

+precision +rigal

on the "general bridge discussion" (select any post age, view results as posts), gives some hits.

 

I used to play 2/1 but switched to Precision in my IRL partnership half a year ago after having played Precision with some semi-regular partners on BBO for a couple of years. I would still have to study it a lot more and to discuss a lot of things with my p in order to benefit from the advantages of Precision. I think 2/1 has the advantage that most style and judgement discussions, such as the "interesting bridge hands" on this forum and Master Solvers' Club in The Bridge World, assume 2/1 or something similar.

[zasanya]

If you want toplay precision the first requirement is a P who is willing to play it and is willing to work with you and who doesnt mind bidding mishaps in the early days.

If you can find such a P then you may try Sontag's Power Precision or the more recent Viking Precision. Here is a useful link to Viking Precision.

http://www.vikingclub.starwarsguiden.net/index.php

[mycroft]

Reese's book is old. Not that that's a problem, but Precision, like all systems, has evolved since 1972. However, it is a very good book to understand the different thinking required to run a limited opener system if you are used to "standard" (also, a good book to understand 5cM if you are used to old-school Acol or Goren - although I'd spend some time with Kaplan and Scheinwold's "How to play winning bridge" if you are used to Acol and want to understand 5cM in a weak NT context).

 

Berkowitz/Manley is a good solid system book. Not too many options or alternatives, enough toys to paper over the most common problems, lots of examples on how to use the system's safety to play games you just can't in standard.

 

Rigal's "Precision in the 90s" is a great system reference, but I would hate to try to learn the system from it. Once you and your partner know what you're doing with Precision, this is a great way to deal with "We keep running into this hand we don't have a call for" issues.

 

I learned from Reese, and my current partnership is playing pretty much straight up B/M (with some added asking bids and tweaks).

 

Michael.

[Apollo81]

I'd recommend the B/M book.

[whereagles]

CC Wei is outdated and too dogmatic (well, to me at least).

 

Reese is outdated, but still good.

 

Sontag's power precision is unreadable. You need at least a month to disentagle it. Besides, it's out of print for a long time.. might be hard to find.

 

Rigal is probably the best. Not the clearest of works, but certainly quite systematic and polished.

 

Berkowitz is modern but doesn't go deep enough into the sequences.

[cwiggins]

In addition to a partner willing to play Precision, you need to worry about what your local bridge authority permits and what your local clubs and tournaments permit.

 

Where I live--in Michigan, U.S.--all the local tournaments permit only the ACBL's General Convention Chart (GCC) unless the ACBL requires the tournament to permit more (e.g. a national event). Under the GCC, both Moscito and Viking are not permitted. The methods in B/M, Rigal, and S-W are okay, at least in my experience.

[awm]

So on the Viking Club page, there is an example of a grand slam bid in a 4-2 fit.

 

While this hand is quite amusing, it seems like it wasn't really a very good contract. It seems to require spades 3-2 and hearts 4-3, which is roughly 4/9 and well below the threshold for a grand slam at IMPs. Even more troubling, 7NT seems to require either of diamonds 3-3 or spades 3-2 with the queen on, for odds of roughly 5/9: better than 7♥. And I'm not sure the Viking Club auction revealed that responder doesn't have the ♦J or ♦T, either of which pushes 7NT up to really excellent odds while 7♥ would remain lousy. Am I missing something?

 

Anyways, I don't suppose this impacts the effectiveness of the Viking Club system at all, although for someone wanting to play relays I would recommend Symmetric Relay (available via the Australian Bridge Federation page) or the various forms of TOSR (available on Dan Neill's page).

[DJNeill]

Hey,

 

Rigal is the one book to get since you already have some precision experience. It discusses every aspect of precision in beautiful detail. Berkowitz is a bit too low-end for you (plus the pages start falling out for me and others I have heard similar from). Other precisions are just too outmoded or ACBL-unfriendly or weird for you, unless you like being old, unlawful, or odd.

 

Getting the feel for how precision wins in real life is why you need to get Meckstroth's Win the Bermuda Bowl with Me. I never understood why people don't just copy the best players' systems to start with and go from there. You can even find meckwell notes out there on the series of tubes if you google enough. Precision is about attacking with light limited openings, and less about strong club, which I think was the popular notion originally. Maybe you knew that.

 

Thanks,

Dan

[helene_t]

"Antipodean Club" got no hits on google

Sorry, don;'t know where I got that name from. Try "symmetric relays" instead.

[hrothgar]

Hey,

 

Rigal is the one book to get since you already have some precision experience. It discusses every aspect of precision in beautiful detail. Berkowitz is a bit too low-end for you (plus the pages start falling out for me and others I have heard similar from). Other precisions are just too outmoded or ACBL-unfriendly or weird for you, unless you like being old, unlawful, or odd.

One quick comment about Rigal's book:

 

I thought that his treatment of mainstream Precision was quite good, however, I found his description of Symmetric relay almost incomprehensible. I play lots of relay. I would never want to try to learn the methods from this book.

[keylime]

Playing Precision for most of my bridge life, I probably have all the books either read or owned at one time or another.

 

Precision Today is a good starter primer. The pages definitely fall out quickly (mine was out in 2 weeks) but in terms of intros, it's a good starting point. The section on transfer positives and Beta asks I feel is a great bonus.

 

Rigal's book I feel is the "next step up". I liked how Barry wrote it with some substance in terms of a "global" approach with conventions, system, and such. However I agree with Richard; the relays part of it is very substandard and poor.

 

From there, I think it would benefit you to view Blue Team Club's methods and other five card major methods. The sky's the limit, and you'd have the foundation to understand the complexities and digest them. I feel exposure to styles and such, can only be fully experienced, once the fundamentals and infrastructure is understood and realized.

[skjaeran]

So on the Viking Club page, there is an example of a grand slam bid in a 4-2 fit.

 

While this hand is quite amusing, it seems like it wasn't really a very good contract. It seems to require spades 3-2 and hearts 4-3, which is roughly 4/9 and well below the threshold for a grand slam at IMPs. Even more troubling, 7NT seems to require either of diamonds 3-3 or spades 3-2 with the queen on, for odds of roughly 5/9: better than 7♥. And I'm not sure the Viking Club auction revealed that responder doesn't have the ♦J or ♦T, either of which pushes 7NT up to really excellent odds while 7♥ would remain lousy. Am I missing something?

 

Anyways, I don't suppose this impacts the effectiveness of the Viking Club system at all, although for someone wanting to play relays I would recommend Symmetric Relay (available via the Australian Bridge Federation page) or the various forms of TOSR (available on Dan Neill's page).

Helgemo knew that 7♥'s probably was odds against when he bid it. But he knew they had already won the match. How aften do you think you can bid and make a grand on a 4-2 fit? :blink:

[whereagles]

The problem with precision is that everybody uses its own souped-up version of it :blink:

[jtfanclub]

The problem with precision is that everybody uses its own souped-up version of it :)

Unlike Standard American, where everybody plays exactly the same thing? :)

[hoolie]

:) Rigal's book I feel is the "next step up". I liked how Barry wrote it with some substance in terms of a "global" approach with conventions, system, and such. However I agree with Richard; the relays part of it is very substandard and poor.

 

From there, I think it would benefit you to view Blue Team Club's methods and other five card major methods. The sky's the limit, and you'd have the foundation to understand the complexities and digest them. I feel exposure to styles and such, can only be fully experienced, once the fundamentals and infrastructure is understood and realized.

 

SH: Thanks for the advice, I'm having the same problem with pages

falling out with Hardy's 2/1 book. Maybe I can graduate from Berkowitz

to a book with a better treatment of relays. I've looked at the notes for

Garozzo's system for World Itatlian Jr. team, Sontag/Bates and Meckwell

and I agree that a foundation is required.

 

I will need to find somebody to practice with on BBO, perhaps the player

profiles will help. I thought the Antipodean Club to be quite creative, and

the idea to read the Bermuda Bowl book seems very good.