Teaching Bridge to University students

[Hanoi5]

I'd like to know your opinions on what's the best way to teach bridge to young people. I think teaching SAYC, a VERY natural approach, is the best thing to do. What are your opinions?

 

What if these guys are going to play in an important tournament in, say, a year? Is it too disadvantegeous to play SAYC in an international tournament? Isn't it more important to know your system very well than to use a very good system?

 

Thanks for your thoughts on this.

 

H A R A

[hrothgar]

I think that we're missing a crucial datapoint.

 

How serious is this group of students? Are they seriously committed to placing well in this "important" tournament? Alternatively, are you working with a group of casual players where you need to focus on retention and the like?

 

In either case, I think that its a big mistake to assume that the specific choice of bidding systems is a significant consideration. This might seem ridiculous coming from me, however, I think that its a lot more important to focus almost exclusively on declarer play and defense when you are introducing the game. Have the students play a lot of Minibridge and use lots of BridgeMaster practice hands. (For what its worth, I'd consider between a quarter and 3rd of your available time before the "big" tournament to be a reasonable introduction). If your students don't understand how many tricks they can expect to take with a given pair of hands, all the bidding science in the world isn't going to mean jack *****.

 

Personally, I think teaching SAYC to a group of serious students is a complete waste of time. SAYC may be popular, but its also completely incoherent. There are plenty of "natural" systems that are well designed and are able to articulate their design choices in an intelligent manner.

 

Personally, I think that there are five good choices of systems that you can teach to beginners.

 

1. Kaplan - Sheinwold

2. French Standard

3. Polish Club

4. Precision

5. Acol

 

I'd recommend taking a close look what methods are used in your local area and chose the system thats closest to what the bulk of the players use.

 

Alternatively, you might want to give your students a choice. When it comes time to introduce bidding, I give a little talk explaining how players in Minibridge get to look at dummy before they chose their contract. A bidding system is designed to achieve two ends.

 

1. Allow your side to approximate the information that they have available when they look at the dummy playing minibridge

 

2. Prevent the opponents from being able to make an accurate guess as to the best contract.

 

Ideally, you should be able to stress some of the strengths and weakness of these different approaches. You might find that your students have an natural bias in one direct or another.

[P_Marlowe]

I'd like to know your opinions on what's the best way to teach bridge to young people. I think teaching SAYC, a VERY natural approach, is the best thing to do. What are your opinions?

 

What if these guys are going to play in an important tournament in, say, a year? Is it too disadvantegeous to play SAYC in an international tournament? Isn't it more important to know your system very well than to use a very good system?

 

Thanks for your thoughts on this.

 

H A R A

Hi,

 

#1 assuming you are the teacher, teach a system

you know, because it will be simpler to answer

questions about the system

#2 teach a system, which is common in the area /

country you live

#3 Ensure, that they know the basics, every system

can be enhanced, even Acol, so that it is fairly

competitive

 

With kind regards

Marlowe

[helene_t]

Which system is best in important international tourneys is probably not the first concern when teaching bridge to beginners.

 

But if you have some very talented and ambitious students you may as well choose 2/1 or some strong club system from the beginning.

[Gerben42]

Start playing at soon as possible. System 5-card major with FOUR weak two bids. Worry about the strong 2♣ later.

 

Center on play technique like declarer's game plan.

 

Personally, I think that there are five good choices of systems that you can teach to beginners.

 

 

6. extremely simple Fantunes B)

 

natural opening bids, 14+

2-bids 11 - 13

1NT 12 - 14

 

Ignore the situation where responder has 0 - 2 HCP and use standard bidding.

2/1 invite or better.

[helene_t]

btw, the best English books for beginners assume Acol. But most advanced books assume some 2/1-ish SA-flavor. You may consider what (if any) kind of books your students want to read.

[bhall]

I'll second that. The most important thing for new players to learn is how to make tricks, and the next is how to estimate the number of tricks that can be made in the various contracts and how that relates to the score.

 

Bidding is a big part of this latter activity, so the information that it provides needs to be properly explained and understood. For that purpose, any natural system will do - the simpler, the better. Choosing one that is popular in their locale will speed their introduction to the tournament scene and enable them to learn faster from observing others' bidding.

 

Given the current popularity of Hold 'Em poker, it may be worth some effort to contrast Bridge ethics and behavior with the free-for-all of poker tournaments. They should be made to understand that Bridge is a game of tightly restricted communication between partners, and meeting the challenges posed by this restriction is easily half the fun.

[hotShot]

The best approach is to teach them mini bridge, they should be able to start playing at the end of the first lesson.

After that you should introduce basic playing technique like finesse, drawing trumps. Putting weight on basic declarer play. This should cater lessons 2 and 3 with a lot of practice.

Lesson 4 should be devoted to defense, basic leads and signals and again a lot of practice.

 

Don't forget to teach ethics and that calling the TD is not meant as an insult!

 

From lesson 5 on you should introduce a simple rule based bidding system (all natural, longest suit first, no extra strength for reverse), with natural 1level openings an weak 2's. Students will very soon discover that reverses need to be stronger, and that they want a forcing opening for very strong hands.....

[helene_t]

I think it's a very bad idea to try to invent a "simple" system. System design is extremely difficult, and designing a bidding system for beginners is probably much more difficult than designing one for experts. Even in the hypothetical case that you could actually come up with a system that was better for beginners than whatever system textbooks are based on, you would still have the disadvantage of having to make all the teaching material yourself.

 

So while I have some sympathy for Gerben's "Big NT system" I think it's better just to stick to whatever system your textbooks have chosen. It could be that weak two's should be taught before the strong 2♣ opening and in that case it's probably not so critical whether the preliminary meaning of 2♣ is "weak" or "undefined". By the same token, it could be that reverses should be postponed to after non-reverse sequences have been dealt with in full, including 3rd round, and in that case it may not be important whether the preliminary meaning of a reverse bid is 12-17 (as other shifts by opener) or "undefined". But whatever choices have been made in the textbooks it is probably not very stupid.

[hotShot]

With a simple system, I mean an established system where you leave out all exceptions, no need to invent another YAISS (Yet another incomplete simple system).

When the basics are understood, students will understand the reasoning behind the exceptions later.

[helene_t]

With a simple system, I mean an established system where you leave out all exceptions, no need to invent another YAISS (Yet another incomplete simple system).

When the basics are understood, students will understand the reasoning behind the exceptions later.

OK, I agree with that in principle, but it's not always clear which system elements are the rules and which are the exceptions. Some think that it's an exception that 1♠-(p)-2♥ promises 5. I don't think so but presumably it depends on what you think the basic philosophy of the system is. As for reverses, I don't think it's an exception that they promise extras: they force responder to take preference at the 3-level just like jump-shifts do and therefore they must be strong. But again, it may depend on the way you motivate the basics.

[Echognome]

Having taught or helped out university students with bridge for five years, I can offer up some of my experiences.

 

First, a lot depends on the size and heterogeneity of your group. Our university club had around 40 members (maybe more) signed up for the club, with over 30 of those as complete novices. Nothing at all wrong with that, but what you will want to cover with complete novices and what you will want to cover with intermediates and then with more advanced players are different items.

 

Second, divide up your teaching by ability. The more advanced students taught the rank novices and I taught the more advanced students. The novices were divided into those that had never played and those that had played before. Those that had never played were taught minibridge and those that had played were taught basic Acol (this was in England). I strongly believe students should be taught the standard system in the country where they play. For the intermediate students, I focused mainly on counting, counting, and more counting. Getting the students to start putting the work in needed to become an advanced player seemed to go a long way, especially amongst university students. For the advanced players (those on the university A team), I focused on partnership building, inferences, and technique (I gave out double dummy problems as assignments).

 

Finally, and most importantly, make it fun. The university club held their meetings at tables in one of the (less crowded) student bars. The students made it clear to the new members that this was a social club. The point was to play cards and have fun. Some of the students would go afterwards to the pub quiz. The training for the advanced players was held separately as to not detract from the generally social nature of the main meetings.

[Robert]

Hi Hanoi5

 

I tend to very strongly agree with hrothgar(what am I typing?). His main points are very good advice. I would reorder the choice of systems and add one of my favorites that I think some promising beginners could play.

 

Throwing beginners into an important tournament in a years time is an interesting(?) idea. I hope that they will be playing in a "limited" event. :P

 

Years ago I did play with a future King of Bridge(the high school student with the most master points in the U.S.A.) He had played for about 3 months and I had played for about three years, he was better than me, however, we did just fine.

 

Warren was 15 at the time and looked 12, so some players tried to take advantage of the youngster. A very bad mistake. Doubling Warren on suspicion was a very dangerous idea.

 

My college bridge club had a large number of very bad players plus a few good ones. I would not think about teaching four or more of the new ones to play in an important tournment if limited to a years time.

 

Back to choice of systems.

1. Precision

2. Power System

3. Kaplan Sheinwold

4. 2/1 game forcing

5. any reasonable system(Acol, Polish, etc. etc.)

 

The Power System uses a Polish Club like 1C(11+) with 11-18HCP limited non

1C bids. It also has a very nice bid to show three card major raises by opener.

1C*-1M-2D* shows a 'suitable' 3 card major raise.

 

I prefer a different 1NT range than the book suggests. 15-17HCP so that

1C-1D-1NT=18-20.

 

The reason that I listed Precision above the Power System for beginners is that they could play with other people if they learned Precision. Power players are very few and far between.

 

I have played a lot of Kaplan Sheinwold and know that it is a very good system.

 

My current Big Club system(loosely Precision based) with 2/1 GF bids and a 15-17 1NT is not for beginners. Too many transfers/relays to mess up.

 

Regards,

Robert

[geller]

For the past 3 semesters I've taught a one semester bridge class (for credit, as one seminar out of a huge number of general education seminars), at Tokyo University (where my "day job" is professor of geophysics). I expect to continue teaching this class for the indefinite future. The following is the home page for Tokyo Univ. bridge class (in Japanese) . Due to the room size the class is limited to 32 students. The students have essentially no knowledge of bridge before staring the class. We've had 50 applicants or more each semester, and we whittle this down to 32 by having them write a short essay on why they want to take the class. Of the 32 students who start the class, in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd times the class was offered 24, 23, and 24 students respectively stuck it out to the end and got credit.

 

Our decision on what system to use was dictated by the text. We are using the Japanese translation of Fred's LTPB-1 and -2 as the main text (download here), so our system is the one used in LTPB-1 and -2 (SAYC). If I were starting from scratch we would probably use 2/1=FG as the system, but the availability of of an excellent text dictated that we use the bidding system there. I don't think this is a big deal. If the students continue playing bridge when the class is done then it will be easy for them to learn 2/1=FG later.

 

Having settled on LTPB-1 and -2 as the texts, we organized everything around that. The reading assignements schedule is as follows

Week 1: Guidance (intro lecture)

Week 2: Play 1

Week 2: Play 2

Week 4: Trump Suit

Week 5: Plan the Play

Week 6: opening Bids

Week 7: Response/Openeer's rebid

Week 8: Responders rebid/slam bidding/competitive bidding

<NOTE Everything up to here is LTPB-1, the following is LTPB-2, except the

NT opening stuff is also partly in LTPB-1?

Week 9: responding to 1NT/2NT opening

Week 10: Michaels/Unusual NT/etc

Week 11: Defense 1

Week 12: Defense 2:

Week 13: Play problems

 

The lectures follow the above reading (except week 13). Each lecture begins with a 30-40 min powerpoint presentation, then the students play 4 lesson hands. In weeks 2 and 3 the lesson hands are just "take as many tricks as you can" (i.e., minibridge without teaching scoring). The opening lead is always directed. In week 5 (following ltpb-1) they have to take a specific number of tricks. In week 6 they are given bdding and they just write down the specified bidding. In weeks 7-11 they bid themselves, but then they open a selaed bidding sheet and the play is basesd on the specified contract. Unfortunately there ususally isn' enough time to explain the lesson hands in class (it would be nicer to have 2hrs rather than 90 mins), so we've prepared "bridge movies" (lin files) that the students read after class. Also we have written homework every week (weeks 6-10) that we teach bidding, and we've prepared various written handouts (a summary of the bidding system, a text on scoring).

 

In the last week (week 13) rather than a regular lecture we have an all day game (imp scoring, using randomly dealt hands). It takes the students about 15 mins to bid and play a hand, so they play 3 pair games of 8-10 boards each, with a barometer movement, so we can stop and time and so they get their score after each round). The level of bidding and play isn't so high of course, but the fact that they can go from zero to being able to bid and play in only 11 lectures is pretty good I think.

 

If anyone is interested in this I'd be happy to provide more information.

 

-Bob

[kenrexford]

I thought about this choice for a while, and I have come up with a simple solution.

 

Teach SAYC. Tell them about other approaches, but teach SAYC. By "SAYC," I mean whatever is "standard" in the area.

 

A couple of reasons, IMO:

 

1. College students will quickly branch off into other approaches. You cannot stop them. This is destiny. They will do this on their own. You can guide them when they make that decision.

 

2. You have to know SAYC to know what others are doing.

 

3. College students have a tendency to rush past fundamentals to the exotic. Restrain that for as long as you can, which won't be long.

 

4. College kids will quickly figure out all of the problems with SAYC on their own. You lean a lot about a superior approach by recognition of the problems that the superior approach seeks to fix.

[Hanoi5]

A bidding system is designed to achieve two ends.

 

1.  Allow your side to approximate the information that they have available when they look at the dummy playing minibridge

 

2.  Prevent the opponents from being able to make an accurate guess as to the best contract.

 

If those are the two ends, where do you leave competing for the best part-score or game (or even slam)?

 

People usually play 2/1 in my country. When I learned a system (I used to play some kind of rustic bridge) I learned a natural system where 2/1 was forcing to 2NT or 2 of opening bidder's Major, double raises were limit bids (1♥-3♥ showed 11-12 with at least 3-card support), five-card Majors and 1♣ could be opened on two cards (with the 4432). I call that SAYC. My teacher (my master) was told it might not be a good idea but he was in command so everybody agreed with him. Learning a system not everybody played (but good players could play if they had to) allowed us not to have 'bad' partners.

 

Of course playing is at the core of our teaching method. But we want our students to learn a good and easy system (so that they can start playing tournaments as soon as possible). The tournament where they'll be playing is an important one, but our goal is not losing so badly and showing young people in our country that bridge exists, that they can have fun, and that there's an international scene where they'll be able to play.

[kenrexford]

A bidding system is designed to achieve two ends.

 

1.  Allow your side to approximate the information that they have available when they look at the dummy playing minibridge

 

2.  Prevent the opponents from being able to make an accurate guess as to the best contract.

If those are the two ends, where do you leave competing for the best part-score or game (or even slam)?

That's seems rather simplistic, I would agree.

 

This goes to the crux of one of the debates about bidding systems. IMO, a bidding system looked at as a technical exercise is difficult to create and difficult to use. A bidding system must cope.

 

Thus, first bids must not just provide good information. First bids are best if they offer the following:

 

1. A good basis from which to launch a scientific auction.

2. A foundation that caters to pressure decisions from partner.

3. A foundation that minimizes risk for pressure decisions from Opener.

 

A simple example. If one were to play that a 2♦ opening showed 4-5♦ and 5♥, with 11-15 HCP's, this would be a GREAT start. Lots of science could follow. Responder is well-placed to make decisions under pressure, ann Opener is well-placed as well under pressure.

 

If, instead, 2♦ showed three diamonds and a five-card major, with 0-4 in the other major, 12-18 HCP's, that would be a mess.

 

Further, the system structure must cover as many contingencies as possible. If you can bid 80% of the hands way better than the field, but you have no chance on the other 20%, you are in trouble.

[hrothgar]

A bidding system is designed to achieve two ends.

 

1.  Allow your side to approximate the information that they have available when they look at the dummy playing minibridge

 

2.  Prevent the opponents from being able to make an accurate guess as to the best contract.

 

If those are the two ends, where do you leave competing for the best part-score or game (or even slam)?

Thats all under "A".

 

There is no bidding in MiniBridge. Dummy get gets tables. Declarer looks at Dummy, and then gets to determine where he wants to play the hand.

 

(Part Score v Game v Slam, No Trump v Suit contract)

 

Now let's replace this game of perfect information with a bidding system. You're approximating the information that you had available before. There is a LOT more guesswork. But the basic decision making process is the same.

[hrothgar]

Further, the system structure must cover as many contingencies as possible. If you can bid 80% of the hands way better than the field, but you have no chance on the other 20%, you are in trouble.

We're departing from the original question here, however, I'd argue that you're describing a strong club system here.

 

We get dealt a hand suitable for a strong club opening about 15% of the time. We risk screwing ourselves royally each and every time we do so because we KNOW the opponents are going to crash our auction.

 

We are willing to do so because we will be MUCH better position on those occasions where are able to make a limited opening.

[Hanoi5]

In minibridge declarer is the player with more points of the pair with more points (or is it the most points?). So the other pair can't compete, they have to defend even if their cards would give them a better contract. That is very different from bidding in bridge; competing is a very important factor.

[pdmunro]

For the past 3 semesters I've taught a one semester bridge class (for credit, as one seminar out of a huge number of general education seminars), at Tokyo University (where my "day job" is professor of geophysics).  I expect to continue teaching this class for the indefinite future.  

 

Thanks for the info. Always good to read a real world example.

 

I'm teaching my third 8 week series of lessons at the moment. It's hard for people to pick up.

 

I recall that it took me a couple of years to grasp the basics of SAYC. And that's all I play. The bonus of SAYC is that it enables me to play with lots of different partners. I learnt bridge in order to meet people outside of my normal concerns of Maths/Science.

 

I never had a definite skill level I wanted to attain. I just wanted to reach a level where I wouldn't feel embarrassed at the table.

[helene_t]

Is it really true that "all" potential opps and partners in North America know, and even play, SAYC? If that's true then your bridge culture must be very different from the Dutch one.

 

Here in NL, we're suposed to have a "standard" (15-17, 5-card majors or maybe 5443, Acolish 2/1s), but in reality, the only thing you can say is that most play a 15-17 notrump with some kind of transfers and that those who took beginner's classes within the last 20 years and didn't progress/deviate much from that tend to play 4-cards-up-the-line as responders. I never encountered someone who claimed to know Biedermeijer Groen - those who are advanced enough to know any system are also proud enough not to know BM Groen. Even teachers don't know the system they teach very well, because they don't play it themselves.

 

Considering all that, I wouldn't give high priority to the "locally predominant system" argument. I started with SA because I like some of Bergen's and Lawrence's books - the new Dutch beginner's books by Hoogekamp/v.d.Linde don't say anything about bidding so I'd have to look elsewhere anyway.

[Gerben42]

I taught bridge to a group of university students and I taught them the LOGIC of bidding rather than a zillion rules.

 

My rules would look like:

 

"With a weak hand (10 or less) you cannot respond to opener higher than 1NT unless you have a fit."

 

Simple, logical and effective.

 

I started with a 5542-system, strong NT, 4 weak two bids. The strong 2♣ opening was included just before their first club night, where we played a pro-am setup (i.e. beginner with a regular club player).

 

Two of them were brave enough to enter a club individual tournament after that and both outscored 40% :D

 

Why a doubleton ♣ you ask? Not just because I think that's how it should be played (which is true but irrelevant), but because it's a simple set of rules:

 

Rule 1. ♠♥ require 5 cards

Rule 2. ♦ requires 4 cards

Rule 3. ♣ is always allowed

Rule 4. From more than one allowed suit, open the longer one

Rule 5. From equally long allowed suits, open the higher ranking one

 

No exceptions.

[Tola18]

I recall that it took me a couple of years to grasp the basics of SAYC.

 

And that's all I play.  The bonus of SAYC is that it enables me to play with lots of different partners.

Right! "the easiest is to begin with a natural system" isnt necessary true. The rebids, the nuancing between lenghts AND strenghts IS rather difficult and also leading most beginners into endlessly point-counting.

 

Some do say a simple club system is easier as a beginner-system: The rebids and showing nuances is easier.

All hands 16+=1C

Balanced 12(13) = 1NT

Unbalanced <16= all others...

 

Thus a basic Precision could be the optimal beginners system. I know Wei himherself did proposed such a basic Precision. I had myself the booklet once upon time.

Basic P being still wellknown enought for our beginners not to have difficult to play with other players.

 

I presume AcolClub could also be useful, if Acol is otherwise your home system.

There is in any case MSK, ie Modern Standard Club. Modern Standard being very Sayc-alike but with 4-cards majors. EDIT. MS being the common system in Sweden.

No problems with 1D; this being always 3+.

[Quantumcat]

I don't think teaching new players a very artificial system is the way to go. Then they just memorise the "rules" and aren't trying to communicate (just attempting to remember what rule they follow with this hand).

 

I learned simple Acol when I started (not even a year ago yet) and it was great because I understood the purpose of the bids I was making, and I tried to communicate things to partner, I didn't just bid a certain thing because I had this many clubs and this many points. When it's a simple system a newbie can control his bidding with confidence and not have to blindly follow the memorised rules.

 

In our university group, our teacher lost many people in their first two or three lessons because they decided it was too complicated and not fun (they learned 5 card majors to start with, then weak two's and the idea of pre-empting, stayman, transfers and blackwood in their second lesson)

 

I think that the confidence that comes with figuring things out for yourself and understanding exactly what you're doing, keeps people eager to learn!

 

I'm speaking from a student's point of view here.