How come so many say SAYC and so few play it?

[vuroth]

Better yet, find a regular partner and play with them.

 

0.02

Definitely the ideal solution, if you can find one.

[jtfanclub]

When people say "hi opps, we play SAYC" I translate it to "we play some simple variant of SA, lots of bids are undiscussed".

I translate it as "we don't alert anything". The actual system used is irrelevant.

 

One of the most frequent calls I get in Addicts actually related to bridge is somebody playing "SAYC" opening 1♣ with 4342 or 4441. No alert, of course.

[zasanya]

I see many people have "SAYC" in their profile.  Do they really mean SAYC?  Seems not.  Seems they mean SA as in Standard American but not SAYC.  If you play SAYC, you should know you play Xfers and NegX -> 2S and stuff like that.

 

Anyone else notice this?

 

-ken

If I play a 5card Major 15-17 NT ; Stayman; Blackwood; all jumps strong, '2/1' not a game Force std raises and no other gadgets what system am I playing?

The term Standard American aka SAYC suggests itself .YC ? I dont know what it means.Who cares? I dont play with experts anyway;rather they dont play with me.

[TylerE]

But that's kinda the point. If it isn't exactly SAYC, it's just SA. If I sat down with anyone (esp. under the age of 70), and the extent of our agreements to be be 'Standard American', I would expect 1♦-2♥ to be weak, 1m-2N to be 10+ - 12, not 13-15, as two examples.

[Trinidad]

I see many people have "SAYC" in their profile.  Do they really mean SAYC?  Seems not.  Seems they mean SA as in Standard American but not SAYC.  If you play SAYC, you should know you play Xfers and NegX -> 2S and stuff like that.

 

Anyone else notice this?

 

-ken

If I play a 5card Major 15-17 NT ; Stayman; Blackwood; all jumps strong, '2/1' not a game Force std raises and no other gadgets what system am I playing?

The term Standard American aka SAYC suggests itself .YC ? I dont know what it means.Who cares? I dont play with experts anyway;rather they dont play with me.

YC stands for 'Yellow Card'. It is called like that because eons ago ACBL printed convention cards with a standard system on yellow paper. This standard system was one of the many variations of Standard American. Because of the yellow convention card, the system became known as 'Standard American Yellow Card' or SAYC.

 

The SAYC variations that you can find on the internet are somewhat different from the original SAYC. Does it matter? Yes and no. It doesn't matter in the sense that when I meet someone and agree to play SAYC, we at least have some minimal agreements and we can play. It does matter since the original SAYC is more or less lost and from a bridge historic point of view that is somewhat sad. (Maybe we could call the 'modern' version I(nternet)-SAYC to separate it from the original, but I think it is too late for that already.)

 

Rik

[kvkmak]

One reason I asked this question is I played back on OKBridge back when it was very new (circa 1990) and most people didn't even know what an internet was. Back then, people said "SA" if they meant more-or-less Standard American as opposed to "Prec" or "ACOL", I sure wish people did that there now-a-days.

 

Wikipedia very incorrectly states that Standard American and SAYC are more or less the same thing. Someone should go in and fix that.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_American

[bill1157]

I read an interesting article in the bulletin for the youth NABC. The writer was talking about teaching children to play bridge but what he said could serve most of the people like me and those i play with: play strong NT, all 2 bids weak (including 2 clubs and with side 4 card majors and voids ok). Overcall 11+ weaker at 1 level, jump if weaker and you feel you must bid. 3 bids 7 card suit max 11 pts. End of system discussion.

This would serve most players fine. Then concentrate on card play which is the real difficult and interesting part of bridge anyway.

 

Bill