A strong-club system for beginners?

[keylime]

Reese Precision - yeah baby yeah, now THAT brings back some memory. Can anyone say "Precision Bidding, Precision Play?" ;) :D

 

Frankly, Precision is so much better to teach to beginners because they get to bid their good hands immediately and not have to do that jump rebid over a forcing NT per se to show strength, when 1C does the trick. I've said this before, but I strongly feel that SAYC and 2/1 suffers from so many problems that it's no wonder beginners struggle. Give me a team of four who are beginning Precisioneers, and a team of four who are beginning 2/1'ers and/or SAYC'ers, and I can almost bank on the Precisioneers coming out on top.

[joker_gib]

Totally agree with Misho and Mikestar. :o

 

First of all, teach them the rules of the game. Everyday, I see people playing bridge and they just don't know what they are doing !!

 

Teach them the national basic system so that it will be easy for them to find partners. You cannot improve your game if you don't find suitable partners ! :o

[helene_t]

[...]So, to sum it up, conventions aren't really that important when playing standard bridge. [....]

My question is not about many conventions (more precisely: artificial bids) or few conventions, since I think we all agree about that. Actually, a strong-club system has the potential of being less artificial than SAYC. This is because you trade the not-very-natural 1♣/♦ openings and 2♣ for a single artificial opening. Anyway, let's assume, just for the sake of the argument, that some strong-club system has to be worked out, in the first place just in order to consider its feasibility.

 

My idea is a "positive-relay" structure, in which great(?) strength is always(?) indicated by means of a provisory relay or "jocker bid", which is a double or a cuebid, or, when that is not available, the first-available-minor. Thus, Forcing Stayman, 1♣-opening and take-out doubles should not be seen as stand-alone conventions but are all the same convention, which would be the only artificial element in the system.

 

Why should this structure be used in a strong-club system? Actually, the Looier BS in Amsterdam uses a similar structure in combination with a natural 4-card-major opening scheme. However, I see two virtues of the strong-club opening scheme: One is that you don't have to call an opening of a 3-card minor "natural" (eventually, though, students will probably have to swallow 1♦ on a 4-card). If we want to extend this virtue to the reponse (and rebid?) schemes, a relay should always be available so we don't have to bid some pseudo-suit just to "do something forcing". The other virtue is that the natural openings (5-card, say, 11-15 HCP) is similar to overcalls, so we could use the same response structure to openings and to overcalls.

 

One problem I have is that I'm not familiar with the alternatives. Also, I'm not sure if "first-available-minor" is better than "first-available-suit". Then the question of 2-openings and other jump bids. In SAYC, all single jumps are strong and double jumps preemptive, which is easy to remember. In a system in which strong jumps are generally not necesarry, I'm inclined to define most jumps as preemptive (or fast arrival), but there will be exceptions, so I'm not sure if that is a good idea.

[whereagles]

Hum... helene, let me just warn you about a political aspect of your problem.

 

If you decide teaching some variant of precision to beginners, it might happen that the club's senior players will oppose to the idea. Unfortunately, most people are very conservative and don't like playing against unfamiliar systems. They'll argue with things like

 

"Precision is too artificial for beginners"

"Nobody plays precision, they won't find people willing to play it"

"what beginners need is card play, not dozens of relay bids!"

 

And if despite this you insist on your point of view, they'll turn to the students and poison them against you. This might sound wierd, but believe me, this sort of things do happen. In fact, it has happened to a friend of mine, which is why I tell you :(

 

It's very annoying to fight against such atmosphere, so before you decide carrying on with a "precision-to-newbies" program, scan the people at the club, see if there is some tolerance towards your methods. If not, you're probably better off teaching them the standard dutch system, with muiderberg and all that ;)

[the hog]

This has very little to do with politics. Simply: teaching beginners a strong Club system before they have learnt plastic evaluation is very poor Pedagogy. It emphasises the worst aspects of the point count mentality before getting students to look at the playing value of a hand.

 

The incidental arguments of:

"How can I find partners" etc etc are also valid but of far lesser concern.

 

As an aside, your comment: "The problem of auction capitancy(sic) is very complex, but is also of crucial importance. Precision solves that in ONE bid" is of concern. If you think Precision solves the problem of captaincy in "one bid" with all due respect, I don't really think you understand the system correctly. Relay Precision, yes, but even then either opener or responder can assume captaincy.

[whereagles]

You can't teach hand evaluation alone. That's a misconception. It's of no use knowing how well your hand fits your partner's hand if you don't know how to use your bids to find out what the correct contract is. Here's a classical example. You hold

 

♠ AKQxxxx

♥ xx

♦ x

♣ xxx

 

partner opens 1♦. Playing a natural system you cannot just shoot at 4♠ now, as that might lead to missing a slam. So you must bid 1♠, despite the fact your bid makes it easy for opps to enter the auction. Opposite a limited 1♦ bid you CAN (in fact should) bid 4♠ now, as there's very little risk of missing a slam, compared to the preemptive and disinformative value of the bid.

 

The point is hand evaluation should be learned in the context of a specific system. This is another forgotten aspect of bidding. To learn evaluation in too broad a context leads to an automatized interpretation of the same cards, which is bound to turn out wrong sooner or later.

 

As for capitancy, and again with all due respect, you're over-simplifying the matter. It's not just a question of "I ask, you reply". It is to know at all stages who has the power of making decisions and how his partner can effectively help him. And any sort of precision does do that with the first bid.

[helene_t]

Unfortunately, most people are very conservative and don't like playing against unfamiliar systems. [....]  believe me [.....]

I believe you. I even realize I get more and more conservative myself as I grow older. Last summer I was in England and dropped by at a bridge club where everybody was playing the same stone-age acol they'd been playing for fourty years. No squarels about missing alerts and brown-sticker conventions, nobody teaching the opponents that they play an inferior system, no illegal information flow related to the explanation of biddings with unclear meanings, everybody could play with everybody.

 

But that's a different story. I was just wondering if somebody had experience with teaching strong-club systems to beginners. The issue of capitancy is interesting, gives me something to think about.

[keylime]

Give you two scenes:

 

1. Playing in Oklahoma City, where everyone HATED a forcing club method.

2. Playing here in Nanaimo, BC, Canada - where they don't care what you play, as long as you are nice and play to the best of your ability that day.

 

Guess which scene I like? :rolleyes:

 

If people are willing to fuss over the fact that Precision has really 3 artificial bids (1C, 2C, and 2D), then I'm going to start fussing over the fact that in 2/1 and SAYC there is an artificial 2C opening with 2D response/2H double negative.

[keylime]

With regards to captaincy, basic Precision allows both hands to be the captain, even after a limited bid, because 14-15 points hands seem to have good playing strength. Just from my experience, captaincy if anything is easier to deal with than with approach forcing methods.

[MesSer]

Many good replies pointing out different things. Maybe a strong club system is not that bad after all... I would still aim at keeping it simple, very simple though.

 

That means not relaying, just bidding your suits and telling them that 1C-1D is a negative bid. I don't think anything else would be needed. Keep it as simple as you can for a starter and then let them learn the rest if they are really interested.

 

I don't think letting them study relay-schemes is a good start for inexperienced players.

[Free]

Yeah, relays are not for beginners imo. But if you teach them a strong ♣ system, you better learn them how to deal with intervention. If you play against me, you'll always have a bid in 2nd hand, except when weak and a 4 card ♠ B)