Reasonable length of time to learn the game

[supes]

Any opinions on how much time a person should give oneself to learn Bridge and be able to play it at a somewhat competitive level (intermediate?) I have devoted about 4 months to studying books and playing on BBO. I've also been playing duplicate once per week for about 2 months. I truly wish to learn to play a fair game of bridge, but so far see little advancement past a more or less novice level. What is a normal learning curve for this complicated game? I consider myself fairly intelligent, but am beginning to wonder if perhaps this is not the game I am best suited for.

 

I'll have an opportunity to take lessons this fall if I choose to stick with it that long. Any opinions welcome. Thank you.

[semeai]

By way of equivocation and to answer a question with a question:

 

Is it the bidding, play, or both that you feel you aren't improving at?

[jillybean]

4 months is a very short time in relation to this game.

Who are you playing with on BBO, how are you gauging your progress and who are you comparing yourself to ?

[supes]

By way of equivocation and to answer a question with a question:

 

Is it the bidding, play, or both that you feel you aren't improving at?

 

 

Some improvement in bidding and little or no improvement in play.

[supes]

4 months is a very short time in relation to this game.

Who are you playing with on BBO, how are you gauging your progress and who are you comparing yourself to ?

 

 

I just pick up games on the Relaxed play boards here on BBO. I play duplicate once a week in person with a group of people who have been playing for 30+ years. They're quite easy going about it though and are helpful to me.

 

I guess if I compare what I know about bridge today to what I knew 4 months ago I would say I've learned alot - Still end up thinking though that my progress has somehow stalled lately. Take lessons? Play more often? Give it more time? Do you recall how long you played before you started to feel as though you were really "in the game" and a somewhat credible competitor/partner?

 

Thank you very much for your responses.

[Hanoi5]

Improvement in bridge doesn't come fast unless you're gifted. I'd say 2-months (2-3 classes per-week) is enough to be able to enter a live tournament. From there you have to be a 'good student'. You need to keep on reading theory and playing but analyzing everything you do after a tournament (or a session).

 

I'd say that after 6 months of having started to play in tournaments if you follow the advice to keep on studying and analyzing what you play (in order not to make the same mistake twice...or thrice) you should see some improvement and could be easily be part of the intermediate crowd.

[jillybean]

At first I spent an awful lot of time playing around, clicking cards, all the while thinking I was playing bridge when I wasn't.

During that time my game was detiorating rather than progressing.

 

My game improved after I took private lessons, asked 1000's of questions on forums and of anyone who would listen. My game improved again when I started playing at a club. Over the last 3 years I have been playing in a regular partnership with a skilled and patient partner and my game has improved significantly. This was like the last piece of the puzzle and the hardest to find.

 

IMO, if you want to improve don't play in the relaxed bridge club. Join the BIL, get a thick skin, find the best opponents you can in the ML, play against them and ask questions until they boot you ( :) ). Ask questions on forums, join a local bridge club with a mentoring program, buy some bridgemaster deals, pay for lessons.

 

Don't get discouraged, perhaps for some the game come naturally and easily but for me it's been a long, slow journey.

[Phil]

You've found this site. That's a great start. There's a lot of resources on here and they will lead you in many directions - all positive I hope. Stick with it and seek out the best advice you can find.

 

There's been some recent posts on the best way to learn the game. It differs for different people and you need to figure out what works for you.

 

Good luck!

[pooltuna]

Have you read Watson's "Play of the Hand" ? Although "read" might be the wrong verb; you really need to treat each hand as a problem to be solved.

[VM1973]

Generally speaking playing bridge does not result in an increase in skill. You must break bridge down into components and practice each skill set moving upwards in the ladder of skill.

 

How many times can one see someone playing in a novice room and one of their good winners gets ruffed. "Sorry, partner," the person says. "I didn't realize he had a trump left." This person has not taken the time to master counting suit distributions and following the play of the cards (not that I'm saying that's your problem).

 

Generally speaking I recommend people work on defense first. Odds are you will be defending twice as often as you are declaring and most of the skills you learn from defending are transferable to declaring.

 

Try to find large numbers of similarly-themed problems (hold up or suit establishment or whatever) and work on that skill set until you have mastered it and then work on another one. You would be surprised how many people cannot finesse correctly. Example:

 

AQ108

 

J973

 

Lots of people start with the Jack, and when the defender doesn't cover they drop the 8. Then they play the 3 and win the 10 with the right-hand opponent (RHO) showing out. Now they have to use another suit to get back to the other hand (or maybe, worse, they don't have another entry). If you do it right you start with the 9, which wins. Then you can play the J, which wins and you are still in the South hand to lead towards the AQ.

 

Simple things like this should be practiced until they are automatic.

[daveharty]

There are people at my local club who have been playing bridge since the Earth cooled, and they have still not progressed past the same "kitchen bridge" level they were playing 40 years ago. Yet there are also some people who showed up at the club as rank novices, and are quite creditable players after a couple of years. If you approach the game seriously, and work at improving, you WILL improve. Read books, get a partner at about the same level as you and practice bidding hands (and study the results to see where you could have done better), get the Bridge Master software and practice your declarer play, don't neglect your defense, and most of all play against people who are better than you. Heck, play rubber bridge for money if you can afford it; I've been told that is the fastest way to improve, bar none. Don't give up; this game is so rich you will never learn everything there is to know, but the rewards are worth the effort a hundred times over.

 

Also I highly recommend taking those lessons, unless the lessons consist of an intermediate player standing in front of a bunch of beginners and describing a bunch of conventions. That kind of lesson is essentially worthless.

[MrAce]

Any opinions on how much time a person should give oneself to learn Bridge and be able to play it at a somewhat competitive level (intermediate?) I have devoted about 4 months to studying books and playing on BBO. I've also been playing duplicate once per week for about 2 months. I truly wish to learn to play a fair game of bridge, but so far see little advancement past a more or less novice level. What is a normal learning curve for this complicated game? I consider myself fairly intelligent, but am beginning to wonder if perhaps this is not the game I am best suited for.

 

I'll have an opportunity to take lessons this fall if I choose to stick with it that long. Any opinions welcome. Thank you.

 

Hi there

 

I agree with Phil, u are on the right track. But if you need to speed up your improvement, a professional can help you, if u can afford it. But choosing the right person is very important. If you can not afford it by yourself, you can find 3 or more people at your level, which makes it easier for your budget. If you consider this, i suggest you speak to Justin, he daily posts in these forums (JLOGIC). You can click on his name and leave him a private msg, i am sure he can help u either personally or can suggest someone who can.

 

Good luck :)

[semeai]

Some improvement in bidding and little or no improvement in play.

I just pick up games on the Relaxed play boards here on BBO. I play duplicate once a week in person with a group of people who have been playing for 30+ years. They're quite easy going about it though and are helpful to me.

 

I guess if I compare what I know about bridge today to what I knew 4 months ago I would say I've learned alot - Still end up thinking though that my progress has somehow stalled lately. Take lessons? Play more often? Give it more time? Do you recall how long you played before you started to feel as though you were really "in the game" and a somewhat credible competitor/partner?

 

 

I think it can take a while to improve, especially if you haven't played many trick-taking games before. Learning the basic strategies and actually applying them are two separate things. Especially counting is very important and sounds simple in the abstract, but in practice it takes a while to get your brain to think in the right way and takes real effort. I don't know what to suggest here other than to keep at it and approach it gradually, first counting the one most important suit and remembering the honors that have been played, and then expanding to counting two suits, and so on.

 

Also, it's easy to play quickly without much thought, especially online, leading to playing lots without improving much. That said, even if you don't do this, your progress sounds likely normal for the amount of time you've played.

 

The rest of this post maybe should've gone in your thread about how to improve, but I'll leave it here because I've written it at the same time.

 

Here are some good BBO-related ways to work on your play (I don't mean to advertise for them, but we're here and their stuff is good) that do not involve human interaction. Human interaction is good and you need to play with and talk to better players and review hands with them, but previous posts have advice there so I'll go with something different. Without other people to worry about, you can take all the time you want.

 

1) There's the free Learn to Play Bridge and Learn to Play Bridge 2 software, available from the ACBL here. The first one goes slowly but with lots of good explanation and has a few hands to practice with toward the end of the play section. If the first one is boring, try the second which has a bunch of hands to practice playing.

 

2) If you've done the above and liked it or want more/harder hands, there is Bridge Master 2000, which isn't free, but is very nice. There are versions for beginners with more hands at the easier levels. If you have the windows version of bridgebase, you can try some of the Bridge Master hands there.

 

These two are good, but they're more about getting things right in theory than in practice. A middle ground between the two:

 

3) Rent a robot on BBO ($1/week for the lower quality ones or $1/day for the better ones) and play at your own pace. Sit south and play duplicate imps against 3 robots in the main bridge club, and everyone you're scored against is also playing with robots. You'll get to see after each hand how everyone else played with the same opposition, i.e. GiB. Note this is not for learning bidding, just [mostly declarer] play! I haven't actually tried this, but I've played in a few robot duplicate tournaments (downsides: has a time limit, costs more money per hand at 25 cents per 8 hands at the cheapest), and it's nice to both play at your own pace and get to compare your play with many others, even if when you're past the beginner stage the opposition isn't very good.

 

Item 3 is surely controversial and you shouldn't play only or even mostly with robots, but I think there's a lot to be said for getting to play slowly enough that you can practice what you need to practice. It's hard to be able to do what you'd like to do at a good pace without first doing it slowly. Maybe if you try item 3 and try playing slowly and thoughtfully it will be especially helpful to get some more experienced people to look over the hands and offer suggestions. I'm sure if you asked on the forums many would be willing to help.

[Mbodell]

1. Find people better than you that you can ask questions of and talk about the hands. If you can find these people in person, fantastic! You've already found one such set of people by posting to these forums, as the B/I forum is a great place to post questions. It is a process getting better at this, I'd say I'm a pretty reasonable advance player overall, but I still have B/I questions about some situations and I certainly make a fair number or terrible boneheaded bids and plays (I can think of two horrific bids/plays in the last 2 days that you'd think even a near novice would get right - not subtle, small things). But I make far fewer than I used to a year ago, and fewer still then two years ago. If there is some hand that went wrong and you can't figure out why (or know why, but don't know how it should have gone) post the hand in B/I.

 

2. Form a regular partnership (or even better, a couple) playing whatever is the vanilla common system near you (2/1 strong nt in most of the US). Try to play what most other players plays helps you understand their auction, and also means more people have informed opinions about what call or play you should have made. Regular partnerships are also important because you can discuss defense, tendencies, deeper auctions, and start to make more inferences from having a better understanding of what is going on. Plus it is fun.

 

3. If you want to get better at the play, I'll put a third vote down for getting Bridge Master 2000. It is really fantastic. I have all the expansion deals. To warm up for the nationals I played through all of the A and B deals on all 5 levels in the 2.5 weeks before the nationals. I try to play them at the same pace I'd play at the table and track if I solved the deal on the first try (no take backs), if I solved the bid only after making an error, or if I couldn't figure out the deal after a reasonable 5-7 minutes (even trying a few lines). It used to be most of level 5 and nearly half of level 4 were that third type for me. Now I solve more level 5 on the first try than can't solve. Although it is really the level 1, 2, and 3 that are likely important, especially for someone trying to become an intermediate and complaining about the play. And when trying to play like at the table I still mess up a few too many of those first three levels on the first try. But like always, it is a process and you get better. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to handle the 5-1 trump split I got yesterday with a trump coup/trump end play if I hadn't played so many similar hands recently in Bridge Master 2000.

 

The bidding, the declarer play, and the defense are all mutually reinforcing skills, where the better you get at one, the better you get at the other.

 

Also, practice counting. There is a link somewhere around here to Fred's "fun game for the whole family" that tests how quickly you can recognize patterns that add to 13. Having those patterns become instinctive helps too.

[diana_eva]

...

 

Also, practice counting. There is a link somewhere around here to Fred's "fun game for the whole family" that tests how quickly you can recognize patterns that add to 13. Having those patterns become instinctive helps too.

 

Fred's Counting Game

[Antrax]

To answer your question, so far bridge seems relatively on par with chess and poker in terms of "time from zero to winning local tournaments". It's slightly more challenging to improve because as others have stated, there are several vectors you want to progress along. Also there's the partner issue, it's harder not only because you have to find a like-minded partner (willing to discuss, offer constructive criticism and read), but because there's a lot of temptation to blame partner for poor results (similar to how it's tempting to blame variance in poker).

But in absolute terms of time, so far it seems roughly on equal footing with other "brainy" games. Of course, I'm very far from an expert on any of them, unlike many of the other posters here.

[helene_t]

Do you recall how long you played before you started to feel as though you were really "in the game" and a somewhat credible competitor/partner?

January 1999: took the game up again after having plaid at a very basic level (could finesse, draw trumps, open 1NT and ask for aces but that was it) and started reading a couple of books.

August 2000: Started playing at the club. Play had not progressed but I now knew most of the basics of bidding (though still had some weird ideas like that a t/o dbl just showed opening strength.

January 2001: lucky to get a good p (shogi on bbo). Also, started reading serious magazines like bridge world. Bidding started progressing a lot, play not so much. Still couldn't count and almost never planned the play or paid attention to partner's signals.

February 2008: moved to UK and landed in a place with a higher bridge standard than I was used to, also started playing more regularly. Play started to improve slowly.

 

So it took me 9 years of club bridge plus online (50-100 boards a week) to reach a level where I could call myself "advanced" by BBO standards. I think it is possible for people with my IQ (ha-ha) to progress faster. The main reason why I progressed so slowly was:

- playing in weak fields. Lack of challenge, confused by terrible advice from local "experts", many partners couldn't bid and signal so not much point in learning it myself.

- focused too much on learning to bid and too little on learning to play.

[Zelandakh]

Perhaps this is too simplistic an answer, but as far as BBO goes you are intermediate after 1 year of playing bridge. Give yourself some time. Where card play is the problem try to recognise mistakes that you are making alot. On which types of boards are you drawing trumps too early, or too late? Are you playing up to honours or from them? Has anyone spoken with you yet about managing entries? signalling?

 

The declarer play is (generally) a mix of experience and technique; defence is experience, partnership and, sometimes, imagination. These things take years to achieve a high level. In the meantime, try to go through the hands you have played with one of your experienced friends so that they can help find the mistakes, what they would do differently and why. Remember also that defence is very difficult in the Relaxed club with a pick-up partner as you are likely to be playing no signals at all.

[supes]

I'm the original poster and I'd just like to say how much I appreciate everyone's responses. I've found them all quite helpful. It sounds to me as though my progress is not abnormally slow. Secondly, it can be a long road to getting moderately good at the game. Do I want do devote the time and effort to perfecting the skills necessary to achieve success? Only I can answer that and I'll be giving it a lot of thought. Thanks again to all.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

 

already mentioned, but important, so I repeat it - join a regular weekly course, where a teacher

followes a certain structure that starts with the basics, and from the basic to the next level.

 

Lots of peoble lack a sensible foundation.

 

My impression is, that you picked up a lot at various places, but there may be a real lack of

consistency in the things you picked up, see also Helenes remarks regarding

"confused by terrible advice from local "experts",

which is a real slowdonw on progress, the confusion can only be avoided, if you stick to one

source / local expert.

After a while you should move on, reflect on what he told you, cross check with books / forums,

and ask him, what he thinks about those things, that seem to contradict him.

If he his really good, he may be able to tell you, why he believes, what he believes.

 

I have learned to play Bridge as a studend, and after 1 year we were able to compete, we did

lack tournament experience, and our card game was not best, just basic, but we did know the

basics of bidding in and out, and reached regular the right contract, ... and this is something

even player with lots of playing years are not able to achieve.

 

The core was

 

- a course

- a like minded partner

- regular playing, we did join the local club, which had a reasonable playing level

 

If you dont find a course near you, there is the BIL program on BBO, a very good program, that you

can join, but you still need a regular partner, best would be, if you both join and participate in

paralell.

But my opinion, I was only an active BIL mentor for a short time, due to lack of time - you need

already some basic understanding about bidding, I am not sure, how well suited the BIL program is

to teach you a complete bidding system, even a simple one, unless you get a bridge teacher as mentor,

who is willing to send you his lecture notes.

 

With kind regards

Marlowe