SAYC summary

[Lesh18]

Could someone, please, pass me a link for a website where the SAYC system (the current one as of 2013) is thoroughly summarised (inluding the point ranges) and explained (not just the card but the some kind of a sayc guideline/summary)?

 

Thank would be great, thank you

Lesh

[Zelandakh]

To my knowledge, this is the only official description.

[Cromlyn]

As an Acol player trying to play Sayc and 2/1 this is very useful. Is there something similar for 2/1?

[mycroft]

No, because SAYC is a defined system - the Standard American Yellow Card. It was defined for the first of the ACBL's doomed attempts to keep the "bridge is getting too complicated. Why can't we simplify the bidding, and bring the game back to it's important bits - cardplay and judgement" people happy. The put forward games where everyone had to play Yellow Card.

 

It turned out that there are two kinds of people who say that:

• Those for whom cardplay and judgement are their strengths, and like the advantages that gets them over those who have other bridge strengths like system design, and
  
• "average" bridge players who hate having to play against "the weird stuff".

 

For the first, well. For the second, it turned out that what they meant was "we want to play our pet conventions, we just don't think they should be allowed to play their pet conventions." They stayed away from the YC (as did they with "Modern Bridge", I believe it was in the 1990s) games in droves.

 

The Yellow Card was doomed to be yet another artifact of Bridge History, like Culbertson 4-5 NT and -2100, until a crazy kid moved away to university and wanted to play bridge, so wrote a bridge server. And since random people were playing with random people, it would be nice to have a "standard" everyone *could* play, even if they'd prefer something else. And this thing was hanging from the '70s, online and available. So...

 

It truly is an elephant - a bidding system made by committee. Deliberately. And it's 40 years old, and it shows. And it was 25 years old, and showed it, when it was revived. But it was the Rosetta Stone of online bridge, and it's still here.

 

As for 2/1, there are as many systems as there are "Standard American"-based systems. Fred has published a couple of "standard 2/1 cards" - BBO Simple and BBO Advanced; maybe those could be used as a starting point? Unfortunately, they haven't taken off as much as the clunky old YC. But remember:

 

"You're told your opponents play SAYC, but all that means is that they can find the letters 'S', 'A', 'Y', and 'C' on their keyboard."

- Adam Beneschan, on r.g.b. (lo these many years ago)

[akwoo]

For the first, well. For the second, it turned out that what they meant was "we want to play our pet conventions, we just don't think they should be allowed to play their pet conventions." They stayed away from the YC (as did they with "Modern Bridge", I believe it was in the 1990s) games in droves.

 

I'm not sure I agree with this explanation. I actually think the problem is that Yellow Card is already too complicated for many players.

 

A lot of people don't know and don't want to learn Jacoby 2N (which is part of Yellow Card). Back 30 years ago, they might not have wanted to learn how to play with transfers either. Or weak 2s (the problem not being weak 2s but with the necessarily artificial sequences after 2♣). (For that matter, some folks at my club can't understand what a reverse is, so they obviously don't play that reverses show a better than minimum opening hand, and they compensate for this by defining strong 2s as being about 18+ and non-forcing.)

 

But this point just illustrates the problem with any standardization effort. Make a system simple enough for beginners to play and no one except beginners will want to play it.

[Vampyr]

I'm not sure I agree with this explanation. I actually think the problem is that Yellow Card is already too complicated for many players.

 

Yes, it is a mystery how so many conventions got on it.

 

We have a simple systems card here in England; it is used for a few events and sometimes for individuals, and it is truly simple. A person with one lesson on bidding could use it.

[Vampyr]

duplicate

[mycroft]

It was basically a committee effort on "what standard tournament players could reasonably play out of the box" in 1970. And we got what you'd expect you'd get given that description.

 

J2NT is on there - "everybody" plays it, and at the time there was a standard set of responses everybody played as well.

NegX->2♠ only - well, that's about where it was.

No forcing minor raise - well, that's because not "everybody" played *one*.

 

It wasn't a beginner card - it was for regular tournament players. Oddly enough, it isn't the "true beginners" that complain about the "proliferation of crazy conventions" - you have to be a regular player for a while before OTBSitis hits.

[Bbradley62]

... I actually think the problem is that Yellow Card is already too complicated for many players.

 

A lot of people don't know and don't want to learn Jacoby 2N (which is part of Yellow Card). Back 30 years ago, they might not have wanted to learn how to play with transfers either. Or weak 2s (the problem not being weak 2s but with the necessarily artificial sequences after 2♣)...

I'm guessing you were not a club-playing ACBL member in the 1980s, when the Yellow Card was created. When I played in New York, New Jersey and Georgia in that era, there was virtually no such thing as a club player who did not play Jacoby 2NT, transfers, and weak 2s. My parents (competent house bridge players) didn't play any of those things, but anyone (including very senior citizens) who regularly played club games did.