A question for beginning bridge teachers

[iandayre]

I am wondering - are beginners today taught invitational jump rebids by responder? After 1C-1S-1NT, rebids such as 3C, 2NT and 3S are invitational. This has been standard for at least 4 decades, but every time I play a tournament I see "intermediate" players making these calls with game-going hands, and presumably wondering why they were passed out below game.

[1eyedjack]

The phraseology of your question suggests that you think that this is a recent phenomenon. It is not.

[iandayre]

Right of course, it's not at all recent. It's just that I'd expect to see less of it as the years go by.

[sfi]

I am wondering - are beginners today taught invitational jump rebids by responder? After 1C-1S-1NT, rebids such as 3C, 2NT and 3S are invitational. This has been standard for at least 4 decades, but every time I play a tournament I see "intermediate" players making these calls with game-going hands, and presumably wondering why they were passed out below game.

 

I'm not sure this is quite as standard as you suggest. Agreements that jumps to the three level on this sequence show a hand interested in slam is entirely playable, fairly common, and even the default treatment in many places.

 

In fact, if you aren't playing some sort of checkback agreements you actually need these jumps to be forcing. Otherwise you don't have any way to force, and that is clearly worse than not having any invitations apart from 2NT. So your treatment actually requires conventional agreements which may not be suitable for a beginner class.

[Vampyr]

I'm not sure this is quite as standard as you suggest. Agreements that jumps to the three level on this sequence show a hand interested in slam is entirely playable, fairly common, and even the default treatment in many places.

 

In fact, if you aren't playing some sort of checkback agreements you actually need these jumps to be forcing. Otherwise you don't have any way to force, and that is clearly worse than not having any invitations apart from 2NT. So your treatment actually requires conventional agreements which may not be suitable for a beginner class.

 

These players are calling themselves intermediate, though. However, while they might know some form(s) of checkback, they do not play it without discussion.

[Kaitlyn S]

I teach them as invitational.

[akwoo]

My experience, not as a teacher, but as someone who regularly plays with novices, is that weaker players will be confused as to why some jump bids are forcing and others are not. This means your choices are to either have them start passing jump shifts or to have them take these jump bids as forcing.

 

Stronger players, when taught that these bids are invitational, will start inventing forcing bids with 3 card suits even if you don't teach them some form of checkback.

[Vampyr]

I teach them as invitational.

 

How do you teach them to make a forcing bid? As the post above?

[helene_t]

the meta rule is that old suits are nf and new suits are gf at the 3-level. without checkback this is of course unplayable.

 

I think I would prefer to link this to the issue of responding to 1nt openings but textbooks don't seem to do that.

 

btw even with a checkback structure the invitational hands may go through checkback so probably the jump should be forcing anyway.

[rmnka447]

The OP hit on one of the anomalies in "standard" bidding. If a simple rebid of 2 of opener's suit or 2 of responder's suit is non-forcing, then a jump rebid in those suits could be either invitational or forcing, but not both. The usual way to treat a jump rebid has been as invitational for years and years.

 

With the advent of checkbacks/NMF, it has allowed a third sequence to be used to show a similar hand. So folks using checkbacks can specify which sequence is GF, and which is invitational. Of course, if you do that, you better be in sync on which sequence specifies which hand.

 

Back in the olden days, as I still am with one partner because we don't play checkback/NMF, you have to make a forcing bid with a 3rd suit then rebid your suit or opener's suit to make the game force. In principle, the 3rd suit is real and treated as real, but occasionally you just have to do it to create the game force.

[iandayre]

It should be noted that NMF/Checkback are hardly new. They were being played in the 60's, when a Bridge World editor described it as a "petty little odious bid". For a time the convention took the name PLOB based on that comment. The convention was quite well established when I began playing duplicate in 1977.

[Kaitlyn S]

How do you teach them to make a forcing bid? As the post above?

"Them" is beginners. They know nothing in theory and the goal in most cases is to get them playing and having fun, and most of them will never play duplicate bridge.

 

That being said, the fact that 1C-1S-1NT-2H is nonforcing is beyond the scope of most beginner courses I've seen, and while I'll teach intermediate students that, I won't confuse beginners with this. So they happily bid 2H forcing or 2D forcing and hope to guess well with game going hands with five spades. Which is fine because the friends they are playing kitchen bridge with think that 2H is forcing also.

 

Would I do the same if I expected the beginners to play on BBO with random "expert" partners? Probably not. But there are many things a beginner needs to learn before they learn how to properly bid over a 1NT rebid, so we ignore it in a beginners' course. The reason we say that 1C-1S-1NT-(3C or 3S) is invitational is that it is consistent with everything else we are telling them - that bidding an old suit is generally not forcing. Exceptions in the hands of a beginner are really treacherous and should be avoided whenever possible IMO.

 

You may think I'm being inconsistent as some of my "Bidding Problems for Beginners" do go into exceptions. However, the definition of a beginner on BBO, according to some of the Bridge Movies published with a Beginner label on it, is probably higher than my definition of an intermediate student, so I'm trying to stay consistent with the BBO labels which ironically give Beginners a farily high skill level and Experts a level not much higher than that. But when I teach beginners professionally, I assume they know nothing; the average student age is probably about 70 (nothing wrong with 70-year olds but many of them don't learn like college students do) and as many of them are there to meet people and socialize as learn to play bridge well, and trying to teach the ins and outs of bridge to beginners is likely to turn a 20 table class into a 3 table class. I have never had a student say that I was teaching too little material in a beginner course.

 

Someone mentioned that some simplistic way of bidding was unplayable. Indeed, but for most beginners taking a live class, anything that is the least bit complicated is unplayable. I have had many students that have come knowing nothing; if you watch them bid and play, you will wonder why I would let them tell people that I taught them (i.e. the right bid or play is a lucky coincidence in most cases), and yet they tell me that they went and played with their friends or in some 0-5 game and placed high. The fact is, as badly as they are playing, they are playing better than their friends (or others in the 0-5 games) and I have to think that stressing consistency and simplicity over "the correct technical bid or play" has a lot to do with that.

 

Speaking of "the correct technical play", you may think it's wise to teach beginners early to win (as declarer in a suit contract) with the ace as opposed to the king because if they win with the king, each opponent will know declarer has the ace. I tend to ignore the issue but occasionally a student has read it in the newspaper that winning with the ace is a better play and I get asked about it. My reply: "If you win with the ace, will you know the king is good later?" Most of them honestly say no so they should win with the king because I'm pretty sure most of them will realize that the ace is good later in the hand. A few of my brightest students will say "Yes, of course I'll know the king is good" (of course, now we're getting into high intermediate students) so I'll attempt to explain why the ace is better because I think that student can handle it. Quite honestly though, I have seen many students not know that their king is good later in the hand after having won the ace early. And yet there are people out there that think we should teach beginners 2 over 1 game forcing! I don't get it.

 

Just today one of my intermediate students asked me what it meant if she opened 3C and her partner bid 4H. Turns out her friend did this with a singleton heart (!) and the student was trying to figure out how she could have known that. I'm guessing her friend probably recently learned Splinter Bids. (If any beginners are reading this, 4H says you want to play 4H - please don't think I am advocating bidding 4H on a singleton!) Anybody that is thinking of giving advice to a beginner that advocates such complications should think about this story and think twice about confusing the beginner.