Popularity Of Strong Club In the U.S.

[pbleighton]

I recently read through a book on Precision (Precision Today, by Berkowitz), and found it fascinating.  While I won't be investing much more time on this for quite some time (I'm still making the jump from Standard to 2/1), long-term I'm quite interested in Precision and other strong club systems.  I have the following questions for you strong clubbers out there.

1)  How popular are strong club systems in the U.S.? My impression is that a significant minority of top U.S. players use strong club systems, but that the popularity drops quickly after that, and that few non-experts play them.  

2) What are the systems played the most in the U.S., besides Precision (including its various flavors). Do any besides Precision have a significant following here?

3) Specifically - I haven't been playing long, and have only played online (except for a bit 30 years ago), so I don't know the local bridge club scene -  I live in suburban Connecticut, about 60 miles from NYC.  What would your guess be about the likelihood of finding a partner who was willing and able to play a strong club system in a non-urban environment?

4) How difficult is it to find partners to play online?

5) Are strong club systems subject to interference by narrow-minded club tournament directors (I've read about the ban of the Strong Pass), or would I be likely to be able to play Precision, say, without any official problem.

6) Which strong club system do you prefer, and why?

7) Since you have played your strong club system, do you find that it has significant practical advantages over natural methods, or do you play it more for reasons of intellectual and aesthetic gratification?

8) How good a player/bidder do you have to be to get an advantage playing a strong club versus a natural system?

9) How difficult is it to learn to play Precision?  It seems to me that it isn't that much more difficult than natural systems, for someone with a good memory, who is willing to hit the books for a bit.  Do you agree?

10) Bonus question (thought of when writing #1) - is there a generally agreed definition of what constitutes an expert versus an advanced player. Do they both play in the A flights, but the experts win, or win at a certain level (i.e. sectional or regional)?  I hope you all have fun answering this one!

[Guest]

If you want to learn Precision, the best starting point IMHO is Rigal's "Precision in the 90's".

I don't play Precision, I currently play Moscito which is just about impossible to play in the US due to systems regulations. Reason I play it is because it is aggressive - quick in and out of auction, its based largely on LOTT, its a lot of fun. Also we are allowed to play it in Oz without restriction.

System matters only a little. What is more important is full understanding with partner as to what you are playing.

[keylime]

I might be able to answer this somewhat objectively. I myself just got the text of Precision Today, and frankly thought Rigal's Precision in the 90's was a little better. Strong club systems it seems is surging in popularity, especially in urban areas. Here in Tampa we have at the local club 3 pairs that play a strong/prepared club, excluding yours truly with Key Lime Precision. In tourney play I've encountered for some reason pairs using strong/prepared club methods in all flights, but I couldn't honestly tell you the distribution. From my observations however, in A/X there is a significant number of strong clubbers in certain areas of the country.

 

In terms of methods played, 2/1 and SAYC are the en vogue methods with sizable popularity. Then there's Precision based methods, and pockets of devout Polish Club players, then everyone else (sorry to my friends who play MOSCITO and TOSR and the like). The likelihood it seems to me of gaining a "non-standard" increases when you approach urban areas. The reason is simple: a larger sample size to draw from.

 

In terms of finding strong club players online, if anything, the density is higher online, especially here (many many players) at BBO. The important thing is determine what form of Precision they play, because like 2/1, there are many forms and derivatives of Precision. Precision is very much GCC legal, and if anything you have more ability to play artificial calls (like transfer positives, low level use of RKC Kickback, and Spiral Scan in KLP) because there's a paragraph specifically discussing conventional calls over a strong opening bid (item 5 under responses and rebids if memory serves).

 

Which strong club I prefer? Well if it wasn't for Key Lime Precision I'd play Viking Club, Ultimate Club, or maybe Carrot/Tangerine, depends. KLP is designed to find fit immediately over a 1C opening but allow for natural bidding to occur when needed; Viking Club is relay-based and very complicated, but the system flat out functions wonderfully. I'd recommend creating your own just to gain understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of strong club.

 

Strong club methods treat the minors a lot better than 2/1. Also you're never stuck trying to reverse, because those hands are opened 1C, and strong 3 suiter hands get open 1C or 2D or another conventional bid. They also gain an added accuracy in part-score bidding because partner's already limited their hand at their first turn, something SAYC and 2/1 do not do normally (unless 1/2NT). However it is very very important to discuss interference over a strong club -- it will happen a lot more than one thinks. If you're willing to tolerate it, then Precision is the way to go.

 

I think Precision is not for everyone. You have to have the right mindset to play strong club because it's a left-brained system. It's more analytical and structured. Some people handle this well, some don't. From teaching students I know I've had some that just couldn't get it.

 

Defining an expert over an advanced player...that's something I'll reserve comment on. I think that an expert is not only a great player, but great person. :o

[easy]

I recently read through a book on Precision (Precision Today, by Berkowitz), and found it fascinating.  While I won't be investing much more time on this for quite some time (I'm still making the jump from Standard to 2/1), long-term I'm quite interested in Precision and other strong club systems.  I have the following questions for you strong clubbers out there.

1)  How popular are strong club systems in the U.S.? My impression is that a significant minority of top U.S. players use strong club systems, but that the popularity drops quickly after that, and that few non-experts play them.  

2) What are the systems played the most in the U.S., besides Precision (including its various flavors). Do any besides Precision have a significant following here?

3) Specifically - I haven't been playing long, and have only played online (except for a bit 30 years ago), so I don't know the local bridge club scene -  I live in suburban Connecticut, about 60 miles from NYC.  What would your guess be about the likelihood of finding a partner who was willing and able to play a strong club system in a non-urban environment?

4) How difficult is it to find partners to play online?

5) Are strong club systems subject to interference by narrow-minded club tournament directors (I've read about the ban of the Strong Pass), or would I be likely to be able to play Precision, say, without any official problem.

6) Which strong club system do you prefer, and why?

7) Since you have played your strong club system, do you find that it has significant practical advantages over natural methods, or do you play it more for reasons of intellectual and aesthetic gratification?

8) How good a player/bidder do you have to be to get an advantage playing a strong club versus a natural system?

9) How difficult is it to learn to play Precision?  It seems to me that it isn't that much more difficult than natural systems, for someone with a good memory, who is willing to hit the books for a bit.  Do you agree?

10) Bonus question (thought of when writing #1) - is there a generally agreed definition of what constitutes an expert versus an advanced player. Do they both play in the A flights, but the experts win, or win at a certain level (i.e. sectional or regional)?  I hope you all have fun answering this one!

 

I started playing bridge (duplicate) in 1967. At that time Goren was the norm and KS was the superscientific system. KS, which was invented by Edgar Kaplan and Al Sheinwold featured weak nt. 5 card majors and the forcing nt response. (also during this time people were playing Shenken which was a strong club system)

Later on in the 70 and 80s precision became VERY popular. In a club game of 16 tables you would see at least 5/8 big club pairs. Today at our club we have about 12-16 tables every day and about 1/4 of a pair plays a big club system. Thats rite less than 1 pair.Why I dont know for sure but i think it's because a big club system is much more difficult to learn and since most dont play it it's not worth the time of  the afternoon duplicate player to learn.

 

Today eastern scientific or 2/1 is the most popular system.(Im speaking of in the states) Why. Because it is easy to play (at least initially) I remember when i began playing 2/1. I had been playing match point precision and my pard and i decided to convert to 2/1. Our initial discusion was "ok if we bid a suit at the 2 level we must go to game?"" Fine sounds good to me. " end of discussion.   LOL

 

Finding a partner online (to play online) is a snap. You sit , you play , and if u enjoy your pard you ask them to play again.

 

Directors could care less if you play a big club system. But you had better alert all of your unnatural bids.

 

Does playing a big club system give your an advantage at the club level no.

 

Is a big club system difficult to learn. no but........ it takes 2 to play bridge and that is the problem. It doesnt do very much good for you to know all of the sytemic bids and pard no. You must learn together.

 

Expert vs advance. LOL if you ask 10 people you get 10 different answers. I've got about 2500 ACBL attendence points. If i play bridge at the local club im considered an expert. At a sectional ... im an expert. At a regional im an adv/exp. at the nationals im an advanced player. What am i? Expert or advanced?

[keylime]

In general any general ranking scheme is bound to be skewed -- people don't tend to take kindly to a ranking like "intermediate" all that well when they've played the game for years.

[inquiry]

In this thread, pbleighton asked: 1) - is there a generally agreed definition of what constitutes an expert versus an advanced player. Do they both play in the A flights, but the experts win, or win at a certain level (i.e. sectional or regional)?  I hope you all have fun answering this one!

 

To which Easy replied, "LOL if you ask 10 people you get 10 different answers. I've got about 2500 ACBL attendence points. If i play bridge at the local club im considered an expert. At a sectional ... im an expert. At a regional im an adv/exp. at the nationals im an advanced player. What am i? expert or advanced?"

 

"Easy" gave a thoughtful and complete answer to both your and his own question. But to have fun answering the question, I wondered if pbleighton might have meant what constitutes an expert versus an advanced player at this site and is there a way to evaluate ones own ability versus this field.

 

This site is visited by World Champions, and people with from one to many national championships. Let's call the World champions "world class" and as well as those who have won more than one national championship. Those with one national championship win or a couple of national championship top five finishes "only" experts to highly advanced. So your local star who does very well at sectionals and has the occasional victory at regionals, is clearly a VERY good player. I would say "advanced to expert". Indeed, this is exactly as Easy defined himself as an adv/exp. He surely has a good handle and enough experience to guess his skill level.

 

Until Fred institutes tournments in the BBO, could we develop a metric to determine a players ability level for terms of self-described "ability?" Probably not, but I gave it a try using myhands site. I pulled up all the hands played by six different "GOLD STAR" players (not to be named). I cut and paste each days results into an excel speadsheet being careful to:

• Exclude matchpoint hands
  
• Make sure the columns aligned properly (people with numbers or underscores in their names create two columns per name, you have to fix that or you average the points on the hand (like +1440) with the imps.
  

I also checked players who I have kibitized over the past months who I thought were good players. All players tested had in more than  1500 imp hands played and most in excess of 2500.

 

One of the non-gold star players who I knew was very good had an average of +1.1 imps per board. The top goldstar had an average of +0.7952, the three of the other four were in the high +0.30's to mid +0.40's, and one was +0.55. Now, I may not have choosen the best gold stars to test, but one of them is a world champion (the +0.795). So if you did this test to your own scores and you average between +0.25 imps and +0.5 per board (over at least 1000 boards played) you should fall in at least the advanced class. If you are averaging +0.5 to +0.75 per board, expert, and above +0.75 world class (however, see obvious caveat below).

 

Now is this quick (well it wasn't that quick) and dirty analysis accurate? Probably not. When you score yourself, you will have to keep several factors in mind that can effect its predictability. For instance, if you are world class player (recognized or not) and ONLY play against other world class opponents, your average per board is going to be pretty close to zero. One of the six gold star players I checked (again nameless) had an average per board of -0.07 imps/board. This player, however both plays with beginners as partners and then with a good partner, insist on playing only against other gold stars, which explains his/her low average. Thus, if you are an expert but only play against world class, your average should be negative. To put this into perspective, if you honestly play only against "expert" or "World class" opponents, and you have a plus average at all, you are darn good, no matter how much plus your average is. If you play, more or less against good players, but without self-selecting killer competition, then the average per board will give you a clue where you stand with regard to the field. And if you only play against novices? Don't bother calculating your average imps/board.

 

And how did "Easy's" self-evalutation compare with this artificial (and often perhaps flawed) evalaution metric? He nailed his ability exactly (and I noticed he plays almost exclusively against strong competition and stil had a very health plus average per board). So by this average imps/board metric, he can safely classify himself as either expert or highly advanced just as he calculated based upon his experience rather than an artificial metric.

 

Of course once tournments are instituted, it will be easier to pull out peoples ranking here based upon performance under battle conditions.

[keylime]

I am starting to wonder if my mathematical approach is starting to rub off in the forum!

 

Ranking methods in the game of bridge is not mathematically coherent. There's too many variables, too many uncontrolled restraints, and prediction is a total headache. Let's look at two of the more known ones: the Lehman rating on OkBridge and the DAR on ACBL.com/e-bridge.

 

The DAR is a horrid attempt to inflate short-term good results at the costs of deflating bad results. It is literally a mathematical roller-coaster because the set of equations used to calculate this have no tolerance built in for wild swings of playing ability and/or boards. I as a former member (notice FORMER -- BBO is the place to play folks, trust me) noticed in one week my DAR change a difference of 65 points for my MP rating and 2.3 for my IMP rating (for the record, MP was 135 with 100 being average and +1.15 for IMP with 0 being average, so I played decently). Furthermore I only played a net total 48 hands, that's it. This was after I had been a member of the site for the longest time and had many tourneys under my belt. This clearly indicates that the weighting of the DAR was very skewed and nonreflective of true acumen. Also, players that has very high DAR ratings were either rightfully world class players or suspected cheaters.

 

The Lehman rating is more fair than DAR in the fact that it takes a larger cross-section of boards to make its determination. The problem however is the algorithms used have built in thresholds that doesn't like to be tampered with. I offer another example here. Everyone starts out with 50 as average, and I after one week of play was at a 44 (didn't have a good week learning players, software, and the like). It took me 3 additional weeks to get back to 50, and that was with playing with my regular partners! It wasn't that I was playing poorly, it was the rating system not accounting for 3 weeks of good play and one week of so-so play. When I terminated my account I was happy with my 55 and change rating, because it would take forever to gain one basis point. The equations are awful, and the stability of the site...well that's another post entirely.

 

Using a standard IMP matrix where high and low are tossed and an average mean formed is a truer way to measure performance because it is not as field sensitive as the 2 aforementioned methods. Now you get to see who bids slam/games well, who defends well, and who plays the best under the set criteria, instead of having such randomness that you have no predictable method of determining who's really good. In this regard, there's still room for discussion and there's plenty of players that would argue that they are a better player than their IMP tallies show, but I feel that if you play with a regular partner against a regular partnership, the best will come forward. It's when you start intermixing new partnerships that causes all the muddled standards.

 

As I've stated before, many people can't stand the tag of "intermediate". It's like a social demotion to them and unfortunately as humans we have egos that won't let us readily accept what might be fact. I attempted to be quite honest in my self-assessment, and the people I mark as friends I feel have attempted to as well. However when I see "expert" or "world class", I get very leery. Maybe 1 to 2 percent fall in those two upper categories and that might be too generous. I'm quite happy with advanced, considering the very short period of time and exposure I've had in the game.

[hrothgar]

I STRONGLY beleive that it would be a major mistake to  introduce a rating system to BBO.

 

I spent a fair amount of time working with OKBridge trying to improve the rating systems.  Here are a few of my conclusions:

 

1.  In order to be of any real use, rating systems need to be accurate.

 

2.  In order to be accepted, individuals need to be able to easily understand how the ratings are derived.

 

3.  The accuracy of a rating system is inversely proporitional to the typical end users ability to understand it.

 

As a concrete example:

 

Masterpoints score very high on the comprehension index, but few people would argue that they are an especially accurate method to rank skill.

 

In contrast, a discrete Kalman filter could be used to derive an extremely accurate ranking system, however, very few people would be able to understand how the rankings were derived.

 

I think that the Lehman scheme falls somewhere in the middle.  They appear to be reasonable accurate, and given enough time, most players seem able to understand how they work, however, the education process can be a long and painful.

[pbleighton]

When I was doing actuarial work, I was working on a product design project and my boss told me a story, told to him by a former boss, in the same context:

 

The former boss had visited a friend of his, who took him out to an airfield, where he showed off his new airplane, which was new and fancy. The former boss exclaimed "Wow - what a sophisticated airplane. Look at all of the dials and levers!" to which the friend replied "If it really was a sophisticated airplane, there would be one lever and one dial.".

 

The point of the shaggy dog story is that I completely

agree with Hrothgar.

 

But interesting responses, which is what I hoped for!

 

P.S. I took the hint, and made the product simpler.  That way the marketing folks could at least pretend to understand it :)

[csaba]

> 6) Which strong club system do you prefer, and why?

 

A customized Precision variant.

I never got to play Pierre Collet's Beta (relay system)

 

> 7) Since you have played your strong club system,

> do you find that it has significant practical advantages

> over natural methods,

 

Yes. The advantage of Precision is not the 1C opening,

that's one of the weak points. The advantage lies in the increased

number of limited openings.

 

The standard range of 12-21 openings is too wide for comfort. If you look at Master Solvers Club in BWS, one of the recurring themes is handling goodish hands in the 16-18 HCP range, especially if an immediate fit is not found. In precision you open 1C and make a minimum rebid.

 

Against weaker players it increases the advantage because they don't compete enough. Against strong players it increases the bidding accuracy when they don't have the cards to compete.

 

> How good a player/bidder do you have to be to get

> an advantage playing a strong club versus a natural system?

 

It has been said that the intermediate/advanced players benefit

more than the experts, the reason being that experts can overcome

the limitations of the (natural) systems easier.

 

Another reason is that for many intermediate players, this will be the first time to seriously look at more than just the first two rounds of bidding.

 

> 9) How difficult is it to learn to play Precision?

> It seems to me that it isn't that much more difficult

> than natural systems, for someone with a good

> memory, who is willing to hit the books for a bit.

> Do you agree ?

 

The original precision was designed to resemble natural systems as much as possible.

 

Some of my friends are teaching their grandchildren bridge with Precision as the initial bidding system (in our club in Romania the majority of players play some sort of Precision, even scratch partnerships).

Personally I disagree with Precision as a starting system because I consider that the basics are better explained with a natural system.

Natural and Precision have different "mechanics" but are based on the same principles. People who understand the reason behind a natural system have no problem should they wish to switch to Precision.

[luis]

>1) How popular are strong club systems in the U.S.? My impression is >that a significant minority of top U.S. players use strong club systems, >but that the popularity drops quickly after that, and that few >non-experts play them.

 

My impression is that they are very well accepted and popular at expert level, back to club level SAYC has an almost absolute 100% of the market.

 

>2) What are the systems played the most in the U.S., besides Precision >(including its various flavors). Do any besides Precision have a >significant following here?

 

I think SAYC and 2/1 get 99.99% of the market, precision the remaining 0.01% and there maybe some foreigners playing other systems.

 

>3) Specifically - I haven't been playing long, and have only played >online (except for a bit 30 years ago), so I don't know the local bridge >club scene - I live in suburban Connecticut, about 60 miles from NYC. >What would your guess be about the likelihood of finding a partner >who was willing and able to play a strong club system in a non-urban >environment?

 

I'd say you'll need a lot of luck.

 

>4) How difficult is it to find partners to play online?

 

That's easy.

 

>5) Are strong club systems subject to interference by narrow-minded >club tournament directors (I've read about the ban of the Strong Pass), >or would I be likely to be able to play Precision, say, without any official >problem.

 

Yes, my experience playing precision in the US is that you are considered

a) Satanic, a guy not playing SAYC just to confuse other players

B) A semi-god that can play a system nobody understands.

 

Directors tend to exert "pressure" on pairs playing big-club systems because they "scare" normal players (mostly old-ladies) and they are the precious clients :-)

 

> 6) Which strong club system do you prefer, and why?

 

Moscito (I play a version that is perfectly legal in ACBL mid-chart conditions).

Moscito is precise, agressive and makes bidding easy. It's also a lot of fun.

 

Then I like the magic diammond (ok not a strong club system), and a system called "unassuming club" based on Polish club.

 

>7) Since you have played your strong club system, do you find that it >has significant practical advantages over natural methods, or do you >play it more for reasons of intellectual and aesthetic gratification?

>How good a player/bidder do you have to be to get an advantage >playing a strong club versus a natural system?

 

I do believe a big-club system has advantage over natural methods. You find slams that others can't and you can play games where others can't do it. The better the opps the narrower the difference is because exp partnerships have specialized understandings to solve weak spots in natural methods.

 

 

>9) How difficult is it to learn to play Precision? It seems to me that it >isn't that much more difficult than natural systems, for someone with a >good memory, who is willing to hit the books for a bit. Do you agree?

 

It's VERY easy.

In fact I learned to play bridge learning super-precision, it was my first system.

 

>10) Bonus question (thought of when writing #1) - is there a generally >agreed definition of what constitutes an expert versus an advanced >player. Do they both play in the A flights, but the experts win, or win at >a certain level (i.e. sectional or regional)? I hope you all have fun >answering this one!

 

Easy answer: Do you know what an intra-finesse is? Have you played one recently? If the answer is yes/yes then you are an expert :-)

[eyhung]

I would have to say that Luis accurately and amusingly describes the reaction to a strong club pair at, say, the club level. In regional tournaments, strong clubbers are usually treated like other pairs. However, even at the club level, strong club and other systems are actually much more frequent than .01%. (Remember, that's 1 in 10000! Most clubs have trouble getting over 100 pairs, let alone 1000) I would guess the non-standard-american frequency is around 3-5% in Southern California clubs, where I live. Many good pairs play unusual systems and eventually they gain followers from intermediate players convinced that system will make them better. After all, they are good players, so why aren't they winning? It must be the system! (Note: for the most part, it doesn't help. B) )

 

Eugene Hung