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New ti BBO with questions

#1 User is offline   blindsey 

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Posted 2022-February-13, 17:56

Recently retired and just joined BBO. I last played about 30 years ago and in my opinion didn't quite make it to intermediate, so a beginner (or re-beginner).

When I last played Sheinwold's Five Weeks was the book recommended to beginners but I see now five-card majors are the norm with 2/1 played by experts (or less than experts?).

Looking on this forum I see conflicting advice - everybody uses SAYC versus nobody really plays SAYC.

So what should I be looking at for a bidding system?

Oh, and I played against the bots here and stopped after 16 hands. Does it ever end by itself or do I have to end it? What if I'm playing with real people?
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#2 User is offline   DavidKok 

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Posted 2022-February-14, 03:09

I don't know well enough how BBO tables work - when I played with other players the boards just kept coming until we called it quits.

It depends on region of course (here in the Netherlands 'nobody' plays SAYC), but as far as I know SAYC is still the most common system played in the USA. At higher level 2/1 has pushed out SAYC almost completely. Of course, at higher level players also use other, arguably more complicated, systems (Precision, Balanced club/unbalanced diamond, Polish club, Transfer Walsh systems or even Magic Diamond, to name a few not fully mutually exclusive options).

Personally I learned most of the basics of 2/1 from Larry Cohen's website, who strongly argues that 2/1 is both better and easier to learn than standard. He wrote a whole sequence on making the move to 2/1 (starting with SAYC, as far as I can tell). I don't know how accurate this is, but I do know that Larry Cohen is a much better bridge teacher than I am! As a footnote, he's got an ongoing series of standard bidding sequences where he explains SAYC, which is very thorough and intended for beginners.

5 card majors are very much the norm these days. 4 card majors are still represented at all levels of play (again, as far as I know), but it is a minority approach.
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#3 User is offline   Stephen Tu 

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Posted 2022-February-14, 06:29

View PostDavidKok, on 2022-February-14, 03:09, said:

It depends on region of course (here in the Netherlands 'nobody' plays SAYC), but as far as I know SAYC is still the most common system played in the USA.

This has never been the case. One major problem is that a fairly large number of players these days, especially foreigners, and maybe beginners who started online where SAYC is more common, think "SAYC" (aka Standard American Yellow Card) is a synonym for "SA" (Standard American), which it is NOT, and use the two terms interchangeably, which they should NOT. SAYC is a particular flavor of SA, not the umbrella term for a family of systems that SA is. SA as a general approach (mostly a style popularized by Goren, updated for 5-cd majors) might still be most common (2/1 dominates among non-beginner level duplicate players), but SAYC never has been common. Rather these people all play SA as they were taught, with their own preferred set of conventions, and considerable variation in certain treatments (most notably which sequences after a 2/1 bid are forcing, which show extras and create a GF, whether responder always promises a rebid, as these things have evolved a lot over the decades, so it tends to depend on when these people learned bridge or when their teacher learned).

SAYC is *supposed* to mean playing SA following a set of conventions and rules layed out in a particular pamphlet and printed on a yellow convention card. However a very large percentage of people who have the above confusion have never read these resources, so may claim to be playing SAYC when in fact they are playing "SA as I happen to think it is", rather than realizing there is no "standard" in "Standard American", and not realizing SAYC is supposed to be a particular version of SA.

The other problem with SAYC (the true SAYC as layed out in the pamphlet) is that it was a system devised by committee originally intended for "everybody forced to play same system" tournaments, and was not really well thought out as a bridge system; it is more a hodgepodge of once semi-popular conventions/treatments thrown randomly together. There are a lot of incoherent things in there, like lack of a forcing minor raise, and things that don't make a lot of sense, like 1M-2x-2nt showing a minimum hand, yet it also being forcing (so that 12 opposite 11 basically forces to 3nt if you actually follow the pamphlet exactly). Also things that suggest that portions of the pamphlet were just cut/pasted from a book using a 16-18 NT without alteration, like "13-15" being described as a min range NT rebid when 12-14 would match actual practice.

The only reason SAYC ever got any popularity in the first place was basically an accident of history. Yellow card tournaments had died out. But in the early days of online bridge, okbridge, there was a need for a relatively simple system that pickup partners could agree on and play, that could be distributed easily. The yellow card text writeup was available and sufficiently brief that it could be easily displayed by the text-based okbridge client program. Details at http://mojo.whiteoak...-sayc-happened/


So in summation, IMO, SAYC is a kind of bad system (if played as written), and no one really plays it anyway (a regular partnership would morph it into their own flavor and it wouldn't be SAYC anymore; a pickup online partnership it's very random whether your partner knows the difference between SAYC and SA, and a guess whether they are following the pamphlet or not). So I would recommend the original poster learn 2/1, probably the best resource for 2/1 is Mike Lawrence's CD PC program tutorial. At least if playing 2/1 with a pickup partner you shouldn't get passed after a 2/1 sequence and play slam in a partial.
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#4 User is offline   DavidKok 

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Posted 2022-February-14, 07:27

Thank you, I indeed thought they were synonymous. My mistake. I definitely should have said "SA" then, in all instances above.
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#5 User is offline   helene_t 

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Posted 2022-February-14, 07:31

View Postblindsey, on 2022-February-13, 17:56, said:

Looking on this forum I see conflicting advice - everybody uses SAYC versus nobody really plays SAYC.

Yeah, SAYC is a reasonable system for beginners but the problem is that while SAYC is in fact a very well-defined system, most people who say they play SAYC just play their own unpredictable idiosyncratic system which probably has a few superficial similarities with SAYC.

Anyway, you should chose whichever system is popular in your area and supported by good, up-to-date beginner's text books in your language. If you live in North America, this would mean some kind of simple natural 5-card major system with a 15-17 notrump. Whether the authors call it SAYC or SA is a minor issue.

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Oh, and I played against the bots here and stopped after 16 hands. Does it ever end by itself or do I have to end it? What if I'm playing with real people?

Chose solitaire and then "just play bridge", this will give you an unlimited number of boards.
The world would be such a happy place, if only everyone played Acol :) --- TramTicket
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#6 User is offline   Douglas43 

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Posted 2022-February-14, 09:07

The free daylong robot tournaments (look under "competitive" and "daylong tournaments") are also a good feature. You can look at the results the next day and see what happened. Today (14 Feb) is "just declare"
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#7 User is offline   jdiana 

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Posted 2022-February-14, 16:37

You might try Larry Cohen Teaches Modern Bidding, a series of 3 short books, which I believe is available for about $45. There are a number of other good resources but I think he gets the complexity level about right for advanced beginners. Not overly complicated but detailed enough to get an understanding of the underlying logic.

Good luck!

P.S. This is probably U.S.-centric so something else might be better depending on where you live and what games you play in.
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#8 User is offline   pescetom 

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Posted 2022-February-14, 16:57

View Postjdiana, on 2022-February-14, 16:37, said:

P.S. This is probably U.S.-centric so something else might be better depending on where you live and what games you play in.


I don't think so, the world is converging fast and Larry Cohen hits the nail on the head more often than not - useful to anyone even if they live and play in different systems.
Just read him with an open mind, noting U.S. treatments that may seem bizarre such as opening 1 with 4432 or responding 2/1 with a 4=card suit and deciding which of them make sense for you and your partner.
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#9 User is offline   thepossum 

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Posted 2022-February-18, 00:23

Having followed Larry's site and lessons for a while, I enjoy his KISS (less is more) approach

My heart sank once trying to return to Bridge finding beginners with tomes of SAYC on their tables, and trying to learn every bit

Whatever happened to a game where 4 strangers could sit down and play with minimal confusion

I have a brain that relies more on processing than memory, and there isn't much of that left anymore. Simple bidding, simple play
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