[AL78]

I assist on the informal practice beginner/improver session on Monday evenings which is a non-duplicate session where people play through hands that were played in the afternoon duplicate. It is apparent that even having gone through the full course, the beginners have barely learned a quarter of the bidding system (Acol, 3 weak twos, weak NT). Yesterday evening there were an unusual number of hands which fitted into the various voids in their knowledge. Examples include:

1. Playing transfers but not knowing how to get out into 3m if they have a weak hand with a long minor, and/or not understanding when it is appropriate to do so.
2. Knowing Blackwood but no other slam conventions such as cue bidding and splinters.
3. Lack of knowledge on how to bid constructively in competitive auctions and how this differs from bidding competitively to the level of the fit where you want to make life difficult for the opposition.

Here is a nice slam hand that I found virtually impossible to guide one pair through:

---

The auction was at 3♥ by the time I was called over and I explained to South they had underbid their hand. North proceeded to make 13 tricks and I commented that there is a better way to bid the hands but they haven't been taught it yet (I was thinking about splinters), and I was reluctant to spend a lot of time teaching them about splinters as there were two other tables that also needed occasional assistance. It is the sort of thing I would teach (amongst other things) in a slam bidding tutorial when I have time to go through it properly. In the afternoon duplicate session only two out of nine pairs found 4♥ so that would have been a joint top for them.

Here is another on at the next table:

---

The auction isn't the prettiest but it was the best I could do when tramlined by their very limited knowledge. 6♠ theoretically can make but it is tricky when the spades split 4-1 and the club finesse fails, it needs careful play once the bad break is discovered, declarer needs to have a trump honor in dummy and be in dummy on the second round of spades, I think running diamonds through East who holds the spades and ♦J2 brings it in, but that is very hard for a beginner to find. No-one in the afternoon session made 12 tricks, only one bid the slam and half of them didn't make game so going two down wouldn't have been a complete bottom as it happens.

Does anyone have any ideas on good ways to fill in the gaps in their knowledge without overwhelming them. Normally I pick a narrow theme, give a presentation on the fundamentals and logic then follow with practice hands. There is the odd theme where there might be some differences of opinion amongst players, for example whether new suits in response to partner's 2/3 level pre-empt is forcing or whether new suits opposite partner's overcall is forcing, but I can probably work around that.

[DavidKok]

This isn't literally an answer to your question (though I'll do my best to give one at the end of my comment), but here's some related thoughts that each form a partial answer.

• In general I would not focus much on slam bidding for beginners. Slams are rare and difficult, while games are common and important. The first foray into slam bidding is going to come with a noticeable loss on simple game auctions as beginners will try for slam while a signoff is appropriate, and I'd try to prepare them for that. Personally I like to start discussing slams with an introduction of the type-1 and type-2 errors on slam bidding: on any given deal you need ~32 HCP average for slam to be percentage, yet the average HCP on a making slam is around 27. Becoming a good slam bidder is all about identifying which combined-28-counts are worth going past game with, and this comes with a learning curve and associated costs.
  
• In my opinion teaching beginners Blackwood is poison, and I'd much rather shield them from that until they have some experience making slam tries through other means (even just 'bid to the 5-level with extras and check how parter responds, good luck'). I understand that in your case that ship has sailed, but I would try to steer them away from any particular gadgets or tools until they have a basic idea of what the goal is on a possibly-slamgoing auction. To me this ties in with the points you listed near the top of your post - knowing some initial actions but not the followups or alternatives is a typical symptom of adopting gadgets without understanding their purposes.
  
• Hand evaluation is difficult and often neglected, and incidentally I introduced it as one of the four big pillars of bridge in the beginner level course here yesterday (the other three being "Declarer play", "Defending" and "Knowing your system"). Personally I would split discussion of the strength of hands from introducing new tools - doing both at once can be confusing.

As for the actual answer I promised: honestly I'd steer away from slam bidding and bidding conventions, and focus more on the basics of hand evaluation and the goals of bidding. Constructive dialogue bidding is going to be much more valuable in the long run both in and out of competition than any particular trick to improve their slam bidding or other aspect of their game. This is a difficult task, but I think it is a better option than the alternatives.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

I repeat what DavidKok, try to focus on game bidding. I know, they say this boring,
I got this reply as well, ..., after a while they agree, that this is the way to go.

Your first slam hand is a 25HCP, and you dont even need the king of spades.
As it is, 2H is insufficent to say the least, you have a 17HCP opening hand, discovered
a 8 card fit in a major and South sells the hand as a min opener.
In the context of a weak NT it could be bal. 15HCP, but South should at least bid 3H,
or force to game, by bidding it,if you count 3 for the void, you have 20, bringing the
total to 26.

As long as they only raise 1H to 2H, forget slam bidding.

Even in my partnership I feel, I will end up in 4H, I dont see North (or at least myself) moving
over a 4C splinter.

The second slam is in a competitive auction, after they opened on the 1 level.
It is good advice, even for exp. partnerships to forget about slam in this situation.

The void in advancers long strong suit will mean the overcaller will put on the brakes, and
we only talk about a 5-3 fit.

From the 3 points you listed, I would ignore 1 and 2, and if you feel comfortable teach them
the Law of Total Tricks and the fast in / fast out rule, i.e. if you make a preempt, pass afterwards.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[AL78]

Thanks for that detailed response. I would like to get them trained up on the logic of bidding, not knowing what to do through memorising, but knowing what to do because they have worked it out in their head from fundamental principles and logic. They are regularly consulting a sheet which tells them what to bid with hands that fit into a particular category, but there is a difference between knowing and understanding, and the problem with pulling info off a sheet is it doesn't tell you what to do (or not do) if the situation is a little different from a fundamental situation. In the past I have given a workshop on the concept of forcing and non-forcing bids, specifically the fundamental principles of why bids are and are not forcing, because one thing I see a lot is beginners looking at a good hand, their partner opens the bidding, and they feel the need to immediately go leaping around to get their strength across because they are afraid their partner will pass. If both of them know when they are in a forcing situation they will feel more confident in having a space efficient dialogue.

Is it worth explaining how duplicate bridge and its scoring works? My reasoning is that they need to know what they are trying to do on each deal and they can't know that if they don't understand how their (and other people's) actions and results influence their score.

[P_Marlowe]

AL78, on 2024-January-30, 07:57, said:

<snip>
Is it worth explaining how duplicate bridge and its scoring works? My reasoning is that they need to know what they are trying to do on each deal and they can't know that if they don't understand how their (and other people's) actions and results influence their score.

Sure, ..., the problem with MP and very low table numbers is, that the results are random.
If you can bring them to play on 1 table, they can try out Russian scoring, if they go constant plus, they are ready for most clubs.
https://www.maproom....ful/bridge.html

I feel certain numbers are unfair, e.g. getting 600 with 30HCP nonvul, but ok, ..., you
may adjust the target scores.

[DavidKok]

Personally I really like introducing the concept of 'game bonus' as early as possible, and I go so far as to stress that the duty of players in the partnership is to evaluate whether or not we might still grab one of those, and if not to drop the auction at the earliest convenience in any even remotely playable strain. This is IMPs-focused of course, but compared to the alternatives is not the worst advice for beginners at MPs either. For the first lesson in bridge I literally flip over a bidding box and show them the scores for 1NT+2, 2NT+1 and 3NT=, and then I tell people to get started even without introducing HCP (though knowing HCP will help). The hope is that if I tell them what they want to do or avoid, but not how to do it, they can develop a rudimentary bidding system free from the endless lists of rules and exceptions and memorisation, and we'll steer them back to 2/1 GF if they are still interested a few weeks in or have questions during the auction. All the while stressing that the purpose if bidding is to find the best spot with our combined 26 cards, and that all our bids should be geared towards helping partner decide where we're going.

We don't bother with most of the scoring - e.g. the intricacies of vulnerability, different matchpoint results, profitable sacrifices, penalty double odds etc. - until much later. But the game bonus is a good one to know. 25 HCP yes/no/maybe, combined 8+ cards in a major yes/no/maybe, and take it from there.

Only slightly related but I really liked guess the contract, though it seems to have been taken offline. It was a simple website showing two hands and asking you which contract you'd like to be in, and then it gave you IMPs and MPs scores for your choice. I found this a really neat gadget for teaching players the purposes of bidding, free from any bidding systems, rules or memorisation. But apparently it's no longer available.

[pescetom]

Excellent replies, in particular I agree with Davidkok that letting them read the back of bidding cards (after a quick explanation about vulnerability) is enough about scoring and objectives for now.

I was also impressed that everyone avoided focussing of the actual two hands, as they are indeed too technical and off base for beginners. Having said that, it's difficult not to comment on them, as AL78 was well aware

AL78, on 2024-January-30, 06:44, said:

Here is a nice slam hand that I found virtually impossible to guide one pair through:

---

The auction was at 3♥ by the time I was called over and I explained to South they had underbid their hand. North proceeded to make 13 tricks and I commented that there is a better way to bid the hands but they haven't been taught it yet (I was thinking about splinters), and I was reluctant to spend a lot of time teaching them about splinters as there were two other tables that also needed occasional assistance. It is the sort of thing I would teach (amongst other things) in a slam bidding tutorial when I have time to go through it properly. In the afternoon duplicate session only two out of nine pairs found 4♥ so that would have been a joint top for them.

It's a problem hand for many methods even beyond beginner level. Opener's splinter over Responder's suit would help, but unless it shows a void then things are still tricky and both Italian control-bidding and RKCB are challenged by the only side K in spades with trumps hearts. If 5♣ is ERKCB 1430 in Responder's suit then we reach 6♥ on the strength of ♥KQ, but I still don't see how to pinpoint the ♠K.

AL78, on 2024-January-30, 06:44, said:

---

....
6♠ theoretically can make but it is tricky when the spades split 4-1 and the club finesse fails, it needs careful play once the bad break is discovered, declarer needs to have a trump honor in dummy and be in dummy on the second round of spades, I think running diamonds through East who holds the spades and ♦J2 brings it in, but that is very hard for a beginner to find. No-one in the afternoon session made 12 tricks, only one bid the slam and half of them didn't make game so going two down wouldn't have been a complete bottom as it happens.

I would expect the defence to take the first trick in hearts unless West is GiB, and surely the club finesse cannot be useful anyway? I agree that many beginners would not cash the first spade in hand and the second in dummy, but once over that hurdle and with West showing out I would expect the better ones to figure out that all they have to do now is run the diamonds until East ruffs, then over-ruff and return to top trump in dummy. Or am I missing something?

[mycroft]

"Don't let mycroft near the novices", but there's too much "bridge structure" stuff to cover in any simple "next steps" list.

Again, I'd be more interested in things like carding and declarer play. It's great to get to great games and slams, but if you can't make them (or if you can't set the bad ones the opponents get into), bidding doesn't matter.

One thing that has worked for me as a mentor (to not-novices, but still "real Cs"); after a while, you get to notice "classes" of issues. You've pointed out some already. I'd guess that "advancing takeout doubles", "responding to NT - the rest of the story" are two of those issues (yes, you mentioned some of that with transfers, but also "stayman rebids", "what is 4♣? What is 4NT?"...) Responding to 2♣, maybe?

When you find one of those "classes", plan a one-shot lesson before the game on that specific point, or a "prep" sheet.

Competition theory, as you discuss, is a big thing - and we don't teach that right away. Even the basic basics - "when they compete, primarily you want to 'win' the partscore. These are 'wins'." or "here's how you show strong hands (one or two calls). Here's why you commit so much of your available bidding space to 'not-strong' hands."

I do like the "games before slams" (and maybe even "partscores before slams") focus. When people start seeing that their main hole is "not getting to slams", work on that. But slams are spectacular and rare. Until they're not losing to 3 or 4 games a 15-board session, or "we're defending 65% of hands more often than not", getting the one or two slams a session right won't get them their 55s.

[AL78]

pescetom, on 2024-January-30, 11:03, said:

I would expect the defence to take the first trick in hearts unless West is GiB, and surely the club finesse cannot be useful anyway? I agree that many beginners would not cash the first spade in hand and the second in dummy, but once over that hurdle and with West showing out I would expect the better ones to figure out that all they have to do now is run the diamonds until East ruffs, then over-ruff and return to top trump in dummy. Or am I missing something?

I didn't see all the play, but the defence took their heart trick, declarer drew trumps finishing in hand then realised they were cut off from the diamonds. A workshop on elements of cardplay is also needed, many of them are clearly in a fog when playing or defending and don't have a grasp of the fundamentals. It is worse when key suits don't break how they expect and they have to refocus and change plan. There was one good play yesterday from a declarer who was in 3NT and got the ♠2 lead. She held AK94 with Q76 in dummy. She worked out the lead was almost certainly from a four card suit and that playing low was best because LHO might have led from JTxx, and she was right and took four spade tricks.

[akwoo]

Forget about splinters and fancy slam bidding tools. For players to be able to find 28 hcp slams, they have to be able to answer questions like the following:

You hold ♠ Kxx ♥ AQxxx ♦ Kxxx ♣ x. Partner opens a 12-14 1N. Is there a hand partner could have for which slam is good?

If you don't have the ability to visualize how play will go in a given contract and imagine possible hands for partner, all the fancy slam bidding gadgets will do you no good.

Most beginners or even intermediates cannot answer this kind of question consistently correctly.

As for competitive bidding - they first need to learn that going down 1 in their contract is better than letting the opponents make something. It can be very hard psychologically to accept that bidding a failing contract is frequently a good thing. Beyond that, they need to learn some system, and "All raises are preemptive in competition if you can have extra length," and "Bids of their suit show support" is good enough. Not quite always right and more sophistication is useful but they can learn all that later.

You should keep in mind that working anything out in their head from fundamental principles and logic at the table is just going to be too overwhelming; there is too much to keep track of and they can't - in some cases will never be able to - keep track of it all. Digging out that correct fundamental principle and connecting it to the hand in front of them and the bidding that's on the table which they can't really keep in mind all at once even while looking at it is already too much.

[TylerE]

DavidKok, on 2024-January-30, 07:39, said:

This isn't literally an answer to your question (though I'll do my best to give one at the end of my comment), but here's some related thoughts that each form a partial answer.
[list=1]
[*]In general I would not focus much on slam bidding for beginners. Slams are rare and difficult,

Plus from my experience beginners often play them a trick worse. Better to be +460 than -50.

Once they start complaining about going +480, then you can start teaching slams.

[thepossum]

I honestly don't see the problem in teaching a few basics like the idea of part scores, games and slams, how to judge them and how to bid them with a few simple methods
Having said that I can't see how to easily bid slam on that first hand with basic methods - but why is South not yet trained to bid game immediately
I went for years with a few basic methods and hand assessments in Acol - including Blackwood from a very early stage - and a few basic leads and signals lol
I think splinters would have been a good part of a basic armory - but still that first hand seems hard to bid other than an easy game
I think people overcomplicate the game - but basic level hand assessment seems lacking there, coupled with general principles and aims of the game

I know if I went to a club I would be forced to go to beginner classes - that's why I avoid them

[hrothgar]

FWIW, here is how I typically introduce friends to bridge

Note: Some friends and I will be trekking across Uzbekistan for three weeks in late February / early March... Here's how we approaching things

First: The new players are spending some time playing around with Bridge Master. This will get them used to the mechanics of the next.

Second: Folks will run through a whole bunch of hands using Guess the Contract.
The goal here is to get them used to looking at a pair of hands and understanding what a good contract is.

Third: Once we're all on the road together, we can play MiniBridge in the evenings.

Note the complete lack of focus on bidding, bidding conventions, or anything like that.

If, at the end of the trip, anyone wants to stick with things

1. There's a bunch of good books on bidding
2. There's all sorts of bots and computer programs to play with

[lchiu7]

hrothgar, on 2024-February-02, 13:20, said:

FWIW, here is how I typically introduce friends to bridge

Note: Some friends and I will be trekking across Uzbekistan for three weeks in late February / early March... Here's how we approaching things

First: The new players are spending some time playing around with Bridge Master. This will get them used to the mechanics of the next.

Second: Folks will run through a whole bunch of hands using Guess the Contract.
The goal here is to get them used to looking at a pair of hands and understanding what a good contract is.

Third: Once we're all on the road together, we can play MiniBridge in the evenings.

Note the complete lack of focus on bidding, bidding conventions, or anything like that.

If, at the end of the trip, anyone wants to stick with things

1. There's a bunch of good books on bidding
2. There's all sorts of bots and computer programs to play with

Slighty OT but I recently went back to playing bridge after a break of 22 years (!). I was amazed how much club play had changed with computer dealt hands, computer tablets on each table where you enter the final bid, result and check in real-time your place. I started on the night where beginners or people with about 2 years play go and was surprised to find how few people could actually score. They said they never needed to since the tablet did the scoring and there was a score sheet under the table placard.

So I asked, not vulnerable, if your opponents bid say 2 of a major and you bid 3 of anything and they can make 2 or 3, but you might go 1 or 2 light, what is better? Most said, let them make it since I won't want to go light not realising that -100 2 light is way better than -140 partscore the other way. Didn't want to complicate it by asking (nobody vul) if they bid and make game, and you bid say 5 of something, got doubled and went two light, is that okay?

Apparently the classes (8 weeks) never taught scoring!

[thepossum]

I find it sad

I was introduced to Bridge sitting round a table

And learned all the basics that way

Is Richard pulling our legs lol

On a serious related note, I find it really sad that there is no easy way to introduce one person to the game in any sensible way
Still waiting for my little portable case with two little bots

[helene_t]

It sounds like your beginners have only small problems with bidding. The only issue that is really serious is the 2he rebid with the strong hand.

A player who makes that kind of bid is very far from being ready to learn splinters. Basic Acol.logic would be a 4he or even 5he rebid and that's what they should learn.

In fact i wouldn't teach splinters at an improver course and would be careful even at an advanced course. Personally, for every good bidding decision i or my p has made thanks to splinters , we have had dozens of ridiculous contracts caused by splinter mishaps.

[Douglas43]

On the Isle of Man our local association and clubs try to follow-up with improvers' sessions so that beginners don't have to learn everything at once. The people giving the talks are experienced players and one of them (Justin Corfield) has written a couple of books.
We try to emphasise that good players won't always agree on what to do - so learners are less afraid of being "wrong". I once ran a bidding quiz for improvers and asked several experienced players to take it. The experienced players were only unanimous on one hand (and the improvers all did the opposite!).

[thepossum]

Douglas43, on 2024-February-04, 03:52, said:

On the Isle of Man our local association and clubs try to follow-up with improvers' sessions so that beginners don't have to learn everything at once. The people giving the talks are experienced players and one of them (Justin Corfield) has written a couple of books.
We try to emphasise that good players won't always agree on what to do - so learners are less afraid of being "wrong". I once ran a bidding quiz for improvers and asked several experienced players to take it. The experienced players were only unanimous on one hand (and the improvers all did the opposite!).

What happens to people who play ok at a certain level but never seem to improve
Another reason I am scared of clubs. I would be stuck

[helene_t]

thepossum, on 2024-February-04, 00:38, said:

Is Richard pulling our legs lol

No I am pretty sure he is serious.

What Richard describes is what the Dutch Bridge Federation wanted to promote when I started my teacher's training in 2005. They have sorta backtracked on the approach, though. Maybe primarily because of resistance from teachers who want to teach the way they have always done, starting with teaching the students to count points and choose an opening bid.

Richard's case is that minibridge is actually a sensible game you can enjoy without having to learn bidding initially. Learning a bidding system without having the card play skills to make 3NT with 30 points together is, OTOH, a bit pointless.

On the other hand I think that most beginners are impatient to get to play at the club ASAP so they will need to learn all the rules and some rudimentary bidding system, and then hopefully their card play skills will catch up after they have joined a club.

In an ideal World, Richard's approach would be what beginners wanted, and I do believe we should try to push things a bit in that direction. For example, at both my Dutch and my English club we have beginners playing minibridge while the seasoned players play duplicate at the same time. In the Netherlands this works very well as they play in a big open space so the interaction between the two groups around coffee breaks is automatic. In England we have unfortunately seperate floors for the two groups so they only get to share the toilets, but still there is a quite decent difusion from minibridge to the no-fear duplicate evenings. We are one of the few clubs who have a better turn-up post covid than we had pre covid.

If Richard's approach works in Uzbekistan, more power to him.

[DavidKok]

For what it's worth this is similar to what we're currently doing with our student classes. We have around 45 minutes of topic discussion at the start, a different topic every week but I make an effort to avoid bidding systems as much as reasonably possible. Then we play all evening in the same room as the regular club, though last week were were asked to move to a different room because I was making too much noise. After each board we discuss what happened and whether anybody had questions or wanted to do something different. At some point I'll have to sit down and talk about bidding system in more detail, but for now people are just bidding and playing and asking questions with only a rudimentary idea of how bidding works and it is going extremely well.

Some of our beginners are slightly more experienced than the rest, and we sometimes reserve a pairs spot in the club competition and swap out who is playing, usually one beginner with one teacher and we rotate between rounds.