I've recently (the last 2.5 years or so) resumed playing contract bridge,
a game to which I was introduced at age 8 or so by my mother. I've played
now and then over the years, but had never tried duplicate bridge, the form
played in bridge clubs and in tournaments, until 2003.
As you may know, a hand of contract bridge begins with an auction in which
the 4 players compete to name a trump suit. There are only a very few legal
words that can be used for these bids. There are therefore many different systems
for assigning a particular meaning to a particular bid.
The bidding system most often taught to beginners in the U.S. and elsewhere and
thus the system known by most of the players one encounters in the U.S. is called
"Standard American", or SAYC, for Standard American Yellow Card.
This system is rather "intuitive" in that one is supposed generally to "bid what
one has" -- clubs if you have clubs, etc., with few artificial bids (for example,
a bid of 3 clubs meanning a good hand in spades to go with partner's spades).
The problem with SAYC is that it's less descriptive and has more "holes" (situations in which there's no good bid) in it than do more sophisticated systems. The most popular extension of SAYC is called 2/1.
2/1 can and does work for players who adopt it, but I prefer a different system
based on an artificial strong one club bid. Typically this system is known as Precision; the variant I've been playing with various partners around Seattle and suburbs is abstracted from a book called Precision Today by David Berkowitz and Bret Manley and is described here.
The Precision advantages:
(1) strong hands come up more often (16+ HCP) than
in 2/1 or SAYC, which typically use an artificial strong 2 clubs at 21 or 22+ HCP.
There's nothing like looking into your hand with 16 points and hearing partner open 1 club -- you know immediately you should very likely be in a small slam. This is much harder to figure out in those other systems.
(2) You can often arrive at a lower-level contract than you could with 2/1:
Opener: 1 club (16+)
Responder: 1 diamond (artificial negative, 0-7 pts.)
Opener: 1 heart (5+ hearts, natural)
Responder: pass
Often you have to get to the 2 level with this sort of hand in the other systems.
(3) Lower-level club players (199ers & below) sometimes find Precision intimidating,
and even higher-level players sometimes find it difficult to defend against.
(4) Finally, all "one-level bids" (1 diamond, 1 heart, 1 spade, 2 clubs) show
a limited range of 11-15 HCP. You don't have to do extra bidding to figure out
what partner has when she opens 1 heart.
I've bought probably 10 copies of the Precision Today book and have been greatly
enjoying playing it with various partners. If you're reading this and would be interested in a Precision class I would possibly be interested in putting one together to teach in Bellevue or Issaquah ... let me know!
