[B_quillero]

As a beginner, I want to learn conventions to achieve better bidding. but when I see how many conventions and systems there are, I'm overwhelmed by the quantity. Many are mutually exclusive.

How should I go about choosing which conventions to learn? (I play SAYC.) It seems impossible to learn them all. Considering that it takes some time to learn a convention, I don't want to waste it learning a convention that I'll have little opportunity to use.

I don't have a regular partner yet, so I have no guidance at all. Any suggestions?

--Eric
:- :- :-

[hrothgar]

An arbitrary collection of conventions is no match for a bidding system.

Find a good bidding system that matches your temperment and learn it as an integrated whole. If the system is well designed, the particular conventions employeed with complement one another. This should substantially diminish the memory load.

[keylime]

I wholeheartedly agree with my esteemed fellow player - gotta find something that works for you, then find conventions that you feel comfortable with. Also remember, style counts - are you aggressive or passive? Big question to ask self.

Remember not even Kearse's text or the multivolume texts floating around have every convention.

[B_quillero]

Okay... But tell me, how did you choose the conventions you play? It's all well and good to talk about how one feels about them , but the process is quiet arduous. Could you please relate your specific experiences in choosing your conventions?

Eric
:

[the hog]

Richard gives good advice here. There are so many conventions because someone at one time thought they were ok to solve a problem - even Flannery gets a guernsey.

Find a bidding system that you and a partner want to play and really learn the "ins and outs" of that. After a while you may start to think, "hey if we added this or changed that, we could improve it". Thats when you start mucking around with conventions - or when you get bored with what you have got.

[keylime]

An adjunct: I give you two very diametrically opposite examples in terms of pairings.

1. Meckwell - LOTS of pages, LOTS of memorization, LOTS of well, LOTS!

2. Nickell-Freeman - simple works, not very many treatments, bread and butter bridge at its finest.

BOTH are multiple world champions AND NABC winners.

With these very opposite extremes, find your place and know that judgment means MORE than any whizbang wonder convention. Last night, I break out our new 2S bid (10-15, minors, 5-4 or more) and MISSED a laydown small slam. What happened? Pard didn't value their STIFF ace of hearts, excellent trumps, and spade ace correct. We lost 9 imps. Judgment matters BIG TIME.

[DrTodd13]

Here are some thoughts about conventions and the newcomer.

1) When you decide to learn a convention, e.g. stayman, learn it
completely rather than just learning the "first layer" of the
convention. For example, stayman says that 1N-2C-2Y-3m is a
slam seeking hand with a long minor. If you memorize "stayman
asks for a 4 card major" you are doing yourself a disservice by
not learning the whole convention. As another example, when
learning blackwood, learn how to respond to blackwood with a
void and learn what subsequent bids by the blackwood bidder
mean.

2) Try to understand how adopting a convention will alter the
meanings of other bids in your system. For any convention, ask
yourself...what am I giving up by using this convention? How
will I bid if I had the hand pattern that I can no longer show
because I'm using that bid for some other meaning?

3) The modern game sees very aggresive interference by
opponents. Therefore, I'd say to start with conventions that
will help you in competitive auctions...whether you are the
opener or the overcaller.

Todd

[kfgauss]

People seem to be leaving out actual advice on which conventions one might go about learning at what time in one's bridge career.

My advice to someone who's playing "standard american" on which conventions to learn (if I'm shooting too high or too low for you, tell me and I'll give updated recommendations):

takeout doubles
negative doubles
weak two bids & responses
stayman
jacoby transfers

is a fine collection of beginning conventions in standard american.

For slam conventions, if you're comfortable enough with basic bidding and the above conventions and are interested in this, sure learn blackwood (but don't overuse it) but make sure also to learn how to cue bid controls when interested in slam (e.g. 1S-3S;4C shows interest in slam and a control in clubs), and decide on a style of cuebidding: does 4C guarantee the Ace or a void, or could it be a King or a singleton.

For further fine-tuning to your constructive bidding, figure out how to differentiate between invitational hands and game forcing hands in various situations:
e.g. is 1D-1S;2C-3S game forcing or just invitational, and if it's one, how do you show the other? ("Fourth suit forcing" is the convention that deals with this situation)

or: 1D-1S;1N-3S ("New minor forcing" deals with the issue here)

All of the conventions I've told you about are in standard full SAYC. I'd learn them in roughly the order I've presented (I'm sure I've missed some). Past this, the other conventions that comprise full SAYC would be a good place to go. Stick with that for a while, as it's a reasonable system that should work for you most of the time.

If you already know full SAYC fairly well and are looking to branch out, that's another issue entirely. Tell me if so, and perhaps I'll have some advice on that.

Andy

[hrothgar]

Okay... But tell me, how did you choose the conventions you play? It's all well and good to talk about how one feels about them , but the process is quiet arduous. Could you please relate your specific experiences in choosing your conventions?

As I noted earlier, I believe that chosing conventions is subordinate to chosing system. With this said and done:

My primary design criteria was enabling a "quick in /quick out" auction style. I want to be able to bash to an adequate contract as quickly as possible while minimizing the opponent's ability to successfully exchange information.

In turn, this lead to two main conclusions about bidding system:

(a) I want constructive openings limited to ~ 6 HCP
( I wanted a light opening system to maximize the frequency of our constructive openings.

For example: Yesterday I opened the following hand with a "constructive" 1 level opening.

4
AK765
84
JT854

While I consider this a bare minimum opening, I think that its losing bridge to open these hands in first/second seat.

Ergo, I play a strong club system (I'd prefer to play a strong pass, but we all have to make sacrifices to the regulatory authorities). In turn,the strong club allows me to use a ~9-14 HCO opening structure without overloading 1C.

Second: I needed to select bidding structure designed to maximize my expected positive score opposite a limited constructive opening. I decided to adopt a combination of

(a) 4 card majors with a majors first opening style
( Natural and non-forcing 2/1s
( Relays for strong hands
© Frequent use of fit showing bids

Third: I selected a response structure over the strong club system that was easy to remember. Given that I am using Symmetric Relay over limited openings, it seemed natural to adopt this over the Strong Club as well.

Finally, I selected a preemptive opening sytle that complements the rest of the opening structure. Here I actually went so far as to design my own set of preempts based on assumed fit principles.

[the hog]

People seem to be leaving out actual advice on which conventions one might go about learning at what time in one's bridge career.

You will know what to learn when you need to learn it. Just putting down an arbitrary set of conventions is a waste of time, and anyway, what one person likes is not necessarily to another's taste. eg you put down Stayman. Stayman pales into insignificance when compared to Keri imho. (Ben otoh disagrees).

[inquiry]

As a beginner pick a very small number of conventions. You will have enough trouble as it is. Here is a "standard" bunch you might consider.

1) Stayman. This one is a must
2) Jacoby transfer (include an understanding of what a 2S bid means by responder).
3) Blackwood or maybe if your venturesome, Roman keycard blackwood.
4) Something over your opponents 1NT opening bids (Landy, dont, cappelletti, something).
5) Takeout doubles. Maybe you should make all double takeout all the time, regardless of the level...but with the idea that the higher the level of the double, the more likely your parnter can pass it even though it is takout.
6) Some conventional response to a weak two to force/explore game and some conventional response to 1M that is forcing, rather it is 1M-3M or 1M-2NT.

This short list should get you started. Don't add more than one additional convention at a time, and if you add it, playh it for a while (until it comes up at least five times) before you intentionally add a new one.

Now as a beginner you will have one additional problem with conventions. Every new partner you play with will want to add a few more to your list. Resist the urge until you are already very comfortable with the ones you are already playing.

Ben

[kfgauss]

Quote

People seem to be leaving out actual advice on which conventions one might go about learning at what time in one's bridge career.

You will know what to learn when you need to learn it. Just putting down an arbitrary set of conventions is a waste of time, and anyway, what one person likes is not necessarily to another's taste. eg you put down Stayman. Stayman pales into insignificance when compared to Keri imho. (Ben otoh disagrees).

All of the theorizing was giving very little practical advice to a beginner. My list of conventions was far from arbitrary -- it's a list of (in my opinion) the most basic, essential conventions from SAYC that will allow you to bid reasonably and intelligently in that system and with many partners. Ben came up with a similar list.

As for your stayman/keri comment, it's ridiculous. Many people also don't
play weak twos, but clearly every current beginner should learn them. Either of these may not be the case in twenty years, but currently they are. Beginners need to learn conventions/systems played by many of their peers. I'm all for innovation and playing different conventions, but feel that one should learn to play (and to do so well) what most other people play first.

Andy

[flytoox]

Quote

As a beginner, I want to learn conventions to achieve better bidding. but when I see how many conventions and systems there are, I'm overwhelmed by the quantity. Many are mutually exclusive.

How should I go about choosing which conventions to learn? (I play SAYC.) It seems impossible to learn them all. Considering that it takes some time to learn a convention, I don't want to waste it learning a convention that I'll have little opportunity to use.

I don't have a regular partner yet, so I have no guidance at all. Any suggestions?

--Eric
:- :- :-

William B. Root and Richard Pavlieck's Modern Bridge Convention will serve you well. As a beginner, just read those marked one star convention. This book is clear, concise,and particularly fit for standard american or sayc sys.

[luis]

If you want to learn useful conventions to soup up your SAYC system my list is:

1) RKCB, complete. So you know how to explore for slam and find grand slams.
2) Double checkback, it will simplify a lot of very common auctions
3) Ogust so you can open random weak 2's.

[Free]

The way I learned conventions in the first stage, was by finding out the system I was playing wasn't good enough. If you don't find a game where everybody finds it, there's something wrong with your judgement or your bidding. In the last case, you need to improve the system by using conventions. Therefor you can find a lot of possibilities online, ask on a forum,...

I started to play something like sayc. After 1X-1M-1NT, there was no strong forcing answer which stayed low. So I started to play checkback stayman (imo better than new minor forcing) and it turned out just fine. When opponents opened 1NT, I initially played natural overcalls.
I knew a lot of persons which played DONT against us, and made some good scores because of that. That's why we started to play that to.
When opponents intervened after 1NT opening, we had no system to continue the bidding. That's why we started to play a combination of rubensohl and lebensohl.
We also started to play RKC blackwood instead of normal bw, because it helps to find slams more often.
...

And time after time, you extend your knowledge of conventions, and you make the system better. Adjust the system to its needs. If it has weak spots, make them stronger by conventions. If it works just fine, then don't change it unless it becomes even better

It's also good to play on regular base with the same partner. That way, you develop a system which works for the both of you. If you always play with somebody else, you should try to learn the most common conventions and openings, so you can play these conventions with everyone who also knows them (if they are really common, you should be able to play them with everyone you know). In my region, about everyone knows the multi-2D opening, DONT and stayman (and some other conventions to), but in USA for example, people don't play multi and play cappeletti (if I remember correctly).

Free

[DrTodd13]

I think that telling someone to pick their system first is
too much of a burden for a beginner. You have to
understand your opponent's system to draw
inferences to get good scores. You therefore need to
learn the prevalent system in your country. So, I believe
the basis of this question was "I am using SAYC. What
conventions should I add on top of that." Is SAYC the
best system? No way but you still have to suffer through
it before you have enough knowledge to go and pick/learn
a better system.

To answer the question as given, what conventions should
I learn? Like I said before, focus on competitive bidding.
So, something like support doubles/redoubles are very
useful. I wouldn't waste time on a NT overcall convention
to start with. It comes up rarely enough that there is lower
hanging fruit to get first.

[Cascade]

Quote

As a beginner, I want to learn conventions to achieve better bidding. but when I see how many conventions and systems there are, I'm overwhelmed by the quantity. Many are mutually exclusive.

How should I go about choosing which conventions to learn? (I play SAYC.) It seems impossible to learn them all. Considering that it takes some time to learn a convention, I don't want to waste it learning a convention that I'll have little opportunity to use.

I don't have a regular partner yet, so I have no guidance at all. Any suggestions?

--Eric
:- :- :-

As a beginner with no regular partner I would recommend learning as few conventions as possible that will allow you to play with a range of partners and concentrate on your bidding judgement and card play.

When you have more experience you will know and be better placed to judge what additional conventions you would like to play.

Basically you can improve much more by improving your judgement and card play than by adding any particular fancy convention to your system.

I semi-regularly play with beginners playing little more than:

Stayman
Blackwood and
Takeout Doubles

and often we do better than those playing every new convention.

Wayne

[MesSer]

This is a pretty interesting thread. As a player that pretty recently ventured into the fantastic game of bridge, I might have a few suggestions to you that might come in handy.

First of all, I'll tell you what I did. I live in Sweden and I'm 20 years old. I've been playing bridge for about 3 years now? I started out with playing a swedish standard system called modern standard (4-card opening system) that besides this is pretty similar to 2/1 and Sayc.
After a while, we noticed that you will have a hard time finding bids after 1x-1y-1NT and 1x-1NT. So we adapted 2-way checkback over the first sequence and something called "häxan (the witch)", which basicaly is an artificial 2c bid that asks partner about a bunch of stuff, over the seqend sequence.
Then we noticed that people at MP makes stupid overcalls from time to time so we started playing negative doubles, take out doubles and forcing pass sequences (we open bidding with 1x and opponents makes a single overcall. Partners pass in this situation is forcing to a double and is showing either a weak hand OR a hand that wants to play the bid suit doubled) over opponents interference.

After this I ventured into online bridge and it was a complete new world for me. Unfortunantly no one online knew what a 4-card major opening system was, so I had to learn new systems. This was Sayc Full and 2 over 1. Since I didn't have a regular partnership I played with pick-up partners that wanted ned conventions all the time. With my youthly enthusiasm I picked them up and started to see reasons to play them all and reasons not to play some.
Here I picked up lebensohl, ogust responses, smolen, rosenkrantz, support doubles, drury, bergen raises, forcing 1NT, multi, ekren, cappeletti, brozel, dont, asptro, crash and a bunch of other stuff that isn't worth mentioning. Besides this I also started playing Magic Diamond (aggresive opening system) with my friends and strong club.
With this knowledge I could jump into almost any game and play as their partner.
Now to come to the backside of all this. I didn't really know how to play the cards. I put the emphasis on learning weird systems, conventions and other things. I couldn't really "read the opponents cards", "visualize hands" and "declare play". So this is where I'm standing right now. I have a knowledge of literarly thousands of systems/conventions and it feels like I'm starting to get a hang of what might be good and what might be bad. But, I really do regret every time I play a hand, that I didn't focus on how to defend and declare correctly. Because, I usually end up in right contract and put a good pressure on opponents due to bidding. But then, the declare play and defense has lost me thousands of match points and imps.
Card reading is something you have use for in EVERY SINGLE HAND. Conventions and systems is something that comes up "every now and then" but is not really frequent.

Anyway, this is starting to look like "Danie's life story" so I'll just end it right here and tell you what conventions that might be useful.

Ogust responses to weak 2s
weak 2s
Lebensohl
Roman KeyCard Blackwood
negative doubles / take-out doubles
support doubles and redoubles
2-way checkback
"the witch"
forcing pass after overcall

With or without these you can and will probably win a major competition, even a world cup, as long as you are a really good card player.
The most important thing thou, is not to learn conventions but to discuss them completely with your partner plus playing a lot with him/her so you know what he bids what on.
Because, bridge is a partnership game, you can play anyway and bid like *****, as long as you know what to expect from partner in different situations.

Yesterday me and partner ended up in a slam no other pair had found. It was a laydown slam and our bidding was very simple. 1D-1H-3NT-6D
1D was natural, 1H was natural, 3NT was suggesting 3NT looking at 7-7½ quick tricks (6-card diamond suit headed by AKQxxx or similar and a side Ace and something more (jack/queen/king)). My hand was very similar to x AKxx xxxx KQxx so I raised partner to 6d, thinking it over for maybe 2nanoseconds.

[Chamaco]

How should I go about choosing which conventions to learn? (I play SAYC.) It seems impossible to learn them all. Considering that it takes some time to learn a convention, I don't want to waste it learning a convention that I'll have little opportunity to use.

I don't have a regular partner yet, so I have no guidance at all. Any suggestions?

--Eric
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As someone wrote, picking a system is better than picking a bunch of conventions, BUT....

If you are a beginner, you will have to change lots of partners before you get to a point where you play with a regular p. And even then you will have to play with pickup partners quite often.

Therefore my advice is the following: in choosing a system, at least at the beginning, DO NOT CHOOSE THE BEST SYSTEM BUT CHOOSE THE MOST POPULAR SYSTEM IN YOUR AREA.
This way you will be able to shift between partners at your local club, which is highest priority (more p = more opportunities to play and make experience).

So if you are in the US, SAYC is your best shot; if you are somewhere else, maybe ACOL or anything else is taught to beginners.

And you should pick onvemtions in a similar manner.

Later, when you become stronger and more acknowledged you will stat to play better and more complicated stuff when you have god partners willing to study.

Not a sound theoretical advice but a good practical hint.


In the same way, pick the conventions

[irdoz]

Here's my experiences based on going through a similar learning process...

1. I learnt bridge at an online site mainly populated by North Americans so I learnt sayc and then 2/1 because it maximised my chances of getting partners.

2. Learning the basic outline of sayc and 2/1 was relatively easy - I bought standard texts or downloaded sayc guides from the net. However, I found learning these 'basic' systems in detail and all their nuances quite difficult...2/1 is actually quite complex and there is no one standard..you nned to develop a lot of indivudalised agreements. Although there are some texts which attempt to define standard basic bidding all of the ones I used I found problems with or they were incomplete - so a lot of my knowledge I picked up by hanging around online bridge lessons and by a process of osmosis and by playing with much more knowledgeable partners who I gave permission to give me lessons. As an example of nuances here's a few sayc (non-competitive) auctions that you could ask experienced sayc players the meaning of and you would get different answers about their meaning...

1h-1s-1nt-2h
1h-2c-2d-2h
1h-2c-2d-3h
1nt-2c-2d-3c/3d

3. Based on my observation of players at the site I play a number of them experience significant problems in competitive bidding... such as being able to distinguish between a preemptive raise, a mixed raise and a good raise in a competitve auction, knowing all of the nuances of negative doubles, knowing proper hands for takeout doubles and responses to takeout doubles, knowing free bids at 2 level are forcing in competitive auctions and knowing when doubles are penalty or not, knowing what bidding a new suit at the 3 levle means etc... Since many auctions are competitive a good reference on competitive bidding might be as useful as a book of conventions - the Bergen Better Bidding books (vol 1 and ii) or Marshall Miles book on competitive bidding or the robson/segal notes on competitive bidding downloadable from Daniel Niell's system page.

4. The theme of 'card play' versus 'conventions' is a constant one as reflected in this thread. I happen to enjoy systems and conventions - so I have fun with them. I don't do this because it's the most efficient way to improve my bridge skills - I study systems and conventions because I enjoy doing it. I learn card play by playing lots of hands and improving my pattern recognition. My attitude is 'do what you enjoy'...and there's different aspects of bridge to enjoy.

5. When I first learnt sayc the conventions I found really useful to add to the basic tool kit were:-
i) new minor force - it helps greatly to find the safest game contract between 4M and 3nt
ii) 4th suit force - also helps determine safest game contract

Have fun!