[supes]

I've learned the basics but am keen to advance and improve. In your opinion is it better to start out playing social bridge for a while and then move on to duplicate or should I try to find a beginner duplicate group and jump in there?

My thought is that perhaps the beginner duplicate groups tend to be very experienced social bridge players who are moving to duplicate. I would not be playing at their level. I want to determine the best way to learn without being a burden to the other players.

Thank you for any thoughts on this.

[jh51]

Personally I would recommend duplicate. While I started playing socially in college, when my game really started improving was when I started playing duplicate.

I don't know where you are located, but I have found that a lot of clubs in the US offer free bridge lessons in conjunction with their Non Life Master or limited games. Two years ago, I moved to a new city and started playing with a complete novice. (She had never played bridge before January of the year we met.) She loved the game and improved rapidly, which I doubt would have happened playing social bridge. She is now on the verge of making life master. She got her start with the free lessaons at the local bridge club.

[mgoetze]

If you want to get good at bridge you should look for non-beginner duplicate games.

[BunnyGo]

What mgoetze said.

I'd follow that up by saying that it's generally good to find a couple different partners (if possible): one who is around your level who has similar goals of improving and enjoying the game; and one who is significantly better and is interested in playing once a month and mentoring. This set up was very useful for me when I started learning.

[jh51]

 mgoetze, on 2011-May-31, 14:02, said:

If you want to get good at bridge you should look for non-beginner duplicate games.

Agreed. I mentioned the beginner duplicate games because

• The OP seemed to be concerned about getting in over his head
  
• That seems to be where the free lessons are most often offered.
  
• These games give the novice duplicate player an opportunity to learn the mechanics of duplicate in an environment geared to that.

I started playing duplicate in an era before beginner games were regularly offered, so I learned in a sink-or-swim environment. Tournament events were sometimes flighted, but stratification at any level was unknown. As a novice I sometimes played against pros and took the appropriate lumps. (But was thrilled when I got an occasional good board.) So I know the value of playing in the non-beginner games. You don't get better playing against other novices, but you also don't get better if you get overwelmed and stop playing the game,

[ggwhiz]

Best advice I ever got was "just play up and forget about winning for a while".

Play against the toughest opposition you can stand humility wise and go to school on how they beat you. It will shorten the learning curve to winning by a large factor.

On going to their first out of town tournament, a rookie pair once asked my advice, "should we go to the NABC's (Buffalo) or the Regional (Toronto)" thinking they were only ready for the Regional. Not only locally but the free lessons, welcoming atmosphere etc. for rookies at an NABC is outstanding.

It wasn't close, I insisted on Buffalo. They immediately came 2nd in a novice pairs game and played the rest of the team games with the pair that came 1st and had a great time. They had picked their spots, getting clobbered in tough local competition and then going for the thrill of victory in this tournament.

Started placing well in local open events VERY soon after.

This is much more difficult to do without a regular partner of similar mindset but you can find one in the local duplicate scene. Not happening in the socail games.

[supes]

Thank you all for your thoughtful replies. I had a feeling that social bridge was not the most efficient way to hone one's skills. A bridge instructor will be available in the fall and I will be signing on for that. At the local bridge club there was some talk about a mentoring program - I may look into that too. Meanwhile, I think will just dive into what are supposedly beginner's duplicate matches. Thanks again.

[Vampyr]

 supes, on 2011-May-31, 12:53, said:

My thought is that perhaps the beginner duplicate groups tend to be very experienced social bridge players who are moving to duplicate.

This is not always true. These days, people in these groups will tend to be people who are in the middle of/have just finished a course of lessons. Also, clubs will often offer "supervised duplicate", where you play but have the chance to ask advice from a teacher.

All of the people who have said not to play with beginners have a point, but first you need to get your feet wet and at the same time find one or more partners who are keen to improve with you.

[TylerE]

I think novice games are ok, but I'd seriously limit it to like, 5 sessions, maybe 10 at the max. Beyond that permenant impairment of skills is likely...

[matmat]

play. read. play. read. play. read. play. play. play. talk to better players in your area; if any of them are your friends get them to play a session with you once in a while. Doesn't matter if it is duplicate game or 4 handed at the kitchen table: ask questions.

[Antrax]

As a fellow beginner, I have to say that "playing with the toughest opposition you can find" is not that great a piece of advice from my experience. My first duplicate experience involved a lot of confusion, I didn't really know anything about competitive bidding and had no clue what any of the opponents' (natural) calls meant. It was quite frustrating, and while we didn't do terribly, the results seemed completely random at the end of the session. It was also quite strange to see that somehow the 25 HCP = game rule we'd been taught didn't really hold water, and overall it was a mess.
Of course, duplicate beginner games or social bridge won't really address these problems. Neither will playing online, BTW - the advice you normally get online, when it's not "faster please", is usually in hindsight and revolves around a specific convention your partner expected you to know. It's also delivered in caps.
So, what worked for me and might work for you is twofold: the card play aspect you can actually learn on your own or with your partner. There's no need to play bridge for it, you can just read books and/or practice with software. For bidding, find a mentor until you know the very basics of hand evaluation, competitive bidding and the most common conventions in your area. Then you can start playing and make sense of those sessions where you get bad results - without a basic level of understanding of the game (much higher than what I had after learning for months at my local club), your opponents' actions and your mistakes will be completely cryptic.

[BunnyGo]

I have to address Antrax's comments, because I strongly disagree with his conclusion even though I sympathize with his reasoning. I completely understand the frustration of playing in the toughest field you can find. At my first national tournament (when I was beginning competitive bridge) I tried playing in a couple open pairs events. I got killed for the most part, and quite demoralized. This is also not good for learning. I balanced this by playing some weaker events and cheering myself up by reminding myself that I'd improved. That said, I played better bridge and learned more by playing the experts. They were usually helpful after the hands were done (and some even made amusing and insightful comments during the play). I strongly recommend playing the toughest field you can. It'll be very painful at first, but you'll be so much better after a while. The experts make you pay for your mistakes, so you have to see them; the beginners don't and you won't even realize you made a mistake.

As for learning just by reading books, I think matmat is closer to correct that you have to play all the time as well. I find that after I read I book, I have to play that very night to try and keep new ideas from the book in mind. A few weeks later, I've forgotten most of what I learned, but the more I play the more I retain.

Keep reading, keep playing, remember it's for fun (even though it's very serious), and talk to better players...they are usually very willing to help.

[hotShot]

Don't focus to much on bidding, the most important thing to improve is declarer play.

With good declarer play, you get all the tricks you can.
This will help your judgment and your defense will improve once you understand what the declarer is doing.
After that you can start thinking about bidding..

Your problem will be that everyone will want to teach you about bidding, because that is much easier than teaching declarer play.

[Antrax]

BunnyGo, I suspect we're just not agreeing on what "beginner" means in this context. I've also felt this when joining these forums, people expected me to know much more than I did. In case my story didn't make it clear enough, here's a concrete list of things I was clueless about when I played a duplicate game against people who knew how to play:
- Concentrated HCP are better than scattered HCP
- Imbalanced hands are better than balanced hands
(these are relevant since I expected 25 HCP = game every time)
- Any way to interfere over an NT opening and any way to handle interference
- Preemptive bids (I didn't even know they existed, let alone what they meant or how to handle them)
- Jacoby transfers
- Cue bids to me meant responder has 13+ pts
- Defensive signals
etc, etc. As you can imagine, at least one of these came up on every board, and it's impossible to play bridge when you can't make sense of anyone's bids (including partner's, since we didn't know what our bids meant over interference). So, if this the skill level you equate with "beginner" (as I do), it's useless to attempt to learn by competing against strong opponents - the subtleties of their skill will be lost in the fact that you have absolutely no clue what's going on (and they, in turn, sometimes give you undeserved good results because they drew the wrong negative inferences, based on the assumption you have any clue - good luck learning from that). So, certainly other people had other experiences, but I do stand behind mine.

[P_Marlowe]

#1 Try to get a regular partner, who has the same ambitions like you.
#2 Try to have one source, which tells you what to do / pick up.
Quite often in a given situation, if you ask "What to do" you get different answers,
if you mixe up different schools of thought, you will get a mess.

And

#3 Have fun.

Now to Social vs. Club

One big issue with social bride is, that the speed and amount that gets played in a
session is considerable lower than at the club in dublicate game, and usually the play
will also occur at a different time, if you work - you will late at night after a full
work day.
If you move from social to dublicate this is the biggest hurdles, and I dont think it
is close - of course, if you have experts in a social game than forget what I said.
But to overcome this hurdle you need to train / get used to it.

With kind regards
Marlowe

PS: Just forgot to add - have fun.

[matmat]

 Antrax, on 2011-June-01, 00:38, said:

BunnyGo, I suspect we're just not agreeing on what "beginner" means in this context. I've also felt this when joining these forums, people expected me to know much more than I did. In case my story didn't make it clear enough, here's a concrete list of things I was clueless about when I played a duplicate game against people who knew how to play:
- Concentrated HCP are better than scattered HCP
- Imbalanced hands are better than balanced hands
(these are relevant since I expected 25 HCP = game every time)
- Any way to interfere over an NT opening and any way to handle interference
- Preemptive bids (I didn't even know they existed, let alone what they meant or how to handle them)
- Jacoby transfers
- Cue bids to me meant responder has 13+ pts
- Defensive signals
etc, etc. As you can imagine, at least one of these came up on every board, and it's impossible to play bridge when you can't make sense of anyone's bids (including partner's, since we didn't know what our bids meant over interference). So, if this the skill level you equate with "beginner" (as I do), it's useless to attempt to learn by competing against strong opponents - the subtleties of their skill will be lost in the fact that you have absolutely no clue what's going on (and they, in turn, sometimes give you undeserved good results because they drew the wrong negative inferences, based on the assumption you have any clue - good luck learning from that). So, certainly other people had other experiences, but I do stand behind mine.

I'm very much in-between on this.

On one hand, I don't fully agree with Bunnygo. I think that you do want to play up, but I don't think you want to be playing against top-flight experts, either. It will become frustrating, a lot of the experts have their biases and peeves, and you will be getting instruction on topics that are way too advanced, or even irrelevant, for you. Furthermore, you will have the effect of randomizing the field, making it less enjoyable for the advanced/expert players, so it may irritate them. That said, if you do find that playing up is making your bridge better fast, you should not let either of the two things mentioned above stop you.

On the other hand, I don't really like the idea of playing in a novice/beginner game, unless there is some form of instruction involved from a proper teacher. Playing is important, but when you don't get punished for your errors (or at least have them pointed out to you by an experienced player), you're not going to improve quickly.

As to learning bidding, declarer play, and defence (noone above mentioned defence?):

A friend of mine on the forums once pointed out that declarer play is like underwear. It is your own business. You can learn the tricks and techniques from books, practice them on excellent software like Bridgemaster, and try to implement what you have learned at the table. The quality of your cardplay is independent of who your partner is and it is the easiest of the few things you can do in bridge to improve all on your own.

Bidding... when you go to a foreign country without knowing the only language the natives speak, you're going to be in trouble. Sometimes you can get by with hand-signals, unfortunately, bridge frowns upon those, and for good reason. You need a (very) basic system to start with, something you are comfortable with and does not require much memory work. Sure, you can learn the new minor forcings, exclusions, drurys, etc., but I don't think you need to to start. Talk to the good players in your area to figure out what general systemic approach (2/1, sayc, precision, acol, whatever) is the most popular where you live. Then find the simplest version of it you can, and try to learn that. As your cardplay and bidding get better, and you become more comfortable with a partner or two, try to add a few things to your system, or maybe even change the overall approach slightly. You should try to learn the more complex conventions, especially the ones played in your area, but not to introduce them into your repertoire immediately, but rather to help you understand what the others at the table might be talking about.

Defence is hard. Two things, in my opinion you should do, are: decide on a signaling method with your partners, and work hard on counting the points and suit lengths around the table, and the number of tricks to be taken when dummy comes down AND during the rest of the hand; all this using guesses from the bidding, inferences from the play, and signals from partner

and as marlowe points out... most important bit: have fun. if you're not having fun, what's the point?

[Phil]

I think there might be another thread on this subject. If there is, why not merge them and pin the thread (hello??))?

Anyway, like any intellectual activity, you have to spend a lot of time reading. There are plenty of resources on the web (the Forums should be in anyone's Top 5) for newer players. While you get some bad advice here, I hope the lurkers get a sense of the frequent posters who understand how to play the game. Surf older articles on Bridgewinners.com, Fred's old "Deal of the Week" articles (DOTW) are great, and Jeff Goldsmith has a lot of good articles (Goldsmith) too.

There are many great books, and as I have mentioned before, there are some that are compulsory for an advancing player.

Learn a very basic system for the 1st two years. I mean BASIC, like SAYC + maybe a few frills. Ignore 'teachers' and better players from your area that constantly talk about conventions. These players are focusing on the wrong area of the game. However, listen very closely when good players talk about bidding judgment especially in competitive situations. As hotshot and matmat say above, focus hard on cardplay and counting. Bidding can wait.

As far as playing in the best game you can possibly find? I don't know about that, especially for a new player. Your results will tend to poor, and sort of random. Some days you will score in the low 30's, and other days you will score close to average, but that might be because your opponents made a lot of poor decisions, so that does not mean that you 'belong' in that game. When you can consistently score 45-50% in a game with limited masterpoints, and occasionally beat it, then I think you should move up to the open games.

Also, try to find a partner that is at your level, and wants to invest the time. Good luck!

[BunnyGo]

 Antrax, on 2011-June-01, 00:38, said:

BunnyGo, I suspect we're just not agreeing on what "beginner" means in this context. I've also felt this when joining these forums, people expected me to know much more than I did. In case my story didn't make it clear enough, here's a concrete list of things I was clueless about when I played a duplicate game against people who knew how to play:
- Concentrated HCP are better than scattered HCP
- Imbalanced hands are better than balanced hands
(these are relevant since I expected 25 HCP = game every time)
- Any way to interfere over an NT opening and any way to handle interference
- Preemptive bids (I didn't even know they existed, let alone what they meant or how to handle them)
- Jacoby transfers
- Cue bids to me meant responder has 13+ pts
- Defensive signals
etc, etc. As you can imagine, at least one of these came up on every board, and it's impossible to play bridge when you can't make sense of anyone's bids (including partner's, since we didn't know what our bids meant over interference). So, if this the skill level you equate with "beginner" (as I do), it's useless to attempt to learn by competing against strong opponents - the subtleties of their skill will be lost in the fact that you have absolutely no clue what's going on (and they, in turn, sometimes give you undeserved good results because they drew the wrong negative inferences, based on the assumption you have any clue - good luck learning from that). So, certainly other people had other experiences, but I do stand behind mine.

Fair enough. I think matmat summed up the pros and cons of our opinions quite well.

[matmat]

 P_Marlowe, on 2011-June-01, 09:08, said:

One big issue with social bride is, that the speed and amount that gets played in a
session is considerable lower than at the club in dublicate game, and usually the play
will also occur at a different time, if you work - you will late at night after a full
work day.

I don't agree with this much. There is nothing wrong with playing a little slower when you are starting out. There is also nothing wrong with mixing in some chatter, taunts, and legitimate questions. You can take a few minutes to try to figure out the best call, play, or to look up a convention etc. at the dining room table, which you can't do at a duplicate tournament. This is especially good if you do have a good player in your foursome. The transition to tournament bridge really should not be that major, provided you know what to expect. (and, by the way, I don't think telling social players "duplicate bridge is a whole different universe" is doing much service to the game of bridge, as it may keep people away).

[VM1973]

I disagree with most posters. If you really want to get better at bridge then playing is not the way. The point of playing is A) to have fun, B) to win points, and C) to apply what you know [not necessarily in that order].

Within the choices you gave, I'd say play in the strongest field you can. But you get better at bridge by practicing and the most important thing to practice is good defense. Unless you have much better luck than I do, you're going to be defending a lot more hands than you are playing. Read a lot about defending and, if you can, get a computer game with lots of defensive hands. Defending 1NT-2NT-3NT auctions will be very profitable for you. You should defend them quite slowly and carefully count as much as you can about the hand. The declarer's point count is known, so you can practice counting his HCPs. You should not hesitate to spend 10+ minutes on the first hand carefully counting things. You will find it impossible to do this in a social or a duplicate game - your opponents will become impatient. At first it will be very hard to focus and count, but after several hundred hands it will become second nature.

You will find the counting skill/habit to be very useful when you start playing hands, too. Beginner bridge players suffer unnecessary adverse ruffs all the time because they didn't properly count the trump suit. "Sorry, partner, I didn't realize she still had a trump!" Don't let that happen to you. Learning to count may not seem as interesting as learning a fancy new bidding convention, or learning to endplay an opponent, but you will never really excel at bridge unless you can count a hand in your sleep.