[micsfyuen]

A friend and I went back to our secondary school to teach bridge lately. There are around 10 students, they are age 12-15, with strong math background, but 0 experience in bridge. Our school dominated the local high school championships 10-15 years ago (won 3 champions and 2 runner-ups in 5 years), so we have high hopes in bringing back a competitive team.

We have a session of 1.5 hr once every week after school. In the first few weeks, we did not do much on teaching, mainly just trying to get to know these young people and watch them playing freely. After three weeks of observation, I find these young people are passionate and have potential to play really well (Without any teaching, they manage the entries properly and they know they need to establish long suit).

We would like to establish a method to help them learn better. Please advise if you have experience on teaching young beginners.

We started actually teaching techniques last week. We started our session with 20-30 minutes teaching, using the "learn to play bridge - basic" program, then play team match in the remaining time. We have also written up some notes on bidding system and carding agreement for them to follow, but we are not pushing them to memorize the system, they just look at the notes when bidding.

Look forward to hearing some advise.

[barmar]

A friend of mine is President of New England Youth Bridge. He passed on this:

There are links to the subject in general on ACBL website (which include the link to New England Youth Bridge, Inc. Teachers Manual and Lesson Plans).
http://www.acbl.org/...s-for-teachers/

Or, more directly there are these links:

1. To NEYB website in general
http://www.newenglan....org/index.html

If anyone wants to contact me directly, they can do so by using the "contact us" reference from the home page of NEYB website.

2. The page of the website that links to the manual and plans.
http://www.newenglan...rg/lessons.html

[SteveMoe]

Get them doing - fast and long. Avoid lectures and passive classroom type learning as much as possible.
Play "Mini-Bridge" for 75% of time then introduce a play topic. Discuss. Repeat.
Introduce scoring and keep track for daily champions. Foster competitiveness.

Once their excitement and confidence is shown, introduce bidding.
Show how bidding relates to their experience with playing Mini-bridge.

Then get them into the free programs from this site.
Finally let them play BBO 4-hand bridge if feasible.

[Zelandakh]

Crib sheets are the way to go. Everything relevant for a call needs to be in a short summary form and easy to look up. Once the students have bid a few hands they will use the crib sheets less to choose their call as to check it. After a while they will not need them at all.

Bidding in the early action can be organised as something of a flow chart - if this then this. For Opener the first split comes in defining whether the hand is balanced or unbalanced. Balanced hands should have a ladder. For Basic Acol, this might be:-

0-11: Pass
12-14: open 1NT
15-16: open 1 of a suit; rebid NT
17-18: open 1 of a suit; jump rebid NT
19: open 1 of a suit; rebid 3NT
20-22: open 2NT
23-24: open 2♣; rebid NT
25+ : open 2♣; rebid 3NT

You then need a section for choice of suits with a 4432 hand: ♥ > ♠ > ♣/♦ and the NT structure (Stayman, transfers(?), whatever) you are teaching.

For unbalanced hands it is a little more difficult in that you need sections for the rebids. These need to be easy to get to from the opening bids or the students end up getting flustered trying to find the right sheet rather than thinking about the bridge. Ideally the same page for both if you can manage it; if not then double-printed so that these sheets can sit next to each other. Try to get them bidding hands fairly quickly once you start teaching it rather than doing too much book teaching in advance. It helps to hold their interest and the lessons make more sense after having tried it practically a few times.

And that is basically it for bidding. You want to make everything as simple as possible to start off with so that they can feel comfortable bidding part score and game hands to a reasonable contract without interference. Competitive bidding comes after that in a basic form. Slam bidding, fine judgement and optimising bidding space through conventions can come later on, if desired.

Teaching card play is somewhat more varied, if for no other reason than the exposure to other trick-taking games varies quite a lot. I think here a table of standard leads in approximate order of favourability is not a bad way of starting off, as it teaches several individual rules (top of a sequence, 4th best from strength and length, top of a doubleton) at the same time. Obviously you also need to teach about counting tricks and losers, ruffing, finesses, stoppers, etc along the way. I think how to do this needs more feeling than with the bidding in terms of balancing organic learning with new ideas and keeping the process fun. This last is the main rule here - prefer to err on the side of progressing more slowly if the alternative is to risk the students losing their enjoyment and possibly giving up.

If you teach bridge properly, it does not take very long to get an intelligent student up to a basic level imho. Concentrate on reaching this basic level quickly; the rest will flow from that and the confidence it brings. A good test - deal out 4 bridge hands. If you have an above average hand keep it, otherwise select another and take the best. Most of the time this means you and your student get the 2 best hands at the table. Now bid normally assuming the opps pass. You should reach the optimal contract (ignoring slams) almost every time. This is the basic level you are aiming for. Once there, do an intensive course in competitive bidding and the student is pretty much ready to go in a club game. If your lesson plan is for months of training to reach that point then it is too long-winded and does not contain enough practical experience. Similarly, if you are teaching cue bidding and Blackwood before reaching this standard, you are directing the students to think about the wrong things. Basics first!

Most of all, good luck! Hopefully your students go away with a love of the game that will stay with them for life.

[barmar]

Zelandakh, on 2017-March-07, 07:23, said:

Crib sheets are the way to go. Everything relevant for a call needs to be in a short summary form and easy to look up. Once the students have bid a few hands they will use the crib sheets less to choose their call as to check it. After a while they will not need them at all.

Not just children. A friend taught a bunch of us how to play bridge when I was in my 20's, and that's the technique he used.

[gixxer1000]

I am a young bridge player, and I think the best way to teach beginners is to start with declarer play and defence. Most bridge books for beginners start out with bidding, but I find bidding to be extremely dry and boring. I would also give them bidding (maybe even declarer play and defence cheat sheets to start with) cheat sheets, and only teach them bidding when they have gotten into bridge - otherwise you will scare them off.
I once taught the basics of bridge to some of my mates (14-15 year old boys - not the average bridge player demographic) and they enjoyed it, but I know that they probably wouldn't want to spend weeks learning it. I think kids who like strategic games such as chess will like bridge. I would also particularly target chess players as they are already willing to spend time playing a game that isn't on a computer.
Anyway, I hope this was helpful and good luck.

[Zelandakh]

Hello gixxer and welcome to the BBO forums. One of the things to recognise here is that everyone is different. I personally found the bidding side of the game much more interesting than the card play and this is really what drew me in. If I had only worked on card play to start with I doubt very much that the game would held my attention more than any other whist variant.

I do note though that I started with bridge through chess, albeit in a slightly unusual way. Basically I used to take the chess books from the local library and study them. At some point, I had spare slots on my library card and as the bridge books happen to be next to chess in the Dewey decimal system, they were a logical choice. A pre-teen teaching himself alone from books is probably another demographic that is not going to reach the mode anytime soon but it is a little anecdotal evidence that that strategy might have at least some success in certain quarters.

[ggwhiz]

My wife and I taught a whole bunch from 2002-2005 and experienced a lot of trial and error.

1. I agree with less lecture more hands on the cards and lots of card play before bidding.

2. We used 1 or 2 pre-set deals to start, had them play it (we told them what was trump, declarer and dummy when those were introduced etc.). After the play, all 4 hands go face up and they get a short lecture on the theme of the deal. Anything from long suits can overcome high cards, crossruff, repeated finesse, 2-way finesse but 1 theme at a time to start.

3. Next they just play and we kibitz and coach, working the room.

4. When we introduced bidding we had laminated bidding ladders for all and at the speed of light they took to bidding boxes like fish to water.

5. Started the bidding by laying out all 4 hands from James Bond vs. Drax in Moonraker and walked them through the story. That split them into 2 bidding camps, always and never.

6. We designed table cloths with SAYC type bidding notes in front of each player that could be printed out but I'm not sure if I can find the PDF which is likely to be on a long gone laptop. I'll look and be happy to send it to you if I find it. Also a Jeopardy game we used to review when we got up to a few dozen bridge concepts.

The highlight was after I had struggled to get BBO unblocked in the computer lab. I walked in one day and the teacher ran up to me and said "We got it working and it's AWESOME!". In I went and 30 10-12 year olds had already clicked on help me find a game and were terrorizing the main bridge club.

One little gal called over and said "Mister, what does that gold star mean?" (her partner). Then she looked at her 2 count, said "never mind" and left. Sorry Massimo.

Just about all of them got the boot for excessive table hopping and when I told BBO what happened Uday immediately offered free robots for them. This was just before Christmas and sadly BBO was blocked again first thing in the new year but a handful got into BBO on their own. We even had 2 sisters playing a bit online with their grandparents who live in Tokyo.

[barmar]

gixxer1000, on 2017-April-04, 02:13, said:

I am a young bridge player, and I think the best way to teach beginners is to start with declarer play and defence.

I think this is why many classes for young people start with MInibridge, which replaces bidding with a simple method to determine declarer and the contract (but not as random as whist).

[barmar]

Zelandakh, on 2017-April-04, 05:13, said:

Hello gixxer and welcome to the BBO forums. One of the things to recognise here is that everyone is different. I personally found the bidding side of the game much more interesting than the card play and this is really what drew me in. If I had only worked on card play to start with I doubt very much that the game would held my attention more than any other whist variant.

While bidding is certainly the more interesting part of the game, it's hard to understand what it's all about if you don't really know how the play works.

[StevenG]

barmar, on 2017-April-04, 10:16, said:

While bidding is certainly the more interesting part of the game, it's hard to understand what it's all about if you don't really know how the play works.

I always used to think the play was just an exercise to see if you'd got the bidding right.

[1eyedjack]

I may be a generation out of date, but in my youth everyone knew the basic principles of whist card play, the concept of tricks, trumps, and even in some cases a rudimentary idea of partnerships, so that in the transition to Bridge the major conceptual difference was bidding and scoring. OK, the card play technique was wanting, but it was not as if the ideas of card play were alien, where the bidding and scoring was.

So I would have expected the bidding to be a priority over card play for someone just starting out.

Nowadays, perhaps any familiarity with card play has been superseded by Minecraft.

[ggwhiz]

1eyedjack, on 2017-April-04, 12:11, said:

I may be a generation out of date,

So I would have expected the bidding to be a priority over card play for someone just starting out.

Nowadays, perhaps any familiarity with card play has been superseded by Minecraft.

I and most of the people of my age bracket I know grew up playing hearts, euchre, 500, spades, gin rummy, canasta .......

The people of the younger generation I know don't have a clue what most of those games are. Not surprising since few can name all four beatles either.

[mycroft]

ggwhiz, on 2017-April-04, 13:08, said:

The people of the younger generation I know don't have a clue what most of those games are. Not surprising since few can name all four beatles either.

Wait, wait, I know dis!
da Pope, da King, and da Movie, right?

Or was it Peter, Davy, Micky and Mike? I can never remember.

[blackshoe]

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

[Zelandakh]

blackshoe, on 2017-April-07, 20:07, said:

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

If we are talking about fictional writers, how about HP, JRR, CS and JK?

[JLilly]

"A pre-teen teaching himself alone from books is probably another demographic that is not going to reach the mode anytime soon but it is a little anecdotal evidence that that strategy might have at least some success in certain quarters. "

Wow, I learned the rudiments of Goren from my parents when I was nine or ten, then paid no attention to the game until my singing group in university played it (a very basic modern version w/ weak 2's, tabletalk for responses to 2C or bidding over interference, intermediate jumpshifts, and no defensive conventions outside of leading fourth-highest against NT or the top of doubletons you sought a ruff in. Recently I've become a (perhaps pathological) consumer of theory and BBO forums and playing on BBO into the wee hours. When explaining defensive signalling to people who are intelligent and competent in spades or in hearts, their attitude has been "so you're supposed to cheat?".

On the bidding side, a common response to my promoting bridge is, "what fun is it to just memorize a bunch of responses?". What is a good way of communicating the challenge of interpreting your partner's (and opps') bids and choosing bids that your partner will interpret in a way likely to be favorable to your side?

Historically, lots of spouse-spouse teams have existed and done well, along with non-sexual close-friends (for any gender combination). With approx. equal talent, maybe it's taking the friendship to "advanced mode" for a while, but in an abstracted and stripped-down context.

Can one find partners on BBO? I don't think I have the time or the financial security to become a world-class master, but I want to find a partner I can play around ways of bidding or defending with. What's the best way to go about this?

Thanks,
JL

[ggwhiz]

JLilly, on 2017-April-16, 01:04, said:

Can one find partners on BBO? I don't think I have the time or the financial security to become a world-class master, but I want to find a partner I can play around ways of bidding or defending with. What's the best way to go about this?

Thanks,
JL

If you are looking for a player that is somewhat serious about being/becoming competitive or just improving, try the ACBL Individuals and take note not only of partners but opponents as well.

It gets exposure to a large number, you can check their profile for compatibility and you can find them online later to invite them to play a bit as a road test. I imagine many in the field may be open to forming an ongoing partnership.

Depending on where you currently stand level wise the Beginner Intermediate Lounge (www.bilbridge.com) brings a lot of like minded players together who go on to form partnerships.

[mycroft]

I would agree. If you count as BIL, join BIL! You'll find a lot to go with.

Whether you can or not, do the "play and keep track of people" thing. You will find people you feel comfortable with who play the way you do; now you may have a partner.

If you have local FTF contacts, follow them and see where that gets you (that's what I do when I'm playing non-robot; but I have a reputation in my community and lots of "friends" (that would be people who I direct that are still willing to talk to me)).

I agree with you on the "it's no fun just memorizing a bunch of rules". But two things:
- without a common language, you can't talk.
- before you can be a master poet, you have to learn the vocabulary.

This applies to bridge bidding and defensive carding languages as much as Spanish or Vietnamese. And unfortunately, there's a lot of vocabulary to learn.

The great thing is, however:
- like any great user of a language, you are allowed to break the rules provided you know why you're doing it (and if you can get a partner to agree with you!)
- there will *always* be situations where the rules end, and you have to use judgment and creativity. Even if you have Meckwell's 800 pages of notes, you will fall off the edge eventually.

[JLilly]

"If you are looking for a player that is somewhat serious about being/becoming competitive or just improving, try ACBL Individuals and take note not only of partners but opponents as well. "

Gghwhiz, is this a forum available on BBO? Thanks