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CHAPTER ONE
If you are an expert, or budding expert, read no further, except perhaps out of curiosity. This book is for you, the ordinary player. Ordinary, even poor, not because you are incapable of playing well, but because you do not really understand the game, particularly the bidding.
In my experience, learning to play Contract Bridge is like hearing a joke that others find amusing, but you do not see the point. There are three questions you might ask yourself:
Who thought of such a weird joke or story (i.e. way to play the game) in the first place?
Why do they understand, but I do not?
Can I learn to understand?
Notice I say "learn to understand". Learning the rules of Contract Bridge is not an area I shall be covering. I assume you know the basic rules. You may even have known them for years, but yet still find the bidding a mysterious blend of luck and dogmatism. In chapter two I shall be answering the first question briefly, to set the scene. The second question and more particularly the third are the main themes of this book.
In all games and sports there are different levels of expertise. Contract Bridge is no exception. Players range from full-time professionals to once-a-year holiday-in-the-rain make-up-a-fourth greenhorns. Competitions span the range: party bridge; club bridge; county bridge; national and international championships. The higher the level to which you aspire, the more technical expertise you require. There is more to the game, however, than technique. Above a certain level, all players are approximately equal in skill. For a team or pair to beat others, what they seek, in addition to their judgement, intuition, flair, and luck, is an "edge".
By "edge" I mean a small, but sufficiently significant strategical superiority that, assuming other factors balance out, will give them a winning advantage. For example, if in a match there are many slam hands, then the team best equipped to manage them will usually win. Or, if the hands are mostly at the game level, but need to be played in the correct denomination, No Trumps, Majors, or Minors, then those bidding systems which deal best with mid-strength hands will have the edge.
One cannot tell beforehand what type of hands will occur. That is part of the perpetual appeal of the game. Experts therefore design their bidding systems, and usually their defensive play signals, to try to give themselves an edge in what they consider to be the most profitable situations. There is as yet no consensus on what these are. Thus, over the years, a proliferation of systems has emerged, each new one of which attempts, often successfully in the short term, to outdo previous systems at the highest level of the game. Books expounding and extolling these systems become best sellers, by Contract Bridge criteria, but they may be of little help to ordinary players. Many find such books incomprehensible, through no fault of the authors or their readers.
I do not find this surprising. I would even suggest it is to be expected. Just as one is advised not to teach one's grandparent to suck eggs, so one should not try to teach the expert game to relative rabbits, as they are sometimes affectionately called. This may seem a little hard on such players. I have nevertheless seen so many struggle to master some esoteric convention, or part of another system, (even with some fleeting success on a particular deal, for which one must give them due credit), only to see them "butcher" ordinary hands which experts would bid correctly whatever system they were playing.
More generally, I have noticed over the years that a common source of learning, by those wishing to improve their understanding of the game, has been some expert's book, interpreted second or third hand by a dominant partner, either marriage partner or Contract Bridge partner, or both. The pupil is overwhelmed by second-hand dogmatism from on high. The words "always" and "never", however much the original expert source would have warned against them, are scattered about bidding sequence post mortems with no hint of a rational explanation. I believe that players, once they have grasped the basic rules of the game, develop better by learning from the bottom up, thinking for themselves, rather than from the top down, slavishing following what others say.
To return to the "amusing story" analogy. Professionals, the world's Contract Bridge experts, invented the jokes and stories, good stories, but they lose so much in the telling, from one to another, that they are no longer understood by the vast audience among whom they circulate. My objective is to enable such players to understand the background to these stories, so that they can autonomously, not automatonly[sic], enjoy their game to the best of their ability, instead of miserably trying to mimic the masters.
One of the lasting attractions of Contract Bridge is that deals vary at random. By chance, a lesser player can do better than a greater player; a poor system can produce a better result than a good one. Every dog can have its day, so to speak. Even so, virtue is rewarded in the long run. At the top of the tree the better players and the better systems emerge as winners consistently. These systems are often tailored for the competitive situations which the social player is not going to meet. I shall therefore, not be advocating any of these particular expert systems. Instead I shall be suggesting a natural style of bidding, based on my observations of the difficulties I have noticed among ordinary club and social players over the past 40 years.
Over those years, I have come to realise that understanding and appreciating can be just as rewarding as personal achievement. When I was younger, I wished to try to develop or discover the perfect bidding system. I studied all I could find, in an effort to become a better practitioner of the game. I was somewhat dismissive of the players who, it seemed to me, were merely participants. They seemed to get as much pleasure from a slam bid and made by opponents as if they had done it themselves. I was puzzled, and pondered.
The turning point came when the team of which I was the junior member reached the final round of the Gold Cup, reputedly the premier event in the UK calendar. The standard of bidding and play was high, so high that it was a pleasure just to watch the experts conjure with the cards. We did not disgrace ourselves, but we did not win. Thereafter, I began to appreciate more the skill of the local experts with whom I played, or competed against, but also noticing the performance of erstwhile beginners attending some of the Bridge lessons I gave at the local Club.
Many of these players were highly intelligent. Admittedly some would never have the time to devote to the game to become more than social Bridge players. Nevertheless, I felt that they often performed less well than they should because they were playing the game too much by rote or by fiat. They were not thinking for themselves. They came to the classes with little or no understanding of what bidding was really trying to achieve, or on what basis the system they were playing had been developed. I therefore did not insist on their learning any particular system. I tried to convey an understanding of the system they chose to play, and offered them a simple alternative for comparison.
This book has been based on the lecture notes I used for these lessons, much expanded, but still with the same aim. I want to encourage people to develop an understanding of the bidding problems that arise in everyday hands, and the tools that are available to surmount them. Thereby they will be able to enjoy being both practitioners and participants, by solving problems for themselves, and appreciating how their partners or opponents do likewise.
Regular competitive players will recognise many of the ideas, as will the developers of the British style of approach bidding which takes its name from the Acol Bridge Club. More important, erstwhile beginners will be able to follow the basic concepts and to enjoy exploring them with their favourite partners.
For those who wish to develop even further, the expert books on particular systems and conventions are there to read aplenty. I should like to think that they would be more understandable after reading this book. In fact, if for a year or so you were to adopt the general style I shall be outlining, or similar, I venture to claim that you will be enjoying your game so much you will not care so much about any of your technical shortcomings.
Alternatively, you will have raised the sights of your ambition high enough, together with your understanding, to be able to choose from among the vast array of published expert systems or conventions those that will suit you best.