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I started learning contract bridge a few months ago after, no joke, seeing a newspaper ad for a 12-week beginners' course for $50 and thinking "hell, I could use a new hobby". All I knew about it was:
I'm now at the end of the course and having done virtually no review between sessions due to work and other stuff getting in the way, I'm thinking "boy, I really should have reviewed between sessions". The teacher is good but the book we are using (self-published by a national bridge master) is kind of arse-about in its lessons, so I'm having to go through it with a notepad and write out what I think it's trying to say for my own understanding. Anyway, since I'm a know-nothing I'm not going to write an explanatory OP. I hope there is enough of a response that we can get a discussion going. I'm in NZ so we use the NZ Acol bidding system of which I don't remember the name of the main characteristics, but we bid the lower suit with four cards or the higher suit with five.
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Jul 31, 2022 06:46
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| # ? Apr 30, 2024 11:21 |
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welp
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Aug 8, 2022 23:30
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We had a similar thing in our newspapers as well. I was always fascinated trying to understand it when young because it seemed similar to Hearts and Spades which I knew, but ramped up with mysterious scoring. Even though I used a training app to learn the game, while I know the rules and scoring, the idea of bidding conversation still baffles me and even with practice, it's a struggle.
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Aug 8, 2022 23:39
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Playing Bridge solo online is a great way to learn, although depending on the app you can pick up some bad habits and the way bidding systems are programmed seems a bit unreliable sometimes. My favourite app is an iPhone thing called Bridge V+ It's not expensive and has the major bidding systems. It's a good way to get up to speed and practise your bidding and play.
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Aug 16, 2022 04:17
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I played bridge in college, though only casually. It’s an incredible game, and in my opinion the best thing someone can do sitting around with three friends. But it’s almost impossible to learn if you don’t have somebody to learn from, I think. I miss the days when I played it regularly dearly.
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Aug 17, 2022 05:21
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my whole extended family were hardcore about 500 back in the day. my dad in particular was an absolute nullo shark, he could pull those hands off like it was nothing it really annoyed whoever was his partner for that game lmao
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Aug 17, 2022 07:01
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I played bridge with my old club online yesterday for the first time in six months. I had a ton of fun. Every hand was a huge disaster, because we all forgot about both how to bid and how to play. There was one hand that stuck with me, where my partner opened 1D. I had this hand, so I bid 2NT: Kxx Qxx Qxxx Axx My partner thought this was 16-18 points and slam invitational… you can’t jump shift into no trumps! But looking this up afterwards, I couldn’t see any real consensus on what this bid should mean. At the table, it felt obvious that 1NT would be 8-10 and thus 2NT should be an invitational balanced hand like this. But it was obvious only to me!
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Sep 10, 2022 03:42
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Why is 2NT a better reply than 2D? It is a minor suit but you have a suit match, and it is unlikely that you have game from here
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Sep 10, 2022 09:15
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I don't know, game seems pretty likely here. I have 11 HCP, and my partner has an opening hand. They only need a bit better than a minimum for us to be in game, and if we're in game here it's almost certainly in 3NT unless my partner has ridiculous shape. I figured if 2NT really did mean my hand, it'd be the best bid because it's pretty descriptive.
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Sep 12, 2022 01:39
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It’s probably not the biggest sin to downgrade it to a 10, flat 11 with scattered honors are very meh. According to Bridge World Standard 1m-2N is the balanced invite, so I would assume that with no discussions. Note that 1m-2m nowadays is a invite+ minor raise, and I don’t think nrooks hand really fits that description (as if partner had a hand that would want to be in a diamond game/slam they would certainly make some noise after showing a balanced invite, which implicitly has minor support!)
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Sep 12, 2022 17:54
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| # ? Apr 30, 2024 11:21 |
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Funny hand recently. I've been continuing to play bridge once a month with my old friends, and we've forgotten everything we ever knew, not that we knew much to begin with. As such, we certainly get into some awkward spots. I recently was reading a bridge book that talked about balancing bids. Balancing is the idea that if your opponents are about to declare a partscore, and you're in the seat where if you pass they get the contract, it makes sense to bid light more often than if you were in the "direct" seat (right after their bid). The reason for this is that it is usually easy to make contracts at the 1- and 2-level, so you'd rather either you get the contract or at least you force your opponents to go higher than they otherwise would. However, for me, there were two problems. The first was that all I knew about this idea was in the vague terms I just described, and I didn't know much in more explicit terms--- what sort of hands should balance, what should partner do, and so on. As such, I was likely to screw it up if I tried to apply the idea. And the other, even bigger problem, was that I didn't discuss this with partner before the hand! This led us to this hilarious contract: pre:nrook in West: AQTx xxxx Kxx T4 Bidding: W N E S Pass Pass Pass 1D Pass 1S Pass Pass Dbl Pass 2C 2S Pass Pass 3C Pass Pass Dbl Pass Pass Pass As it turns out: Even if you're in the balancing seat, you probably shouldn't double for takeout when all your points are in the bad guys' suits. And discuss these sorts of things with your partner before you play!
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Jul 30, 2023 23:53
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