[johnu]

beatrix45, on 2014-July-04, 08:54, said:

At one time I did do a fairly intensive investigation of my actual and prospective partners for the ACBL Speedball. All I had to go on was a couple of months of recent BBO results for each player. All of the players who turned out to be any good averaged plus IMPs per board in pay for play BBO tournaments. Mostly it was between +0.25 to 0.50 IMPs per board. Averaging more than 0.50 IMPs per board was rare. You have to be really good to do that over any length of time. Such players do exist, just not me except for short intervals.

In any event, processing BBO hand records to determine a player's skill level ain't that hard.

Averaging +X imps per board for a short period is a fluctuation, not a trend. In any case, any person's individual results are more a matter of the level of the competition (or lack of) than anything else. And for pair results, an established pair with good partnership agreements will tend to have better results than a random pair who barely have any agreements.

[johnu]

hrothgar, on 2014-July-04, 04:13, said:

Don't get me wrong, I am a firm believer in belligerence and insult and I'm as egotistical as any.

I need to put that in my signature

[Mbodell]

helene_t, on 2014-July-05, 15:01, said:

it's probably close enough that one should just chose whichever system would be useful for the students to learn and is supported by good books in the students' language.

This. And which will enable the students to find partners and pickup partners and will enable the students to ask many of the better local players what they'd do with the hand.

[rhm]

Vampyr, on 2014-July-05, 13:17, said:

Beginners who first learn such a system will never learn to think.

This gets my nomination for the hogwash of the year.
It is like claiming if you ever want to grasp physics you need to start with quantum mechanics.

Rainer Herrmann

[blackshoe]

rhm, on 2014-July-06, 03:07, said:

This gets my nomination for the hogwash of the year.
It is like claiming if you ever want to grasp physics you need to start with quantum mechanics.

Rainer Herrmann

String theory.

[Vampyr]

rhm, on 2014-July-06, 03:07, said:

This gets my nomination for the hogwash of the year.
It is like claiming if you ever want to grasp physics you need to start with quantum mechanics.

Whatever. I have seen this phenomenon in action.

[rhm]

Vampyr, on 2014-July-06, 11:51, said:

Whatever. I have seen this phenomenon in action.

And you have never seen palookas claiming to have learnt to play SAYC, 2/1 or ACOL?
They all know how to think at the Bridge table except those of course, who have been raised on Precision.

Give me a break!

Rainer Herrmann

[helene_t]

Vampyr, on 2014-July-06, 11:51, said:

Whatever. I have seen this phenomenon in action.

I see what you mean but I suspect that those students had a teacher who was more interested in conventions than in GBK. There could be a correlation with the teacher's pet system. Maybe if that pet system is SR or Power Acol you have a point.

[Vampyr]

helene_t, on 2014-July-06, 12:29, said:

I see what you mean but I suspect that those students had a teacher who was more interested in conventions than in GBK. There could be a correlation with the teacher's pet system. Maybe if that pet system is SR or Power Acol you have a point.

When I have seen this is has not usually been a teacher that was the source of the system, but I was commenting more generally on the idea of Precision being a player's first system.

[hrothgar]

Vampyr, on 2014-July-05, 13:17, said:

Beginners who first learn such a system will never learn to think.

The Chinese seem to have done pretty well standardizing on Precision...
And the Poles on Polish club
And the Brits on Acol

Takes a pretty inbred mind to insist that there is one true way for people to learn

[Zelandakh]

hrothgar, on 2014-July-06, 16:27, said:

The Chinese seem to have done pretty well standardizing on Precision...

I read once that Acol is often used in the Far East as a starter system to learn the basics of natural bidding before moving onto Precision. Perhaps that is not really the case but it would certainly not be an unreasonable approach.

[rhm]

Zelandakh, on 2014-July-06, 16:29, said:

I read once that Acol is often used in the Far East as a starter system to learn the basics of natural bidding before moving onto Precision. Perhaps that is not really the case but it would certainly not be an unreasonable approach.

I believe the opposite is true from a theoretical aa well as practical point of view.
Beginners have to learn how to express their hand in a code new to them.
You can view bidding systems as languages with a limited vocabulary, which have to describe a wide variety of hand features.
Since not all features can be described hands need to categorized.
So called natural systems look at first to be simple, e.g. bid what you think you can make etc.
One motivation for ACOL was that its creators believed in limiting hands quickly, often an achilles heel of "natural" systems.
Just look at natural systems wide ranging one level bids.
Precision does this differently and limits strength and this is what counts for beginners and poor players, but is important no matter how good you are.
New players can be in less doubt what certain sequences show or deny. Precision does a better categorization of strength of a hand with the opening bid.
What is forcing, non-forcing and a stop bid is simple.
That's why the advantages of 2/1 compared to SAYC is much greater for average or poor players than for experts.
Claiming that a simpler system stop people from advancing is nonsense.
They may not progress faster, but they will get better results quicker and understand how bidding works better, because they have no immediate need to learn the nuances of too many sequences and getting confused.
They have plenty of opportunity to develop their bidding judgment in any system.
But a system like Precision avoids gross misjudgements and misunderstandings.
I consider this at least for novices an advantage not a deficiency.

But of course, if nobody plays Precision in their area, it might not be a good idea to teach beginners Precision.
This is an important though extrinsic consideration.

Rainer Herrmann

[helene_t]

I once taught a relay system to a class of novices. Not my choice, it was dictated by the club owner.

Obviously they learned basic uncontested auctions faster than normal students did, which is in itself a good thing. They were able to join the club evenings quickly, which is usually the primary objective of novices.

Most of them would switch to a normal system at some point for obvious reasons. Those who didn't would probably never become more than "social" players. But if we imagine a hypothetical student who aspired to become a good player while sticking to the weird system - would they have been handicapped by having learned relays as the first principle instead of natural approach-forcing methods? It is a hypothetical question so I can't know for sure. But I don't think so. In many contested auctions, it is so that natural bids are nonforcing while almost all strong hands will have to do something artifical - a western cue or a double or redouble. This is similar to what they learned first, namely that strong hands, in particular strong hands without a clear direction, use the relay, while weaker hands make natural bids.

Many club players underbid in part score battles because they are afraid of showing values they don't have. Maybe teaching a system without the approach forcing principle would make this a bit easier. Just speculating.

[mycroft]

There are judgement points in Precision just as much as there are in approach-forcing systems. There are "on the rails" auctions in Precision just as much as there are in approach-forcing systems. They're just different.

One of the issues with an off-field system (whatever it might be) is that your thinking points are different. I get into a Precision auction where I know that the field is going to bid game in a major (it's "on the rails"), but I have more information that tells me that game is not odds-on. Do you trust your system and pass for the top, or do you trust your play and go with the field? Is the value different if you're vulnerable at teams, or all white at matchpoints?

I find American systems (whether they include 2/1 GF or not) run very much "on the rails", close to strong club systems like Precision. You "have to" bid 1♦ with 4-4, and 1♣ with 3-3; you "have to" show a 4cM with 9-fourth; you "have to" respond 1NT with this hand because any other call massively overstates your values; your raise structure is effectively set in stone (although it isn't always the same). Modern American bidding will bite you, hard, if you violate the system in many cases; so those are cases where judgement is not involved, just like strong club, or 1♠-X-3♠ auctions where opener is limited to 15.

I don't recommend Precision (to most, anyway) as a starting system; but that's because part of your judgement comes from a variety of partners, and almost nowhere in my area can you play with a variety of partners if you don't play some sort of Standard. Also, if you don't understand some sort of Standard, you will have the same issues incorporating the opponents' auctions into your judgement that they will with your bids; but while you are 2 boards in the night, they're 24.