Beginners' bridge convention
Jan. 10th, 2012 12:13 pmI've played bridge sporadically for the last few years. A few times I've had a spate of going along to the university bridge club, but often I've been playing casually with friends. In fact, most people I know fall into the "learned a fair amount of it at some point, but are really rusty" category.
I learned a little bit at school and went to some lessons with the university bridge club when I was at university, but never took it up regularly at the time. The first time I played with friends it had been years since I played, and I was really nervous -- nearly shaking -- because playing badly doesn't just mean you lose, it's generally really tedious for partner and everyone else too.
Since, I've got a fair amount of practice, probably less rusty than many of my friends who play sometimes, even if they may have had more experience long-term, and just about good enough to play with a pick-up partner at the university club without horrible miscommunication. Although I'm still very diffident at suggesting how things should be done.
And I've intermittently thought about the best ways of playing with not-complete-novice-but-not-played-for-years people. There seems (to me) to be an unfortunate tendency for everyone with some amount of experience to spontaneously offer helpful advice to anyone who seems to need it, which unfortunately, for the recipient, often feels like "everyone yelling at me". It's hard to avoid, because every piece of advice is helpful, so it's hard to not say it, even if there's little point giving more information than someone can absorb at once.
The previous weekend with Liv's family, and this Sunday at Naath's, things were surprisingly productive: I think people played fairly well, and more to the point, people seemed to improve by talking to each other with a minimum of feeling awful for not being perfect...
I think one problem is that people often get presented with heuristics without actually understanding the reasoning behind them, which is understandable when you're trying to teach someone quickly, but if you get things like "bidding stayman over an opponent's 1NT instead of partner's" it's a clear sign that you've not really explained to someone what they're doing.
( Conventions )
I learned a little bit at school and went to some lessons with the university bridge club when I was at university, but never took it up regularly at the time. The first time I played with friends it had been years since I played, and I was really nervous -- nearly shaking -- because playing badly doesn't just mean you lose, it's generally really tedious for partner and everyone else too.
Since, I've got a fair amount of practice, probably less rusty than many of my friends who play sometimes, even if they may have had more experience long-term, and just about good enough to play with a pick-up partner at the university club without horrible miscommunication. Although I'm still very diffident at suggesting how things should be done.
And I've intermittently thought about the best ways of playing with not-complete-novice-but-not-played-for-years people. There seems (to me) to be an unfortunate tendency for everyone with some amount of experience to spontaneously offer helpful advice to anyone who seems to need it, which unfortunately, for the recipient, often feels like "everyone yelling at me". It's hard to avoid, because every piece of advice is helpful, so it's hard to not say it, even if there's little point giving more information than someone can absorb at once.
The previous weekend with Liv's family, and this Sunday at Naath's, things were surprisingly productive: I think people played fairly well, and more to the point, people seemed to improve by talking to each other with a minimum of feeling awful for not being perfect...
I think one problem is that people often get presented with heuristics without actually understanding the reasoning behind them, which is understandable when you're trying to teach someone quickly, but if you get things like "bidding stayman over an opponent's 1NT instead of partner's" it's a clear sign that you've not really explained to someone what they're doing.
( Conventions )