[naveak99]

I am a largely self-taught bridge player, having learnt and played the game mostly online - the ACBL Learn To Play Bridge Software is a very good resource!
I've also supplemented that with a Bridge course, and read up a bit on conventions and opening leads. I do not like to follow the conventions and so-called thumb rules blindly, and would like to appreciate and understand the logic that led to their development. However my search for such a source has proved elusive so far. Can anyone recommend a book or a website that would be suitable to my requirements?

[DavidKok]

Larry Cohen does an excellent job of explaining the reasons behind system choices and bidding agreements, and I would recommend his website as a place to start (https://www.larryco.com/).

[mycroft]

Specifically for leads and signalling theory, a very good explanation is the first couple of defence chapters of Watson's "Play of the Hand" (because in order to understand advanced declarer play, an understanding of what the defence is saying is frequently required. At least, that's his argument). Because 90+% of leads and signals (and near 100% of useful information for newer players) was codified in the Whist days, a 1950's reference is just fine. Just know that the auctions in Watson are antiquated at best. Oh, and it reads like a textbook, because it is.

And I applaud the thought. In order to effectively play a bidding agreement, you have to understand why you're playing it (and what it means when you don't do it). Just know that a very powerful reason for much at "newer player" level is "because that's what everyone you'll play with understands it to mean", and "better" or "good" vs "worse" or "bad" aren't a real concern. Bridge is a Partnership Game (and while also antiquated bidding, that's also still a good book), after all, and a mediocre, or even a bad, system that both partners play and understand will always beat a better system that partner doesn't understand as well, and you don't know enough to know why you're playing it.

So, some things you'll just have to do "because that's what it means", at least for several years or unless you find a regular partner who also wants to investigate other options. There may be (obviously is) logic behind it, but many times the logic is "26 and a major fit make game, partner's shown 15-17 and a fit for my spades, so I need 10 or so to bid game", not "this bid shows 15-17 and 4 spades, and that's because <independent reasons>."

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

I dont know the book myself, but it gets high praise:
https://www.amazon.c...w/dp/189415407X

There was a discussion between Cohen and Seagram, how high the number of MUST KNOW Conventions has to be.
Cohens number was 4-5, Seagram has it at 25, not surprisingly.
The main difference in the argument was, what is a convention, and what is "just" Bridge / common sense.

The response by Cohen or by Seagram featured in the BBO News, but I was not able to quickly find the link.

With kind regards
Marlowe

PS: As already stated, make sure, you know, why you play a certain convention, before you add it.

[jillybean]

P_Marlowe, on 2023-January-29, 14:21, said:

PS: As already stated, make sure, you know, why you play a certain convention, before you add it.

And not just the first 3 bids, it's important to understand the entire structure.

[blackshoe]

Building a Bidding System is an advanced book, but it does discuss these things.

There is a new second edition of 25 Bridge Conventions You Should Know. Some things are new, some aren't. The link is to the kindle version, which is in three parts. I'm pretty sure the paperback is the whole book. :-)

[axman]

naveak99, on 2023-January-29, 03:44, said:

I am a largely self-taught bridge player, having learnt and played the game mostly online - the ACBL Learn To Play Bridge Software is a very good resource!
I've also supplemented that with a Bridge course, and read up a bit on conventions and opening leads. I do not like to follow the conventions and so-called thumb rules blindly, and would like to appreciate and understand the logic that led to their development. However my search for such a source has proved elusive so far. Can anyone recommend a book or a website that would be suitable to my requirements?

I sounds like your interest is in understanding the judgment underlying conventions and their use.

I'll suggest Churchill Style of Natural Bidding as a reasonable source. He gets into the underlying principles and how to utilize them. It is his system book and while its conventions are natural, they underlie the principles behind many of the widely use artificial conventions of today. S Garton Churchill was an attorney so he didn't spare his words- which I found to be interesting words. He also won several American titles.

[pescetom]

Di Stefano has a rare capacity to describe systems and conventions with reasons for the choices made. Unfortunately only in Italian and more precise than accessible.

[naveak99]

Thanks, everyone, for responding. I've followed the links and read through them, but none of them has been what I am looking for.
If I can refine my query, I am looking for something that explains bridge conventions as lucidly as Graeme Tuffnell explains bridge on YouTube. Any leads?

[Gilithin]

The logic behind most of the traditional carding agreements comes from the era of Whist. Players needed a basic set of universal rules that would work even though they only had one or two hands together without any time for discussion. So "lead the highest honour or 4th highest pip", "win with the lowest" "signal high for like" became a de facto standard which just continued on when the bridge craze struck. Change came from players then seeing deficiencies in this scheme, such as switching to low-like and gradually more complex signalling schemes befitting pairs playing 1000s of hands together rather than single figures.

Bidding has a similar history. Early pairs tended to jump all the time, as happened in other auction trick-taking games of the time. Then Ely Culbertson came along and revolutionised bidding theory allowing much more detailed information exchange between partners. Within these early frameworks, players then noticed hands that were problematic within the natural system rules. Thus conventions! Conventions are just ways of solving issues in the bidding system. The logic of the vast majority of bidding conventions is gaining the ability to show more hand types, with the second category being able to show a more common hand type over a rare one. The logic is just using the available bidding space more efficiently.

In any case, if you want to look back at the history of modern bidding systems, you cannot really go wrong starting with Culbertson. Try to find either the 1930 Blue Book (for early concepts) or the comprehensive Contract Bridge Complete, originally published in 1936 but updated to include Milton Point Count in 1938. Once you understand Culbertson, the next logical step would probably be either to look into Goren (if you are American) or the early Acolites - Cohen, Reese, Simon, Lederer - if European. For the latter, Basic Acol by Cohen and Lederer was first published in 1962 and then reprinted and updated constantly through the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, so just reading the various editions of that one book would give some input about the way bidding logic has changed through the years. Finally, while not historic, if you want to read about the logic that goes into constructing a sensible competitive system, you can never go wrong looking through Robson and Segal. In the end though, all you really need to know is that the bids are generally arranged in a logic that tries to maximise efficiency while minimising artificiality and memory overhead.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

you would need to do the above research for every single convention, and the question is why?
But lets start:

You open 1NT with a balanced hand, the strength 12-14.
There were some statistical analysis done in the 20s, that showed, that you can expect 7 tricks,
if you open with 12-14. The statistical analysis was part of the foundation of the Milton Count Work Method.
But there are other ranges 15-17 (16-18), why those ranges? They correlate with other evaluation methods,
an old method was, an opening bid promises a certain amount of playing / honor tricks.
The HCP count won the evaluation war, but 15-17 was at times (maybe even still) more popular than 12-14.

Why 15-17 did win vs. 12-14? Due to being superior? or due to better press? Who knowes, who is the judge?

If you face a NT opener and have major cards, you would love to find out, if you have a major suit fit.
Playing in a trump contract generates usually more tricks than playing a NT contract.

The Stayman convention was developed to discover 4-4 fits.
But it was not the only method, the BARON convention was another method developed at the same time.

Why did Stayman win vs. BARON? Due to being superior? or due to better press? Who knowes, who is the judge?
I have never played BARON.

So, what is it, you want to achieve? and why?

[DavidKok]

When it comes to NT ranges, a big part of why I prefer 14-16 is that this allows us to play a semiforcing (6-11) notrump response to 1M. Balanced hands with a 5-card major and approximately 14 or 15 points are quite stuck on the auction 1M-1NT in a 2/1 GF system, and the standard solution is to rebid a 3-card or sometimes even doubleton club. I believe this is also a part of why so many experts frequently upgrade 14-counts into their 15-17 NT, the rebid issues after opening at the 1-level can be significant.

Personally I have quite some ideas on the logic behind the conventions I play and the conventions I rejected, but I don't know of any systemic overview of all the choices. A large share of bridge treatments lend their existence to some obsolete worse alternative being popular a century ago, and in light of modern bidding treatments are not very important. Opening leads and signals are a different story.

[barmar]

Unfortunately, there's no general "logic" for bridge conventions. Bidding conventions are like a language, but with a very limited vocabulary, as well as a constraint that the "conversation" should end with someone bidding the optimal contract and their partner passes (things get more complicated when competitive bidding is involved). This constraint severely limits you -- you can't use Blackwood to determine if you have enough for game, because you're already past the game level of bidding.

Early bidding systems were mainly concerned with not bidding too high for your combined assets, so they had a general principle that you bid higher with strong hands. Over time, and as the scoring system changed, the benefits of preemptive bidding with weak hands was discovered, so this logic was flipped in many cases -- bid more with less, to make it harder for the opponents. Also, keeping bidding low with strong hands allows more room to explore for slam; this is the principle behind 2/1 game forcing and strong club systems -- you know right away if you have enough for game and should use the rest of the auction to explore higher aspirations.

Other than these guiding principles, there's not a whole lot of logic. Artificial bids are mostly arbitrary.

[mikeh]

Gilithin, on 2023-July-04, 19:41, said:

The logic behind most of the traditional carding agreements comes from the era of Whist. Players needed a basic set of universal rules that would work even though they only had one or two hands together without any time for discussion. So "lead the highest honour or 4th highest pip", "win with the lowest" "signal high for like" became a de facto standard which just continued on when the bridge craze struck. Change came from players then seeing deficiencies in this scheme, such as switching to low-like and gradually more complex signalling schemes befitting pairs playing 1000s of hands together rather than single figures.

Bidding has a similar history. Early pairs tended to jump all the time, as happened in other auction trick-taking games of the time. Then Ely Culbertson came along and revolutionised bidding theory allowing much more detailed information exchange between partners. Within these early frameworks, players then noticed hands that were problematic within the natural system rules. Thus conventions! Conventions are just ways of solving issues in the bidding system. The logic of the vast majority of bidding conventions is gaining the ability to show more hand types, with the second category being able to show a more common hand type over a rare one. The logic is just using the available bidding space more efficiently.

In any case, if you want to look back at the history of modern bidding systems, you cannot really go wrong starting with Culbertson. Try to find either the 1930 Blue Book (for early concepts) or the comprehensive Contract Bridge Complete, originally published in 1936 but updated to include Milton Point Count in 1938. Once you understand Culbertson, the next logical step would probably be either to look into Goren (if you are American) or the early Acolites - Cohen, Reese, Simon, Lederer - if European. For the latter, Basic Acol by Cohen and Lederer was first published in 1962 and then reprinted and updated constantly through the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, so just reading the various editions of that one book would give some input about the way bidding logic has changed through the years. Finally, while not historic, if you want to read about the logic that goes into constructing a sensible competitive system, you can never go wrong looking through Robson and Segal. In the end though, all you really need to know is that the bids are generally arranged in a logic that tries to maximise efficiency while minimising artificiality and memory overhead.

I usually agree with much of what you say, but I very strongly disagree with recommending any bridge bidding text published before about 1947.

Culbertson’s books will not help anyone trying to learn bridge these days, even if you look at an edition that includes the 4321 count, which has been universal for a little over 70 years…although back in the late 1940’s and beyond some old-timers persisted with their disdain for such an approach.

If one is looking for a basic starting point, one could do worse than Goren

He, more than any other writer, popularized the use of point count for valuation, including some allowance for looking at shape as a factor.

Perhaps more importantly, from the perspective of the OP, once one learns ‘Goren’ one will fairly soon recognize that the methods don’t work very well. They are too simple. But the basic outline is far closer to today’s NA bidding than is anything written in the 1930’s….and I think I have books on just about every bridge bidding system from that time…I collect books, trying (not very successfully) to collect only books published before 1940….my earliest date to the 1890’s, but aren’t (obviously) about contract bridge, which was invented until the late 1920’s.

Conventions were invented, each by each, in order to solve problems arising from the methods in use.

Thus Stayman, invented in NA by Rapee but apparently promoted more by Sam Stayman, ‘solved’ the previous horrible problem of finding a 4-4 major suit fit after partner opened 1N.

The now standard use of a 2C opening as very strong and artificial arose because some players thought that weak two bids in the other suits offered a useful way to get into the auction while lacking traditional opening values. Recognizing the strong hands are rare, and dedicating 2C, 2D, 2H, 2S, 2N and 3N for different rare strong hands was not a useful approach, they rolled all the strong openings (initially leaving 3N for 26-28 hcp or so) into 2C.

Another example is the forcing 1N response to 1M. This was invented because Roth, the inventor, espoused strong 2/1 responses…not game force but not go-as-you-please as in standard bidding at the time. Now responder couldn’t bid 2D in response to 1S, holding say Jx xxx AQJxxx xx. Yet often diamonds played far better than 1N…so 1N became forcing. This carries a real cost, in that often 1N IS the best contract, but nowadays there’s an entire ecosystem of bidding built around the forcing 1N, even though it’s nowadays often played as ‘semi-forcing’.

This forcing 1N creates problems when playing five card majors (I don’t know any standard method where one plays 4 card majors together with a forcing notrump) if one picks up 4=5=2=2, minimum holdings. Nobody likes having to bid 2C (although it’s generally accepted as the least of various evils) so Bill Flannery invented a 2D opening bid to show 4=5 majors, minimum opening values…the Flannery convention.


And so on. The point that conventions should never be adopted unless one thinks that the one chosen solves either more or bigger problems than it creates. Every artificial bid creates system problems, but since basic bidding is so awful, a coherent set of conventions provides benefits outweighing the costs.

To give some idea of the complexities involved, I’ve played a 2D opening as:

Weak

Flannery

Multi with only weak options

Mini Roman (I was very young)

Multi with strong options as well

Schenken 2D ( in university the first bidding book our group got was Schenken’s big club method….don’t bother looking it up, it’s a complete waste of time)

Weak, both majors

Short diamonds in a big club system such as precision

Obviously one only plays one version of 2D in any given partnership.

[akwoo]

mikeh, on 2023-July-05, 18:44, said:

Perhaps more importantly, from the perspective of the OP, once one learns ‘Goren’ one will fairly soon recognize that the methods don’t work very well. They are too simple.

Actually, Goren doesn't work too badly.

I played a fairly simple system with one partner, a Goren-Standard American hybrid that dated from somewhere in the early 70s, with transfers, forcing jump raises, weak 2s, and 2/1 responses not promising a rebid. Once I put in two-way new minor forcing and fourth suit forcing, and straightened out some doubles in competition, I estimated our (lack of) bidding system was giving up around 5% (two half boards a session) compared to a 2/1 system with all the bells and whistles. I give up more than that on play mistakes, and the average beginner gives up 20% on play mistakes, so at a beginner level, Goren works perfectly fine.

The average beginner gives up more from letting opponents play in 2M too often than the difference between a 1960s Goren and modern 2/1, both played well.