[sceptic]

After an extremelly bad display of bridge on my part, the other day watched by many, a kibber decided to tell me what a friend of his said about me.

he said, I lacked bridge judgement (I do not disagree with this at all, well most of the time )

BUT, the thing that I thought was total B********S was this statement "because he never learnt acol first" what do you think of that statement, not whether or not you agree, I lack judgement

[gwnn]

don't you mean B********T?

[matmat]

the kib has bad judgement.

[Flame]

I don't know about you, but i do agree that begining to play bridge with a non natural system can do some damage.

[hotShot]

Acol is a great system to learn bridge.
(But the teacher and his way of teaching is much more important.)

[EricK]

No system gives you judgement.

If you start with a system which requires more judgement, all that happens is that your lack of judgement becomes noticeable far sooner.

My local clubs are full of people who
1. Play Acol
2. Have Played Acol for years
3. Display close to zero bridge judgement

[Wackojack]

What the kibber said was rubbish. A related question though. How does one obtain bridge judgement? When to overcall, sacrifice, ask, tell, hand evaluation etc. Here is an incomplete list not in any particular order that might help (and me too):

Have the desire to improve
Get a list of "must not do's"
Allow your partner to use judgement by describing your hand
Watch viewgraph intelligently
Use this forum intelligently
Read books on bridge judgement
Get to understand the underlying principles of bidding theory (and that has nothing to do with what system you are playing)

Maybe the first and last on the list are the most important

[655321]

Flame, on Nov 7 2008, 02:44 AM, said:

I don't know about you, but i do agree that begining to play bridge with a non natural system can do some damage.

I agree with this, and if this is what the kibber's friend meant I agree with the kibber's friend.

There are lots of bad players playing all sorts of systems, but that is not the point. If a player is keen and wants to get better, the best way to learn judgment is to play simple natural systems. IMO, to start playing bridge and move straight into a strong club system with relays is a good way to hinder development of bidding judgment.

[kenrexford]

gwnn, on Nov 7 2008, 02:03 AM, said:

don't you mean B********T?

Maybe the word was German?

[ASkolnick]

Actually the way we learned in college was by better players making fun of us until we got better. As for systems, I do see the usual progression as seen by CC:

Novice - Barely anything filled out on the CC. Don't know what system they are playing?

Intermediate - There is no white space left on the convention card due to your playing flap-jack flannery sow cow hearts.

Advanced - We played everything, and now we discard the rest of the stuff.

[han]

matmat, on Nov 7 2008, 02:04 AM, said:

the kib has bad judgement.

Agree.