Life In 19x19

tj86430 wrote:OT: How would you define kyu/dan -levels in Bridge?

I have no idea how I would characterize my bridge skills in those terms (probably high kyu/low dan, my best achievement back then was finishing around 20th in the Finnish national championships for pairs; OTOH I have very few masterpoints because I didn't play much in the big tournaments. I used to be very competent in bidding, decent in declarer play and not so remarkable at defensive play)

In the U. S,, ratings accumulate, so people can advance without improving. But I would say that Life Master is roughly equivalent to dan level at go, unless it took a long time to get there.

Victor Mollo quipped that the LM rank lets third rate players pretend that they are second rate.

Also, if you can find it, Why You Lose at Bridge by S. J. Simon is a classic.

Agree strongly. Some of the bidding discussions are outdated, but still an excellent book.

Also, the Bill Root books are excellent: How to Play a Bridge Hand, and How to Defend a Bridge Hand. Pretty dry reading, but tons and tons of examples of good fundamental techniques.

In the U. S,, ratings accumulate, so people can advance without improving. But I would say that Life Master is roughly equivalent to dan level at go, unless it took a long time to get there.

Not anymore in my experience. The LM title means very little about actual skill. It has become, essentially, an attendance award. I have less than 50 MPs, but there are plenty of LMs around that I know I am better than.

Random other tips:
-The site bridgebase.com is the standard place to play online. They also have a discussion board similar to this one.
-Conventions (i.e. artificial bids) are fun but learning them is probably akin to learning joseki (i.e. don't do it too early, and make sure you understand details/implications when you do)

zinger wrote:

In the U. S,, ratings accumulate, so people can advance without improving. But I would say that Life Master is roughly equivalent to dan level at go, unless it took a long time to get there.

Not anymore in my experience. The LM title means very little about actual skill. It has become, essentially, an attendance award. I have less than 50 MPs, but there are plenty of LMs around that I know I am better than.

Yes, bridge ranks aren't so meaningful because they just accumulate. You do have to be at least okay to become a life master, but many young or good-at-games players will be much better than many life masters well before they reach that rank (I'd suggest this would be true of most go players.)

tj86430 wrote:As for whether 1H-Y;2S-Z;3S or 1H-Y;3S should be stronger if both are natural I prefer to think that the more direct route shows more playing strength and less high card strength, whereas the longer route shows more high card strength and possibly less playing strength.

A good way to play. (Still, I wouldn't use it on the current hand anyways as it understates the hearts. Perhaps by this I just mean I'm a 1H-Y;2S-Z;4H bidder, absent anything unusual from partner.)

Bill Spight wrote:In the U. S,, ratings accumulate, so people can advance without improving. But I would say that Life Master is roughly equivalent to dan level at go, unless it took a long time to get there.

I played in the UK and have never played tournament bridge in the US, but I assume the rating system is similar. I did not have the money to play in a lot of big tournaments so I never accumulated a large number of point, but when I did always did well. There were people in my local club who where 40 years older than I and thought they were something special because they had amassed a huge number of points. But when I played them I could run rings around them every time. During my last year in the UK I won the individual, pairs and team championships at the county level, roughly equivalent to the state level in the US.

So, I guess there is no way to directly rank the strength of bridge plays in a manner as consistent as go players.

To keep this discussion way off topic: just in case it interests anyone here, here are the poll results for 1H-1N;3S for Bridge World Standard (Bridge World is the main periodical aimed at experienced players). Of course this is a panel of experts deciding what they most want to play, and 922a would be the standard choice without discussion (unless you hastily agreed to play splinters in all the standard situations and your partner interpreted this as one of those situations!).

In BWS-2001, if opener rebids one level above a forcing reverse or jump-shift after a one-notrump response (e.g., one heart — one notrump — three spades, when two spades is forcing; or, one spade — one notrump — four diamonds), that should be . . .
922a. natural (big two-suiter). (23,11)
922b. an autosplinter (big one-suiter; shortness bid). (58,69)
922c. defined, but not as 922a or 922b. (12,18)
922d. left undefined. (7,2)

(From http://www.bridgeworld.com/default.asp? ... npage.html)

Thanks for the tips! I will check out those books on Amazon and investigate further.