Bridge Club conventions

Throughout the years of bridge at Williams, as in any bridge club, there has been a great deal of experimenting with bidding and teaching each other old and new systems. It has always been helpful, though, to have a set of standard conventions (agreed bidding systems) that are relatively simple, based on teachable principles.

Past systems

Bridge Club's basic "approach" to bidding has been based Standard American Yellow Card (SAYC), the most common beginner's system in the United States. The major change, however, to the system as bid in the club from 2002 to 2005, was that strong responses were made as jump-shifts. This made it very obvious when a game hand was held, but harder to bid slam. Club members decided this was desirable, as slam was rarer and harder to play, while game was important not to miss.

In 2004, to support the Free University class on beginner's bridge that he was teaching with Matthew Spencer, Jonathan Landsman attempted the codify the opening and first-round response bids in a flow-chart-like "cheat sheet": File:Bridge Club Cheat Sheet.pdf

In 2008, Jonathan made a similar sheet to express something closer to SAYC, while he was teaching beginning students at Cornell: File:Bridgeclub08cheatsheet.pdf

See also

• Standard American Yellow Card as described on prairienet