[sceptic]

Why not have table options where there is no vulnerability at all to worry about,

That way beginners and ints can just concentrate on bridge, it may well need to change when you start playing in more advanced tourneys etc, but as a starting point have no vuln tables to play at

[csdenmark]

sceptic, on Dec 22 2006, 03:59 PM, said:

Why not have table options where there is no vulnerability at all to worry about,

That way beginners and ints can just concentrate on bridge, it may well need to change when you start playing in more advanced tourneys etc, but as a starting point have no vuln tables to play at

You can ask for a lot of functionality which are likely never to be implemented in free service. At the other end you may ask for penalty cards, cheating filters etc.

What you ask for here I see as a trickle down effect.

[inquiry]

sceptic, on Dec 22 2006, 08:59 AM, said:

Why not have table options where there is no vulnerability at all to worry about,

That way beginners and ints can just concentrate on bridge, it may well need to change when you start playing in more advanced tourneys etc, but as a starting point have no vuln tables to play at

Correct me if I am wrong, but don't beginners and novices pretty much ignore vulnerability anyway?

[zasanya]

I advise all my novice and beginner friends not to worry about vulnerabiluty or even scoring but just concentrate on biddding and play.Very soon they themselves get familiar with the implications of vulnerabilty and become cautious about giving penalties.In fact many of them become so cautious about bidding when red that they disregard my advise about bidddding borderline vulnerable games but merrily bid very thin non vul games.

[inquiry]

sceptic, on Dec 22 2006, 09:49 AM, said:

that is sort of my point ( see above post)

But if they don;t realize the vulnerability anyway, why go to the trouble and confusion of creating an option where vulnerability does not exist. I mean for them anyway, it already does not exist.

[temp3600]

I don't understand what you mean by "no vulnerability" :

You need a form of scoring, or else how can you tell for instance if your sacrifice, that ended up down two doubled, was a good action against the opponents' game, making exactly?
So, are you proposing a table where the scoring is fixed once and for all (using the non vulnerable vs non vulnerable scoring for example)? But then the players will only learn to bid in one specific vulnerability situation, which doesn't sound like a good idea.

Can you specify more exactly how the table you have in mind would work?

[EricK]

But probably the most important thing about any game is the scoring. If you don't know what scores what you will have no idea of what to do.

Ultimately, every bridge action should relate back to the scoring table.

[neilkaz]

Vulnerability is a major feature of bridge and I strongly feel that our tables, all of them, should have it included.

Most games are played for score..so at some point beginners need to understand it.

[barmar]

I think I understand the point of this. When you're first learning the game, you learn some simple rules of thumb, like you should bid game when you have 26 combined HCP. All you need to know about this is that there's a bonus for bidding and making games -- the actual value of the bonus is not really significant. Vulnerability is generally only an issue in more advanced decisions, such as competitive bidding, sacrificing, and bidding close games or slams. A beginner doesn't really have enough experience to even know what is "close", so there's not much point in bringing vulnerability into the equation.

But if you're not going to have vulnerability, you might as well not bother with scores at all. At work there are a group of us who get together once a week to play a few hands during lunch. Everyone but me is a true novice (one of them keeps checking his bidding cheat-sheet, and every hand becomes a lesson). We don't bother with scoring, they're just interested in making the contracts they bid. They know it's bad to make game when you haven't bid it, or to go down several tricks, they don't need this quantified with numbers.

[Echognome]

I see Wayne's point. There's nothing wrong with having a "no vulnerability" table. The point is that beginners will play and start to wonder what this thing is and ask about it and then start to think about it when they shouldn't. But on that regards, I think Barry's point should also be borne into mind. The website offers quite a plethora of options for tables with various forms of scoring and also with teaching tables. Perhaps an option of "practice table" would be welcomed. The options for scoring maybe could be either "none", "duplicate" (with other practice tables by imps or mps), or "par" (double dummy according to gib). It might be considered less pressure for beginning players before they jumped into the fray of the main bridge club. Or perhaps it won't be necessary when people start playing more in the different areas of the MBC?

[hotShot]

Mini-Bridge simplifies the bidding to almost nothing so that new player can concentrate on the playing technique.

Now Wayne is suggesting to simplify the scoring for beginners so that everybody is non vul. at all boards. I think when people start bidding and play this would be ok.

Before new player start to think about sacrifices, they should learn to make what they bid.

But any simplified version of bridge you might use for teaching, you should get to the real think as fast as possible.
I usually start teaching basic playing techniques and use of Mini-Bridge to allow my trainees a little practice in the beginning. As soon as they a capable of playing a deal and basic evaluation of their hand, we start bidding. When bidding starts to work, I introduce the scoring and it's
consequences. Up to this point Waynes suggestion makes sense, since scoring is of no importance.

[awm]

Are there really any significant number of true beginners logging into BBO?

Of course to some degree we are all still learning this game and there is a wide range of levels of knowledge, but it would surprise me if there are a substantial number of people who've really never played bridge before logging into BBO.

I suspect before they find out about BBO, people know the order of bids, which cards take tricks, and even some rudimentary "standard" bidding (based on wherever they live). Let me know if I'm wrong.

[matmat]

nothing gets you as quickly from beginner to intermediate status as a few well placed -1700s

[csdenmark]

awm, on Dec 23 2006, 06:41 PM, said:

Are there really any significant number of true beginners logging into BBO?

Of course to some degree we are all still learning this game and there is a wide range of levels of knowledge, but it would surprise me if there are a substantial number of people who've really never played bridge before logging into BBO.

I suspect before they find out about BBO, people know the order of bids, which cards take tricks, and even some rudimentary "standard" bidding (based on wherever they live). Let me know if I'm wrong.

I have often wondered the same. Difficult to see the wisdom in adding communication problems to normal problems of learning the game.

[hotShot]

I have taken people that never played bridge before (or at least very little) to BBO.
1) To use a teaching table, for teaching.
2) To play among them selfs (not to be troubled with wrong leads insufficient bids, bids out of turn ...)
3) To kibitz player and explain (at least try to explain) what they are doing.
4) To have Gib-Analysis available

If the people have laptops available, you can come together f2f but play online. So there is no communication problem.

[barmar]

I also took one of the guys who sometimes plays in my lunchtime game to BBO. He was interested in a way to practice without embarassing himself in the MBC, so
I showed him how to use the "Learn to Play Bridge" section and how to play against robots. But if there were "non-scoring" tables for beginners, I think I would have steared him that way.