[mike777]

What do you prefer playing with a forum nonexpert

bidding...play.... defense..other...etc.........

[hanp]

I'd play whatever the beginner wants to play. If they learned strong 2's, 4-card majors and Stayman, then that is what we play.

[CSGibson]

It depends on the situation. If I am mentoring or grooming a partner, then we'll start out playing what they play, but try to evolve to being able to play cohesive and technically sound methods.

On the other hand, if it's just a pick-up partnership for a quick game, then I strongly recommend that the strong player adapt to the weaker player, as it is often impossible for the weaker player to handle 23 new methods/conventions on the fly.

[Fluffy]

Agree with han, just that I cannot teach him anything if he is willing to play 4 card majors, nor if he wants to play odd-even attitude or soemthing. I'll try to avoid them.

[jjbrr]

go fish

[pooltuna]

jjbrr, on May 24 2010, 10:51 AM, said:

go fish

Okay I will. I suggest you play the K.I.S.S. version of whatever they like.

[awm]

It really depends on the situation.

If it's just a quick game with a friend, then I recommend playing whatever the weaker player prefers (within reason, as long as it's at least moderately familiar).

If it's a long-term partnership, the comfort level of the weaker player is still important, but it makes sense for an expert to try to guide the partnership towards better methods. For example, I think that Cappelletti is a really poor defense to notrump and while I'm willing to play it in a "one-off" quick partnership, I will try to convince regular partners to drop this from the card and play something better instead.

If it's a long-term "teaching" type partnership, then the expert has a lot of leeway in teaching his partner methods that he likes, although it still makes sense to stay away from things that are very much non-mainstream or unfamiliar (unless the student wants to learn a strong club system or whatever). In general simpler methods are better (focusing on card play, judgment, and especially on defense and signaling) but if the student is really insistent on learning/playing a lot of conventions, better to play conventions that work than to let him put mini-roman and capp on the card.

[Mbodell]

In a long term partnership it depends on the people. Beginners and non-beginners and bad players and non-bad players alike have different strengths and weaknesses. I play with one intermediate partner in a long term partnership and we've tried to keep it quite simple and add new conventions (simplish/common ones like inverted minors) or what not like once every 6 months or so. This partner is quite bad in the bidding at remembering conventions and in being disciplined in the bidding. In contrast a different partner whom I play with one beginner partner who is erratic in all aspect of the play but actually likes conventions and remembers them fairly well and even though we play less often we've added a lot more conventions and what not.

So it depends on people's interests. I absolutely agree for playing with someone at a partnership desk or what not that it is better to just play a card that one of the players knows well rather than a card that neither knows.

[georgeac]

with a random i just play what they want, or try at least to remember their conventions with like 5 minutes of discussion. usually the weird ones dont come up anyway.