[helene_t]

(snip)

[Stephen Tu]

awm, on 2020-October-31, 16:23, said:

I just find it interesting that people who've never played a system in a serious partnership and never even seen that system played by good players are so quick to decide that it's incoherent and not designed to work. Maybe the booklet didn't state that 1M-2m-2NT shows extras because it was something everyone knew back in the day, and it's just the modern players (who all play 2/1 and think non-GF 2/1 bids are for beginners) who assume otherwise?

The SAYC pamphlet as written is undeniably incoherent. It explicitly says that NT at lowest level is min range. It doesn't make any exceptional meaning for after a two-over-one. No verbiage showing otherwise, no example sequences showing otherwise.

I can infer how good players played SA (they were playing SA their way, not SAYC) by what was written in their books and in bridge world, without having played it extensively myself in a long term partnership. The good players who played 2/1 promise a rebid played it in a coherent way, with 2nt showing extras, raise showing extras. Or they played certain rebids as showing min but then those bids were then limited and not forcing.

But it was very well known that there was considerable variation in continuations back then. 2/1 promises rebid was a style that evolved, and was by no means universal. E.g. bridge world standard 1968, two-over-one did *not* promise rebid, but then eventually it did, and finally more recently it's gone to full 2/1 GF. Quote from Commonsense bidding by Root:
"If your partner has made a two-over-one response, any rebid you make below game is forcing; a two-over-one response promises another bid. (NOTE: If the responder bid a new suit at the two-level, a new suit bid by the opening bid is forcing; to this everyone agrees. If instead the opener rebids 2nt, rebids his original suit at the two-level, or raises his partner's suit to the three-level, his rebid is considered nonforcing in some bridge circles. So here is another subject to be ironed out with your partners. ... [(paraphrasing) modern trend is forcing, the way vast majority of experts play; this method described in this book])" (Also this is written in 1986, so "modern" as of then).

It would have been simple for SAYC author(s) to put in verbiage to make the 2/1 section coherent, make a section saying that rebidding above two of opener's suit showed extras and given some examples. Or to clarify that 1S-2D-2S-3S should be absolutely forcing as your interpretation, and write that responder *must* bid 1S-3S with 3cd limit raise instead of saying *should*. But they didn't. (If you polled SA / SAYC players of whether 1s-2d-2s-3s should be assumed forcing w/o discussion, whether or not you confined the poll to experts only, I think the number of players that would agree with you would be very, very tiny.).

I don't see how you can assume that the committee/person/people who composed/approved the SAYC pamphlet was actually careful and competent and that we should assume someone meant for the 2/1 section to be coherent and deleted/omitted some exception section intentionally because "everyone knows this", rather than they just wrote a bunch of stuff sloppily and hastily without paying attention and not realizing that what they actually wrote doesn't logically work together (or maybe realizing but not particularly caring).

Sure SAYC can be *made* coherent, by adding the awm missing material to alter what was actually written in the pamphlet for certain sequences. But as written, it is *NOT* coherent. AWM-mod-SAYC I'm sure is coherent, you are an excellent theorist IMO. But I think it is a big mistake to claim that SAYC should be read to assume those mods even though they appear nowhere in the text, that the authors assumed those mods but just neglected to write them down and assumed players should just know them. Surely they should think some newer players can't be expected to just know the exceptions on their own, and surely they knew there were older players playing the non-rebid promising style who wouldn't know either, without explicit instruction. It was just a sloppy job.

[Vampyr]

What is funny is that the SAYC experiment was a dismal failure, yet some people are using it as a system today.

[mycroft]

You can thank Matthew Clegg for that - when he first built OKBridge, he knew that he needed a "standard system people who've never seen each other ('s country) can agree to play, globally available on the web". And sure enough, there the SAYC booklet was. And it was before the ACBL's grand second attempt at a "single system event" - the Classic Card (which did have several options, so maybe less useful for a "2-minute agreement".

That doesn't stop SAYC from being the classic camel - "an elephant designed by committee".

It might be an awful version of SA, it might be even more archaic than it was when OKB started; but it still solves the "play with someone from Bengaluru" problem as well as it did then.

Now that's independent from the reason for the Yellow Card being invented, which was in fact a dismal failure. For ever, people have been complaining that the auctions are too hard to understand, and people just play these weird things to confuse, and bidding judgement and play skill are what that should be emphasised. So the ACBL decided to try it, and gave the world "a system most tournament players in 1980 would be able to play". It turns out that what all those complainers actually *meant* was "*We* want to play our pet gadgets, because they're useful; it's just the opponents' mad systems that are confusing and should be banned."

[rdylan]

Thanks all. This thread has been very enlightening for me. The only reason I said at the outset that there was no need to convince me to change bidding systems was that I was already generally aware of the weaknesses of SAYC and the superiority of 2/1 GF. However, I play with a group of mostly (self-described) "kitchen bridge" players who claim to play SAYC, but really play a combination of pre-modern SA and Grant Club series with only the most basic modern adaptions. They are also all in their 70s and 80s, so getting them to switch now to 2/1 GF would be an exercise in futility.

I will definitely be learning 2/1 GF, and hope to find a player soon to take that journey with me (I'm working on getting my brother to play). In the meantime, I've been trying to make the most sense out of SAYC (and out of the situations in which my group departs from SAYC) as I can. What is clear to me now is that there isn't much sense to be made for either.

[blackshoe]

"Elephant: A mouse built to government specifications." -- Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love.

[mycroft]

If you're learning how to play a good version of Standard American, then please do so. Learn to play the version your kitchen bridge people play; it's probably better than YC. It's really good to know YC because you *can* play YC with anyone with little discussion, because it's a specified system. It's better to take YC as a base and fix a bunch of holes (some modern NMF, defined 4SF, inverted minors, negX through 3♠ or 4♥, definitions around things like "is 2NT passable after a 2/1?").

30 years ago, my teacher told me "it's a good idea to learn 2/1, not because 2/1 is any better [it is, but at our level at the time, only minimally so], but because if you find a 2/1 partner at the partnership desk, you'll know that they play all the gadgets needed to make standard work. You can't guarantee that from someone who doesn't play 2/1." Those gadgets are still necessary to make standard work, and frankly, a good standard with all the hole-fillers is sufficient for 99% of cases at "newer player" level. I played a (very gadgety, with a weak NT) version of Standard with a regular partner for three years and never felt we were missing something, for instance.

Note that 2/1 is just as fluid as Standard - literally no pair plays 2/1 the same way unless they were trained by the same teacher. So, taking the time to learn "your group's" SA won't hurt you at all; it will prepare you for "there's more than one way to do it" when you get to 2/1 as well.

Good luck - with your adventure, and with bringing in your brother. It's a long and fulfilling one, no matter where it leads.