[mikl_plkcc]

 hrothgar, on 2025-June-21, 06:12, said:

FFS

Goren stopped playing serious bridge close to 60 years ago
Culbertson has been dead for 70 years

When you go to the doctor, do you lecture them that you aren't willing to accept anything that runs contrary to Hippocrates and Galen?

The game has moved on during the last half century.

Pull your pompous head out of your ass and listen to your betters
Or don't

But with the skills and the attitude that you seem to have, don't expect folks to view you with anything but amusement and contempt

A lot of modern gadgets have resulted in less accurate bidding, resulting in missed fits and games, especially when the opponents do not intervene. For example, Walsh, preempting without having certain top honours, opening light, or opening 1NT with 5422.

Therefore I am now studying old bridge materials and aligning my bidding system / styles to the norm half a century ago.

I am playing low-level club bridge, not national / international tournaments so I want to make our methods good enough against typical club players.

[eagles123]

mikl_plkcc, on 2025-June-21, 08:44, said:

A lot of modern gadgets have resulted in less accurate bidding, resulting in missed fits and games, especially when the opponents do not intervene. For example, Walsh, preempting without having certain top honours, opening light, or opening 1NT with 5422.

Therefore I am now studying old bridge materials and aligning my bidding system / styles to the norm half a century ago.

I am playing low-level club bridge, not national / international tournaments so I want to make our methods good enough against typical club players.

"Opening 1N with 5422"

Kx Ajxx Kqxxx Qx

1D - 1S ... and your rebid is?? You could ask the top 10,000 bridge players in the world what they open with that hand (playing 15-17 NT), I would almost guarantee that all 10,000 of them would open 1N. Feel free to poll it on BW if you don't believe me.

There are obviously certain card play principles that will forever stand the test of time. Mike Lawrence's How to Read Your Opponents cards is a superb book that I would highly highly recommend. But looking to play a system that was the norm 50 years ago is absolutely idiotic. Bridge theory evolves and moves over time. If you were looking to become an Expert at Chess, would you look at Magnus Carlsen or would you look at some chess theorist from the 1800's?

[mikl_plkcc]

 eagles123, on 2025-June-21, 10:05, said:

"Opening 1N with 5422"

Kx Ajxx Kqxxx Qx

1D - 1S ... and your rebid is?? You could ask the top 10,000 bridge players in the world what they open with that hand (playing 15-17 NT), I would almost guarantee that all 10,000 of them would open 1N. Feel free to poll it on BW if you don't believe me.

There are obviously certain card play principles that will forever stand the test of time. Mike Lawrence's How to Read Your Opponents cards is a superb book that I would highly highly recommend. But looking to play a system that was the norm 50 years ago is absolutely idiotic. Bridge theory evolves and moves over time. If you were looking to become an Expert at Chess, would you look at Magnus Carlsen or would you look at some chess theorist from the 1800's?

I rebid 2♦, the smallest distortion to the hand, the same rebid as if the ♠Kx becomes xx.

Similar rebidding problem exists for 3=4=5=1 not enough to reverse as well. Rebidding a 5-card suit is unavoidable.

If the values are concentrated in the 2 doubleton I may exercise judgement to open 1NT, but definitely not Kx and Qx. The risk of it becoming the final contract and getting -200 or worse, because 2 suits are completely unstopped, is too great.

Playing 5-card major means that sometimes rebidding a 5-card minor is unavoidable. If I have to rebid a 5-card minor holding 12-14 why can't I do that with 15?

Or maybe I can play some strong club system where a 1-opening is limited and the responder will not respond with 6 points, in those systems I can freely reverse without extra values, if I don't want to systematic lie on these hands. But I think lying a point is less evil than getting my forcing 1♣ aggressively overcalled by the opponents.

Yesterday there was a hand where LHO opened 1♦! (strong club, 1♦ means anything without 4-card major and not enough to open 1♣) and RHO responded 1♥! (artificial GF relay). If I had a long suit I would preempt aggressively as they had established a game force without showing any suits, but unfortunately I held a balanced hand so I could do nothing but watching their whole conversation exchanging their exact hand shape to arrive their perfect game.

Similarly, there was another hand, where the opponents used a natural system, LHO started 1♥, partner overcalled 1♠ so I was prepared to jump to 3♠ with 4-card support. Unfortunately RHO responded 2♥, and I didn't have a strong hand, so there was no longer any need to preempt as the hand was destined for a partscore and they had found their fit.

[smerriman]

It's time to close this thread. The answer to the title is - for you, impossible.

[hrothgar]

mikl_plkcc, on 2025-June-21, 08:44, said:

I am now studying old bridge materials and aligning my bidding system / styles to the norm half a century ago.

When you first started citing your "rules" like having X suits stopped when you opened 1NT, I jokingly asked whether you had been reading Culbertson.
I never thought that you were stupid enough to do so.

Ultimately, bridge is about communicating with your partner

Even if you believe that there is value in aping the bidding systems that were used 70 years ago, I very much doubt that you're going to have any real success in finding a partner who is willing to play along. But, who knows, maybe our prowess at declarer play and defense will draw someone in...

[mikeh]

mikl_plkcc, on 2025-June-21, 08:44, said:

A lot of modern gadgets have resulted in less accurate bidding, resulting in missed fits and games, especially when the opponents do not intervene. For example, Walsh, preempting without having certain top honours, opening light, or opening 1NT with 5422.

Therefore I am now studying old bridge materials and aligning my bidding system / styles to the norm half a century ago.

I am playing low-level club bridge, not national / international tournaments so I want to make our methods good enough against typical club players.

You are incredibly ignorant.

I started playing in 1972. I’m still playing.

I learned the Schenken forcing club method early on, and I also played a form of Goren (although it was outdated by 1972), Acol, Kaplan Sheinwold, the original Precision method developed by C C Wei, Power Precision, by Sontag, Aces Scientific, and 2/1 as written up (not invented by) Max Hardy.

All within the first 15 years or so,

I invented a big club method that I played with one partner for a few years. Then I played a highly artificial 2/1 method, incorporating a lot of relays. That won me my first two Canadian Team Championships, and the right to play in the Bermuda Bowl.

In 2006 I invented (well, technically I used a lot of ideas from others) a variant of T-Walsh.

More recently, I play a souped up T-Walsh, with many relays but very different from the relay method I played in the late 1990s.

Why have I played so many methods?

Because each method has represented a significant upgrade from previous methods.

Why do NONE of the best players in the world play standard American or acol or the original Precision? Because the methods they now play are significantly better than the older methods.

The top players get paid a LOT of money to play. There is intense pressure to excel. If 50-70 year old methods were the best, they’d all play them…but none…none at all…do.

I’ve sometimes said that if I had a Time Machine I could go back 70 years with my most regular team and we’d win every event we entered…including World Championships. No, we’re not as good as the top players back then….but we bid FAR better than they could hope to bid, and we play our cards pretty well. And defensive methods today are far ahead of yesteryear, so we’d kill them on defence much of the time.

50 years, I’m not so sure….that’s about when top players began to get serious about partnership bridge, including developing partnership-specific methods. Prior to that, many top players, especially in NA, didn5 pay much attention to ‘scientific’ bidding.

The fact that you seem serious is a poor reflection on you, revealing that you are profoundly ignorant of the best parts of our game,

[mikl_plkcc]

 mikeh, on 2025-June-21, 17:32, said:

Why do NONE of the best players in the world play standard American or acol or the original Precision? Because the methods they now play are significantly better than the older methods.

However, both Standard American and Acol are still commonly played in club bridge, where I am playing. I have even played with some players who still play the old fashioned 1M-3M forcing raise and 1m-2N = 13-15 balanced.

And the reason I am going back is because I believe them to have bridge merit. The strict rules of various bids in the past enable accurate partnership bidding while limiting the chance of big losses, at the expense (compared to modern methods) of competitive bidding.

Using Walsh as an example, it sacrifices many hands where the best contract is 2♦ or 3♦ to play a hard-to-make 1NT, which frequently goes down with a weak hand, in exchange of competing in ♥ more effectively. A Walsh player frequently ends up 1♣-1♥-1NT compared to 1♣-1♦-2♦ in a 5-4 fit using old-fashioned up-the-line bidding.

[hrothgar]

mikl_plkcc, on 2025-June-21, 18:51, said:

And the reason I am going back is because I believe them to have bridge merit.

Michael, you don't understand basic declarer play or defense.
Perhaps you're not the best individual to be making decisions about "bridge merit"?

[mikeh]

mikl_plkcc, on 2025-June-21, 18:51, said:

However, both Standard American and Acol are still commonly played in club bridge, where I am playing. I have even played with some players who still play the old fashioned 1M-3M forcing raise and 1m-2N = 13-15 balanced.

And the reason I am going back is because I believe them to have bridge merit. The strict rules of various bids in the past enable accurate partnership bidding while limiting the chance of big losses, at the expense (compared to modern methods) of competitive bidding.

Using Walsh as an example, it sacrifices many hands where the best contract is 2♦ or 3♦ to play a hard-to-make 1NT, which frequently goes down with a weak hand, in exchange of competing in ♥ more effectively. A Walsh player frequently ends up 1♣-1♥-1NT compared to 1♣-1♦-2♦ in a 5-4 fit using old-fashioned up-the-line bidding.

You should quit posting. Every post reveals your ignorance.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

you could play Stone Age Acol, it does not get a lot older, and be reasonable successful at the club level,
even at (mid) national level.
This would assume, that you focus on declarer play / defense. But it would also assume, that you have a p,
that buys into your philosophy.

You would also need to accept, the limits of those old systems, you would also need to to accept, that those
methods work in a reasonable way on the part score level, and on the game level, but have problems investigating
slam.

Finally: Andrew Robson said about Stone Age Acol ... it was the first system, that recognised the fact that there
are 4 peoble on the table, not 2. The bidding is competive, even at a local bridge club. Focusing on this is important.
You dont need to play Walsh, I dont do this, but bidding a four card major suit instead of a 4 card diamond suit helps,
finding your major suit. Bidding 1NT as fast as possible gets you to the system part of your system, that is the best
defined, makes it harder for THEM to enter.

Anyway, it is YOUR game, if you find a partner that buys into this, good luck and enjoy.

[mikl_plkcc]

 P_Marlowe, on 2025-June-22, 01:26, said:

Hi,

you could play Stone Age Acol, it does not get a lot older, and be reasonable successful at the club level,
even at (mid) national level.
This would assume, that you focus on declarer play / defense. But it would also assume, that you have a p,
that buys into your philosophy.

You would also need to accept, the limits of those old systems, you would also need to to accept, that those
methods work in a reasonable way on the part score level, and on the game level, but have problems investigating
slam.

Finally: Andrew Robson said about Stone Age Acol ... it was the first system, that recognised the fact that there
are 4 peoble on the table, not 2. The bidding is competive, even at a local bridge club. Focusing on this is important.
You dont need to play Walsh, I dont do this, but bidding a four card major suit instead of a 4 card diamond suit helps,
finding your major suit. Bidding 1NT as fast as possible gets you to the system part of your system, that is the best
defined, makes it harder for THEM to enter.

Anyway, it is YOUR game, if you find a partner that buys into this, good luck and enjoy.

Honestly, defence is too difficult for me to understand. Like the board I quoted above I opened 3♣ where the winning line was to shift to ♥, I did use similar strategy in the past but every time I did this the A was always in the declarer, not my partner. On some other boards the winning strategy is to play from the top to knock out the stopper, then wait for a side entry after partner gains the lead.

Similarly, in suit contract, when I see 5 and have 6 (or vice versa), there is theoretically about 24% chance for my partner to have a void, but every time I play this suit, it is nearly always to hit declarer's void instead.

[P_Marlowe]

mikl_plkcc, on 2025-June-22, 04:02, said:

Honestly, defence is too difficult for me to understand. Like the board I quoted above I opened 3♣ where the winning line was to shift to ♥, I did use similar strategy in the past but every time I did this the A was always in the declarer, not my partner. On some other boards the winning strategy is to play from the top to knock out the stopper, then wait for a side entry after partner gains the lead.

Similarly, in suit contract, when I see 5 and have 6 (or vice versa), there is theoretically about 24% chance for my partner to have a void, but every time I play this suit, it is nearly always to hit declarer's void instead.

Defense is hard.

There are various good books on it, but I liked Bill Roots book.

https://www.amazon.c...s/dp/0517881594
https://www.amazon.c...t/dp/0517883937

Again you need a p.

As it is, if you improve on your declarer play, your defence improves.
Also understanding the information provided by the auction. You can agree to play whatever superior you think
there is out there, but you need to learn the standard meaning (what ever this may mean) of the auctions,
because most players will play, maybe inferior, standard methods.

It is also important to understand, that patience is quite often more important than activity.
To understand, when to switch from passivity to activity is important, is key (*), and you will discover the moment due to
clues provided by the line of play declarer choose, due to information provided by the auction and due to signals
given by partner. You can play with a minimal amount of signals from partner, i.e. the last of the 3 is the least important,
you cannot omit the first two parts. Quite often pairs focus on the 3rd, ..., you still need to be able to read the
signal and apply the information.
And improving / working on declarer play, working on analyzing the clues from the auction, can be done alone.

(*) I quite often fail to switch to active mode, I need to work on that, I prefer a wait and see approach.
But letting declarer do his own work is quite often good enough.

[mw64ahw]

A lot of the responses here are too harsh. Mike has demonstrated a strong desire to learn and adapt, despite a lot of what some would call 'trolling'

Some of the rules have gone out the door or are more flexible. Harking back to earlier times can also be beneficial as you get to learn about the transition to a modern style. A lot of what I see at a club level is based on rules that the so called experts have taught.

[awm]

While “going back to Goren/Culbertson” seems rather extreme and counterproductive, at the level the original poster plays, the best way to improve his results will be to focus on play and defence. As far as bidding goes, adopting more complex methods favoured by modern experts will improve your results only if you and partner both know/understand the methods and even then the improvement is fairly small. When you play with different partners all the time and don’t have a particularly solid grounding in bidding theory, “simpler is better” is generally a good approach.

I’d be much more worried about messing up a simple defence (and apparently not seeing the problem even looking at all four hands after the game) than whether T-Walsh could gain you a few IMPs somewhere.

At the same time, the modern methods ARE generally better than the older methods, and you don’t need to be a world-class declarer to see the benefits. When I was relatively new to the game, I won a lot of (low flight) events by playing complex methods (and knowing them really well) without necessarily having superior card play or competitive judgment to my peers. That said, if your card play is substantially BEHIND your competition I’d focus there first.

[mikeh]

mw64ahw, on 2025-June-22, 05:55, said:

A lot of the responses here are too harsh. Mike has demonstrated a strong desire to learn and adapt, despite a lot of what some would call 'trolling'

Some of the rules have gone out the door or are more flexible. Harking back to earlier times can also be beneficial as you get to learn about the transition to a modern style. A lot of what I see at a club level is based on rules that the so called experts have taught.

I disagree. The OP is most remarkable for his refusal to accept advice. He has his views about bridge…views completely at odds with those who know at least a little something about the game…and he is adamant that he’s right. There isn’t a single competent player, to my knowledge and I know hundreds of players and know much about hundreds of others…who thinks that the methods popular 50-70 years ago are as effective as those now popular.

One need not play transfer Walsh or Meckwell lite or even many of the now widely popular gadgets….xyz, bart, range ask, even 4 way transfers or smolen etc to understand that a simple 2/1 method is far more effective than Goren or Acol, etc.

You want complicated? Try playing classic Goren for a few sessions. You’ll be guessing what to do on hands that modern methods, even simple versions thereof, make easy.

Consider just the hoops that one must go through with a limit raise if partner’s 4 card major. Or how hopeless Goren becomes, on many hands, once the opps interfere. Or how one creates a gf as opener after partner’s non gf 2/1, etc, etc.