Re: the decline of ACBL bridge

stevts@xxxxxxx wrote:
Pubkeybreaker wrote:

As I said in an earlier post:

ACADEMIC LAZINESS.

Poker and Spades take little time to learn how to play.

Bridge requires a very LARGE effort to learn well.

I'm sorry if I am offending people, but the provincialism that
permeates these posts, about why young people are not taking up this
great game, is truly absurd. It's almost as though the old guard
bridge players have rationalized all the actions that have been taken
to destroy this game by saying to themselves "The game is too hard to
learn, only smart and attentive people (cough, cough, like myself,
aren't I wonderful) want to play this game. Oh, how I long for the
days when people were smart and attentive, like me (cough, cough)."
This is baloney, and it is tiresome to hear repeated over and over
again. Let me pop a few balloons here:

(1) "Bridge is hard to learn to play." No, it's not. In its heyday,
bridge was played by virtually every housewife in America. We're not
talking about magna cum laudes here. For the majority of young people
(by that, I mean under age 30, although I know that for bridge players,
this means under age 60) who play Spades, it's a miniscule leap to
playing bridge. All they have to learn are the basics of natural
bidding (and scoring, of course) and point count, and they are on their
way. Any competent teacher could have a table of Spades-playing kids
playing basic bridge in 2, maybe 3 hours. FACE IT, YOU GUYS ARE NOT
SMARTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE OUT THERE! You might like to THINK that you
are, but you are not.

(2) "Bridge is hard to learn to play well." OK, very true. But that
is part of its charm. The fact that is IS hard to play well is what
makes it attractive, and keeps people interested. Who keeps playing
games that are EASY to play? How many people keep playing "War" after
they get past elementary school (by the way, I can't help but laugh at
the comment in my related post about kids playing "complex card games
like Magic" -- ummmm, "Magic" is nothing more than a souped-up version
of War, LOL LOL LOL). The beauty of bridge is that it is EASY to
learn, but HARD to master. Very hard. And that is what will KEEP
people playing the game once they choose to try it out. All we have to
do are two things: (A) convince people to get started with it, and (B)
try to manage our national bridge federation in a manner that does not
drive people out of the game once they start to play it. By every
observable measure, we who love the game of bridge have failed
miserably at both goals.

(3) "New players don't encounter the Polish Club or EHAA, those things
don't affect their choice not to learn the game to begin with." Yes
they do, but you are so self-focused that you don't see it. "Rubbish,"
you say, "New players don't start with the Polish Club, so how can that
enter into the equation?" Easy -- because of the prevalence of
byzantine bidding systems on the highest levels of bridge (natiional
and international championships), it's IMPOSSIBLE to promote the game
to new players. Face it, there's nothing about your average club games
with Mabel and Fred that are going to capture the interest of the
non-playing public. (I can just see it now -- let's see if ESPN2 wants
to broadcast "Club Bridge with Mabel and Fred." Not very likely.)
Only the drama of top-flight competition will get the non-playing
public interested in the game. Think back a bit on the history of the
game -- there was a big surge of interest in game at 3 junctures that I
can recall: during the Culbertson-Sims matches, when Charles Goren was
taking the game by storm, and when the Aces were formed to wrest the
international championship away from the Italians. The game of chess
had a similar boom during the Fisher-Spassky matches. In each case,
the public became interested in the game because they began to follow
the drama of top-flight competition. The same thing could be done
today in bridge, IF IT WASN'T FOR THE COMPLEX AND INCOMPREHENSIBLE
BIDDING SYSTEMS THAT PERMEATE THE TOP-FLIGHT COMPETITION TODAY.
Unfortunately, the bidding always precedes the play and defense, by the
nature of the game, so in any presentation of the game (whether it be
in the newspaper or on TV), you have to get past the bidding in order
to get to the play and defense. And when people (and even the
commentators) can't understand the bidding, they are going to get
turned off even before they get to the play and defense. THAT is how
the Polish Club and EHAA and the "Big Diamond" systems and all of their
ilk keep people away from the game, even though it's not what new
players learn.

(4) "Bridge isn't the same game if you take away all of the
conventions." Yes it is, it's the EXACT SAME GAME. It might even
require MORE flair and innate ability. ANY bridge player who is worth
their salt could sit down with a very "restricted" convention card
(Stayman, Blackwood, takeout and negative doubles, weak 2-bids, that's
about it), and play high quality bridge. Do you really think that if
you played a team match against Meckstroth, Rodwell, Soloway, and
Hamman under those conditions, that would increase your chances of
beating them? Not in a million years. You'd get crushed. It's not
the conventions that make a good bridge player, it's how well they play
the game. And it's not the conventions that make the game interesting,
it's the fact that it's a great game. I have played with and against a
number of people who are among the best players in the world today, and
they would still be among the best players in the world if they had to
play a "restricted" convention card. And I think that a lot of them
would be intrigued with the concept of playing in a national or world
championship event with everyone being limited to the same "restricted"
natural bidding system.

Look, if it wasn't for the incomprehensible bidding systems that all
top-flight players today play, I think that the public would be more
than ready for the bridge equivalent of "The World Series of Poker,"
which is what touched off the current poker craze in the first place.
But this is NEVER going to happen until we face the fact that the way
top-flight bridge is played today, it is completely and totally
IMPOSSIBLE to promote. I'm sure it will never happen (although I don't
know why), but if we did have world championship competitions with
everyone limited to very "restricted" natural bidding systems, I think
that this may well be something that could be broadcast on ESPN2 (or
similar), and it would spark the imaginations of the non-playing bridge
public. But as long as today's bridge players stay dead-set against
trying anything out that will be good for the overall health of the
game, I'm afraid that we'll never see bridge break out of its death
spiral in the U.S.

I think you have shown some important insights......

Usually, the prerequisite for a product to be popular is that it be a
good product. Bridge at one time was very popular- and now it is
imploding. Are there conclusions to be be drawn? Probably that bridge
used to be a good product and that today it may be a poor product.

But why? The answers are not so easy.

It has been suggested that complex bidding is at the heart of the
matter. But does that go to the heart of the matter? Hardly. What is
the impetus behind complex bidding? Is it not the rules of the game?
Namely that rewards are in opposite proportion with the difficulty and
risk undertaken. It is this force that pushes players to Byzantine
bidding. And until the scoring table is corrected the force will
persist, and it will continue to be irresistible.

Does that mean that once the scoring table is corrected that things
have been fixed? Hardly. Correcting the scoring table is probably the
easiest thing that might be accomplished, but there are a host of rules
that have turned the game on its ears and it is not so easy to see what
to do.

That is largely because there is a mindset due to players having been
told for decades what is right and what is wrong. Yet the underlying
principles of that instruction probably were not adequately understood.
But then again perhaps they were understood, but not made public.

As illustration, in October 1999 Chris Compton wrote to the Bridge
World. He asserted that bridge players had two universal beliefs: [1]
the principle of full disclosure is correct and [2] no infractor should
be permitted to possibly gain from his irregularity. After considering
and testing for several years I have come to two conclusions- that
Compton was at least pretty close to right; and, those beliefs deserve
as much credence as believing the earth is flat.

On the first count, full disclosure is impossible. It would take me
years to ascertain when I have given full disclosure for even a single
call. And I have a much better memory than most. So what can be
expected from the rest of the world? It is just too unlimited. No, it
is just plain wrong to require full disclosure- an anachronism foisted
by the lazy upon the unsuspecting.

The underlying principle must not be how much- but how little is fair
enough. The question is, "how little disclosure does an opponent
need?" That is not a lazy question. The answer is difficult.
Surely the information that a player needs is the information imparted
by agreement including [a] promised range of length [b] promised range
of strength [c] identified holdings [d] the expectation of a future
call [e] the nature of queries and instructions to partner and [f] the
nature of replies to queries. Perhaps there is more but in my opinion
it is adequate. It would be important to note that no mention of tacit
partnership understandings was included. It should be the function of
the rules to describe to players the point at which that which would be
classed as understanding becomes agreement.

The rules of a game ought to strive to establish and maintain a level
playing field. Figuring out what a level field is, is one thing.
Maintaining it is quite another. The notion that infractors not
possibly gaining from their infraction presumes that they are not
entitled to the outcome to which they were heading because of the
unknowns of future events. And thus necessitates extracting the
maximum penalty conceivable. Why? To prevent the possibility of gain.
Such principle prescribes that the playing field be not level but
distinctly tilted. And when the playing field is tilted, the side it
is tilted against has forces against it that discourage remaining, and
for the side it is tilted toward there is little incentive to undertake
easy pickings.

As the rules are so punitive and the resulting infractions are
abundant, there is social pressure to not seek remedy except in the
most egregious of occurrences. The upshot is that the vast majority of
infractions are never remedied. Which is reminiscent of the so called
'Professional Wrestling' since it appealed to those that are
entertained by what is fake.

Anyway, it is because beliefs such as those mentioned by Chris Compton
are so universal that they are impediments to seeing things as they
are- which is a necessary condition to putting things right.

regards
axman

Alright, now I KNOW that I'm going to get a lot of angry replies.

Steve

.

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