Re: bridge and memory

On Jun 30, 10:55 pm, john0714 <john0...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
I am a beginner, and it seems to me the talent you most need is a
memory at least bordering on the photographic in order to remember
enough details of enough conventions and even what cards have been
played. I am weak on that and  I fear that memory like that is a gift
which I have not been given,that it cannot be learned, and that
whatever skills I may develop cannot overcome that lack.

I hope I am being overly pessimistic, what do you think, have I
overestimated how superior a gifted memory is needed to become
advanced?

Hi John,
Don't worry - it's not rote memorization! Otherwise no one would play
this game. Bridge is like a language; as far as the bidding goes, you
might (and will probably) start out having to remember what individual
bids mean, but the more you play, the more you start to realize
patterns and principles that can be applied over and over again in
different situations. You'll start to develop a "feel" for the
language of bidding. This to me is what makes bridge so fascinating
and fun to learn. It's just like learning a new language.

Suppose you're first learning a new language, say, English. You
encounter the sentence "I couldn't drive yesterday because it rained
yesterday". You would probably have to memorize this sentence word
for word and it would be very time consuming. It would come out un-
fluently and seem like a one-time use sentence that you would never
need again. But eventually you would learn all kinds of variations
based on this same principle: "I couldn't fly today because it snowed
today". "I won't be able to play ball tomorrow because it will hail
tomorrow". "I [can't/couldn't] [verb] [time] because [bad weather
condition] [time]"

In bridge it's just like this. At first you might be memorizing what
"2 diamonds - 2 hearts - 2 notrump means". But eventually you will
realize (probably on your own) that, in a way, anything diamonds,
anything hearts, then notrump at the lowest level *always* has a kind
of similar meaning. This will relieve the pressure on you to
memorize.

It's true that in bidding, many bids do have specific numbers of
points or cards that they show, and there's no getting around it, you
will have to learn some of them by rote. This is why you see players
studying their notes before a game. It's expected to be short-term
memory and they have to study again before the next bridge game. But
the best players memorize the least; they've learned to figure out on
demand what a bid must mean, just like you might "invent" an English
word you need by making use of general principles of spelling and
grammar.

That's it for bidding. As for card play (remembering which cards are
out, keeping track of all the cards), this part is similar to chess.
Again, it's not rote memory but rather, pattern recognition, that
helps you. A chess player *doesn't* remember the locations of pieces
by remember each individual piece on the board, but rather, notices
the *patterns* that the pieces make, and remembers those. Each
"clump" of pieces is so familar to the chess player that in one sub-
syllable he can describe it to himself. Not "king on A1, pawn on B2,
pawn on C2, pawn on D2", but rather something like
(thekingandthreepawns).

In bridge, you'll eventually start to see the same card combinations
over and over again (Ah yes, the thing with the ace, queen and 10).
Once the situation becomes something familiar to you, you won't need
to devote so much memory to it and more brain will be free to keep
track of other things during the hand. Some counting is needed, e.g.
to draw trump and keep track of how many you've pulled out, but you'll
be amazed at how much bridge you can play by feel rather than memory
after only 10 short years. <-- sorry, I do have to be realistic with
you - it's not a fast game to learn.........

One caution: You mentioned "conventions" and there are HUNDREDS of
conventions; some beginners are tempted to learn as many as possible.
DON'T. This is akin to a beginning computer user buying the most
complicated possible system and ending up with something less usable,
more expensive, and more frustrating than the cheap, basic model.
Some conventions require you to redefine bids to mean unusual things,
in order to "pack more precision" into the bidding. This is akin to
your first-year English teacher telling you that people use pig-latin
occasional for humor, and giving you an exercise in pig-latin. It's
just not worth learning. The fewer conventions you spend time on, the
quicker you'll develop the natural feel of the game.

Good luck, and enjoy :)
.

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