Re: Marketing Bridge

dranon wrote:
On Sun, 08 Feb 2009 13:38:39 +0000, lescor <lescorbett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


dranon wrote:

On Sat, 07 Feb 2009 09:46:26 +0000, lescor <lescorbett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:



dranon wrote:


On Fri, 06 Feb 2009 09:10:38 +0000, lescor <lescorbett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:




Give me a racket and some balls and it is simply my skill which will decide if it's next stop Wimbledon. We can hardly say that about bridge where partnership system memory might be even more important than the skill element of the game, the card play.


This seems to me to be an emotional argument that resonates for you,
based on your experience, but is contrary to my understanding, based
on mine. What you describe as system memory IS PART OF THE GAME. For
you to say that people drop out once they encounter a competitive
environment where there is increased demand in that area is the
equivalent of saying that your budding tennis stars drop out once they
play an opponent who can, at will, put a top-spin rotation on a
backhand shot. It is all part of the skill of the game.

I dare say that *IF* you are correct, then the fault lies with those
who taught said students about the game in the first place. If they
were presented with dishonest expectations, they have a right to be
disillusioned at some point.

Interesting points, but not quite correct. My comments are not at all emotional and I, until recently, enjoy playing duplicate bridge as much as anyone. I am simply pointing out the main reason why so few from those who take up the game don't also find it so.


But I think your understanding of their reasons and reasoning is based
on your personal bias and is not consistent with my experience.

Fine, so all is well and there is no problem, no worrying drop out rate?


I didn't mean to imply that. We both want to see a change that
increases the student's longevity. I submit that all things point
back to the teaching methods and that, as has been suggested elsewhere
in this thread, teaching to the expected course is far superior to
"just teaching the game."

Tel them upfront:

This is a class where you will learn how to play the game of bridge,
and you will learn those things which are necessary for you to be
prepared to play in a friendly duplicate bridge club.

I hardly think that ACBL (or any other SO) should bother with a course
that doesn't offer the above as a minimum syllabus.


But why the hell should you come to that "bias" conclusion? My knowledge of their reasons are based upon teaching them by the hundreds, speaking to them and even playing with them as an introduction. In short, it is based upon what they said. You seem, for some strange reason, and despite my comments, to suggest a personal bias. Seems that in your haste to defend the status quo you assume that I dislike duplicate bridge This is not so.


You invite many a comment about WHAT you are teaching and HOW.
Suffice it to say that if one teaches "to the result", you missed.
Many others have also, so don't feel too bad.

But John is right. It is all about marketing. If the bridge
"lessons" aren't seen as a marketing tool for increasing ACBL
membership, then they are not properly developed. Or, if one wants to
be kinder and gentler, they aren't tapping the vein with maximum
efficiency.


The topic, remember, was why so many do not find it as attractive as some of us do.


I still blame the teacher.


Of course system memory is part of the game, and it is difficult enough for the beginner to learn even the most basic, uncluttered methods and they take time to absorb. If you are suggesting that the teachers should, in the cause of honesty , also add defence to opponents multi or weak twos and the rest, its a non starter.


Not at all. I am suggesting that the teacher make it clear that there
are certain skills that they need to have a grasp on before they
anticipate mediocrity in an open environment.

This is obviously made clear very early. It is not some guarded secret.
They know that in the game played under a different format they would be faced with playing against systems which were not 'natural'.


Bravo. A problem identified is 1/2 solved. Then teach to them the
skills necessary to not feel overwhelmed.


It also presupposes that they wanted to learn the game so that they could play duplicate bridge in a club, a strange idea and one which the games governing bodies seem to subscribe to.


Not at all. If you want my support, I expect something in return.
Hardly unreasonable.


Ah, but that is the purpose of the lessons. Even if a large
percentage never do, there may, someday be an individual coerced to
the game by three such never-doers, who his/herself goes on to do so.


In retrospect, I wasn't as pointed here as I should have been. The
purpose of the lessons is to increase ACBL membership.


And some do, including me, but not enough it seems. But the purpose of the lessons is NOT to provide players for duplicate, it is to teach them the fundamentals of bridge. Where they take this, what form of the game
they play and how often, is for them to decide. Maybe our difference of opinion have a geographical basis , but I do not understand where this accepted wisdom that bridge means duplicate (in one form or another) is correct. Seems the vast majority of those who play the game would not agree. Fault of the teachers you say......... but if so, maybe the teachers have got the market right?


They may have "something" right, but it isn't the "market".


Then you "advisory" was lacking.


s/b "your"


Yes maybe, but that presupposes a wide low standard of teaching.


Admittedly.


There might be other reasons for the problem and they could just be the ones I stated. We have a class of 32 new players, slightly bewildered at the beginning, but after 8 x 3 hour lessons and armed with pages of comprehensive notes on each topic, they learn and, most often, fall for the game, become fascinated by it, and will then sign up for another course at the intermediate level a few weeks later after attending weekly practice sessions.

We have them. keen as mustard and enjoying their increasing bridge days.
Many will, at some stage, take the natural step into club duplicate, but not for long. Why? Poor preparation at clubs where the main objective is to get them into club duplicates, as you suggest? Unlikely!


Agree to disagree.


this was a decade or so ago but, as I discovered the last

time I played, the duplicate world is now even less appealing for the novice


Why is that?

The thought occurred to me as I played at a club and where the event which once attracted 18 plus tables now had 8. Many old faces ( very few young) and I reflected on how things had changed in such a short time.
How, a few years ago these events, and even one which carried a $200 winners-take-all cash prize, was run in a far more informal, chatty and friendly fashion.


I started in 1971 in the Washington DC area and the games were very
large and definitively NOT informal, chatty or friendly. They were
fierce. The Thursday night Unit game was considered to be regional
open pairs' quality. My brains were bashed by the likes of Robinson,
Woolsey, Cappeletti(s) and so forth. Trust me, there were times when
achieving 35% was a victory.

I certainly understand being beaten to a pulp.

What I don't understand is not being prepared by one's teachers for
the experience.

What you describe is general bewilderment. You blame it on a specific
toxin: unfamiliarity. I suggest that is merely a convenient excuse.
Whether it is the first time one encounters a reverse into a 3 card
suit or a forcing pass system, the result is the same: newbies are
overwhelmed when playing against experienced players. Those that you
saw drop out would have still done so if they never ran into a Reverse
Bergen with LOTT undertones (or any such other system name you want to
make up). And they should be prepared for that reality from the get
go.


Maybe the last straw was bidding boxes, unless they see a need for under table leg barriers in the future of course, But the change was screamingly obvious, and if that past environment was unattractive to novices, the present one is even more so.


and that fact will never be overcome by even the most expert marketing.


All can be overcome by marketing.


Disagree.



I dispute your suggestion that system memory is a bridge SKILL


Houston, we have a problem. This is a fundamental difference that
can't be brushed over.

, at least, not in the context discussed, possibly because it could be learnt
by someone with a lively memory but who had never touched a card in his life. A vital part of the game without doubt, but memory of agreed system is hardly a skill is it?


It is indeed. In a nutshell, people's brains have different
capacities. You either manage your capacity or fail. Managing that
is definitely a skill and separates many a bridge player from the next
level.

But you again miss the point. I am not suggesting that reason or skill and experience cannot be used in tight bidding situations. It is more about facing new artificial bids - many of which are meant to be disruptive - of which there is a long list, some allowed, some allowed for a while before being banned in some events but not in others.

It takes no great skill to recognise a multi opening bid which might have one of 3 or 4 meanings. Its use disadvantaged more than novices for a while, until they had agree a defence when it started to become widely used. All part of the game of course, but why should the less experienced player bother?


To become a less less experienced player.


Why learn yet another list of defences to it and a few more for other such openings? Do you honestly think teaching
is the reason that they find the task not worth the time?


Absolutely.


Face the fact that this unlevel playing field is unattractive to most
apart from a few like us. No amount of marketing will change that fact. The clubs that taught them once had them by the nose but failed to keep them. You won't get them back with naive idea that you can , by marketing, get them to see that what they found unappealing really isn't.

There is a way of increasing club activity given time, but it requires fresh thinking and an acceptance of what the vast majority of those who play the game would really enjoy. Market what is attractive, not " you may have found it wanting but please try again as it's all we have got".


Your tennis example is not valid. Of course an opponents greater skill in play will give him an advantage, but we both play with the same ball as we do in all other pastimes apart from bridge.


I guess it depends on your definition of ball. I see 52 balls and
they look alike at every table I've ever played at.




I never suggested it was wrong that sophisticated and 'non natural' systems are allowed. but simply pointing out that they are the reason
for the drop out of most who learn.


Again, I fault the teacher.

It is not losing a point to a swerving spinning serve, a result of skill. It is more like losing one to an opponent suddenly serving with a smaller harder ball, one we have never experienced before.


A fabrication of your own choosing, I'm afraid. I see no difference
between your smaller ball and my top-spinning backhand. The novice
can not handle it and only the crybabies murmur something about a
different ball. It isn't different. It is returned with greater
skill. Learn to defend that skill or lose. Simple.



You are dead right, it is part of the game. I never disputed that, but it is the part which makes duplicate bridge growingly more difficult to market to those who have recently taken up the great game.


More difficult? OK, I'll buy into that. 1%, maybe 2% more. It
merely is a matching of expectation with experience.


Only because their initial tutors failed them miserably.


Ibid.



To reply to all your latest comments in one go, as they are all coloured by the same misconception, don't you see how you fall into the same trap as the ACBL or the EBU? This is the idea that the game has only one face and it is the one played in the form the ACBL have allowed it to take. Teachers are wrong, it seems, if their lessons are not constructed to prepare the students for club duplicates. Why?
Where does this idea stem from? What logic is their behind it other than some preconception that all roads should only lead to one place? That there is only one true and valid destination?

The suggestion that the game of bridge equates only to duplicate as provided at club level is not only illogical, it is untrue. Consider the simple fact that far more play the game than play in the clubs. Don't they also play bridge? Don't they also enjoy bridge? So was this love of the game the result of poor teaching? It makes as litte sense to blame teachers for not producing more club duplicate players as it would for blaming them for not producing more cash rubber bridge players.


If you can justify this suggestion that the game has only one true facet, which also seems to echo the official line, many of your suggestions would make sense. Right now they don't and I can see no way they ever could.

It is this elitist and unrealistic attitude which will prevent the controlling bodies from ever solving the drop out problem, and the cop-out suggestion that, although they provide so many new bridge players each year, this is just the result of poor teaching, is just a bit too easy and convenient. Try an even more realistic idea for which there is plenty of evidence, simply that the complex bidding which the authorities have allowed, which remember is only one part of the game of bridge, has put it out of reach of too many.

It is a strange and unrealistic approach, but I suppose understandable,
that having allowed themselves to disenfranchise most who play the game by lack of control over one aspect of duplicate, they, and you it seems, want to continue along this ever changing road under the illusion that this is what it has become so this is what was always going to be.
This is not true. If most see duplicate as some strange and unfathomable monster, it is one that the rulers created. Some of us are fascinated by it, but most are not.

There was never any need to accept the road club duplicate has gone down. No reason to allow all that has been allowed. Many would argue that what is now acceptable adds little or nothing to the simpler, more 'natural' game. Not sure that this is so, but the question remains. Have those who supervised its development themselves created the falling membership problem? But would the games rulers consider this a problem. Would they hell! Far easier is the conceit that we have obviously got it right and getting all to agree can be done by marketing.
This is truly laughable....and I do mean amusing in its true sense.
Flogging a dead horse by marketing whips.

Far better is for them to understand that the chasm is now established and to drop this nonsense that duplicate, as mostly played, is not only "the game" but the only game of merit. Understand that they need to discourage this elite tag given to the form which the game has taken and provide more 'natural' events which carry as much or even more kudos. Events which would attract the best along with the less experienced on a truly level paying field. There are already some, but not enough with the required clout and prestige. Two types of bridge of equal stature. One which allows those with the time to pursue the more complex, and one which doesn't.

Forget teaching as the answer. The problem I have with that is where should I introduce the beginner to the defences to the multi? Before or after ' responding to partners one level major opening bid'?


LC















The idea that teaching novices the way duplicate ( rather than bridge ) is played is as the answer is







































.

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