I was half-heartedly watching BBO Vugraph the other day when an acid explosion from a commentator caught my eye. He had made a dismissive (and I thought, quite unjustifiably so) remark about the bidding of a Belgian pair on a particular hand. One of his fellow commentators remarked that it was surprising to hear an Englishman condemn a sequence that would be fairly standard in Acol-land. His reply was (perhaps not quite verbatim, but close) “I may be English, but I hate Acol, and detest the weak no-trump, which I consider to be a device to trap British bidding in the Stone Age”.
I find it difficult to fathom where this intensity is coming from. I'm not the right person to advocate for Acol as a top-notch modern bidding system (I don't think it is). But if you learn and play basic Acol for a while, you will not only have fun, you will get some results, and you will learn some sensible bidding judgement and get a good attitude towards bidding. When you decide to upgrade your bidding after a while, you will have a fairly sound basis for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the different systems and gadgets that present themselves. And the weak no-trump? Well, “why not?” is my question. Even if you are playing 4-card majors, a strong no-trump will force you into 3-card minor-suit (“prepared”) openings, and other indignities. The weak no-trump is a perfectly viable bid that has some distinct advantages as well as some attached dangers.
For example, if you have had Acol 2-bids available, “upgrading” to weak twos may be clearly seen as a trade-off that isn't all benefit and no cost (a 2C opening that isn't game-forcing and opening 1-bids that have an even wider range than before are serious detriments). Or, if you “upgrade” to 5-card majors and a strong no-trump a la Standard American, you can see all those 3-card openings surface, and know that minor-suit openings (and minor-suit bidding in general) is compromised, often quite severely. Or, having seen the difficulties presented by a natural system with wide-range opening 1-bids and 2C as the strong opening, you may better understand the concepts of a Strong Club system where the opening 1-bids are more limited and you have more room to handle strong hands.
Over the past year, I've met (and taught) quite a few beginners whose first (and only) exposure to bridge bidding has been a basic Standard American. Almost none of them understands the idea of a reverse, even after special classes where they spend an hour or two hearing about them and bidding and playing example hands. (I have met pairs who “don't play reverses”, as if it were a convention that they could add to their system or not, like New Minor Forcing.) They rarely think in terms of bidding sequences – it's all one-bid-at-a-time with lots of rules to memorize about what bid is the right next one. To be sure, you can blame a lot of this on the teaching methods, but on the other hand, a lot of it comes from the basic system they're being taught. You have to have a five-card suit to open a major. Why? From the beginner's point of view, it's quite arbitrary. So rule one, five-card major, check. And it goes on from there.
I'm more or less convinced that if we made these people play Acol with a weak no-trump for 6 months, where all the openings really are natural and the preference and reversing sequences are clear, they could go back to Standard American and actually have a much better understanding of how to bid in that system. In fact, I've become so sure of it that I've persuaded Agent 99 to participate in The Acol Experiment.
The only way to “put my money where my mouth is” would be to find a volunteer who knows how to bid Standard American somewhat half-assed, teach them Acol, and see if their SA bidding improves. Enter Agent 99. I think her bidding is better than half-assed, but it is still rather weak compared to her play of the cards. And the type of difficulty she has, the type of mistake she sometimes makes, is telling. My hypothesis is that throwing her into the world of Acol, where there are lots of guidelines and few rules, will be an antidote. It should provide a counter-balance, where the weight of memorization will be eased by understanding some under-lying principles.
So far we've played one Acol session, and as luck would have it, we were sitting East-West while the cards ran North-South. Next time, maybe.
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4 comments:
I was watching that BBO presentation when the commentator dissed Acol. I was going to take his e-mail down and send him a message about his poor commentary and lack of appreciation of Acol. My favorite bid in SA now, is the Acol 2D which is 17-21 and balanced or primary with diamonds or two suited with diamonds primary or 4441. As to the weak NT I think he must mean IMPs strategy, but I play there also.
Although Acol is the easily the dominant system in British clubs (probably over 90%), it is played by a minority of the top players.
If the clubs I've played in are anything to go by, the most popular form of Acol in the clubs is Benjamised Acol. This means weak 2s in the majors, 2♣ showing eight playing tricks in any suit and 2♦ is the really strong game-forcing opener.
Swapping these calls is also popular (reverse benjy) which, to my mind, says something about the people who play it :)
I must admit that I think Tournament Acol, as played by the majority of tournament players, has the same number of rules as any other system. The free-wheeling approach as seen in the clubs is more a symptom of people not knowing what they are doing!
Good luck with your experiment.
It's a long time since I played in England. Benji was somewhat popular back then, but maybe it has gained ground in the interval.
As to the "number of rules" thing: maybe so. But what I had in mind was where I've met beginners who have played some other games (Bid Whist or something). They pick up a hand with a nice 4-card spade suit and want to open 1S. Maybe you don't want them to do that when you're playing Acol, but there will be an explanation why not in terms of preparing a sequence to describe the hand fully. Playing SA, too often the explanation seems to be "because that's what we do in SA", and any better explanation would need them to understand the alternatives (which is way too much information for them to take in). That's why I was thinking that learning Acol first might help: it would provide some understandable groundwork that they could build on.
And then if they got serious about tournament play, I would indeed expect them to move to more "scientific" methods. But maybe they would know what problem areas they are trying to deal with.
I think most club players would improve their average score considerably if they were taught to plan their rebid before they opened.
I'm not sure that you need to switch to Acol for that, but I guess it may help get out of the current mindset and if it works for you ... :)
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