[AL78]

Head-to-head teams:

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Playing Acol, weak NT, 3 weak twos. Partner opens 1♥ instead of 1NT then panics and passes my forcing response. When dummy came down, I thought we'd fluked this as just looking at the NS cards, it looks like 3NT is a very fragile contract so we might actually gain imps. Fortunately for our opponents, the spades are 4-4 with the AK under the Q and the diamonds break, so I make 11 tricks for +130 whilst opps at the other table bid and make 3NT.

A reminder of why I don't play club bridge anymore.

[jillybean]

Thanks for starting the topic, I was wondering how I could introduce this hand I played with a substitute partner at the club yesterday.

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♦ lead 4♠=

1nt partner?
"Showing a stopper in their suit"

[johnu]

AL78, on 2025-November-07, 13:41, said:

Playing Acol, weak NT, 3 weak twos. Partner opens 1♥ instead of 1NT then panics and passes my forcing response.

Good pass by South. Bad things can happen when you bid in response to a forcing bid, like making a game, a slam, or ending up in the right denomination.

[AL78]

jillybean, on 2025-November-07, 16:30, said:

Thanks for starting the topic, I was wondering how I could introduce this hand I played with a substitute partner at the club yesterday.

---

♦ lead 4♠=

1nt partner?
"Showing a stopper in their suit"

South had a brain fart and thought partner had opened 1♠, not RHO?

There was another hand yesterday where partner asked why I had raised her opening 1♠ on a weak hand with three card support and was disappointed it had no chance. I pointed out she had overcalled, not opened and I expected better opposite than a 4333 12 count with ♠ATxx.

[jillybean]

AL78, on 2025-November-07, 18:26, said:

South had a brain fart and thought partner had opened 1♠, not RHO?

Unfortunately, no

[DavidKok]

jillybean, on 2025-November-07, 18:52, said:

AL78, on 2025-November-07, 18:26, said:

South had a brain fart and thought partner had opened 1♠, not RHO?

Unfortunately, no

That's a shame, I thought this would be a likely explanation.
As for the deal itself, 4♠ isn't home yet on a diamond lead. Something happened after the lead that cemented the poor result.

AL78, on 2025-November-07, 13:41, said:

A reminder of why I don't play club bridge anymore.

I'm sorry to hear that you had such a bad experience. The deals you showed inspire little confidence in your partner. To me it sounds like you want to get more out of bridge than this partner - in particular, have more reliable auctions (and with that improve your winning chances). Hopefully there are alternative options for you. This is not a flaw of club bridge, but perhaps of the availability of club bridge and partners in your area.
I'm curious, is online bridge better in this regard? I thought you might pair with a weak partner online just as readily as at the club, but perhaps a greater selection of options mitigates this.

[Cyberyeti]

First ever national final, very tight match, opps played a partscore on the final board, required AK10/xxx for 3 tricks of course QJ in the hole and that was the match.

[AL78]

DavidKok, on 2025-November-08, 01:06, said:

That's a shame, I thought this would be a likely explanation.
As for the deal itself, 4♠ isn't home yet on a diamond lead. Something happened after the lead that cemented the poor result.



I'm sorry to hear that you had such a bad experience. The deals you showed inspire little confidence in your partner. To me it sounds like you want to get more out of bridge than this partner - in particular, have more reliable auctions (and with that improve your winning chances). Hopefully there are alternative options for you. This is not a flaw of club bridge, but perhaps of the availability of club bridge and partners in your area.
I'm curious, is online bridge better in this regard? I thought you might pair with a weak partner online just as readily as at the club, but perhaps a greater selection of options mitigates this.

The issue I have had for years is that the standard at the clubs I play at has been poor, which means the available partners (with one or two exceptions) haven't been very good. My local club post-pandemic developed a large bias to online bridge and what was left of the decent players mostly moved online. I got fed up of repeatedly rushing home from work to get to the club with a 4-5 table movement, playing with a not great partner, repeatedly getting sub 50% results and seeing my NGS going down. I ended up resigning from that club because most of the time I played there I came home feeling lousy mentally.

Still harbouring a love of the game, I joined a club in a nearby town which didn't play F2F on the days I was commuting into London. That started off enjoyable, 8-12 tables, friendly, however it soon became apparent the standard was even worse but I persevered as I was enjoying the company even if the bridge was erratic. The quality of bridge and my enjoyment of it deteriorated through the year and I was feeling the same as I did at my former club, so I didn't renew my membership.

I have looked into clubs in other nearby towns, but many of them are either online or play during the daytime. Duplicate bridge is highly sub-optimal for working people especially post-pandemic. Many elderly people do not like driving at night in the UK with its dark evenings and poor weather for much of the year.

The other reason I have largely stopped playing is I don't like doing badly (particularly when other people see me as a good player and thus the expectations on me are high), I regularly fail to control my frustration, and I turn into someone I don't like. The logical solutions in that situation are either therapy or remove myself from the provocation, I chose the latter.

I have little interest in online bridge. When I am sat in front of a computer for eight hours a day doing a mentally demanding job, I don't particularly want to spend another three hours in front of it doing a mentally demanding hobby, plus a large part of the enjoyment is F2F interaction. I might as well play a computer game if I am going to play online.

[DavidKok]

That makes a lot of sense. My personal situation is not too dissimilar - I work 8 hours a day 5 days a week, a swift 1 hour commute, then play bridge when I have time in the evening. Fortunately there are several local clubs that play in the evenings. The club I currently play at doesn't have a high standard of play, but my partner is young, smart, eager and quite good while also rapidly improving. This makes the events fun for me, even though I feel like we're not getting challenged by the field much.

Might it be an idea to ask club directors to float your name looking for a serious partner? A good partner with similar ambitions will make all the difference. It's difficult to find someone like that, and over here the only real option is informal, having someone in bridge circles connect you.

[Cyberyeti]

AL78, on 2025-November-08, 02:53, said:

The issue I have had for years is that the standard at the clubs I play at has been poor, which means the available partners (with one or two exceptions) haven't been very good. My local club post-pandemic developed a large bias to online bridge and what was left of the decent players mostly moved online. I got fed up of repeatedly rushing home from work to get to the club with a 4-5 table movement, playing with a not great partner, repeatedly getting sub 50% results and seeing my NGS going down. I ended up resigning from that club because most of the time I played there I came home feeling lousy mentally.

Still harbouring a love of the game, I joined a club in a nearby town which didn't play F2F on the days I was commuting into London. That started off enjoyable, 8-12 tables, friendly, however it soon became apparent the standard was even worse but I persevered as I was enjoying the company even if the bridge was erratic. The quality of bridge and my enjoyment of it deteriorated through the year and I was feeling the same as I did at my former club, so I didn't renew my membership.

I have looked into clubs in other nearby towns, but many of them are either online or play during the daytime. Duplicate bridge is highly sub-optimal for working people especially post-pandemic. Many elderly people do not like driving at night in the UK with its dark evenings and poor weather for much of the year.

The other reason I have largely stopped playing is I don't like doing badly (particularly when other people see me as a good player and thus the expectations on me are high), I regularly fail to control my frustration, and I turn into someone I don't like. The logical solutions in that situation are either therapy or remove myself from the provocation, I chose the latter.

I have little interest in online bridge. When I am sat in front of a computer for eight hours a day doing a mentally demanding job, I don't particularly want to spend another three hours in front of it doing a mentally demanding hobby, plus a large part of the enjoyment is F2F interaction. I might as well play a computer game if I am going to play online.

I echo a lot of this. For differing reasons, my 2 main clubs have shut down. I'm now playing very occasionally at a club that has 4-5 tables most of the time, with a very low general standard of both play and awareness of ethics.

While I don't like online bridge (I'm medically retired, and spend the day in front of my PC at home, so prefer to get out), I may have to resort to playing online to play at any standard.

[jillybean]

You are fortunate to have the option to play in the evening. Evening bridge is all but dead in North America.
You can play during the day at a Seniors Centre or a church. Its little wonder we aren’t attracting new players.

[AL78]

jillybean, on 2025-November-08, 06:39, said:

You are fortunate to have the option to play in the evening. Evening bridge is all but dead in North America.
You can play during the day at a Seniors Centre or a church. Its little wonder we aren’t attracting new players.

The way to attract new players is to have an active teaching section in your club. My local club has this and is a good reason why it is one of the, if not the most successful club in the county in terms of membership. Part of the reason I got disillusioned with it is they have focused so much on beginners/improvers, they makes up almost all of the new membership annually, so the standard, which 20 years ago was one of the highest in the county, is now low, and a chunk of these newcomers to the game end up as permanent beginners/improvers playing once a month with no aspiration to advance. The best club players are gradually dying out or stopping due to ill health and there are very few decent intermediate players joining to replace them.

[pescetom]

jillybean, on 2025-November-08, 06:39, said:

You are fortunate to have the option to play in the evening. Evening bridge is all but dead in North America.
You can play during the day at a Seniors Centre or a church. Its little wonder we aren’t attracting new players.

Half way between still normal and sudden death in Italy.
Pre-pandemic it was the dominant time of play (with the eminent exception of Thursday afternoon, THE national sim), but since then it struggles to attract players, even our traditional Friday night (transgressive and fun) is suffering.
In the bigger city clubs the evening game still strives, but I doubt it will remain that way.
It's another nail in the coffin, because people like my ex (and future, who knows?) partner happen to work in the afternoon

[pescetom]

AL78, on 2025-November-08, 08:12, said:

The way to attract new players is to have an active teaching section in your club. My local club has this and is a good reason why it is one of the, if not the most successful club in the county in terms of membership. Part of the reason I got disillusioned with it is they have focused so much on beginners/improvers, they makes up almost all of the new membership annually, so the standard, which 20 years ago was one of the highest in the county, is now low, and a chunk of these newcomers to the game end up as permanent beginners/improvers playing once a month with no aspiration to advance. The best club players are gradually dying out or stopping due to ill health and there are very few decent intermediate players joining to replace them.

I do hope you will not leave bridge, because your analysis is acute and I am sure you have much to contribute a a club or to the game in general.
Here you make a valid and often unacknowledged (or wrongly refuted) point: beginners are life blood, but we also need to continue to improve them, and without both active mentoring and a critical mass of advanced players and of ex-beginners who have improved to intermediate there is little hope of that.

My club too has been more successful at the (apparently more difficult challenge) of attracting beginners than it has been at improving the level of play.
IMO (often expressed and ignored) we are making the mistake of not differentiating clearly between
- training tournaments for beginners (with discussion and explanation)
- training tournaments for intermediates with mentoring for beginners
- competitive tournaments (open only to those who have shown they can swim).
But I'm from a meritocratic culture and that is not how this country works.

[akwoo]

pescetom, on 2025-November-08, 16:22, said:

I do hope you will not leave bridge, because your analysis is acute and I am sure you have much to contribute a a club or to the game in general.
Here you make a valid and often unacknowledged (or wrongly refuted) point: beginners are life blood, but we also need to continue to improve them, and without both active mentoring and a critical mass of advanced players and of ex-beginners who have improved to intermediate there is little hope of that.

What I have found is that most players are not particularly interested in improving, or they are initially, but once they find out how hard it is (because their brains are not capable of thinking 2 tricks ahead, never mind planning the play of a hand - or they may even have memory problems keeping track of which aces have been played), they give up.

Look at the play problem I just posted on the I/A forum. If I give that to the average player at a club, they can follow the analysis slowly with a piece of paper, but they will tell me that they will never be able to keep track of all that in their head at the table. Mostly, they are correct about their cognitive capabilities.

If we push improvement too hard, then what happens is that beginners who aren't improving feel unwelcome and quit, and we no longer have enough players for a game. We have to make sure that players who can't or don't want to improve also feel welcome.

Even with gentle encouragement and plenty of opportunity, you can only expect a small percentage of players to both have the ability and desire to improve.

Most of us are pretty innately good at bridge and don't understand how hard it is for most people.