Customer Reviews

Building A Bidding System

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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The focus is on components of bidding systems, rather than existing systems like Precision or Polish Club or 2/1.
The book does a good job of covering bidding system components, such as relay systems, transfers, diaglogs (where both partners share information, like in Standard American), using frequency of hands to structure the responses, constructive vs. destructive bidding, preemption, complexity.

while the book does a decent job covering these components I don't think it teaches the reader much on how to design their own system. Maybe that should be in another book, hopefully a sequel.

I would have liked to see sections on:

1) Common problems with home made systems (complexity, hidden holes, gaps, etc.). Example - introducing a weak NT to a 2/1 system. What do you have to change?

2) Problems and evolutionary fixes to some modern systems. What were the initial problems of Precision, how did it evolve to corrcet them? Learning from the past to avoid future problems.

3) Checklist of things to test and look out for.

4) problem hands to bid. Test your system against these 100 hands to see how well you do. The hands would have a rough frequency of occurence and how well they are handled by current popular systems like 2/1, Polish Club, Precision, etc.

100% worth buying.
The book touches upon many ideas in budding systems.
But it left me wanting more. The book is just a starting point. It wouldn't really help you much if you were designing a system.
This book is of most value to someone who isn't familiar with several systems, philosophies, and lots of conventions.
It brings you up to speed, but then you are left on your own to do the real work.
It's an interesting book, but by itself wont be enough to design any worthwhile system.

I've been playing bridge and reading about it for about 25 years.
This is the only book I ever read that discusses how to build a bidding system.
Building a bidding system is as basic as choosing which convention you use, based on which fit your general bidding approach, style of bidding, and each other.

Seriously. Read that again.
If you haven't read that book, the odds are long you've never been exposed to the BASICS of how to make those decisions. How is that better than someone who's never read a book on defensive card play?

Time and time again I hear solid club players (in the US, France, and Israel) draw completely the wrong conclusions from their experience at the table, especially when it comes to bidding. They ask the wrong questions, and from the answers draw the wrong conclusions. How could they know better if they don't have the basics?

OK, there's a bit more here than "how to think". Some of the examples Hughes drops are so useful they immediately made their way into all my partnerships. And I'd love to see his system of responses to natural opening bids fleshed out. But that's not the point. The point is that he teaches how to think about bidding. If you have, or aspire to have, a serious partnership, you need to read this. It's that simple.