You knew it had to happen; it was just a matter of time. I have been sitting here for a year with all these interesting things happening to me while I pursued the fine art of Playing Precision and nowhere to record these wondrous occurrences. Well, it may not all that momentous to others, but for me it was a year filled with “Gee Golly” type amusement, most of it at my own expense. Like 95% of the world, my learning process is visual and not auditory. Tell it to me and 10 minutes later you are going to have to tell me again. Write it to me, or better yet let me write it to myself, and it stands a fair chance of surviving tomorrow’s breakfast. So when you doubt the value of what you read, or for that matter, the value of my even creating this blog, remember that it isn’t a public service that I aspire to, but rather getting better (or more effective if you wish) at a pursuit that I purely enjoy.
The reasons for playing duplicate bridge are as myriad as the number of participants. Some enjoy the play of cards, others bridge’s many strategies and puzzling plays, others any type competition and in this case it just incidentally happens to be called bridge, others the social aspects and a great number find 3 hours entertainment and a free lunch just too good to pass up for $5. Where else?
For me I admit it is the challenge of effectively communicating with a partner through a bidding box without the benefit of speech. Bridge has its own language, in fact many languages, and the only thing they have in common is that they demand complete silence and no hand signals (at least none that can be observed). Aside from “alert” and “stop” which are mere punctuation, you have a selection of 38 pieces of plastic that you can pull out of your bidding box to send a message to your partner, and to make it even weirder, your opponents get to listen. Whoever heard of combatants telling each other about their plans and assets? If you think bidding is just a necessary evil to get to the point where you get to play the hand, think again. Bridge luminaries, all the way back to Sam Stayman, Edgar Kaplan and beyond have said that in competitive bridge, bidding is 75% of the game.
I am not here to tell you that Precision and other “big club” systems are superior to other popular systems, but for the past 50 years big club systems have been dominating the game at the highest levels of competition and they continue to do so today, not only in United States, but throughout the world! There has to be some logical reason for that, and it just ain’t in the water. If it were like golf, where players are richly compensated by sponsors for preferring one type of equipment over another that would explain it. While there are sponsors in bridge, they don’t care what system you play as long as you finish on top. And…. if you don’t win, you better change your system or find a real job.
So for me, learning Precision has been a pursuit in improving the effectiveness of communication with my partner. Duplicate bridge is simply a way for me to measure my progress. It is a cruel measuring stick, for as we all know, results have to be measured over a long continuum. Often mediocre results have more to do with extraneous factors beyond your control than pure quality benchmarks, but try to tell that to yourself when you are going for 1700 or find yourself at the bottom of the pairs result.
No doubt the frustration of this process takes its toll, but a funny thing happened to me along the way … I found out that I purely enjoy playing the Precision system, and if I could find partners, I would willingly do it for the rest of my bridge life. I now feel a sense of pleasure and fulfillment from the game that is purely reminiscent of the joy and excitement that I experienced when I first played the game. Now if I could just get a few more master points I would be sooooo happy!
There will be time enough for mechanics, I just thought I would throw some personal philosophy at you while I still have control of this blog and no readers.
