Surfing The Bridge Web
You played at the club twice this week, a tournament last week and it’s a quiet night at home with the kids and hubby fast asleep. You go online to play a few hours of bridge and your options are essentially two over one and SAYC—predominantly SAYC. You remember back to the mid-80’s when SAYC first came about. Indeed, the Standard American Yellow Card was developed by the ACBL to attract more players to duplicate bridge by providing simple bidding and basic conventions. Its creators felt the need for an easy to use system because the trends in Standard American toward five-card majors, limit bids, non forcing jumps, and weak twos had evolved into an array of other systems which the average player could not easily access. Among many, these systems included Precision and other forcing club systems; Kaplan-Sheinwold with weak notrumps and other gadgets; Roth-Stone from the early Fifties with forcing notrump, a cornerstone of the Eastern and Western Scientific systems—both precursors to the two over one system; and, some intentionally disruptive methods of bidding such as forcing passes with weak openings of 0-7 HCP while passing what we would consider to be ‘normal’ opening bids.
In March, 1987 at the St. Louis North American Bridge Championships, the ACBL, in keeping with the tradition of the European ‘No Fear’ games⎯where nothing much beyond Stayman and Blackwood were used⎯introduced a standardized convention card printed on yellow stock, thus the Standard American Yellow Card.
But SAYC, very akin to modern-style Standard American, never really took hold and was approaching an early death by the ’90s. Then came the explosion of personal computers and, with it, online bridge. SAYC is born again!
Many sites join the ‘Bridge Ring’, www.webring.org/cgi-bin/webring?ring=chips2&list. This link takes you to 235 bridge sites. However, before we navigate our way through SAYC sites, let’s find out what to expect from a SAYC card.
Typically, a ‘full’ SAYC card has not changed much since its inception. The system involves very few gadgets and those that are employed are so integral to bridge that many of us don’t think of them as ‘conventions’ anymore: Negative Doubles, Michaels, Unusual Notrump, Transfers, Minor Suit Stayman, Jordan (W: 1♠ N: Dbl E: 2NT* = limit raise or better by unpassed hand), and of course Stayman and Blackwood. Weak jump shifts are used only over an opponent’s takeout double. However, if you are just starting out to learn bridge, this is a mouthful so let’s take a quick look at someplaying sites where you can download SAYC convention cards, and then move on to sites where more detailed information can be obtained.
Firstly, for players wanting to learn SAYC, I offer lessons on the amazing free site, Bridge Base Online (BBO) which can be downloaded at www.bridgebase.com. There is a terrific free program, the BIL (Beginner/Intermediate Lounge), the first private club on BBO. All beginners through intermediates can join. Here I teach every Tuesday at 2pm Eastern and follow the book I co-authored with Ned Downey, ‘Standard Bidding with SAYC’. As well I provide a private supervised SAYC group on the same site.
If you are a member of BP LIVE! (www.bridgeplayer.com), OKBridge (www.okbridge.com), or play for free at WinBridge (www.winbridge.com) you will find SAYC cards and/or notes. Each is useful and tends to cover the same territory: a general approach of five-card majors with balanced notrumps which may include a five-card major.
We start at the ACBL home page, www.acbl.org, where a quick search for SAYC will find a pdf file of the “ACBL SAYC System Booklet”.
The ACBL Standard Yellow Card” game is one where all partnerships have agreed to play the system exactly as described in this booklet. The object is to provide a simple, modern method which will lead to a good, solid understanding in a partnership when both players have read this booklet.
The beauty of the event is that players know in advance not only their own bidding agreements, but those of their opponents. The game is free of complex bidding systems. There are few Alerts (none unexpected) and there should be a minimum of director calls.
(Few sequences are defined in the later rounds of “ACBL Standard Yellow Card” auctions. Players are free to assign forcing, invitational or non-forcing meanings to natural calls in such sequences. They are not, however, free to introduce their own sophisticated methods in these undefined areas.)”
The booklet continues with a cautionary note:
Psychs are a sensitive subject to players in this event. A very rare, totally unexpected psych is not illegal, but pairs who wish to psych with any degree of frequency are encouraged to enter other games.
So what did this convention card allow? We have 15-17 1NT openers; 20-21 for 2NT and 25-27 for 3NT. Limit raises, weak two bids with raise only non force and 2NT asking for a feature are included. Other conventions used included Jacoby 2NT, Michaels, Unusual Notrump, Negative doubles through 2♠, overcalls from 8-16, Jordan, SOS redoubles, Gerber, Blackwood, and DOPI . While the card was already filled out for you, spaces were left for you to determine what to play over the opponents’ notrump and carding agreements. There was no room for anything beyond whether you led third, fourth or fifth best, options to lead the ace from ace-king, the queen from KQ109 etc. Interestingly attempts at making this game friendly for all were already underway with a note in red on the front of the card — sometimes simply stating ” Active Ethics” or “Be Courteous—Opponents May Just Be Friends We Haven’t Yet Met!” And how true as we look back to the 80’s and think of the many friends we have met through this wonderful hobby of ours.
For players wanting to learn SAYC, I offer lessons on the amazing free site on Bridge Base Online (BBO) which can be downloaded at www.bridgebase.com. There is a terrific site, the BIL (Beginner/Intermediate Lounge), the first private club on BBO. All beginners through intermediates can join. Here I teach every Tuesday at 2pm Eastern and follow the book I co-authored with Ned Downey, ‘ Standard Bidding with SAYC’. As well I provide a private supervised SAYC group on the same site.
And as we near the end of our tour, we would miss a landmark if we didn’t visit Karen’s Bridge Library at home.comcast.net/~kwbridge/ with a separate section for novices, one for intermediate to advanced and then a catch-all section. Karen’s novice section does go beyond what we know to be ’standard’ SAYC with Lebenshol, Roman Key Card, New Minor Forcing and the likes. Nonetheless, it is worth checking out given you can pick and choose what suits you, keeping in mind that you are unlikely to play the SAYC card as is forever. It seems the nature of the bridge beast is that we learn and quench for more!
So finally we come to a site near and dear to my heart, The Bridge Forum International, www.bridge-forum.com of which I am the founder. Here we provide sections for the novice, intermediate and advanced players and more. The contents of the site change regularly and you will find articles by our expert affiliates, Marty Bergen, Larry Cohen, Ron Klinger, Fred Gittleman, Kit Woolsey. Matt Granovetter, Marshall Miles.
[ Back to Top ]
