Start with Rubber Bridge?

From a different thread (the very long "Teaching Bridge in NZ")

In my experience it is close to completely irrelevant what you teach learners.  The vast majority end the lessons completely lost - but this doesnt matter.  They now go into playing in whatever group that is and learn by doing.  Now of course they are constantly "helped" by all the old timers who, lets face it, also in the main have no idea either, but that also doesn't matter.  When I get them again later I can start teaching the keen ones how to play for real. 

I recently played a session with a newby straight out of (not my) lessons and near the end she said to the oppponents that she had "learned more tonight than in the previous three months". 
We didnt have the ghost of a system really, but again, it didn't matter.  All I got her to agree was that every time we bid a new suit we were still looking for the right contract and to keep bidding...and when in doubt keep bidding.  That was plenty really, and we just bid our suits. 

Cheers, Gerry Palmer January 2019 (abridged)

This makes me think a better way to learn is to start with the bare essentials and let them loose playing rubber bridge first

IOW insert 3 lessons prior to the standard series:

Lesson -3    Basic rules and procedures (bidding order, rank of suits, play procedure, dummy comes down etc, AND rubber scoring
then let them loose with some cards and play "by the seat of the pants" (thats the way most prople play 500 anyway, and, I suspect, the way many played rubber bridge in its heyday in the 1930s)

 Lesson -2     Assessing the value of a hand (HCP to open, two opening hands = game, NT with balanced hands, otherwise longest suit etc)

Lesson -1    Introduction to duplicate bridge (easier to explain scoring, vulnerability etc when relating to rubber bridge)

Then start lesson 1

This way they can all play a reasonable sort of game at home right from the start.
Better than just being overloaded with rules and numbers before they start actually playing

Any views please?

cheers
Nick

Started by NICK WHITTEN on 18 Oct 2019 at 08:43AM