In our research, we found that having a sophisticated convention card had relatively little to do with whether a partnership made accurate bidding decisions. Accordingly, the approaches you will learn in our books will be valuable, no matter what bidding system you and your partners use.
For a quick summary of the convention card items that matter in practical bridge, see Convention Card Resources which highlights the convention card decisions that we have found to be particularly important in The Real World .
In our research, we found that the advantages that stronger pairs enjoy in the bidding were not generally due to what conventions they play and don’t play, but rather to these sorts of factors:
- Stronger players use a wider variety of tools and techniques, when judging their bidding decisions; by contrast, less experienced players tend to consider high card points and little else.
- Compared to less experienced players, stronger players consider a wider range of possible calls.
- Stronger pairs tend to spend more time discussing sequences that occur frequently and, as a result, have a better idea of what partner is likely to hold.
- By comparison to less experienced players, stronger players are more likely to be consistent in their bidding decisions, whereas less experienced players tend to bid today, pass tomorrow and double the day after tomorrow, with similar hands.
However, we think there is an exception for slam bidding; in Real World Bridge 7: The Slam Zone we discuss a variety of bidding agreements that make slam bidding more accurate for advanced pairs.