[zasanya]

In a different thread I came across a view that beginners should start with natural system and after getting familiar with the issues involved, may then shift to artificial systems like precision.
I will shortly be teaching bridge to a group of youngsters and I was planning to get them started with Precision without any of the asking bids.I thought precision quickly allows one to arrive at a game / no game decision which is most importnat decision that a beginner has to take. The asking bids put a bit of pressure on memory and they could be introduced later.1 ♥ and 1♠ opening bids will be treated as in 2/1 with the responder knowing opener has 15 or less.
It may be mentioned that in this scheme except for 1♣ -1x everything else is natural but 1♣1x sequence makes it easier for beginners.
I would like to know in what way a natural system is better?

[Gerben42]

Precision is also a good system to start with. It's just that it's not main stream and it will be harder to find partners outside of the group.

[luke warm]

i tend to agree with you... as a matter of fact, i've found that more judgment is needed in a big club system than a 2/1 type system.... limited openings opposite many non-game force hands can and do make games, but the players need to evaluate how their hands fit in order to reach them

[helene_t]

If someone says that beginners should be taught a "natural" system, does "natural" mean "mainstream"? It can hardly be argued that Cindarella Precision is less natural the SA.

Anyway, I agree with Gerben.

[hotShot]

The system to teach beginner should be close to the system they will meet most of the time. Otherwise they have to learn 2 systems at the same time, this will lead to confusion.
There is nothing to say against starting with precision, if they have opponents that play precision too.

[csdenmark]

zasanya, on Mar 24 2006, 03:19 PM, said:

In a different thread I came across a view that beginners should start with natural system and after getting familiar with the issues involved, may then shift to artificial systems like precision.
I will shortly be teaching bridge to a group of youngsters and I was planning to get them started with Precision without any of the asking bids.I thought precision quickly allows one to arrive at a game / no game decision which is most importnat decision that a beginner has to take. The asking bids put a bit of pressure on memory and they could be introduced later.1 ♥ and 1♠ opening bids will be treated as in 2/1 with the responder knowing opener has 15 or less.
It may be mentioned that in this scheme except for 1♣ -1x everything else is natural but 1♣1x sequence makes it easier for beginners.
I would like to know in what way  a natural system is better?

Not much point in starting with Precision. Beginners don't understand the basic principles because they are defined as an alternative to something they don't know.

They need counting, judgement, general knowledge of interference handle and defense. Last but not least playing technique.

The variety of Goren books are still and I think for many years the solid fundament for newcomers to the game.

[hrothgar]

I think that its a mistake to compare bidding systems based on whether they are "natural" or "artificial". As other people have noted, its a good idea to try to conform with whats being played locally (whatever that might mean in the age of Internet bridge). Case in point: I'd recommend teaching Precision to the Chinese and Polish Club to Poles.

Equally significant, I think that you need to have a decent feel from your audience: In particular, do you think that they would benefit most from a rules based approach. Alternatively, would they prefer a system that has some internal logic...

[barmar]

I also think the best thing to teach them is the prevailing system in their location.

While there may be an intuitive feeling that natural systems would be easier to teach, I'm not so sure it makes a big difference. When I first learned bidding, it just seemed like a bunch of rules that had to be learned by rote: if you have A, bid X; if you have B, bid Y, etc. (in fact, the person who taught a bunch of us just gave us a cheat sheet of basic opening and responding bids). If one of those rules were "If you have 16 HCP or more, bid 1C", it would not have made the process significantly harder (strong 2C was on the cheat sheet, I think).

[zasanya]

Thanks a lot to all the responders.The consensus seems to be that one should learn a system that is most popular in that locality.
In fact precision is the most preferred system in our area.Almost everybody plays precision.
In one of our local tournaments our opponents called the director because we did not alert our acol 1♣."They are playing some strange system where 1♣ means 4 card ♣ and 12-20 points"
Even the person officiating as TD advised us to alert 1♣ and 1♦ whereas alerting precision 1♣ was not necessary.