[awm]

kereru67, on 2026-May-02, 22:08, said:

So what's so terrible about Standard American? I know 2/1 is technically better but it's also more difficult to learn. Standard American is a good workhorse when you're starting out.

As someone who plays a variant of Standard American (with a lot of gadgets though), I'd have made this point differently.

If you want to improve as a bridge player, it's important to develop a common understanding with partner as to which sequences are forcing. Partnerships that are unwilling to put in this work will never be able to have good auctions and this puts an upper limit on their results.

The issue is that the rather vaguely-defined "Standard American" does not give you default answers to these questions. So you need to either adopt another system (it doesn't have to be 2/1 -- SEF has decent rules here as does Polish Club) or come to some general agreements beyond the basic "we play Standard American."

For example, what Elianna and I play is that any rebid by opener above two of opener's suit is forcing to game, and rebidding two of opener's suit is a catch-all that includes all minimums where no cheaper call applies and doesn't show extra length (even in the somewhat funny auction 1♦-2♣-2♦ where 2♦ could still be three cards in length). This is obviously not the only possible agreement (and I'm sure all the 2/1 players will say it's not best) but the point is that we KNOW what is forcing and what is not and don't have to worry about being dropped in a partial on game values.