On the one hand proponents of "more" argue that unless new conventions are allowed we would still be playing the crude1928 bidding system. Negative doubles, weak two-bids, transfers, and even Blackwood were all revolutionary at one time, and if they had never been allowed would never have become standard.
Furthermore, our top players need the tournament experience with newer systems and conventions so they can effectively compete on the international level. Among newer players, the number of conventions a player knows is often a measure of their bridge skills. And, to follow the money, new conventions sell new bridge books and give bridge teachers something more to teach.
Everything comes with a price. Anyone taking up the game must now spend the majority of their initial effort learning conventions, and there is little time to actually learn how to exercise judgment in bidding and play. Since there is no time left to teach thinking and analyzing they are taught to apply rules. The rule of 20, the rule of thirteen, losing trick count. Take your partner's IQ, add the current temperature, and subtract your zip code and you will have the answer to all your bidding problems. There is no time for the new breed to learn how to make an opening leadÑjust keep bidding and it won't be problem. Your opponents probably haven't spent much time learning to defend either, so it's unlikely that you'll get hurt.
We all have a limited number of brain cells and there is limited time for you to come up with a bid at that table. Inevitably, somebody will give me a hand containing something like eight diamonds to the KQJ and an outside ace and asks me what to bid after partner opens a 15-17 notrump and the next opponent doubles, showing God knows what, but probably a one-suited hand of undefined quality. Well, I would reply, you can ignore the double and either bid 6 diamonds and let them find the killing lead, if any, or you could check for aces to make sure you're not missing two and then bid the slam.
I had to ask "so what happened at your table?" "Well we play (something like) transfer relays after a double of one notrumpÉ" I've heard the sad ending of the story too many times before, so I quickly changed the conversation to a happier subject.
Knowing a new convention and understanding when to use it are two different things. A basic knowledge of common conventions may be necessary as a matter of self defense when they are used by an opponent, but that doesn't mean newer players will benefit from adding them all to their convention card. In my opinion, most newer players would get better results and enjoy the game a lot more if they stuck to and thoroughly learned the basics. This advice might apply to some veteran players as well.
In the real world, when an opponent overcalls one no trump with two hearts (alert), all too often the accurate explanation is that it shows (a) hearts and spades; (b) maybe my partner forgot; or (c) maybe I forgot.
A lot of people have wondered for a long time why tournament bridge doesn't make it on TV, like poker. The answer comes down to it's simply become too complicated for the common man to understand.
Another problem with inundating our new players with a long list of conventions is that it quickly becomes beneficial to find a regular partner who has the same interest in the same conventions. Partnership agreements become paramount and new players (and old) have become very hesitant to play with new partners, for fear they will not play the same combination of conventions. This inbreeding is sad, because it not only diminishes the social benefits of playing bridge, but it also makes it difficult to play with a new partner. If your regular (and only) partner comes down with the flu, you get to stay home also.
One way to encourage people to "play around" would be to bring back the individual, which used to be the top event at nationals from the 30's into the fifties, and was recently resurrected for a few years by the Bridge Pro Tour. In case of you've never heard of this event, you basically play with a new partner every two or three boards. Club games might want to give it a try.
It has gotten to the point where most "established" veteran partnerships have thirty pages of system notes. The ACBL convention card has limited space, so maybe five or ten percent of these "understandings" are revealed to the opposition. Many new conventions have proven to be no better than what they have replaced. To be honest, the main benefits of an unusual convention are (1) it gives your opponents something else to occupy their brain cells, and (2) often, many conventional understandings don't have to be revealed unless the opponents ask, thus giving you the benefit of secret information. This is perfectly legal under the rules. It doesn't help much if you and your partner diligently inquire, because you have no control over what happens at other tables.
One favorite example is upside-down signals. The merits of this system versus "upside-up" have been thoroughly analyzed and discussed and run through computers for years and the end result is that although there are combinations where one or the other has an advantage, on balance upside-down is no improvement. The real advantage to upside-down is that many opponents don't even know it's happening, especially in stratified pairs. If you have to announce your one notrump point-count, how onerous would it be to require a simple announcement before the opening lead of "upside-down signals and count"? I clock it as 2.5 seconds, to eliminate what is in reality a very unfair practice.
That leaves the point that permitting a lot of conventions helps our top players prepare for world competition. I've never been there, but according to The Bridge World, when the international competition begins with a round-robin one must be prepared to deal with dozens of unusual conventions and systems. If it took you "Five Weeks to Winning Bridge" to learn "Standard American", it would take 100 weeks to learn 20 new systems. Since many of the systems are similar, you could probably gain an adequate understanding and devise effective defenses in a matter of just a few months. Many of the top international teams have hired specialists who make a living analyzing and developing defenses and teaching them to the players.
Since most of the ACBL membership won't put up with being used as guinea pigs, most of these avant garde systems and conventions are dumped on Flight A. I just love it when I am handed a typed-out "suggested defense" in the middle of an auction. When Precision first came on the scene, people went out and bought the book and played the system a few times with their regular partners. When people learned to defend against the new system the initial advantage was greatly diminished.
A lot of these systems/treatments/conventions would be worthless if the opponents took the time to understand the system and derive defenses. But most people I know have no interest whatsoever in taking the time to learn somebody else's new system, and we just try to muddle through as best we can. What benefit is there to the users in world competition if they have never been exposed to effective defenses?
But there is hope for Flight A. For the past 35 years everybody's masterpoints have been increased except Flight A, a.k.a., the top bracket. Before strats and brackets, players got nothing unless they beat everybody, not just the other players in Strat C. Back then, it took a long time to accumulate enough masterpoints to become a Life Master. Now we have Flight X, where you get masterpoints simply because you don't have enough to be forced to compete in the top flight. I don't want to take anybody's masterpoints away, but it seems a little odd when two teams tie for 8/9 playing against the same competition in the same event, and one team gets 5.91 masterpoints and the other gets 18.91 simply because they have less than 5,000 masterpoints.
Effective 1/1/08 the ACBL has changed the masterpoint payoffs for knockouts from being based on attendance to being based on "strength of field". Masterpoint awards will now be based only on the average number of masterpoints of your competition in your bracket, and how many teams are playing in other brackets becomes irrelevant. Sounds fair to me.
The result of the new formula is that masterpoint awards for winning the top bracket have increased substantially, in many cases doubled. Unfortunately most other brackets have lost, and taking masterpoints away from people has never been a winning strategy. But the concept underlying the new system is undoubtedly fairer. Beating a team with a combined masterpoint holding of 200,000, and numerous world championships, has got to be at least ten times the accomplishment of beating teams averaging less than five thousand in other brackets.
The new system does give something back by increasing awards for each match won in Swiss as well as ko's. Everyone understands that this new formula is going to need some fine-tuning. One day my team got knocked-out in the second match (being knocked-out happens to 15/16 of all teams), and I remember someone rhetorically asking "how many masterpoints did we win today?" In retrospect I would have gladly settled for zero, because the ACBL had incorrectly programmed the new formula into their computers, and had retroactively deducted seven-point-something from my January total.
Looking ahead, bargain season has arrived in District 17: Mesa in April with $92 hotel rooms, Denver in May for $83, and Phoenix in August for $78. These are great deals for first class hotel brands like Crowne Plaza, Renaissance, and Sheraton. And don't forget the Las Vegas NABC in July, Colorado Springs in October, and Tucson in November.