Standard American is a bidding system for the game of bridge widely used in North America and elsewhere. Owing to the popularization of the game by Charles Goren in the s and s, its early versions were sometimes referred to simply as 'Goren'.
With the addition and evolution of various treatments and conventionsit is now more generally referred to as Standard American. It is a bidding system based on five-card majors and a strong notrump; players may add conventions and refine the meanings of bids through partnership agreements summarized in their convention card.
The purpose of bidding during the auction phase of each deal is to disclose information which one's partner may employ in order to arrive at an optimal contract while concurrently contending with the opponents' attempts to do likewise.
A bidding system is a set of agreements about the meanings of the different bids that the players use. Each bid provides information about the hand's high-card strength and suit distribution based on hand evaluation techniques. This system employed the point-count method to evaluate the strength of a bridge hand.
Most bids had fairly specific requirements regarding hand strength and suit distribution. This point-count system became so popular that most bridge players, social and tournament players alike, used it. American bridge teams in the late s and s won world championships using Standard American.
Modifications began to appear from the s forward. Most tournament pairs now assemble their own system from a variety of new treatments and conventions that have evolved. SAYC is widely used in internet bridge play, but only rarely in on-site tournament play.
Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. Bidding system for the bridge card game. This article is about a bidding system for contract bridge. For the "standard" American English accent, see General American.
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