Standard American is hard to define these days. Fifty years ago, it was whatever Charles Goren said it was, but today, there are almost as many variations as there are people playing it. Here, I will describe several variants, starting with the simple system described in Bill Root's book Commonsense Bidding, then adding conventions a few at a time, to take the system through to one which should give any player the tools to bid sensibly and well.

Unfortunately, I got a little ahead of myself, so I've already put up the beginnings of what is planned as a complex system.

Standard American, traditionally, is an "approach forcing" system. What that means is that responder, holding game values opposite his partner's opening bid, makes a series of forcing bids, until he has enough information to set the final contract. This approach has several consequences, most notably that responder with an invitational hand must make a "mark time" bid, and then make his invitation. Modern theory has tended to prefer, first, an "approach limited" system, wherein responder makes his invitation immediately, and uses one or more artificial bids to show a hand with game values. Jumps to game in opener's suit are normally preemptive (as they are in "old style" Standard, as well). The latest wrinkle is to treat all major suit raises as weak, and invitional and stronger hands are shown artificially. Minor suit raises have also evolved somewhat, to allow all jump raises to be preemptive.