Learn to Play Bridge and Improve Your Game by Studying using Bridge Books

Bridge is one of the world’s great card games but to learn to play bridge properly you really need to study some bridge books. There are literally thousands of titles for everyone, from bridge books for beginners to some for even expert and experienced players.

 

If you’re starting out with bridge you should consider a beginners bridge book like Introduction to Bridge by Australian expert and teacher Paul Marston. Marston has taught thousands of players over the past thirty years and he has refined his methods to a simple six step series of lessons in his popular book.

 

To learn to play bridge you must learn the fundamentals of both bidding and play. Marston begins by discussing how to evaluate the cards you are dealt – what makes a good bridge hand, what makes a bad bridge hand and how you must regulate and adjust your bidding to suit each hand.

 

In Chapter One, Marston discusses opening bids at the one level – what they show, what they mean and how your partner needs to take this information into account when looking at and assessing their own hand. After an opening bid, the book describes responses and how these will convey information to both players on the limits of the hand and how high they should consider bidding. Bidding is a complicated process and you must tell the other players using a limited and regulated vocabulary about the thirteen cards you hold. You can only say the four suits: clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades (and no trumps of course) and the numbers from one to seven. You’d be amazed how much information can be conveyed using combinations of these words.

 

Later chapters of this beginners bridge book refine the bidding process so that by the end of the six chapters you should be able to enjoy a good game of bridge.

 

Of course this is just one of many books the aspiring bridge player can refer to if they want to learn to play bridge. One you feel you no longer need bridge books for beginners you can refer to books on conventions, books on defense, books on card play. There are even genres of bridge books that specialize in bridge fiction or bridge humour.

 

Perhaps the most famous of all bridge humour books is Bridge in the Menagerie by Victor Mollo. It’s set in the fictional Griffin’s Club in London, and all the characters are animals. Think George Orwell’s Animal Farm but set around bridge. Characters include the Hideous Hog, a brilliant and arrogant player who almost always wins, the Rueful Rabbit who is a very bad player but invariably lucky – nothing he does ever seems to go wrong to the frustration of the other players. Colin the Corgi is the weakest player in the Griffins Club and he can never do anything right and is it the subject of ridicule by all the other players. Finally there is Papa, the Hog’s arch nemesis – a brilliant player in his own right but sadly never gets the better of the Hideous Hog.

Bridge Software – The Key to Improving Your Contract Bridge Skills with Software in a Few Short Lessons.

Bridge is a great card game for everyone of all ages about ten years and over. There is a great range of skills that bridge can develop – from team play, logic, mathematics and game theory. But the game itself can take many years to master and no one can really claim they have conquered all aspects of this complex game.

Like any pursuit, improvement at bridge can be achieved via practice, study and dedication. As an example, consider golf. You will never really become a great or even competent golfer if you don’t spend time on the driving range ironing out your swing, or hours on the putting green working on your short game technique. You should also consider lessons from your club pro.

Bridge is the same – the best bridge players have spent years refining their skills – their bidding, their declarer play, their defence. One of the best ways to work on your bridge game is to practise using one of the dozens of contract bridge software programmes on the market. These help train you in all aspects of the game.

The best bridge playing software for declarer play is Bridge Master 2000, developed by Canadian Fred Gitelman. There are two versions of this software – one for novices called the Audrey Grant version and the main product for more experienced players. The user is presented with a contract (meaning the bidding is shown) and needs simply to make their contract, overtricks are unimportant. Each hand has been carefully crafted to illustrate a key declarer play principle – but they are not as straightforward as they may seem.

The user of this contract bridge software is required to follow the proscribed order of play – any divergence will be punished. What this means is if you do not play the hand, trick by trick, as per the solution, the software will shuffle the defenders hands around so you are guaranteed to fail. There are no lucky finesses, no second chances. If you go down in your contract it means at some point you played the wrong card or diverged from the recommended line of play. That means you have to back track and try to work out what and where you went wrong.

If, ultimately, you cannot work out how to make your contract there is a helpful Bridge Movie that describes all the tricks and traps on the hand and what you needed to look out for.

Bridge Master comes as a software programme of 180 hands split into five levels of difficulty. Levels ones and two are not too challenging but levels three and four will test most club players. Level 5 hands are not for the faint-hearted – these are tough and complex hands that require advanced knowledge of squeeze play and end game theory to solve.

There are other contract bridge software programmes to choose from, but to really improve your game Bridge Master 2000 is for you.