BridgePlus!Bridge is my great hobby and there are a number of excellent sites that are worth visiting. Many of these are great launching pads into the world of bridge playing that, to me, are as yet unexplored.
Systems and conventions can best be found off some of the (personal) websites on this page and from some of the links at the end. I'll try and bring some of this together in a coherent manner, as time permits in the future.
My own exploits during the current bridge year are detailed on my home page, together with details on our system, and previous years are detailed here.
The authorities around the world are getting on-line quickly, and many are providing a service that is useful.
Both the EBU, ACBL, and WBF provide on-line convention cards. The ACBL Convention Card editor supports a wide variety of convention cards, including the EBU and WBF cards. The WBF is probably the best for their own card since it has a convention card editor and is therefore easy to complete. However it only prints on an HP-printer, so this can be a limitation, and the EBU has now banned this card from all its events except the Spring Fours.
On the positive side, the EBU does provide the 1998 Orange Book on-line, so anyone coming to the UK to play can now attempt to understand which conventions are allowed and when to alert. Both the BBL and EBU provide limited information about forthcoming tournaments. If you'd like any advice about playing in national tournaments, then I'd recommend asking the EBU (contacts on their website) or drop me a line. Be warned, there is no prize money to speak of, and less bridge is played than at the American Nationals.
ECats Bridge in Britain run a number of tournaments for the UK, European and World authorities and have a useful collection of bridge-related information.
When I was young, you played bridge at school during the lunch hour and graduated to playing at the club down the road. I started playing in rural Essex, then improved dramatically whilst at university in Cambridge, settled in Hertfordshire for a while and then for about 20 years in Berkshire. I now live in the Scottish Borders.
The last few years have seen the arrival of on-line bridge and the range of sites and their offerings is covered in my personal guide to on-line bridge.
I now play most of my on-line bridge at Bridge Base Online. This is a free site run by Fred Gitelman and colleagues and now represents the best value-for-money site around. The addition of tournaments and team games have greatly enhanced the site - so I'd recommend giving it a whirl.
Alternatively, you can play against real people:
If you want your club included on this list, please just send me some mail.
A lot of people maintain websites with useful information about bridge. These are some that I've seen:
There is an extremely active newsgroup, rec.games.bridge. OKbridge has its own newsgroup, rec.games.bridge.okbridge, primarily relating to specific OKB boards/happenings.
There are a number of bridge forums springing up. Not as vociferous as rgb, but interesting in their own right:
Other links to bridge can be found through the big central websites, including Yahoo! Bridge.
Links to popular and other bidding systems I've come across ... not that I've necessarily played them or wish to endorse them :-)
Bridge Base Online provides an excellent facility for partnership bidding practice that includes the ability to generate specific hand types.
Although bridge players, especially in the UK, have the reputation of spending a lot of time in bookstores reading and not buying, there are a number of sites where you can purchase books on-line. These include
And then there are the magazines ....
Bridge and computers have never gone well together, especially compared to the standard of a $35 chess program. However Matt Ginsberg is making a significant impact with GIB, probably the first computer to play in a National and now even has ACBL master points. GIB is available commercially and costs approximately $80.
The strongest bridge program is Jack, from the Netherlands.
BridgeMate make their double dummy solver available for free.There are a number of links to other sites at Great Bridge Links.
A number of people are starting to build sites holding as many systems and conventions that they can find. One of the best is http://www.bridgeguys.com/conventions.html.
Overcall Structures - a more complex method of overcalling.
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Of course, any feedback please drop me a line
This page was last updated on January 10, 2008
