Beginner's Bridge

this page mainatained by Wei-Hwa Huang
Last update: 2004/05/10
Current as of: 2004/05/10

Overview

Beginner's Bridge is a variant of Contract Bridge intended to teach beginners some of the strategies and principles behind bridge bidding and play without the tedious task of remembering bidding conventions.

Rules

The rules are identical to Contract Bridge, with the following changes:

During bidding, all cards are face-up; i.e., all players know exactly which cards everyone has. Players may communicate verbally as much as they wish as long as all players hear and understand what is being said.
After the contract has been determined, everyone picks up their cards. The defenders then take their two hands and shuffle them, randomly dealing out a new hand of 13 cards to each defender. Play then proceeds as in contract bridge; the opening lead is made and dummy is then revealed.

Strategic differences

A partnership should, upon seeing all hands, to have a good idea for what the optimal contract is, as well as which hand is better suited for declaring. This is a most-important skill for any beginning bridge player and will then give them a good "feel" for optimal contract locations when they play actual contract bridge.
The play is very similar to actual bridge. The only difference is that a defender with a good memory can reconstruct the entire hand; my belief is that this is a reasonable aid as defending is one of the harder tasks for beginners.
The players can no longer use knowledge of opponent's bids to make deductions on what cards they have; but this is an advanced technique that even seasoned bridge players are still learning.