Many professional bridge players and teachers frequent various online forums. Post your bridge question to one of these workshops:

GOOGLE GROUPS lists rec.games.bridge (RGB) with over 3,000 current topics and lots of great bridge teachers and experts sharing their knowledge of the game. RGB is the granddaddy of online bridge discussion forums - it was around before the world wide web!

Bridgetalk.com has an active Ask An Expert forum.

Bridge Base Forums - lots of activity and interesting topics including Book Reviews.

NEW in the Bidders' Box

Standard Bidding with SAYC : "A few months ago someone asked me to recommend a good, up-to-date book on standard American bidding. I couldn't think of one and so asked my American friends to do so. After much head scratching the best that anyone could come up with was a Kaplan classic - written 40 years ago! This book- Standard Bidding with SAYC [by Ned Downey and Ellen Caitlin Pomer] fills  therefore not a gap in the market but a gaping hole." - Julian Pottage. Click Here for more ::>

March 2006 -BridgeHands Bridge Encyclopedia - new bridge instruction website. BridgeHands offers a well-indexed complete Bridge Encyclopedia with conventions and play narratives, comprehensive Laws reference for players/Directors, Tourney bulletins, free monthly eMagazine Newsletter, webhosting, reviews for cruise and books (including ordering). Owner : Michael Nistler

March 2006 - Contract Bridge on Wikiverse : a community of sites dedicated to providing high-quality informative web content. Information on bridge mechanics and history. Managed by Katz.

March 2006 - Contract Bridge on Wikipedia : a community of sites dedicated to providing high-quality informative web content, similar to Wikiverse above. Available in 16 languages. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. In the English version, started in 2001, members are currently working on 1,030,462 articles. Anyone can drop in and correct, update or add to the content.

March 2006 - Bridge7 - BIG SITE with lots of info - bridge terms, theory, conventions and more. Practice your bidding and play online with these neat pages from Bridge7 (Yalcin Pekiner). Yalcin writes "Learn or improve your bridge by numerous exercises, tests and free software." He has recently completed "Conventions" Looks like there is a LOT on this site (IE5, mac)

ARTICLES

Web sites that feature bridge articles.

June 24, 2004 - Bridgesnaps.  This site presents a free monthly news letter of bridge tips, quotes and humor.  John S. Thomas

January 18, 2004 - Bridge Articles - Articles on somewhat neglected aspects of the game, historical, current, and futuristic.  It also offers a platform for other writers, and a random hand generator. David King

May 1, 2004 - The Bridge Buddah - enjoy humorous conversations had between Geoff and his friends held at a local pub.

March 2006 - David Lindop's bridge articles. In PDF form, www.betterbridge.com - choose ARTICLES from the main menu.

BIDDING and PLAY PRACTICE

Daily and Weekly Bridge Puzzles - a page on Great Bridge Links.

THE BECKER ARCHIVES :: Bid-em-ups for bidding practice available online at LarryCohen.com . Mike Becker, a future hall-of-famer, and son of the legendary B.J. Becker, has been compiling bidding practice deals for many years.  He was gracious enough to make them available to the public. Deals from the "Becker Archives" often appear in Bridge World magazine. Click on any set below then have your partner click (and print) the corresponding set for partnership bidding practice - bid over the phone, the internet or by email - smoke signals, telegraph or owl! Partnership Bidding Practice (courtesy of Mike Becker and Dave Berkowitz) Hosted by Larry Cohen. Great hand printouts, new set each month. Click Here ::>

January 29, 2004 :: Bridge Bidding Trainer V2.0 - Bridge program to train the bidding BBT is a complete program to practice and improve your own bidding system. Windows or NT  Email

Bernie Chazen - monthly set of Bid-Em-Ups along with suggested auctions and comments.

April 1, 2001 - Practice with partner at BridgePerfect.com- Bridge Perfect. - BridgePerfect places the game in a tournament environment where one cannot rely on luck of the cards or bad opponents to win.. The program can be played by 1, 2 or as many as 4 players at a time. All of the hands in the program have an optimal bid and solution based on expert play and analysis. The program was not created as an actual program for one to play bridge with others, but instead to practice and train techniques by oneself, a partner or others. It is not a substitute for online bridge clubs but rather, a complement.

Practice Bidding ONLINE!
Question: I'm looking for a (free/share)ware on windows implementing a server to practice *bidding* through the Internet (using modem to modem connection, and opening a port). Answer: Try Bridge Base Online. This is a free service that does what you are looking for. When you first log in to the program go into the Training Rooms area. Then enter the Partnership Bidding area. There are a lot of other things you can do with this software as well that you will not find in other online bridge games. The software is available as a free download through: www.bridgebase.com/online Let me know if you have any questions. Fred Gitelman Bridge Base Inc.

August 31, 2003 - Bridge Calculators from Richard Pavlicek. These may not be new to some of you, but on a site this large cool things can get buried. As well, Richard has new URLs for these cool little utilities. Check it out! Bridge Hand Evaluator | Bridge Hand Calculator | Suit Break Calculator | Dual Suit Break Calculator | Wheeler Dealer | Personal Deal Creator | Bridge Score Calculator | Contract and Result Finder  These links can also be found on the Software page, the Resource page, the Bidding & Play page and in the Classroom.

Bidding Quest dot com - October 26, 2001 - Online bidding with Bidding Quest - a site were you can bid for practice and/or compete in online bidding contests. Practice bidding with you partner. Bid 10 boards with an unknown partner. Compete against other pairs. Learn new systems. Improve your bidding technique. This site is lots of fun. Doesn't work in my Mac Internet Explorer 5, works fine with Netscape 6.1 on the Mac

PlayBRIDGE -Hand Generator - WINNER of the Great Bridge Links Great Site Award May 2000.
"It is a bridge education tool to be used to practice bidding, visualize hands or resolve what-if situations. It also produces duplicate forms pre-filled with computer generated deals. You can generate random deals, seed your hand with selected cards or specify your strength and distribution requirements. I hope that the Internet bridge playing community will find playBridge useful and fun."

Deal of the Week Contest from Bridge Base Inc. Java based, includes introduction to players, some history, and runs like a little machine that you, the visitor, can control. Cute, Fred. (April 1999) As of February 2000 you get to be declarer and play whatever cards you want!

Bridge Base Inc. has been posting The Deal of the Week on their web site for almost 3 1/2 years. All 180 past Deals of the Week are still available through their web site. The applet that is used to display The Deal of the Week and Online Vugraph is now available for license. If you are interested in using this software to create interactive bridge presentations on your web site, please e-mail Fred Gitelman at Bridge Base Inc.

MASTER SOLVERS CLUB SOFTWARE - And while you're practicing your bidding, take a look at Master Solvers Club (MSC) from Bridge Base - a set of problems that were presented in The Bridge World Magazine to a panel of experts and to solvers. The initial software comes with all the problems from 1994-1996. Ive seen this little program and it's very cool -

Nikos Sarantakos' bridge page Luxembourg - Articles and Quizzes. Originally published in Dutch and/or the Greek Bridge Federation magazines, Nikos Sarantakos presents problems from real-life deals played at the highest levels. In each problem, you face a decision, usually concerning a call or an opening lead. (December 17, 1998)

Intermediate/Novice Bidding and Play material can be found in the Great Bridge Links Classroom

STANDARD AMERICAN YELLOW CARD
Most Comprehensive Site on the Net

Wayne Flournoy and Anna Marsh have put together a great site (click on SAYC logo). It includes a complete discussion of all aspects of the Standard American Yellow Card including its conventions and responses. It also discusses other common conventions used by players on OKbridge. The site is laid out to provide easy printing or online viewing, and has a gif file of the ACBL Convention Card for printing. It's everything you could want or need from a convention card site.

SYSTEMS AND CONVENTIONS COLLECTION SITES

ACBL's Commonly Used Conventions - With only 15 words allowed during an auction and just 13 cards in each suit, bridge players have invented dozens of special bids, called conventions, to describe their strength and hand patterns. These descriptions are from the ACBL Bridge Bulletin series called the Bidding Toolkit. A new bid is added monthly. Click here for Commonly Used Conventions

Convention of the Week - from Bridgetoday.com.
Every Monday, a new convention club hand appears on the website, featuring an interesting bridge convention. You can access that column for 7 days by clicking on "Monday Conventions" in the upper left-hand side of the website's homepage. Note: You can access older columns if you purchase a Bridgetoday.com club membership.

Othere sites:

• Standard American Yellow Card (SAYC)

• Bridge World Standard (BWS) A nice new site from the Bridge World. (February 2003)

• Acol Info - interesting site with message board, lessons, books and convention pages. And hey! The first 'dot info' we've seen.  August 9, 2002

• Bidding: A comprehensive page from Jeff Tang (December 2003)

• October 27, 1999 - The Exotic Systems Mailing List - The okb-exotic mailing list has been renamed exotic-systems, since it quickly became clear that bidding theory and strange systems were going to be the primary focus, not OKbridge issues, and since I wanted to make it clear that non-OKbridge-members are welcome to join. We already have over 40 members and over 100 messages posted in the first month, including some quite interesting discussions; it's been a quite interesting list so far. To join, or to browse the archives of previous postings visit the url above. Alan Jaffray

• March 01, 2002 - Bridgeslam.com The tournament Players Resource - systems, conventions, partnership notes and more. Interesting site!

• Bidding Systems Page
  Vlatko Primorac is converting the available documents from the Internet Bridge Archive into the html format. The page also contains the link to every bidding system description that Vlatko can find on the net.

• BridgeWare List of Conventions - Toronto, ON Canada Bridgeware Software Company lists lots of conventions here.

• Bidding Systems Collection
  Maintained by Hank Eng, Texas. Welcome back Hank!

• All The Bridge Conventions You Could Want (for now). - Chris Marlow
  At present (January 1998) there are 270 conventions described and explained. Chris is trying to obtain as many new conventions and sample hands as possible to make it “the most complete bridge convention guide on the net. ” Good luck Chris on a huge challenge!

• Internet Bridge Archives - Conventions Area

• Internet Bridge Archives - Systems Area

• ACBL Unit 498 - Extensive links to pages with info on system, alerting, conventions, and other hard to find stuff. June 7, 2001

INDIVIDUAL CONVENTIONS AND SYSTEMS PAGES

Posted in order of receipt

September 7, 2004 :: Ted Muller's World of Bridge, Home of X-Men Bidding Systems - powerful methods not seen elsewhere. Home of Dante's Infernal commentary. Classic and original play problems, bridge movies, editorials, movements and movement design, software. Ted Muller, Sacramento, California

June 8, 2005 - Mark Abraham - The server upon which my bridge systems page was located suffered a catastrophic failure recently and is not being resurrected. . I would be grateful if you would update your links and bookmarks accordingly. For those who don't know, or have forgotten, there are descriptions of a number of symmetric relay systems, including strong club and strong pass methods, mostly with transfer-opening styles. There are also links to several other exotic Forcing Pass systems and bidding conventions. Regards, Mark Abraham

December 2004 - Merry Christmas from Krzysztof Jassem : A summary of the Polish Club System by Krzysztof Jassem (in English) will be published next year, but Krzysztof would like it to be made available free to anyone who wants it PDF | DOC | HTML

March 28, 2004 - LANDS Big Diamond : short club, strong diamond system with some other unconventional bids - Lucas Karpiuk

January 11, 2004 - The Modest Club - New Bridge Book : The Modest Club gives you dynamic distribution data fast. Think hard, right away. Project the possible auctions. Be prepared to handle surprises. Be ready to create them, too. Ted Warner, author.

ZAR POINTS : Points Aggressive Bidding Theory A Zar Points article will appear in the next isue of The Bridge World, and 7 articles on Zar Points have just been published in the Japan Bridge Bulletins (Eric Kokish Editor). Also, the article is translated and published in Polish for the Polish Brydz (August 2003), and is being translated in German for the German Bridge, French for Le Bridgeur, Russian for Brydge in Russia, and Italian by the Blue Team writer M. Pamcotti. You'll find it interesting to visit and play with the Zar Bid Machine, which can be found on the Zar Points website. All the downloadable materials are free, and the site needs no registration of any form. Click Here for Website

Feb 16, 2003 - Smart Blonde Bidding System This site provides information on the Smart Blonde bidding system. Will Aubrey

November 20, 2002 - A lot of people on the forum were of the opinion that the new Moscito relays, while exciting and effective, require more effort to memorize. With this in mind, Atul has come up with a strawman to try and improve on the
mnemonic aspects. Click Here -

October 29, 2002 - New site for people who like to play Klinger's POWER SYSTEM (limited version). Best regards P. Bednorz

August 9, 2002 - Acol Info - interesting site with message board, lessons, books and convention pages. And hey! The first 'dot info' we've seen.

May 27, 2003 - Henry Mach of PA, USA. Precision - 2/1 Mix and Weak 2 Diamond Opening: 5+ cards + 4 card major, 5-10 HCP

Feb 20, 2003 - Pannol Bidding System - copyright 1995-2002 James Wanless & Claire Gilman

January 10, 2002 -Ü Composite Club: book describing a new strong club bidding system Bill Hodgkiss

October 3, 2001 - Suction - Thomas's Bridge Fantasia

August 31, 2001 - MUTOS-MUlty Transfer Oriented System - Belgium. Eugeen Vannuten Bidding System- New modern innovative Bridge system, simple and yet accurate

August 20, 2001 - Bridgevefurinn Iceland. Bidding systems, convention, links

August 15, 2001 - The Composite Club by Bill Hodgkiss

July 23, 2001 - Melams Bridge Page - Greenwood, Indiana, USA. Gene Lewis Bidding System, Cue Bids. A full bidding system with advanced cue bids, step overcalls and two club responses.

June 20, 2001 - Hannon Raises - This is a new page featuring a new system for dealing with 5 card major suit bidding (raises).

December 01, 2000 - BullBridge USA/NY/Sunnyside Information for the new "ForcePoint" bidding system. Bidding for people who do not like bunch of conventions. Original artificial oppenings, ONE only convention for all distributions and slams needs, elementary determine of cool contracts levels (not supported for 5:0 opponents trump only distribution), expert contracts, steely double-dummy player

Mark Abraham Transfer-opening symmetric relay systems. May 12, 2000

August 01, 2000 - Bridge Matters Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. - Bidding, Systems, Conventions, Articles, Interviews

July 18, 2000 - Daniel Neill's cool links to systems and other bridge sites.

July 1, 2000 - Bridge System from Davide Tavoschi. Italian and English

May 22, 2000 - Bidding Systems in Polish

December 19, 1999 - The ETM Bidding Systems - by Glen Ashton. The "Everything That Matters" methods are systems, conventions, and bidding approaches designed to keep the important while eliminating the unnecessary.

November 13, 1999 - The Blue Team Club Home Page - A site dedicated to the famous bridge system played by Forquet, Garozzo, Franco, etc. The site is not yet in English, but the English version of the Arturo Franco and Benito Garozzo's System Notes is available for download. It is a very interesting 73 page system, more or less the same used by De Falco and Ferraro to win the las European Championship. Marco Pancotti.

October 29, 1999 - Precision - 2/1 Mix Bidding System USA, AZ, Phoenix. Paul C. Glick. Bidding System.

October 22, 1999 - L_system - Bidding System. L system is for the idea of light opening: open the 5 card suit with 8-12HP, since the range is of highest probability. If we overcall with these hands, why not bid at the first chance.

August 9, 1999 - Bridge is iT - Bid it, Play it, Surf it, Sick of it. Visit it, you'll like it.

August 16, 1999 - Site d'enchères de bridge Benton/Maubird - Nous avons le plaisir de vous annoncer la publication en fran¡ais d'un nouveau site d'enchères de bridge, dévellopant 3 idées originales :
La présentation d'une base de données relationnelle d'enchères
Les Blackwoods Benton
La majeure Texas

Is the Montreal Relay legal in Canada?
The "Montreal Relay" is a treatment first popularized by Eric Kokish. Major openings promise 5+ cards; diamond opening promises 4+ cards; hence, when you hold a 4-4-3-2 opening hand, you must systemically open 1 Club. My mathematician friends tell me the one club is "short" no more than 10% of the time.

The 1D response is artificial denying a 5 card major. One of a major promises 5+ cards in the suit.

Today, Eric Kokish believes the "Montreal Relay" treatment is mostly for beginners. Notwithstanding that, Baran-Kokish still play it! So do I with a few of my partners (hey, I grew up in Montreal!).

Yes, of course it is "legal" -- in fact it is a general convention card treatment and can be played at any level in any ACBL game. Naturally, you must alert the "artificial" 1D response. Jonathan Steinberg, May 13, 1999

Hannon Raises A site dedicated to a new major suit bidding structure. Hal (March 15, 1999)

Mike's MAGIC Bridge System called: M.A.F Netherlands, HERVELD N. - Mike's MAGIC bridge system, which many wonderful, completely new and very powerful properties. (December 31, 1998)

Symetric Relay (Precision)

Prism Signals The sole content of the site is an 11 chapter e-book entitled Prism Signals. A hyped description- A Revolutionary Defensive Signal...Defender Signals Declarer's Distribution. A more down to earth description (a quote from the forward)- “The purpose of these pages is to demonstrate one fact: The four hands of a bridge deal are structurally interdependent.” (September 23, 1998)

French Conventions with examples - organized by H. PACAUILT. Conventions et exemples d'applications - organisés par H. PACAULT. (September 17, 1998).

Jeff Tang's Home Page - Lot's of conventions on this Bidding page, part of Jeff Tan's excellent site. (February 26, 2003)

Asghar Hassan of Pakistan has developed the Orient Bidding System in which opening bids at the one level show strength accurately but without reference to shape. Email Only.

Defence to Multi 2D:Dixon - by David Stevenson

EHAA: FAQ by Eric Landau, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA

Halstein Kvangraven (Norway) Polish club, Precision & some intresting plays (May 6, 1998)

Christopher W. Hasney's The Basic American Bidding System a book designed for beginners and for those who have been playing for a while but need to go back and "Fill in the gaps." Copyright Christopher W. Hasney and Gerald Pottier

Chris Ryall - A Collection of Weak Two Styles from usenet and elsewhere.
July 1999, this from Chris - About a year ago there was a most splendid discussion on this group on the merits, responses and defence to the Polish Wilkosz 2D opening. Starting with a query from Piotr Radzikowskias as to why it had been banned. I have edited the text (quite heavily in the case of side threads moaning about ACBL regulations) and pasted it up into the Weak two archive. If anyone is interested .. only 68k - plain text mostly! (93 posts pre-edit) btw: the project was stimulated by my interest in using Wilkosz 2D as an overcall of those horrible strong or phoney 1C openings. In contrast to openings where Wilkosz is 'brown sticker' anything is allowed round here over an unreal club. chris

Thomas Andrews - Taking the Suck out of Suction (and lots of other good stuff).

The Yang's Jump Shifts - A Powerful Bidding Approach For Slams!! Cliff Yang -

Kopenhagen system (August 29, 1997)

New Bridge System Called L System (August 5, 1997)

ACOL Based Bidding system by Chris Ryall, UK

Acol- A Guide to the System, University of Warwick

Bergen Raises, University of Warwick

Blackwood with a void - Voidwood by Jeff Goldsmith

Bridge World Standard

Colonial ACOL by Kent Feiler

Control Jump Shifts after Major Openings, by Cliff Yang

Defensive Bidding by Chris Ryall

Double! by Tom Townsend

Dutch Standard Bidding

Dynamic Request After Major Suit Double Raise, by Cliff Yang

Five Card Stayman over 2NT Opener by Unversity of Warwick

Fourth Suit Forcing by Ed Sheldon

Good/Bad 2NT by John Hoffman

Improving 2/1 Game Force by Fred Gitelman

Indirect Game Invitation after Minor Double Raise, by Cliff Yang

Internet Archives Systems Area

Kaplan Sheinwold system notes, in postscript by Moty Katzman

Lebensohl by Bridge Arkade

Lipschitz Two Diamonds by Ed Davis

Low Information Puppet Stayman by Kent Feiler

Low Information Standard American by Kent Feiler

Major Suit Raises by Henk Uijterwaal

Major Suit Raises: Long and Short Suit Game Tries by Bridge Arkade

Major Suit Raises: Nagy Games Tries by Jeff Goldsmith

Major Suit Raises: Puppet by Jeff Goldsmith

Major Suit Raises (Relay) by Jeff Goldsmith

Major Suit Raises: Stenberg by Bridge Arkade

Major Suit Raises: Stenberg Citronclub by Bridge Arkade

Minor Suit Openings: Inverted Minor Suit Raises, University of Warwick

Minor Suit Openings: Kokish Rebids after 1D-2C by Jeff Goldsmith

Muiderberg, invented by Onno Janssens

Multi 2 Diamonds - Using a Multi double as defence by Chris Ryall

Multi 2D Constructive Sequences by Chris Ryall

Multi 2D Defense by Jeff Goldsmith

Multi 2D Defense by Henk Uijterwaal

One Notrump Opening: A Flexible Response System, by Cliff Yang

One Notrump Opening: Mohan Defense to Weak Notrump by Jeff Goldsmith

One Notrump Opening: 10-12 HCPs by Ed Davis

One Notrump Opening: Woolsey Defense by Jeff Goldsmith

Overcall Structure Follow-ups by Jeff Goldsmith

Polish Club by Mike Mardesich

Precision Forum by Michael O'Connor

Preempts: Defenses to Artificial Preempts to Midchart and Superchart conventions

Preempts: Defense to Preemptive Jump Raises by Jeff Goldsmith

Request Jump Shifts by The Opener by Cliff Yang

Request Jump shifts by The Responder by Cliff Yang

Runouts After 1NT-Double, Twisted Swine by Jeff Goldsmith

Standard English, hosted by the EBU

Standard Yellow Card System Booklet

Strong 2C & Paradox responses, combining Roman 2D and 2D by Chris Ryall

Strong 2C Bid for 20+ unbalanced hands, by Cliff Yang, see Strong 2D Bid

Strong 2D Bid for 22+ or 8+ quick trick hands, by Cliff Yang, See Strong 2C Bid

Suction by Thomas Andrews

Two-way Checkback after a 1NT Rebid by Jeff Goldsmith taken from Kit Woolsey

Weak Two Bids by Chris Ryall

Weak Two Openings: Ogust Responses to Weak 2-bids by Jeff Goldsmith

Weird Science by Jeff Goldsmith

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