Learn Bridge: The Best Free Bridge Courses Online
By Alex J. Coyne © Great Bridge Links
Learning to play bridge or want to sharpen your game? We can help! We researched to find some of the best free bridge courses and videos online right now. Organized by skill level from beginner players to bridge veterans, we got you covered.
Bridge Courses
More people pick up the game every day, and if you’re one of them, you should take a look at some of these bridge courses below. You’ll find something suited to your skill level whether you’ve never played bridge before, you haven’t played in decades or you last played yesterday.
Great Bridge Links Learn to Play
This is a fantastic section on our site that offers video and simple introductory courses for new and interested card players. Start with Videos, interactive play or books! You’ll find a great list.
Lessons and learning tools are available from the American Contract Bridge League. Everything you need to start learning this wonderful game.
The introductory module to bridge available in the Funbridge app is aimed at people who want to find out more about bridge rules and basics to be able to play their first bridge deals in a fun and simple way. Five chapters and an online dictionary will get you started and a great thing about Funbridge is you can start playing right away against robots. If you like the idea of playing against robots while you learn, find more offerings on our Play Online page which has a section for Robot Solitaire Bridge.
A Teacher First is an interesting little blog set up specifically for learning bridge. You can also find some cool bridge problems and resources including the famous ‘Bridge Placemat.’
Want to pick up some bridge knowledge fast? Check these guys out. They host a range of different online lessons and an accompanying app that gives you mobile access to the lessons as well as daily bridge hands and play against the computer. This looks like a great site!
Richard Pavlicek is a veteran bridge player and teacher. His free online lessons cover topics like popular conventions, declarer play, defensive play and partnership bidding. Great, because it’s a lot of information presented in a way that’s easy to process.
Once you’re got the basics down, Richard’s site will help you practice and hone your skills.
Bridge Doctor: Free Bridge Lessons
While Bridge Doctor is paid software, you can find eight basic bridge lessons with an accompanying bridge quiz (and answers) hosted on their website.
The Bridge World: Lessons on Bridge
The Bridge World is one of the oldest bridge-related publications out there. Their website hosts a comprehensive bridge course with 10 lessons covering beginner and advanced play as well as 25 bidding quizzes, 51 declarer play problems and 25 defensive play problems.
If you’re looking for a great, fun bridge teacher that won’t bombard you with info, but will give you everything you need as an advanced player at the same time, Joan Butts Bridge and her Online School of Bridge Lessons is worth checking out. Plenty of resources are available, with the Lesson Archive over here.
Bridge Quizzes and Questionnaires
Bridge quizzes and questionnaires are a great way to refresh your bridge knowledge, or to start picking up the game for the first time. Bridge problems are a quick way of exercising the brain and bridge skills.
Here are some great quizzes from around the web:
Richard Pavlicek hosts some great free bridge lessons on his website and offers a range of different bridge quizzes. Plenty for advanced players here, and more than enough for beginners.
FunTrivia is a quiz site that’s a lot of fun if you have a bit of time to kill, and you’ll end up learning some new facts at the same time. There’s a vast amount of topics available with a special section for bridge, or you can browse over to their general card game trivia quizzes.
Larry Cohen is a popular face at bridge courses, events and cruises. Several comprehensive bridge lessons are available on his website for free, and you’ll find many fascinating bridge problems as well.
Eddie Kantar’s Bidding Quizzes
If Bridge for Dummies was your introduction to the game, you’ll already be familiar with Eddie Kantar. Here are some of his bidding quizzes hosted online. In true For-Dummies-style, you can also find the bridge-related Cheat Sheet on the website here.
Bridge Bears is great for teaching beginners (especially kids) the rules. beginners and newer players.
Bridge for Kids
Looking for bridge aimed at kids instead? Here are a few links to inspire kids to play more Bridge!
MiniBridge is a fast-paced, shorter form of the game with the scoring a little different than standard. The simplicity of it makes it a great way to introduce kids to the game for the first time before getting into the more advanced concepts.
Teaching Contract Bridge to Children
While this one is a book instead of a course, this new 2019 release is worth taking a look at if you’re anyone who wants to teach bridge to kids, whether you’re a teacher or parent.
Teach Me to Play by Jude Goodwin is still one of the best bridge instruction books for kids out there – anyone with kids to teach should have this one on their shelf (and maybe some adults too). Originally published in 1988 it was revised and republished in 2020.
This article was updated April 2024