Arthur's Bridge Site
HOMEPAGE
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Welcome to my Bridge site
At the moment this consists of a basic guide to the Acol bidding system, intended for beginners. It assumes that the auction is uncontested - ie that the opponents conveniently do not enter the bidding. Later I plan to add further pages covering more advanced bidding, bidding in a contested auction, and the play of the cards.
I am currently working on a book for beginners to learn the game from scratch in simple steps. I will be including extracts from the book on this site, and hope eventually to publish it.
This site assumes that the reader is familiar with the mechanics and scoring of the game. The book, however, will contain a detailed description of these for the benefit of the complete beginner.
Throughout the site I use the masculine form of the personal pronoun (ie he, him, his etc). This is for convenience and legibility only.
I am continually improving and expanding the site, so if you find it useful, visit again to see the latest version.
HAND ASSESSMENT
Several factors may need to be taken into account when considering an opening bid - the high-card point-count, quick trick or playing trick value and the distribution.
Distribution
The distribution, or shape, is the number of cards held in each suit. This is only taken into consideration when considering a suit bid. No-trump bidding is based on the point-count with reasonably balanced hands. A balanced hand is one with a distribution of 4-3-3-3, 4-4-3-2 or 5-3-3-2.
High-card point-count
The point-count is an indication of the strength of the hand based on the high cards held and is calculated as follows:
Thus there are a total of 40 points in a deal, and an average hand would contain 10 points.
Some authorities recommend adding additional points to the high-card count for distributional hands, but I prefer to stick to the high-card point-count whilst making mental allowance for the distribution.
Values for opening bids
A game contract in no-trumps or a major suit can often be made with a combined point-count between the two hands of 24-25 points. Consequently, it is advisable to open the bidding with any hand containing 12 or more points so that a possible game contract will not be missed. The Acol system caters for this by using a weak 1NT opening bid and light opening bids in the suits.
Quick tricks
Quick tricks are taken into consideration when contemplating certain bids, eg an opening bid of 2§
A quick trick is a high card or high-card combination which will, as the name suggests, produce a quick trick during the play of the hand. An ace, for example, is obviously worth one quick trick. High cards or combinations in each suit may be counted as quick tricks according to the following table:
Playing tricks
Playing tricks are also taken into consideration when contemplating certain bids, eg strong two opening bids and pre-emptive opening bids (both described later).
A playing trick is a trick which would be expected to make given a reasonable distribution of the suit between the other three hands.
For example, a suit of AKQ973 would make six tricks unless there was a very unusual distibution of the remaining cards in the suit between the other three hands, and may therefore be counted as six playing tricks.
Trick-taking requirements
The following is a rough guide to the minimum number of high-card points required between the two hands to make game or slam contracts. For trump contracts, a good trump fit is assumed. In all cases, the requirements can be slightly lowered for good distributional values.
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