Lesson 1: – Introduction to 4 card Acol and Opening bids at the 1 level
Suggested Reading (remember they are not Bibles)
- Bridge for complete Beginners – Paul Mendelson
- Bridge Winning ways to play your cards – Paul Mendelson
- Andrew Robson’s Essential Bridge Flipper
Facts: –
- Matches etc are lost by mistakes, not brilliances
- There is no such thing as a perfect bidding system – there will be hands your system will get wrong
- There are no “right answers”. It is up to the partnership to agree what the right answers are (both doing the same thing)
- Bidding is more important than the play of the cards. If you bid sensible contracts you do not have to be a genius at playing the hands.
- Bridge is a partnership. You have to cope positively with a partner and develop a system to suit both members of the partnership.
Bridge bidding system (covered by these lessons): –
Acol is the bridge bidding system that is “standard in British tournament play and widely used in other parts of the world”. It is basically a natural system using four card majors and, most commonly, a weak no-trump.
Facts: –
- There are 52 cards in a pack
- There are 4 suits which are ranked upwards – Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts and Spades
- No-trumps (NT) is ranked above Spades and is a limit bid
- The minor suits are Clubs ()and Diamonds ()
- The Major suits are Hearts () and Spades ()
- We will be playing the 4 card Acol system using weak NT (12-14 pts)
- There are 40 High Card Points (HCPs) in a pack
- Ace = 4pts, King = 3pts, Queen = 2pts, Jack = 1pts
- Balanced Hand – roughly the same number of cards in each suit (4,3,3,3 or 4,4,3,2 or 5,3,3,2)
- Distributional or an unbalanced hand where you have 1 (6 cards) or 2 suits (9+ cards across the 2 suits) that are much longer than the others. This will result in shortage in at least 1 of the remaining suits (e.g. 1 or a void)
- A distributional hand one should look at the loser count e.g. for every A, K or Q you are missing in the suit(s) that are bid is a lost trick; 1 card in a suit is only 1 loser,etc…
- In a distributional hand add 1pt for each 5 or 6 card suit and 2pts for each subsequent card and 2pt for a singleton and 3pts for a void
- A 4,4,4,1 distribution – pass with 12pts and bid best suit where possible below the singleton if you have 13+pts
Opening 1 of a Suit: – (agreed with Partner)
- count – 12 – 19 HCPs
- Must have 4 cards headed by an honour or any 5 cards or longer suit
- Must be able to make a rebidg. rebid suit – must be promising 5 or more cards headed by at least 2 honours or bid a second suit which should have at least 4 cards headed by an honour (always bid the 5 card suit first if there is one in the hand first) or be able to make a rebid in NT
Opening 1NT
- 12-14pts HCPs ideally divided evenly across the 4 suits (this is often not realistic)
- Balanced hand
- Limit bid
- No rebid unless partner responds that forces you to bid
What are the Opening Bids?
Hand | Bid | Ax | KQJxxx | Qxx | xx | Axxx | AKxx | Qxx | Jx | AKQx | Qxx | x | AQJxx | xx | Axxxx | KQx | Axx | Axx | KQx | AJxx | Qxx | Qxx | Axxx | KQx | xxxx | Qx | AJxxx | KQxxx | x | Qxxx | x | KJxx | AKxx | Kx | KQxx | QJxxx | Ax | AQxxx | Kxx | xxx | Ax |
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Upper Bann U3A Bridge Lessons