General info
Akademisk Bridgdeklubb will host a beginners course in bridge during fall 2025. We have set up 10 Tuesdays for course. The course is aimed at beginners that have not played any bridge earlier.
The course costs NOK 100 for students and NOK 500 for others. Attendees are not required to pay until the second time one shows up, so that everyone gets to try the course once for free.
We recommend that all that are interested in the course attend our recruitment event the Tuesday before the course starts (26. August). Beginners will get information about the club and a head start in minibridge at this event. There will also be free pizza at this event. All necessary information is available at our web pages for the event.
Note that the lecture starts at 18.00, while our regular club event starts at 17.30. It is then possible for those at the course to show up at 17.30 and either play, or get a recap of the lecture from the previous week.
Also note that there will be no course on 23. September, as the lecturer will be away on that day. We encourage you to join our regular club event (starting at 17.30) and play minibridge on that day.
Feel free to check out our Facebook event for the course (external link). Short messages might appear on the Facebook event, and those interested can ask questions. There are also other ways to ask questions, see our page about contact information.
Course plan
2. September: mini-bridge lecture 1, 2, and 4 (we skip lecture 3).
- Introduction to mini-bridge: basic rules. Playing phase only.
- Basic play techniques in NT-contract and trump contracts.
- Hints and tips on opening leads.
19 September: mini-bridge lecture 5, 6 and 7.
- Contracts and points: partial game, game and slam. Choice of contract based on hp and distribution of suits.
- Duplicate bridge.
- Basic playing techniques and defense: finesses and ruffs.
16. September: mini-bridge lecture 8 and 9, and the action rules.
- More playing techniques: cross ruffing, different honor combinations, distribution signals.
- Rules for an actual bridge auction.
23. September: no lecture. Feel free to join our regular club event from 17.30 and play minibridge.
30. September: bidding lecture 1.
- Opening 1 in a suit.
- Partner has trump support.
7. October: bidding lecture 2.
- Opening 1 in a suit - partner does not have trump support.
- Opener has trump support to partner.
14. October: bidding lecture 3 and 9.
- NT openings.
- Stayman and transfers bids.
21. October: bidding lecture 6, plus defensive bids.
- Defensive bids.
- Takeout doubles.
- Other types of doubles.
28. October: bidding lecture 4 and 5 (not defensive bids).
- Other NT bids.
- Openers second bid after forcing answer.
4 November: bidding lecture 7
- Weak 2 openings and higher suit openings.
- Pre-emptive bids.
- Sacrificing.
11. November: bidding lecture 8 and 10.
- Strong hands - opening 2 clubs.
- Blacwood.
Course material
All the course material used in the lectures are written by the Norwegian Bridge Association, and hence only available in Norwegian. Since I have made some minor edits to them, and saved them as .pdf files, I have also uploaded them to our website.
The material has been translated to English, and can be found on the web pages of the World Bridge Federation here. In the pdf material that can be downloaded, there is a booklet for minibridge and one for bidding, which will correspond to the course material in text form. We highly recommend checking this material out.
There are also youtube videos available in English here.
Mini-bridge: mini-bridge 1, mini-bridge 2, mini-bridge 4, mini-bridge 5, mini-bridge 6, mini-bridge 7, mini-bridge 8, mini-bridge 9.
The slides for the rules of the auction can be found here.
Bidding: lecture 1, lecture 2, lecture 3, lecture 4, lecture 5, lecture 6, lecture 7, lecture 8, lecture 9, lecture 10.
A summary of the system we play, which can be used during playing, can be found here.
For practicing playing bridge, we can recommend Bridge Masters on BBO.
For bidding practice, we can recommend the app FunBridge.