Important message! The start of the course has been rescheduled by one week due to illness.
General info
Akademisk Bridgdeklubb will host a beginners course in bridge during spring 2025, starting Tuesday 11. February. We have set up 9 Tuesdays for course, the last lecture will be on 8. April. The course is aimed at beginners that have not played any bridge earlier. The course is free for students and costs NOK 500 for others.
We recommend that all that are interested in the course attend our recruitment event the Tuesday before the course starts (4. February). 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.
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
11. February: 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.
- Finesses
- Hints and tips on opening leads.
18. February: 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.
25. February: 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.
4. March: bidding lecture 1 and 2.
- Opening 1 in a suit.
- Partner has or does not have trump support.
- Opener has trump support to partner.
11. March: bidding lecture 3 and 9.
- NT openings.
- Stayman and transfers bids.
18. March: bidding lecture 4 and 5 (not defensive bids).
- Other NT bids.
- Openers second bid after forcing answer.
25. March: bidding lecture 6, plus defensive bids.
- Defensive bids.
- Takeout doubles.
- Other types of doubles.
1. April: bidding lecture 7
- Weak 2 openings and higher suit openings.
- Pre-emptive bids.
- Sacrificing.
8. April: 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.
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.
The Norwegian Bridge Association has videos for learning bridge available in English. They can be found here (external link).
For practicing playing bridge, we can recommend Bridge Masters on BBO.
For practicing bidding, the app Bridge by Neural Play can be a good choice.