Bridge lessons

The Regina Bridge Club is here to help you improve your bridge game. Beginner and intermediate lessons are taught at various times throughout the year. Call or text  Tanya at (306) 570-2998 for upcoming opportunities.

Why play bridge?

Bridge has been described as an intense mental activity that combines the opportunity to socialize and unwind for people who appreciate using their mental wit to solve complex puzzles and mysteries.

The game is both fast-paced and mentally challenging. While each hand takes only 5 or 10 minutes to play, each hand presents a new mystery to be solved.

Don’t be intimidated if you have never played bridge before, we offer lessons to introduce the game to you and our site is full of information to get you ready to play.

In a 1955 issue of Sports Illustrated, an article covering the subject of Bridge references Eisenhower’s love for the game which was his

“only effective form of relaxation…The most relaxing thing he could do was to play a game in which the problems were tough, the solutions difficult, but the consequences of error were just a few hundred harmless points written down on a scorepad.”

The Reasons We Play Bridge

• It’s fun - when it ceases to be fun then try another game and never detract from another person’s fun.
• The social aspects of bridge - being with people and making friendships.
• Mental challenge - intellectually exercises the mind and keeps us young.
• Competitive challenge - every hand whether pairs or teams.
• Achievements - become better player, masterpoints, section tops, life master, overalls etc.
• Very goal oriented - easy and fun to set goals and try to achieve them.

What is Duplicate Bridge?

Duplicate bridge is a variation of bridge which eliminates much of the luck from the game. Each hand is played at many different tables. Afterwards, the results at each table are compared, and your score depends upon how well you did relative to others who held exactly the same cards as you. The challenge in duplicate bridge is to find a better line of play than anyone else who held your cards

Convention Cards

All ACBL tournaments require partnerships to have a convention card (CC) available for opponents to look at on request. The Regina Bridge Club also has this requirement for its regular club games.

Partnerships which are new to duplicate Bridge, or are not interested in using and remembering lots of agreements, may choose to have a very minimum of agreements to indicate on a CC. In most cases of Bidding Agreements, it is perfectly appropriate for a partnership to have no agreement about a given topic, or have not discussed that topic in order to develop an agreement. As a result, a partnership may either leave many areas of the card unmarked, or include a required entry indicating such a lack of agreements. But any field or option on the CC where is a partnership agreement must be marked.

The ACBL rules require at least a basic agreement be made and indicated for some of the significant topics on the CC, such as for Carding Agreements, the HCP range for opening No Trump, or a set of option boxes may require at least one box to be checked such as the minimum length of a minor opening. The information of all agreements which the partnership does have is required to be indicated on the CC and available to their opponents by marking any field or option on the CC that reflects that agreement.

The ACBL allows use of either the ‘classic’ version or the ‘new’ version of the CC. The new Form has many fields and boxes which try to reflect the wide range and extensive number of agreements a partnership might have during both the auction and the play of the hand. “While it may seem like a lot of information — especially at first — it’s perfectly fine to only fill out the areas that apply to your partnership.” The ‘New’ version is very good for identifying things that are ‘alertable’ in red and those that are ‘announced’ in blue.

Note: The ‘classic’ forms the club has in stock are somewhat out of date in that some things like support doubles are in red whereas they are no longer alerted. They will be updated as stock runs out.

For convenience PDFs of the 'New' and Classic fillable CC as well as help on how to fill them out is found in Learn to Play and CC menu.

These fillable CC work best with the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. Save the form to your computer then rename it for each partnership.

If anyone has questions or would like help contact Don at donaldRN@gmail.com or ask any Director.

IMPs Vs Match Points

So how are IMPs and Match Points different?

IMPs are International Match Points and are a way of scoring Team Games where 4 to 6 players compete against another team. All international competitions are scored this way and work so well that they have been adopted for all club and tournament scoring. IMP or team games are very much like rubber bridge as the total score (above and below the line) is what matters. This score is compared to the opposing team who play the same hands. MPs or Match Points are used for scoring in duplicate games where it is not the total score you make on a hand but how well you do against all the other players who have the same hand. In match point play making 7NT on a hand can give you the same MPs as making 2 spades on another.

Bob Hamman, a world champion, puts it this way: What is the difference between IMPs and Matchpoints? Who do you think were the two best heavyweights who ever fought? I don’t really care who you pick, but take those two fighters, both at the peak of their careers, put them in a ring and let them slug it out for 15 rounds. Whoever wins is the champ. That’s IMPs. Now take the same two fighters, blindfold them and tie one hand behind their backs. Divide the ring diagonally with a solid barrier and put a heavyweight on each side of the barrier. Now go down to the local tavern and collect 20 drunks. Place 10 drunks on each side of the ring and let the fighters go at it. Whoever knocks out his drunks first is the winner. That’s matchpoints!— Bob Hamman, in Classic Bridge Quotes by Jared Johnson