Winchester Bridge Club, part of Winchester Racquets and Fitness in Bereweeke Road, Winchester, welcomes all bridge players, from complete beginner to expert, to play duplicate bridge in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. If you want to play bridge in Winchester, come and play with us!

All sessions are scored electronically by Bridgemate with results available soon after the session and shown on this website along with hand records and double-dummy analysis. For online games, we offer hands, double-dummy analysis, and the ability to replay bidding and card play.

For more details please click here.

We want members to stay healthy so if you think you may have an infectious illness such as a persistent cough or cold, please do not come to the club but stay at home and get well soon! Note that you must also inform the director if this is a booked event such as Teams.

Online club Bridge will continue to be available every Monday.

We are playing online on  Mondays, at 6.45pm for a 7.00pm start at the latest. We are also glad to welcome guests. Please see our separate post below for more details.

Beginners and Improvers courses are offered by one of our members, Margaret Blewett (please email Margaret directly for more information). We also offer Supervised Play membership to introduce players with less club experience of duplicate play, before applying for full membership, at a special introductory rate. There are weekly sessions face to face on Wednesday evenings.

Our club bridge teacher, Margaret Blewett, is now teaching bridge both online and face to face for both absolute Beginners and Improvers. She says “Discover the joy of playing bridge. It is a fun and absorbing partnership card game played by four people with a pack of playing cards. It is easy to learn but takes a lifetime to master. It’s open to all, in a relaxed setting, meeting new people and improving your mental agility".

For further details please contact Margaret: Email: bridgewisembl@gmail.com, Phone: 01962 734797

The club has a thriving beginner membership and welcomes novice players. We have a full schedule for less experienced players, including:

Gentle duplicate face to face. Every Wednesday we are running gentle duplicate sessions which run from 7.00pm (turn up by 6.45pm) until between 9.30 and 10.00pm. These are short sessions with a break, usually 15 boards. These sessions are free to full and intermediate members or £3.50 for SP members or visitors - pay at reception, visitors limited to 6 times a year. Booking is required

If you are interested in playing, please contact Tim Anderson.

We have set up our dedicated online bridge site which is free to members. The site is at yourbridgeclubonline.co.uk and we are currently playing on Monday evening at 6.45pm for a prompt 7.00pm start. Come and join us!

If you would like to play online bridge but do not know how to get started please contact Tim Anderson for some assistance.

Tim would also welcome comments about how we should go about this so please get in touch.

Check back here for updates.

Whether you are a beginner or an experienced player, most of us would like to improve our bridge. There are many ways to do so, but the one I want to highlight today is an excellent free online resource for players of any standard.

Bridge Master is actually based on Windows software that came out some 20 years ago, but has now been adapted for the web and will work on any computer, phone or tablet. It consists of 600 tutorial hands (a lot!) graded from Beginner to World Class. Each hand shows the bidding and then lets you try and make your contract. The hands in levels 1 and 2 show some basic bridge points, like keeping communication open between dummy and declarer, when to take a finesse and when to go for the drop, leading up to honours and so on. The hands in level 3 onwards are more challenging and personally I find it takes me two or more tries before I get it right - but hopefully learning something along the way.

A few points to note. These hands are designed on the basis that making your contract is more important than getting overtricks - so not intended for Pairs scoring where overtricks can make a big difference. Go for the safety play if there is one; it will probably be needed.

Second, the hands are not actually fixed. This takes a bit of adjustment. You play a hand and fail to make because E has all the trumps. So you try again, and now W has all the trumps. What's going on?

The answer is that you are being taught to play to a high standard. Your job is to find the best line of play. If you find an inferior line, the cards will turn out to be wrong and you will not make the contract.

All the contracts can be made, though there isn't always a play that will make in all circumstances. For example, if your slam depends on a finesse, you must take the finesse and it will be right. On the other hand, if there is a better play that avoids the finesse, you should do that instead because the finesse will be wrong!

Each hand has a solution which shows exactly what you need to do and why.

It is a lot of fun and quite distracting. For beginners, there are lots of great example hands. For experts, it is a chance to try things like squeezes and elimination plays, in the hope that you might sometimes recognize them when they come up at the table.