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Thanks Roof,

25a - If something is 25a it can quickly become "a habit" - ignore "cold" and you are left with a "food ingredient".

Glad it all went well - I can't play it but I sometimes look at the reports of games in the Times and it looks a very tactical (and difficult!) game:-)

It's an excellent game but it's hard to find 2 pairs of people who know how to play.

I also went to a bridge society meeting at uni and got scolded for not bidding high enough but we never really took it seriously when I learned to play, which put me off a bit (we used to play it in 6th form common room after we got the Computer Science teacher to teach us the rules as a lesson skive).

A good way to learn to play it is to play 4 hand whist (with no special rules like proper Whist has), then play with a dummy hand, or play 3 handed where the dealer picks the trump suit (or no trumps) and plays the dummy hand. Then you don't have to learn the bidding stuff (although it's not too hard to learn basic stuff for that like 1 = ok hand, 2 = great hand, 3 = good hand but only if 1 suit is trumps, take out double = I want my partner to pick a trump suit I have a decent-ish balanced hand).

By 3-handed I mean deal 4 hands but the dealer has the dummy each time and picks the trumps/no trumps.

By scolded I mean "I was told off for not bidding a slam, stopping at 5" when we had great hands. I'd never played duplicate bridge before either so that was all new to me.

Thanks Paradigmshifter,

I would like to learn and a friend is always saying she wants to teach me but the ruffs, declarers, bidding dummies and the like make it look very complicated 😜

Yeah start with no bidding, and no dummy. Then play with the dealer always has the dummy (can play this version with 3 people). That's enough to learn the basics and then introduce a simple bidding system.

A ruff is just leading in a suit your partner has none of so they can trump it.

Harder thing to get the hang of is the finesse where you gamble that playing the highest card will win the trick anyway.

Also difficult to get the hang of is how to pass the lead (who plays first card) by winning tricks with the dummy hand.

Gamble that NOT playing the highest card will win anyway was what I meant to say (about the finesse).

Wikipedia as always is good to start out with learning.

When I was in college (long ago, unfortunately), I enjoyed and often played the game of Spades, which seems to be a simplification of Bridge and was not difficult to learn. It's a fairly popular game in the US, I've no idea if it's played in the UK.

Spades is a variant of Hearts which is the best 3 player card game I think. They're both trick avoidance games in the main which is a good twist. Unless you "Jump the moon" (get all the penalty cards) in Hearts, which is a great thing to pull off. Spades is 4 player I think.

OK apparently not, it seems spades is about winning tricks and looks like simplified Bridge yeah. Hearts is a great game for 3 players anyway.

Hearts is also a game I often enjoyed. So long ago that I forget the rules, but iirc it's not very complex.