Instructions for Bidding Practice

ALERT: Please read these instructions carefully.

This section of the website enables you to practice bidding with a partner.

Or, you can just read the deals and see how you think you would do.

Each set contains 4 deals. One member of the partnership should take (read, view, download or print) the West hands. The other member of the partnership takes the East hands. They are not bid by entering anything into the computer. You and your partner do them verbally (in person or on the phone) or by email (or text or any form of communication) to each other.

There are no North and South hands. This is just a "theoretical" exercise--you don't need to see all 52 cards. The idea is to reach the best contract with the East-West cards.

The dealer and vulnerability are shown. Sometimes there will be interference from your opponents (as indicated).

For each deal, there is also a "Results" article. That article is to be clicked on after you have bid the 4 deals with your partner. There, you can read the scores for each deal ("Top" is 10). If you get to the correct contract, you get a score of 10. Maximum score for a set of deals is 40.

My comments about how to bid each deal appear in the scoring section.

Summary:

To practice with a partner, one of you take the West hands, the other the East hands. You can bid them by phone, e-mail, or any more fancy communications method. After you finish, check the results. Can you score 40 points?

About Bidding Practice

Most of these deals are courtesy of Mike Becker. He has saved these deals from his experiences over many decades. Larry Cohen has added some of his own deals, the scoring and commentary.

BACK TO BIDDING PRACTICE

Note: The scoring is based on the assumption of matchpoint scoring. If it gives a score such as "10" for 5, that means you would also get 10 for 4 (but not for a partscore or slam in hearts). Similarly, if 3 gets a score of "10" you would get the same top score for stopping in a lower spade partscore.