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ONLINE
BRIDGE CLUBS
How
to Play Bridge Whenever You Want
For
as Long as You Want
Thousands of people
from around the world are online right now, playing bridge
at their computers. If you'd like to join them, you have plenty
of choices. There are more than twenty online bridge clubs
that offer real-time play for players of every skill level.
The bigger sites will have hundreds (sometimes thousands)
of players online at all times of the day and night.
Choosing
a Club
You can visit the
Great Bridge
Links site to read descriptions of all the online clubs.
Here's a quick
look at the most popular sites:
-
Okbridge
($99 a year for unlimited play; 7-day free trial)
-- This is the oldest and largest online bridge club,
with more than 18,000 members from 100 countries. It uses
a rating system to track your success and help you find
compatible partners. Currently OKB has 12 non-ACBL santioned
tournaments (12 hands each) every day of the week, as
well as informal tables with your choice of IMP or MP
scoring.
-
Bridgebase
Online (free) -- Designed by Fred Gitelman, this site
is growing rapidly in popularity. It's frequented by many
expert-level players and offers lots of extra features,
including partnership bidding rooms, teaching rooms, vugraph
shows and bridge columns and lessons.
-
Zone.com
(free) -- Microsoft's bridge area is huge (3000+ players
on a typical weekday afternoon), with 26 rooms of open
play and a fee-based tournament club.
-
Yahoo
Games (free, Java-based) -- This is another big site,
offering simple graphics and 15 rooms of open play.
-
Pogo
(free, Java-based) -- Especially popular with beginners,
this site has simple graphics and an easy-to-use game
interface.
Getting
Started
When you visit a
club's home page, you'll be asked to create a login name and
password. Some sites require a simple software download to
begin playing. Others (the Java-based sites) use a web interface,
which requires no download.
Each club's homepage
has help files that will describe how to use the game interface,
find partners, join tables, etc. Read up on the basics, then
choose a room (or "lounge") matched to your skill level --
social, beginner, intermediate, advanced or expert. Some clubs
also offer different types of scoring (matchpoints or IMPs).
Finding
a Partner
You and your favorite
partner can log on and play as a pair, but most of the online
players are singles who form casual partnerships with each
other. Each club has a lobby area where you'll see messages
from people who are looking for partners. You can send a message
to one of these potential partners and agree to start your
own table.
You'll also see
requests from people who have already started a table and
need one or two more players. If you join one of these tables,
it's polite to ask permission to "sit" before you start playing.
Kibitzing
Before you actually
begin playing, you might want to kibitz to familiarize yourself
with the table layout and the ways the players interact. Just
join a table that's already in play and ask the participants
if you can watch. You'll find well-known experts playing on
Okbridge and Bridgebase Online, and these tables will often
have dozens of kibitzers. If there are already several "spectators"
at a table, there's usually no need to ask permission to watch.
Online bridge players
have developed their own in-group language, full of acronyms
and abbreviations. For a quick overview of some of these,
click
here.
Bidding
Systems
Before you play,
you and your partner will usually have a very short discussion
of your bidding system. Many players in the beginner rooms
use standard Goren bidding. In the intermediate and advanced
rooms, you'll find partners who play 2-over-1, Precision,
K-S and other systems.
The most popular
system of all is SAYC (Standard American Yellow Card), which
is a 5-card-major system with simple conventions (weak 2-bids,
Jacoby transfers, negative doubles, etc.). If you're new to
online bridge, it will be helpful to develop a working knowledge
of SAYC, since it eliminates the need to discuss conventions
and many of your "pick-up" partners will probably ask you
to play it. Here are some helpful links for learning online
systems:
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