Bridge for Absolute Beginners

 The Basics

• The cards. Suits in the pack.
• Dealing, sorting your hand, valuing your hand
• Playing the hand. Winning tricks. Following suit. Trumps
• Some basic card play techniques
• Minibridge

Bidding 

• The auction. Making a bid. The contract
• Trumps or no trumps? Balanced and unbalanced hands
• How high should we bid?

Scoring

• Rubber bridge scoring
• Scoring above and below the line
• Scoring for making a contract
• Bonuses, penalties and overtricks
• Vulnerability
• Doubling and redoubling
• Sample rubbers with scoring

Bidding Strategy

• Opening the bidding
• Opening on balanced and unbalanced hands
• The first response. raising partner’s suit, bidding no trumps, bidding a new suit

More on bidding 

• Opener’s rebid
• Responder’s second bid
• Opening bids at the 2-level. Acol 2-bids and the Acol 2§
• Higher opening bids - preemptive openings

The Play of the cards 

• Planning. making winners
• Establishing extra tricks
• The simple finesse and card combinations
• Drawing trumps

Defence 

• The opening lead - basic principles
• Standard leads
• Some general rules. Returning partner’s suit