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Software Review

ACBL's "Learn to Play Bridge"

To bid or not to bid…..
this is the program that will tell you!

"Yes! This is it! This is the one!". These were my daughter's words (Christina, a 24 years old new grad microbiologist) when she came home for Christmas and found the ACBL's "Learn to Play Bridge" program on my computer. Over the years, I tried to teach her, she took lessons at a club, she read a little, but she didn't have the patience to go through the entire learning process and reach the point when she knows enough to be able to play it and enjoy it. In other words, she is a "tough cookie" as far as bridge is concerned..

What differentiates the teaching method in this program from the others is that it starts with teaching the card playing first, rather than the traditional way of beginning with the bidding. In this way, the student has the opportunity to start doing something quickly by playing some deals and enjoy the game.

Bridge Base, Inc., Toronto, Canada developed the software under an ACBL contract, based on the lessons prepared by Fred Gitelman, one of the best bridge players in the world. It can be downloaded for free from ACBL's web site.

The program starts with an useful brief tour of the software to provide the student with information necessary to use it. The information is succinct and presented in a narrative way. Personally, I would have preferred a point form approach, with as few words as possible, because the student wants to get quickly to the actual lessons.

Then, it goes to a brief introduction to the bridge game. And here the student's "prayers" to start soon are listened: after a brief, point form explanation why someone would want to spend time learning this difficult (but beautiful) game, the fun starts….

The explanations are clear, and flow easily. Although they are lengthy and may seem "childish" in some cases, they allow the learning to be taken up by children, too. New terms, concepts, playing techniques, etc. are introduced gradually, in a smooth progression.

"What's great about it is that after you learn a bunch of new things, there is a summary screen or two, and exercises to practice. And you know, whoever wrote the program was smart, because the exercises go progressive, starting with simple things and becoming harder and more complex, as they need more and more of your knowledge you just learned. And each exercise shows something new. Pity it doesn't have a few more". That's Christina again… Actually, additional exercise hands can be purchased from the program maker, Bridge Base, Inc. (Ph.: 1-888-631-9581).

Other useful teaching tools and approaches included in the program are:

	Bolding bridge specific words that pop up a window with their definition when you point to them;
	Presenting explanations for both sides, declarer and defenders, for each hand played. In this way, the students learn simultaneously playing techniques for both sides.
	Talking a little about the probable distribution of cards in the opponents' hands. Some more details here have been useful, although a probability table is included in the program Appendix.
	Playing the deal first with the cards hidden in the other three hands and then, re-playing it with all the cards shown, and with additional explanations, including the defense.
	Starting with simple rules (regarding the mechanics of the game) and techniques to win tricks in a no-trump game and then advance to those more complicated, for trump games.

One item I would have liked to see is introducing earlier in the program the idea of keeping track of the number and value of the cards remaining in play in each suit, and a greater emphasis on this. Some exercises regarding this item would have been helpful, too.

The bidding part of the program follows the same approach, starting with explanations of bidding mechanisms, rules and terms.

The program teaches the so-called "Modern Standard American" bidding system, one of the most popular in the world. Elements of the system are introduced gradually through examples. A nice touch is the bridge history notes, which could also have been placed at the beginning of the program, in the "Introduction to Bridge".

The inclusion of some elements regarding suit value and bridge scoring at the beginning of this section would have helped with easier understanding of the reasoning behind certain bidding decisions, rather than pure statements of the "trust me now, you will see later" nature.

The program ends with an Appendix that includes a lot of useful information, such as:

	Scoring in bridge
	Summary of the mechanisms and rules for bidding and playing
	Tables with the probability of cards distribution in the opponents hands
	Guidelines about opening leads in trump and no-trump contracts, etc.

"How long is this program? When I'm going to be able to start playing?" Now, when I hear these questions from Christina, I know that trouble is coming…..She is losing her patience…. In other words, she thinks the lessons and the overall program are too long.

Thus:

	Shorter and simpler explanations
	Getting faster to the point
	More point-form rather than narrative/descriptive explanations
	Shorter sessions, with a clear goal for each one

would help keeping the student focused and interested. One example is the explanation of the rank of the suits and the order of bidding. Hopefully, we will see these small improvements included in the next release of the program.

Enough about the teaching itself, let's hear what Christina has to say about the software. "..It's user friendly…and it's good that it's using bright colors and big letters…and it has lots of nice sound effects, appropriate for each situation, that do not repeat and keep your attention focused. You can tell that a lot of thought and effort was put into this…". Now, these young people, always captivated by esthetics…

It's true that the graphical interface is bright, and colorful, and it allows following easily the cards played. From esthetical viewpoint, I think each person has its own "taste" and comments should not be made. Thus, I will make none. One observation, however, from the application viewpoint: it would have been useful to have a greater color difference as a marker for the hand whose turn is to play. Right now, although the color of the playing hand changes, the difference is too small and almost not noticeable.

The software has a toolbar that allows both to flip back and forth through the lessons and to customize the appearance of the program. The options part of the program may still have some minor bugs, because I haven't managed to disable the "confirmation of the end of the trick", or to enable the sound effects on a computer running Windows 98 Second Edition. Probably I should have asked Christina for help.

Two more suggestions I would like to make for the next version of the software:

	a page counter, so you always know where you are in respect with the chapter you are learning and with the overall program (or, as Christina would say, how much until I finish the lessons and be able to play…), and
	a more detailed table of contents.

In the end, you probably ask "So, you talked a lot about it, but what is your opinion?"

I better let Christina answer this question: "Daddy, may I have a copy of this program?"
This, tells it all!

Dan Berkley, P.Eng.

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