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The Beginner's Bridge Hangout

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Bridge Card Play

Beginner

The path2bridge Leads and Planning PDF provides a number of tips and guidelines for defensive play.

Ralph Welton's BridgeBears site has a series of articles on Bridge Defense for Beginners that is simple but very useful.

Karen Walker has a couple of defensive play articles of interest to the beginner:

Karen Walker also has several articles on counting cards during play:

Intermediate/Advanced

Eddie Kantar's online book Topics in Declarer Play at Bridge provides in-depth discussions of a variety of Declarer topics.

Karen Walker has several additional defensive play articles of interest to the intermediate player:

  • Suit break odds tables - tables of the different suit break odds.

    You don't need to memorize these tables - but at least get a general idea of the odds for common suit breaks. For example, when 6 cards are missing in a suit, it is better to finesse (50% chance) than to play for a 3-3 split (36%). The key mnemonic is: "an even number of missing cards splits oddly; an odd number of cards splits evenly."

  • Improving Opening Leads (part I) - a list of suggestions for intermediate players for picking an opening lead, with examples.
  • Improving Opening Leads (part II) - an additional list of suggestions for intermediate players for picking an opening lead, with examples.
  • Signaling Methods - a list of signaling methods for intermediate players.

Bridgewebs has a presentation on Leads and Signals. Most of information is useful to the beginning player, although some information on signaling is more advanced.

Worldbridge.org has an article describing Five Lines of Defense that are key defensive strategies.

The University of Toronto Bridge Club has compiled a PDF containing a comprehensive variety of defense techniques, which is replete with examples, tips, and strategies.

Hamilton Bridge provides a summary of four techniques for defensive strategy, as well as tips, examples, and general strategy.

Northern Colorado Bridge provides a set of examples showing methods for card counting.

Austin Bridge provides a set of tips and examples showing methods for card counting.