You have decided that you want to learn to play bridge. Every year thousands of people start playing bridge: it is fun, it is sociable, it is a challenge. But there are several different bridge systems. How do you decide which system to learn and what are the obvious differences?
There are two main systems that are played. Acol Bridge and American Standard Bridge. As a general rule, Acol is the system played in the UK, Ireland and Australia, while American standard bridge is widely played around the world.
A pee aside: when I started learning, I was convinced that Acol was an acronym and that each letter had to mean something. It isn’t and they don’t! It is named after the London road where its creators used to meet and where they developed the system.
Many people learn to play bridge by attending classes. If you are joining a class, you probably won’t have the option of choosing which system to learn. If you later progress to join a local bridge club, again you probably won’t have a choice and your club will play on whatever system is widely used in your country.
It gets a bit more complicated if you want to learn to play bridge online and if you intend to join a community of online bridge players. Some sites offer a variety of systems. Some do not. So it might be worth doing a little research and identifying the site where you want to play before signing up for your online lessons.
So what are the main differences?
The most obvious difference lies in a part of the initial bidding. This makes it easy to decide which system is playing. It is the range of points required for an opening offer of 1NT (one no trumps). In the Acol bridge, an initial bet of 1NT means that you have a balanced hand with 12 – 14 points. On the American Standard bridge, the same opening offer would mean that your hands are balanced but contain 15 to 17 points.
Points are resolved in the same way. Before the auction begins, each player adds up the points in his hand. They count 4 points for each ace they have, 3 points for each king, 2 points for each queen, and 1 point for each jack.
The next difference arises if a player wants to make an initial offer of 1 of a higher suit. There are four suits in a deck of cards, spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs. They are ranked in that order, with spades and hearts being the main suits and diamonds and clubs being the minor suits.
On the Acol bridge, a player will bid 1 of a major suit if he has 4 (or more) cards of that suit. So an initial offer of, say, 1 heart tells your partner that you have at least 4 cards of that suit.
In standard American bridge it is more common to play with 5 major cards. In other words, an initial offer of 1 of a major suit tells your partner that you have at least 5 cards of that suit. If a player only has 4 cards in either of the two major suits, he will normally make a minor suit opening offer, telling his partner that he does not have 5 major cards.
In the AS bridge it is common to include length points when evaluating your hand. This means adding an extra point for each card that has more than four in a suit. Acol bridge players rarely include length points. Both systems offer the opportunity to add shortage points (additional points for short or no suits) for some offers. AS players would count lean points instead of longitude points.