Bridge Teaching
Our team of experienced bridge teachers are all volunteers who aim to create Bridge players for the future. We draw people from several local bridge clubs to offer an excellent 3-year teaching programme designed for students to learn Bridge from the basics to competency at both club and social level.
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Click here to register for lessons.
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Our team of experienced bridge players are all volunteers who aim to create Bridge players for the future. We draw people from several local bridge clubs to offer an excellent 3-year teaching programme designed for students to learn Bridge from the basics to competency at both club and social level.
Leicester Bridge Teachers based at County Bridge Club use the Paul Bowyer lesson plan where the emphasis is on “learning by doing”. Paul Bowyer is an outstanding international level player, author, and teacher. His lessons make sure that students get their hands on cards at every opportunity, backed up by quality resources. The bridge system is up to date modern Acol, the UK’s most popular bidding system.
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Each lesson follows a similar format: a review of the week before, a presentation on a topic e.g. opening bids or the finesse. Students then play up to 8 set hands, supervised by Assistant teachers based at each table, that illustrate the topic and reinforce the learning. Students have access to a record of the lesson and hands played which is available on our website. Lessons are 2 hours long starting at 7.00pm on Tuesdays or 10am on Fridays.
As well as classes, we offer a range of opportunities for students to develop their card playing skills, including extra sessions, focused on students at all levels. We will also be organising specially designed student competitions, friendly duplicate pairs, and fun events such as parties.
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For those who want to come and try the game before enrolling in the lessons we offer two free introductory sessions please come and meet us and see how Bridge is both a challenging and fascinating game with a fabulous social side. Come and meet the team visit the premises and enjoy the welcome from our active club.
Note we are a Charity and lesson costs are far below commercial course prices. Our objective is to further the playing of bridge and we only plan to break even every year. All our teachers are volunteers, we have no paid staff.
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Beginning your journey – Year one
For those who have never played cards we start with how the pack of cards is designed, the suits and key cards. How to sort and assess your hand, play tricks, and gauge who won each hand. We move on to mini bridge where the bidding is simplified, and the focus is on card play. It’s a lot to learn but great fun!
At every step an experienced teacher will guide you as a class and assistant teachers are based at each table to guide the play of the cards to reinforce the lesson.
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The rest of year one is designed to give students a solid grounding in the bidding structure, using the Acol system and learning how to play.
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Our objective is that at the end of year one students will be able to play and enjoy social bridge with friends.​
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By the end of year three students will have a solid grounding in Acol and will be able to play anywhere in England.
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Summer Supervised Play
Each summer the Club invites students to come and practice their newly acquired skills at supervised play. The hands have been specially set to suit the student’s level of play. In a full duplicate session, the hands are computer dealt and can be very random.
The session is run by either a teacher or an experienced bridge player and help and guidance is offered to all who need it and time allowed to complete the bidding and play the hands at a much slower pace than the club sessions. The groups of students get to practice through the summer improving their skills and developing their love of what can be a challenging and frustrating game.
Sessions run from 7 to 9 pm on Tuesday evening every other week through the summer see the Club website for dates.
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VuBridge
This is a commercial web-based bridge game which has online learning facilities written by Paul Bowyer and students can choose to join this company to continue their learning and practice their skills.