You have decided that you want to learn to play bridge. Every year thousands of people start playing bridge: it’s fun, it’s sociable, it’s 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 United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia, while American Standard Bridge is widely played throughout the world.
A little aside – when I started learning I was convinced that Acol was an acronym and that each letter must mean something. It isn’t and they don’t! It is named after the road in London where its creators used to meet and where they developed the system.
Many people learn to play bridge by attending classes. If you’re going to join a class, then you probably won’t have the choice of which system to learn. If you then go on to join a local bridge club, again you probably won’t have a choice and your club will play 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 selection of systems. Some don’t. So it may be worth doing some research and identifying the site you want to play on before signing up for their online lessons.
So what are the main differences?
The most obvious difference lies in a part of the initial offer. This makes it easy to decide which system is being played. It is the range of points required for an opening bid of 1NT (one no trump). In the Acol bridge, an opening bid of 1NT means you have a balanced hand with 12 – 14 points. In American Standard Bridge, the same opening bid would mean that your hands are even but contain 15 – 17 points.
Points are resolved in the same way. Before the auction begins, each player adds up the points from their hand. They count 4 points for each ace they hold, 3 points for each king, 2 points for each queen, and 1 point for each jack.
The next difference comes if a player wants to make an opening bid of 1 of a major 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 major suits and diamonds and clubs being the minor suits.
In Acol bridge, a player will make an initial bid of 1 of a major suit if he has 4 (or more) cards in that suit. So an opening bid of, say, 1 Heart tells partner that he has at least 4 cards in that suit.
In the standard American bridge it is more common to play more than 5 cards. In other words, an opening bid of 1 of a major tells your partner that you have at least 5 cards in that suit. If a player only has 4 cards in any of the major suits, he will normally make a minor suit opening bid, which simply tells partner that he doesn’t have a card greater than 5 cards.
In AS bridge it is common to include length points when valuing 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 scarcity points (additional points for short or null suits) for some auctions. AS players would then count scarcity points instead of length points.