The first meeting of this group will take place on Friday 17 October 2025.

This group is designed for members who already have some basic knowledge of the Acol bidding system (such as "weak no trumps", Stayman, Blackwood and Gerber) and some basic techniques of card play (such as "finessing" and avoiding "suit blocking"). Thus, the group is not suitable for members new to the game of Bridge, but is appropriate for those members who have recently completed the Beginners Bridge group/course and who wish to further improve their knowledge and understanding of the game.

The group will operate as a course from October to the following March inclusive, with the 2-hour meetings being held weekly. The group will also probably continue to meet weekly from April to June inclusive, but for supervised bidding and play, putting into practice the systems and techniques developed in the course.

The course will start with a brief review of basic Acol, followed by a look at various techniques of hand evaluation, including the "losing trick count" method. Then, about one-third of the course will comprise some of the major Acol extensions in common usage, including "Backwood and Gerber variants", "Baron", "Benjamin/Weak 2-Bids", "Red-Suit Transfers", "Cue Bids", etc. The remaining two-thirds of the course will look at techniques of card play, for either no trump or suit contracts, intended to either maximise the number of tricks made, and/or achieve the number of contract tricks safely.

For more information or to sign-up for this course please contact David Stewart (click on the name above to send an email).

Please note that the Beginners and Improvers Bridge groups/courses will alternate years, ie

Bridge Beginners 2024-25, from October 2024 to March+ 2025
Bridge Improvers 2025-26, from October 2025 to March+ 2026
Bridge Beginners 2026-27, from October 2026 to March+ 2027
Bridge Improvers 2027-28, from October 2027 to March+ 2028, and so on

So, it is anticipated that the next Bridge Improvers group/course will run in 2025/26, and the next Bridge Beginners group/course will run in 2026/27.