[datalocus]

I am not looking for a software to learn bridge but to kind of demo and teach it.

Basically it's a "hobby sharing" session as part of team building, it's going to be my turn in about 1 month time. Because some of the team members are working remotely, so I am looking for a software to demo it.

So my requirement is very simple, it's just like a bridge version of digital chess board, where I can assign the hands like I want and all four hands bidding and play are controlled by human. What's better will be like BBO's Vugraph that I can pre-record some boards and just click next during my demo session.

If such thing doesn't exist, is there any recommendation to fulfill my demo/teaching need?

Thanks in advance.

[mycroft]

BBO's own handviewer.

Note: this explains how to make it by hand - which might not be what you want (it's a bit tedious :-). If you're a computer person, however, it might just be easy to output your hands and the play in that format.

If doing it by GUI is better, use one of the several dealers/generators to create a PBN file, use John from Arran to convert to LIN, load them into a teaching table, bid and play the hands, and then from the "history" pane, hamburger/export/handviewer link to get a short-link.

Note: BridgeComposer claims to export as LIN file, which will save a rather nasty step. I have not tried this (by and large, I Don't Do Windows).

I let BBO deal the hand, but like this: https://tinyurl.com/yxk2u8ke.

Or, with a little bit of expanding and tweaking, like this:

https://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?lin=st||pn|Mycroft,Caoimhe,Ra%C3%BAl,Sonia|md|3SQJ942HAQT2D2CA52,S8H543DQT98CKT764,SAT7653H96DAK6CQ8,SKHKJ87DJ7543CJ93|sv|o|rh||ah|Board%201|mb|1S|mb|1N|an|takeout%20of%20!S|mb|4D|an|!D%20shortness%20raise|mb|5C|mb|5S|mb|P|mb|P|mb|P|pc|C3|pc|C2|pc|CK|pc|C8|pc|D8|pc|DA|pc|D3|pc|D2|pc|SA|pc|SK|pc|S2|pc|S8|pc|CQ|pc|C9|pc|C5|pc|C4|pc|H9|pc|H7|pc|HQ|pc|H3|mc|12|

To have some fun, at the end, run the Moonraker hand?

[y66]

mycroft, on 2022-May-16, 09:48, said:

To have some fun, at the end, run the Moonraker hand?

Interesting bid Mr. Bond.

[mycroft]

It is all about class (as, at least at the time, everything in gentlemen's clubs were).

It is a famous cooked hand that swindled the Duke of Cumberland of a huge amount of money 80 years before. A gentleman of quality (which it is made clear that Drax is not, just "new money") or, in fact, a sharper of anything but the simplest opportunity and history (he uses a shiner as he deals), would know the hand to see it and the bid, and avoid getting taken as badly as he does. Bond plays the "very obnoxious, very drunk, very free with money" person very well to avoid suspicion as it was, which of course is the point.

It would be interesting, these many years on, to slip it into a game, and see who still gets it. Not have it score, of course :-)

[johnu]

How much time do you have to demo? An hour, or two plus?

If around an hour or so, that's not much time to go over the rules, bidding and play, and keep it interesting for people who never played before, and probably won't be interested in learning to play bridge.

I would probably make up a few slides with some basic bidding, scoring and play principles, and then search for some interesting hands on BBO's Bridge Master and structure the demo as a puzzle solving session, starting with the easiest.

[hrothgar]

I have some strong opinions about teaching people to play bridge

I think that its nuts to try to teach bidding before people are capable of understanding what does / does not constitute a "good" contract.

So, to me at least, you don't want software that is designed to teach bridge, but rather software that allows people to build basic skills.

For me, this is a combination of Fred's Bridge Master and the following

https://dominicprice...ss-the-contract

Guess the contract allow folks to practice what does / does not constitute a good contract
Bridge Master lets folks build basic skills in taking ones tricks.

Get people up to speed playing and experimenting with these programs.

After this, you can introduce mini bridge or some such

[mycroft]

While I very much agree - we no longer have whist players or even the hearts players - this isn't "teach bridge", it's "introduction to my cool hobby". In, max, 35-45 minutes.

At best I think you can get from "an ace is higher than a king" to "watch this cool trick (the finesse)" to "you'll never see this coming (Moonraker, or even just the automatic double squeeze for 7 with 12 tops)."

Plus maybe a "there's the time my first match was against 'the guy who won the Lance Armstrong suit', and the third match was against another pair of world champions. Will you ever get to compete against world champions in your hobby?" (or [BillG|the Berkshire Hathaway guy|the guy who lost Bear Stearns because he was playing bridge] depending on audience).

[thepossum]

It's sad that it can't be done with a pack of cards round a table. How to achieve that by Zoom or whatever your choice

No way to get the team together for a while?