Welcome to the club's online library. Here is a collection of helpful documents that explain a number of concepts, strategies, and conventions in bridge. There are documents here for both beginners who are learning bridge and advanced players who are trying to improve their game. I have arranged the documents into a few categories. Within each category, the documents are arranged roughly by skill level, with the beginner documents at the top of each category and the more advanced documents located towards the bottom of each category.

As of this moment, most of the documents here are scanned, so they are a bit large. Hopefully, most of these scanned documents will eventually get OCR'ed, but that takes time. In any case, the HMC network connection is fast, so who cares? :-)

General

Bridge Vocabulary by Lee Goodman
1 page - Scanned PDF - 200 KB

This defines some of the basic bridge vocabulary for people who are just being introduced to the game.

Bridge Quick Reference (a.k.a., the Cheat Sheet) by Susan Kladstrup
2 pages - Scanned PDF - 687 KB

This is a tightly-packed reference mostly with information regarding bidding, though it contains a few rules-of-thumb for play as well. Great for beginners to look off of as they are learning.

Good Bridge Advice for Your Partner by Lee Goodman
2 pages - Scanned PDF - 338 KB

For intermediate players, this document provides some bidding and playing tips that will help improve communication and cooperation.

The Rules by Lee Goodman
7 pages - Scanned PDF - 1153 KB

A terrific read for intermediate and advanced players, this document contains a collection of various rules-of-thumb, most of which are pretty darn cool.

Bidding

Chart: Responses to Opening Bids and Rebids by Bidder by Unknown
1 page - Scanned PDF - 259 KB

This is a very handy reference chart for beginners summarizing the conditions for responding to partner's opening bid as well as partner's response to your response.

Chart: Openings, Responses, and Rebids by Unknown
1 page - Scanned PDF - 284 KB

Yet another handy chart, this summarizes in a nice format the conditions for openings, responses by partner, and rebids after response.

Commonsense Bridge by Lee Goodman
1 page - Scanned PDF - 183 KB

The title of this is somewhat deceptive. This is a good beginner document that deals with the basics of bidding.

Using Commonsense by Lee Goodman
2 pages - Scanned PDF - 362 KB

Like his Commonsense Bridge document, Lee's Using Commonsense also deals with beginner-level bidding. However, whereas the former document deals with some of the basic concepts of bidding, this document reads more like a what-to-do bidding chart, but with a bit more information.

NT Opening Bids and Responses by Jean Joseph
1 page - Scanned PDF - 205 KB

This is a nice beginner document dealing with, well, the title says it.

The Overcall by Ken Monzingo
1 page - Scanned PDF - 312 KB

This short to-the-point guide to the overcall is recommended reading for both intermediate and beginning players.

Takeout Doubles by Lee Goodman
5 pages - Scanned PDF - 835 KB

This is a nice intermediate-level guide to making and responding to takeout doubles.

The Stayman Two Club Convention by Jean Joseph
1 page - Scanned PDF - 250 KB

A quick and to-the-point guide to the Stayman convention, it is highly recommended that intermediate players read this.

Jacoby Transfer Bids by Lee Goodman
2 pages - Scanned PDF - 411 KB

This is a guide to the Jacoby Transfer, for intermediate players.

Weak Twos, Preemptive Bids, and Two Clubs by Kai Liu
1 page - PDF - 9 KB

This document for intermediate players deals mostly with weak opening bids.

D.O.N.T.: Disturbing Opponents' No Trump by Kai Liu
1 page - PDF - 8 KB

This is a simple overview of the DONT convention, for use in competitive bidding. For intermediate or advanced players.

Negative Doubles by Unknown
6 pages - Scanned PDF - 933 KB

The negative double, not to be confused with the penalty double, is another form of the takeout double, invented so that doubles could be more efficiently used. For advanced and intermediate players.

Advanced Stayman by Lee Goodman
1 page - Scanned PDF - 205 KB

As the title suggests, this deals with some of the more advanced topics associated with the Stayman convention.

Slam Bidding by Lee Goodman
7 pages - Scanned PDF - 1340 KB

All you ever wanted to know about slam bidding. Asking for Aces and Kings under for both suit and NT (Blackwood, Gerber), cuebidding, what to do, and what not to do. For advanced players.

Play of the Hand

Play Maxims by Lee Goodman
1 page - Scanned PDF - 133 KB

This is a short summary of the major rules-of-thumb for gameplay.

Opening Leads by Jean Joseph
3 pages - Scanned PDF - 793 KB

Bidding is over, your right-hand-opponent is the declarer, and you get the honor of making the opening lead, which in some cases may make the difference between setting or making the contract. This wonderful document for beginners deals with these opening leads.

Declarer's Card Combinations at Trick One by Lee Goodman
7 pages - PDF - 22 KB

You are declarer, your opponent has just made the opening trick, and it's now time to decide how you should play from dummy. This document for intermediate players deals with this.

The Finesse by Lee Goodman
10 pages - Scanned PDF - 2023 KB

The finesse is a very important and frequently-used tactic during gameplay. Despite the length of this guide to the finesse, the finesse is actually fairly simple to learn, and it is highly recommended that intermediate players (as well as ambitious beginning players) read this.

Double Finesses by Lee Goodman
4 pages - PDF - 17 KB

As the title suggests, this document deals with double finesses; this is Lee's follow-up to his original finessing guide.

Discarding by Lee Goodman
3 pages - Scanned PDF - 549 KB

This is a must-read for the intermediate player. Discarding cards in bridge is no trivial matter. Not only are there strategic considerations that should be taken into account, discarding is also a wonderful way to signal to your partner information about your hand.

The Hold-Up Play by Lee Goodman
2 pages - Scanned PDF - 417 KB

The hold-up play is a tactic used by the declarer used in NT contracts. For advanced or intermediate players.

Acknowledgements: I would like to give my thanks to Lee Goodman and Jean Joseph. A very warm and friendly retired lawyer who teaches bridge, Lee donated his time and ran the bridge club at my high school. A friend of Lee's, Jean ran an ACBL-sanctioned bridge establishment not too far from my house, and she was kind enough to give Lee's students free admission (and as a result, I have many fond memories of playing hours upon hours of ACBL-sanctioned duplicate bridge there each week). They taught me just about everything I know about bridge, and their lesson handouts now appear in this online library. -Kai Liu, HMC Bridge Club President, 2003-2004