Winchester Bridge Club, part of Winchester Racquets and Fitness in Bereweeke Road, Winchester, welcomes all bridge players, from complete beginner to expert, to play duplicate bridge in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. If you want to play bridge in Winchester, come and play with us!

Exceptional facilities

Membership of the bridge section of the club (currently £179.00 per annum but please check for updates) includes full use of the club facilities, including the bar and cafe, serving drinks, meals and snacks, tea and coffee. There is also a cheaper online bridge only option (£90.00), which includes use of the club facilities. No table money is payable and members can play as often as they like while their membership is current, without extra charge. Existing members of another section of the club may join and also add bridge membership for just £36 extra. 

Current schedule

Face to face club sessions will be held  on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the usual time of 6:45pm for a prompt 7pm start. In addition we run a shorter gentle duplicate session at 18:45pm on Wednesday, usually 15 boards with a break for drinks half way through.

While official COVID restrictions have ceased, if you have a persistent cough or cold, please do not come to the club. We cannot afford to take the risk of spreading infection.

All sessions are scored electronically by Bridgemate with results available soon after the session and shown on this website along with hand records and double-dummy analysis. For online games, we offer hands, double-dummy analysis, and the ability to replay bidding and card play.

Online club Bridge will continue to be available every Monday.

Online play

We are playing online on  Mondays, at 6.45pm for a 7.00pm start at the latest. We are also glad to welcome guests. Please see our separate post below for more details.

Guests

Visitors and prospective new members are always welcome. For face to face visitors,  there is a guest fee of £3.50 for the evening, and there is a limit of 6 visits per year (between AGMs). Visitors should arrive at 6.30pm. After the third visit it is hoped that the visitor will be ready to apply to join the club if they plan to play regularly. For online visitors the guest fee is £3.00, which must be paid in advance. Online visitors are also limited to 6 visits per year.

We normally have a host available on duplicate evenings so visitors do not need a partner, but you are asked to arrive early and introduce yourself to the Director, so that any formalities can be dealt with before start of play. For enquiries about full membership, contact the membership secretary Margaret Blewett.

Beginners and improvers

Beginners and Improvers courses are offered by one of our members, Margaret Blewett (please contact Margaret  bridgewisembl@gmail.com directly for more information). We also offer Supervised Play membership to introduce players with less club experience of duplicate play, before applying for full membership, at a special introductory rate. There are weekly sessions face to face on Wednesday evenings.

For more details please click here.

The club has a thriving beginner membership and welcomes novice players. We have a full schedule for less experienced players, including:

Gentle duplicate face to face. Every Wednesday we are running gentle duplicate sessions which run from 7.00pm (turn up by 6.45pm) until between 9.30 and 10.00pm. These are short sessions with a break, usually 15 boards. These sessions are free to full members or £3.50 for SP members or visitors - pay at reception, visitors limited to 6 times a year. Booking is required

If you are interested in playing, contact Tim Anderson via our contact page.

If you have any items of interest for inclusion on our website, or any suggestions for improvement, questions, or problems, please complete the form below.

The club enjoyed its 50th Anniversary on 3rd July 2023 with 60 members and guests, including club founder David Parry who described the early days of the club.

A celebration Teams match was played with 14 tables and we congratulate the winners: Maarten van der Kolk, Jan Whitehouse, Pat Mounsey and John King.

We have set up our dedicated online bridge site which is free to members. The site is at yourbridgeclubonline.co.uk and we are currently playing on Monday evening at 6.45pm for a prompt 7.00pm start. Come and join us!

If you would like to play online bridge but do not know how to get started please contact Tim Anderson for some assistance.

Tim would also welcome comments about how we should go about this so please get in touch.

Check back here for updates.

English Bridge Union - www.ebu.co.uk
County Bridge - www.bridgewebs.com/hiwcba
County Education Opportunities - www.bridgewebs.com/learninhampshireislewight
Ecats (for Simultaneous Pairs events) - www.ecatsbridge.com

www.winchesterracquetsandfitness.net/members/bridge/

Whether you are a beginner or an experienced player, most of us would like to improve our bridge. There are many ways to do so, but the one I want to highlight today is an excellent free online resource for players of any standard.

Bridge Master is actually based on Windows software that came out some 20 years ago, but has now been adapted for the web and will work on any computer, phone or tablet. It consists of 600 tutorial hands (a lot!) graded from Beginner to World Class. Each hand shows the bidding and then lets you try and make your contract. The hands in levels 1 and 2 show some basic bridge points, like keeping communication open between dummy and declarer, when to take a finesse and when to go for the drop, leading up to honours and so on. The hands in level 3 onwards are more challenging and personally I find it takes me two or more tries before I get it right - but hopefully learning something along the way.

A few points to note. These hands are designed on the basis that making your contract is more important than getting overtricks - so not intended for Pairs scoring where overtricks can make a big difference. Go for the safety play if there is one; it will probably be needed.

Second, the hands are not actually fixed. This takes a bit of adjustment. You play a hand and fail to make because E has all the trumps. So you try again, and now W has all the trumps. What's going on?

The answer is that you are being taught to play to a high standard. Your job is to find the best line of play. If you find an inferior line, the cards will turn out to be wrong and you will not make the contract.

All the contracts can be made, though there isn't always a play that will make in all circumstances. For example, if your slam depends on a finesse, you must take the finesse and it will be right. On the other hand, if there is a better play that avoids the finesse, you should do that instead because the finesse will be wrong!

Each hand has a solution which shows exactly what you need to do and why.

It is a lot of fun and quite distracting. For beginners, there are lots of great example hands. For experts, it is a chance to try things like squeezes and elimination plays, in the hope that you might sometimes recognize them when they come up at the table.

At the last Committee meeting it was agreed to publish a "Thought for the Month" each month on our website. Here is the first:

Don’t be a time thief!

As declarer, we all want the same thing...

not to have to rush the hand. 

If you are on lead, please give declarer that courtesy by making your lead as quickly as possible, before entering the contract in the Bridgemate, writing on your scorecard, etc.

Dummy should go down as soon as the lead is faced.

Be courteous, don’t be a time thief.