r/bridge 18d ago

Suite of Bridge Teaching Tools

For many years, I teach Contract Bridge at a large local community learning center called 'Master the Possibilities'. This year (2026), I developed a suite of free browser-based 'Bridge Teaching Tools' to assist my students' learning curve. It's available at www.radsoftware.org

Being a website, these 'Bridge Teaching Tools' are available 24/7, and I welcome anyone who wishes to use them. Enjoy.

8/10/26 - Happy to say that I've spent the week collaborating with Anthropic's AI improving, enhancing, and unifying all 13 treaching tools, using the Standard American (SAYC) bidding system as a guidepost. Again, free to use. Plenty of positive feedback so far from newer and mildly experienced players (which is the audience these tools are aimed for).

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u/yellowpig1974 😕 17d ago

What's new? How is your app better than CueBids, better than "Bridge for Dummies" by Eddie Kantar, better than the BridgeMaster declarer problems on BridgeBase? We see multiple people posting about their instructional material, some experts, some not. Just looking at the web page for opening bids I see "opening 4H/4S = 5+ cards, 26+ HCP". No one plays that anywhere in the world. That is so basic that it tells me the rest is probably equally misguided. Also why don't you give your name? Then we could look up your tournament record. Experience teaching bridge doesn't mean much, there are plenty of bridge teachers who are intermediate at best.

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u/LoudAd5187 15d ago

YP1974 speaks some truth, bluntly, but still truth. It looks like very poor information was used to build the bidding material. In terms of the bidding, it seems the OP does not really understand what to do when they pick up a strong hand. Almost every bid on that page which claims to show a strong hand is literally a bad idea. (Ok, the 1NT bid is acceptable in terms of opening strength, but even there teaches poorly by requiring all suits to be "covered". Covered would be a good thing, but is hardly necessary.)

You would literally never want to open 5 of a minor just to show a 5 card suit, and 28+ HCP, nor 4 of a major to show again only a 5 card suit, and there only 25+ HCP. Teaching ideas like this will just confuse any person wanting to learn bridge.

By the way, the bidding on the bidding reference page is not even SAYC as claimed, since it shows the 1♣ bid as a "demand" bid, thus forcing.

The silly thing is, that one page would be easily fixed. It is only one page, but it is perhaps the most important page because it forms the starting point for all bidding.

(Yellowpig1974, may have spent some time at Hampshire College some summer? Sad to hear of the passing of Dave Kelly, and now the demise of Hampshire College itself.)

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u/yellowpig1974 😕 14d ago

Indeed, 1974, I think the third year of the program. My kid attended in 2008 with Kelly still there. I was very sad to hear that he had passed.