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Bicycle Bridge
by Reviewed by Dennis Lee—dsblee@compuall.net NOCCC - November 23, 1999 at 22:50:25:
Bicycle Bridge can help you to learn how to play bridge or help you to improve your bridge playing ability. Increasing levels of difficulty make Bicycle Bridge a constant challenge for beginners and seasoned players. You can play against the computer or take on opponents all over the world via the Microsoft Internet Gaming Zone. Bicycle Bridge allows you to learn as you play by selecting on-screen step-by-step tutoring, immediate feedback on plays, hints, and replay/review features. You can choose random or biased dealing distribution, save game scenarios for later review, and select advanced bidding conventions such as Jacoby Transfers, Weak 2-bid, Unusual No-Trump, etc. On-line documentation provides basic information on bridge terminology and rules.Game types include Rubber Bridge and Duplicate Bridge. In Duplicate Bridge, you play the hand, and then the computer plays the exact same hand to see who played the hand better. You can also play the hand in normal mode or tutorial mode. You can also select the playing skill (easy, moderate, or difficult) of your partner and opponents.
I found Bicycle Bridge to be very easy to use. All of the options for setting up the game and playing the hand are selected via on-screen buttons or tabs. Although you can get an explanation of each button or tab via the on-line Help, you can just select the button or tab and all of the options are self-explanatory.
The bidding sequence is shown on screen and the user can select the hint button to get the bid recommended by the computer. The play of the hand is very simple and fast. You just click on the card that you want to play. The computer will automatically play your opponent’s hand. You can view the hands played previously at any time by simply pressing the Show Previous Hand button and going backwards as far as you want to. You can also Undo a play or Request Hint for the card that should be played. At the end of the game, the score is shown and the option to replay the hand or play a new game is provided. At the end of the session, statistics, which summarize the play of all of the hands, is available. I did not try the capability to play bridge on the Internet.
The system requirements are as follows: 486DX/100 MHz or higher, Windows 95/98, 8 Mb RAM (16 Mb recommended), 2X CD ROM or higher, 16 bit sound card, 30 Mb hard drive space, and Windows supported mouse. Installation is simple: click on the Start button, then select Run, type D:\setup.exe, click Install, then follow the on-screen installation instructions. Bicycle Bridge can be purchased for $14.99 at www.expertsoftware.com.
In summary, I recommend Bicycle Bridge to any beginner or moderate skilled bridge player who enjoys practicing his bidding and play of the hand. The expert bridge player may find that the limited number of bidding conventions and the compu-terized play of the hand may not be up to the expert level.
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