Play better bridge

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BBCSoft's White Knight is one of the finest chess programs available for the BBC range of computers. The company has now released Black Queen, a contract bridge program - but does it maintain the high standard set by White Knight?

It is described as being suitable for both beginners and club players. As someone who hasn't played bridge since his sixth form days I was most grateful for the well laid out and informative manual supplied with the game.

Unlike the majority of programs these days, this one openly encourages you to make a working copy of the unprotected software. This is most advisable as you save the hand, and accompanying bid, on the actual program disc before play commences.

As in the real game, you must first deal the cards before bidding can begin. The deal can be a fresh one - shuffling and dealing a new pack of cards - or you may choose to reload a previous deal that has been stored on disc. In either case, bidding continues until there have been three consecutive passes. At this stage you can save the deal and bid to disc, or select the play option from the main menu.

Play commences with the cards being set out in traditional N, S, E and W fashion. Two hands are visible - your own and the dummy hand. If you were the declarer of the bid then you play both the North (dummy) and South hands, otherwise you play the South hand only. The cards are large, well-designed, and laid out in an easy-to-read fashion.

As play proceeds, the bid, the number of tricks won, and the last card led are displayed on the screen at all times. Following the thirteenth trick, a detailed breakdown of the current score is shown, along with a sub-menu of five options.

If you are satisfied with the way that the game went, you can update the total score. If you found that you underbid the hand quite badly, you may choose to rebid and play it again.

You could have made a mistake that resulted in your losing several subsequent tricks - in this case you can choose to play the hand again. Option four lets you peek at all four hands before making a decision, and the fifth option returns you to the main menu.

This very flexible approach reinforces the educational aspect of the package - a player may replay the same hand many times with increasingly adventurous bids.

The final feature ofBlack Queen is a facility that allows the construction of deals - manually putting together four hands from the 52 cards available. This may be used for tackling bridge problems found in newspapers and magazines, or as a way of weighting one or more hands with specific cards.

Black Queen is a first-rate bridge program and most definitely a worthy stablemate for BBC Soft's White Knight chess.

Steve Brook