Let's say you want to learn how to bid in Duplicate or Contract Rubber Bridge or that you simply want to improve upon your bidding skills. If your bidding system happens to be Standard American Yellow Card (SAYC), which is the preferred system used by partnerships on most Internet bridge tournaments and is also the system favored for training by the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL), you can go to ACBL's home page and download (for free) Fred Gitelman's excellent tutorial on SAYC. Gitelman does a fantastic job of explaining the intricacies of bids and the underlying philosophies of bidding. But the problem is that, to me at least, his software is only a tutorial. It is not a flow chart, an outline or a codification of the system.

While his software is great for learning SAYC and for practicing what you learn by working many examples, there is no document presented to codify SAYC which one could use as a reference. But then the software was never designed to document SAYC, only to teach it. Perhaps Gitelman felt that if one had a supporting document, the person might read the document and not practice the hands.

SAYC is sufficiently intricate (I think) to warrant a supporting document outlining the bidding system. With such a document one could look up various bidding situations when one is stuck on a simulator and can't remember what Gitelman said to do in such and such a situation. To that end I have produced a bidding booklet on SAYC based upon my understanding of Gitelman's implementation.

I have never met or corresponded directly with Mr. Gitelman and my document is not endorsed in any way by Mr. Gitelman or the ACBL. It is simply provided for download or for on-line reference to those interested in using it.

Click to link to Wes Fager's SAYC outline.

You're welcome.