As a bookworm from the moment of my very premature birth, I’ve always loved books. But as a reader, I’ve always had a special love for booklets and short story collections.

Who’s with me?

Books don’t have to be upwards of 300 or more pages to be great. Books shouldn’t aim to be War & Peace. A great book says what it needs to, and might do it very well as the length of a novella instead of a novel.

More specifically, I believe that short bridge booklets are absolutely wonderful.

Booklets can condense information, giving only the most necessary parts and cutting the filler. Booklets can still engage and capture the reader just as much as a 250, 000 word text.

A booklet can accommodate a busy or distracted reader, and often easier.

Here’s a look at some of the best bridge booklets out there, available for free download.

ACBL SAYC System Booklet

The ACBL SAYC System Booklet teaches readers everything they should know about dealing with (and dealing against) the Standard American Yellow Card system.

For newbies or forgetful readers, SAYC refers to one of the most common bidding conventions you’ll get to know playing ACBL players.

Get to know it, or lose when you see it. Simple.

The Bridge Booklet: Competitive Bidding

Thanks to Bridgewebs, here’s a short booklet about Competitive Bidding.

Bidding can set the tone for your entire 13 tricks. When you get screwed during the bidding phase, you might get screwed worse during the actual game – and when bidding with competition in mind, that’s what you are hoping to avoid (or counter).

Good luck.

And take this: It’s dangerous to go alone.

Beginner’s Bid Brochure

Are you more into brochures than booklets, for whatever reason?

I’m not going to judge. I’ll just recommend this bridge bidding brochure next. Written by Robert Locke, new and advanced players might both have the potential to learn something new.

It’s pretty good. Read it.

Bridge Scoring: A Tutorial

Scoring is the one aspect of bridge that online players tend to forget about, just because it’s something that bots do automatically.

Back in the older, table days of bridge, people had to count further than 13.

Learn how to score bridge games manually. It helps, even if online games mostly mean that you never have to.

Use the above booklet as a quick reference.

The Laws Of Duplicate Bridge

It’s a good idea for any gamer to keep the rules of their chosen game nearby.

Much like scoring, rules are automatically handled by the bots on systems like BBO, but that doesn’t mean you should forget about them.

Always read the rules.

What else would we argue about on bridge message boards?

Better Bridge Teacher’s Manual

If you want to play better bridge, one of the greatest sites to start out is BBO – and then, add some Better Bridge.

There’s a lot of useful detail in the Teacher’s Manual. Even if you have no interest in being a teacher, you’ll find most of the information in there useful as a student.

The ACBL Club Director’s Handbook

The ACBL Club Director’s Handbook is exactly what it sounds like.

It’s useful, and it’s free. What more do you need to know?

Download it above. It’s got a lot of great information that can help you to put together a local or online game even if you aren’t a club director.