Easy Bridge 4 Gripes

Where is Easy Bridge?

July 22, 2009: Someone named Norm (no last name) emailed me that he had downloaded the source code for EasyBridge and was going to maintain it. He said "I have been fixing bugs and adding features for the last several months. My version (4.0.3) is available at my site If anyone is interested in helping me improve this program, please email me and I'll explain how you can document the problem and send it to me." He is normandpaula at mo-net dot com. The direct link to the zip file is
sites.google.com/site/normsstuff1/Home/files-to-be-shared/EasyBridge4-0-3Exe.zip.

September 28,2007: You can download EasyBridge version 4 at Steven Han's website, specifically on his Old Stuff page.
Last verified July 22, 2009.

September 28,2007: You can download Easy Bridge version 4 at Winsite:  www.winsite.com/bin/Info?4500000036163
Update July 22, 2009: The entire Winsite web site has disappeared.

August 19, 2002. The web site www.easybridge.com has nothing to do with the free bridge program that this page is about.

November 14, 2001. After disappearing, EasyBridge is back. Thank goodness. The new page to download Easy Bridge is at Winsite:  www.winsite.com/bin/Info?4500000036163 . The file is 4.8 meg and is version 4.0.2.  FYI: It requires about 8 meg of disk space if all installation options are selected. 

October 7, 2000

Version 4.0 of Easy Bridge was recently updated to version 4.0.1. The documentation on the web site does not say whether users of version 4.0 should un-install this version prior to installing version 4.0.1. I gambled and did not un-install the older version. It seems to have worked fine.
 

May 2000

These comments apply to version 4 of Easy Bridge which was released April 24, 2000. 

Installation 
On a machine with Easy Bridge version 3 installed, I installed version 4 on top of version 3. Only after version 4 is installed is the Readme file displayed. Of course, the Readme file suggests that you un-install version 3 before installing version 4.

Web Site 

There is a link on the Easy Bridge home page to see what's changed in the latest version, but there are no installation instructions. 

The FAQ does say that you can not run both version 3 and version 4 at the same time - which implies you should uninstall version 3 before installing version 4 but does not say it outright. 

Bidding

The program can provide a hint when its your turn to bid. This blinks the suggested bid for a couple seconds. If you don't happen to see it and click on the hint button a second time, it bids the suggested bid immediately, then continues on and bids the other three hands. If you didn't want to make the bid formerly known as suggested, you have to start the bidding over again. I found it confusing that a Hint function made bids. 

When using the game just after it has been installed, an option called auto hint is on. In this mode, clicking on the Hint button one time during the bidding, results in the suggested bid being played. 

Play

Aggressive hints (my term) also apply to the play of the hand. Clicking the get hint button on the toolbar once displays a hint, but twice and the game plays the card indicated in the hint. Fortunately, right clicking on the table pops up an undo trick option.

On machines with the video display set to a resolution of 800x600, the cards on the table for the current round will cover up the cards in the North and South hands when they are dummy and have a long enough suit. Closing the bidding history/play history windows will change the display around and may fix this.  

After a hand, there are many choices for replaying the hand, but none for playing another hand. The OK button plays another hand, but this could be explained better. After bidding there is a New Deal button, why not after the play? 

FYI

Steve Han released the source code for Easy Bridge under a GNU license. December 6, 2004. 
Update: March 30, 2007. This link is no longer valid. It was www.nyx.net/~shan/EasyBridgeSource0.htm

Not to give the wrong impression, this is a great free program and I am glad that I ran across it. I have happily installed it on many computers. I just gripe about everything.  

If the links to EasyBridge go bad, send me an email and I'll point you to a copy that I've saved.