Create Your Own Bridge Bidding System

Here you can create your very own bridge system in the form of a collapsible tree view that can be shared with your partners. New systems appear on the list of published systems once I've approved them, but you can share yours using its address straight away, so keep a note of it. Changes you make later will also need my approval before your system reappears on the list.

You can create your system by entering it in markup form in the first box, below. Its tree view representation will appear in the second box as you type. You can also give your system a name and password, which will allow you to edit it in future. I've already populated the first box with some example markup, which I hope is mostly self-explanatory. However, there is a full guide to the markup format at the bottom of this page.

How to write markup

Each line of the markup consists of up to three elements:

• A bid. This is usually written in the form .. ,, 1H:. The two dots indicate a previous bid by opener; the two commas indicate a previous bid by responder; the 1H indicates that the current bid (by opener in this case) is one heart. The next bid in the sequence might be .. ,, .. 1S:, which will be responder's reply to opener's one heart. Each bid should be terminated by a colon.
• A description. This is where you explain the meaning of the bid, in text or simple html. The four suit symbols (clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades) should be written as $C, $D, $H and $S in the description.
• Annotations. These are special symbols used to denote common bid information, such as artificial or forcing. These are optional and are defined in the table below. To add annotations, you simply add the | symbol after your description, followed by a comma-separated list of the annotation symbols you want to add. For instance, | ~, ? denotes a natural game invitation. You do not need to add a | after the description if you do not wish to annotate a bid.

You can also add sections of text before and after your tree view, to serve as introductory or closing remarks. The maximum permitted size of your system is 200,000 characters. I also recommend that you keep backup copies of your markup (as .txt files), in case you ever wish to revert to an earlier version. Here are the permitted annotations: