While bridge is a lot of fun to play, learning it can sometimes be a problem. The rules are straightforward enough, but numerous. When they're translated by friends - all of them itching to make up a fourth and get down to business - things can get confusing, to say the least. What you need is a tutor that takes things one at a time, doesn't move on until you've understood, and isn't impatient to start a game. And that's just what Artworx offers in Compubridge.

Compubridge is based on the writing of Shirley Silverman, author of several popular bridge books. Text and quizzes are all on disk, there's no need to refer to a book or chart. In spite of a few weaknesses, this is a very good tutorial, especially for the rank beginner.

The first option offered to the player on this program is changing the color of the screen, border and / or text. It is wise to exercise the option, since the program's choice is black on white and it soon gets a little eye-wearying. The program itself is divided into two parts: a text section and a quiz section, both broken down by topic. The ten text sections are baby-simple and clear. The first section covers everything from how many players are needed to what the suits are and how they are ranked. Nothing is assumed. Each section of text is accompanied by a relevant quiz, in addition to the eight more advanced quizzes offered later in the program. Go to the advanced quizzes as soon as you feel confident enough; in some of the other quizzes, the same question can appear twice in as few as six hands.

Even if the user runs through all sections in order, there is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between program and main menu. Fortunately, even on the Commodore 64, the access time is short. This makes skipping around the sections a fairly simple matter, too, and the user has any bridge-playing experience at all he or she will probably want to do a lot of skipping.

In the advanced quizzes, there can be more than one right answer to a question - a real life situation that any bridge player will recognize. However, the computer does not always "play fair" in these ambiguous situations; it may give a qualified response and still note the answer as wrong. Still, this is a mild-mannered program which reacts calmly to the most off-the-wall responses. Even if the user tells it to lead a non-existent card, it will respond with "a possibly better answer is...". This alone puts it one-up on most human tutors.

The one thing that Compubridge does not offer is the chance to play a complete hand from first bid to last trick. For this, you'll need either three more people or Artworx's excellent Bridge 4.0 program.