The Scenario Tool lets you create your own custom bridge bidding practice. Instead of waiting for a rare auction to appear, you define the hands you want, test sample deals, generate stock, and then use that scenario in Cuebids practice.
The current version is much more than a simple high-card-point filter. You can combine predefined hand types, custom constraints, saved building blocks, variables, locked cards, robot settings, vulnerability rules, sample-deal testing, and community sharing.
If you want to see a complete example, the video below walks through a Multi Landy practice scenario and shows how the Scenario Tool turns a specific partnership agreement into repeatable bidding practice.
What a scenario is
A scenario is a custom Deal Type. It describes what kind of hands should be generated for North, East, South, and West, plus global deal settings such as dealer, vulnerability, rotation, partnership strength, and robot system.
You can keep a scenario private for your own practice, save scenarios from other players, or publish a changed scenario to the Scenario market with a short description.
Scenarios are a Heart subscription feature. You need Heart to build or use your own scenarios and to save scenarios other players have shared, so it is worth knowing that going in.
Hand types for each seat
Every seat can have one or more hand types. If a player has several hand types, a generated deal may use any one of them. That makes it possible to describe real bidding agreements: opener might have a weak balanced hand, a strong balanced hand, or a natural club opening.
The tool includes predefined openings and sequences, so you do not always need to build from scratch. For custom work, you can define the hand by HCP, suit lengths, shapes, shortness, suit quality, variables, locked cards, and other filters.
Custom constraints
Custom hand types are where the latest Scenario Tool becomes powerful. A custom hand type can include:
- HCP ranges, including upgrade-aware options.
- Suit-length ranges for specific suits.
- Shape patterns such as exact shapes, forbidden shapes, and wildcard shapes.
- Relative suit-length rules, for example making one suit longer than another.
- Shortness rules, including no singletons, no voids, and required singleton or void locations.
- Long-suit quality and CCCC-style strength filters.
- Vulnerability-specific applicability rules.
- Locked cards, such as forcing a hand to contain key honors.
The builder validates several combinations before you save. For example, it warns when locked cards conflict with the HCP range or when shape and shortness rules cannot both be true.
Variables for suit patterns
Variables are useful when the suit name should not be fixed. You can define variables such as X, Y, Z, and W, assign them to allowed suits, and then use those variables inside hand constraints.
This is important for conventions where the structure matters more than the exact suit. Instead of creating separate versions for spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs, you can describe the pattern once and let the generator choose from the allowed suits.
Settings for the whole deal
Scenario settings control the full deal, not just one hand. You can choose the dealer, choose the vulnerability, set an N-S HCP range, randomly rotate the deal 180 degrees, and decide whether robots are used.
Rotation is especially useful for partnership practice because both players can see both sides of the scenario over time. Robot settings matter when East-West hands are constrained or when a special robot system, such as Multi or Mini NT, is needed for the auction.
Robot commands and special systems
When robots are enabled, the Scenario Tool can work with robot-facing hand instructions. For robot seats, the dialog supports openings, second-seat overcalls, and special-system options when the scenario uses those robot systems.
The session setup also filters scenarios that are not playable with the selected robot setup. That prevents you from accidentally starting a robot practice session with a scenario that needs human-only or incompatible conditions.
Saved hand-type building blocks
If you create a useful custom hand type, you can save it and reuse it later. Saved constraints appear in the hand-type dialog, can be searched, selected, and deleted, and help you avoid rebuilding the same 15-17 balanced hand, shapely opener, or responder pattern again and again.
Testing before saving
Before a scenario becomes useful, it has to generate realistic deals. The Test Scenario button asks the dealer to produce sample hands and shows the full deal, dealer, vulnerability, selected hand types, and whether a rotated deal is being displayed.
You can move through the sample deals, ask for more examples, and save from the test dialog once the output matches your intention. If the filter is too rare or the dealer is rate-limited, the tool surfaces that as an error instead of silently saving a broken scenario.
Stock generation
Saved scenarios need generated stock before they can fuel a practice session. The scenario manager shows how many deals are in stock, shows generation progress, lets you retry expired or failed generation requests, and stops requesting more when the stock is already full.
When generating more deals, the tool offers a choice between faster generation and higher-quality generation. In practice, use fast generation for broad scenarios and higher-quality generation when the scenario is more demanding.
Scenario market
The Scenario market lets players share useful scenarios. You can search by scenario name, search for a creator, save another player's scenario to your own list, and see how many times a public scenario has been cloned.
If you publish a scenario, Cuebids checks that it has changed from its parent before allowing it to be shared. Published scenarios can also have their description edited later.
Using scenarios in practice
In session setup, switch from Deal Types to Scenarios and select one or more saved scenarios. The selector supports filtering by name, applies your default scenarios when appropriate, shows available stock, and warns when the selected scenarios have too little stock for the number of boards.
Scenarios are strongest when paired with the broader Cuebids practice loop. Use events and challenges to find the recurring mistake, then create a scenario to practice that exact auction until it becomes automatic.
For the bigger practice workflow, read how to practice specific bridge bidding topics.
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