Note that the title of this post is not: “Bridge is an easy game.” Bridge is not an easy game. It’s not the mental switch off that something like Apples to Apples is. But contract bridge has a simple, elegant structure, where you can learn the rules in a single session and spend a lifetime trying to get better. Here is my attempt at a straightfoward description of the rules that should allow 4 people who have never played before to try it.
Bridge is played by four people in two partnerships. Partners sit opposite each other at a square or round table. A standard deck of cards is used with 13 cards: A,K,Q,J,10-2 in 4 suits: ♠,♥,♦,♣: Spades, Hearts, Diamonds, and Clubs
If anonymous players are needed, they are often referred to by the compass directions N, E, S, W. North and South are partners, and East and West are partners.
An additional deck can be used to shuffle one deck while another is used.
Bridge is played as a series of hands. One person deals each hand, and the person to their left deals the next hand. A hand consists of two phases, an auction, and the play of the hand. The score for the hand is calculated after the play. The auction results in a contract which affects both the scoring and the play of the hand.
The deck is dealt completely to 4 players, 13 cards to each player.
The core of bridge is the trick. Each player plays a single card in clockwise order. The player who chooses the first card is said to have the lead. They can choose any of the remaining cards in their hand to play. The next 3 players are required to follow suit if possible. That is, if they have a card of the same suit as the card lead, they must play a card of that suit. Failure to do so is called a revoke.
Bridge was invented by a series of improvements on existing games. It’s best learned as a series of small additions to a simple game, which we’ll call Follow Suit:
Deal the cards. The person to the left of the dealer makes the opening lead. They play the first card. The person that plays the highest card in a trick of the suit lead wins the trick. Their partnership gets credit for the trick. One person from each partnership should collect the tricks for their side. The winner of the trick gets to lead to the next trick. Play all 13 tricks. The side with the most tricks wins one point for each trick over 6. First team to 5 points wins.
Counting only the tricks after six is strange. The tricks over six are called “odd tricks”. If you think about it, it makes a certain sense. You only get credit for taking more tricks than the opponenents. If you have 7 tricks and they have six, you have beaten them by 1 trick. Each trick you take after that counts as an additional odd trick. 7 odd tricks would mean taking all the tricks and keeping the opponents from taking any. The first six tricks are referred to as book.
Not The Donald. A trump is a high-powered suit. When there’s a trump suit, the rules of winning a trick change slightly. If someone is out of a suit and plays a trump, then the highest trump played wins. Trumps are straightforward. They give rise to a lot of strategies, but trumps themselves are straightforward.
We’ll call this game Trumps. Play proceeds as in Follow Suit, with the following change. The last card should be dealt to the dealer face up. That suit is now trumps. Play and scoring is the same as in Follow Suit
On every hand of bridge, one player is the dummy. After the opening lead, the dummy puts their hand on the table in 4 columns facing their partner. Dummy’s partner is called the declarer. They should put the trump suit on their right and Declarer’s left, and alternate the suits between red and black. The dummy doesn’t play without instruction from their partner. Not even if there’s only one card left. Dummy should also refrain from giving hints. On dummy’s turn to play, declarer instructs dummy which card to play.
Play and scoring is the same as in Trumps, except that after the opening lead, dealer’s partner puts down their hand, and dealer becomes the declarer.
If your side could choose the trump suit, you’d likely take more tricks than if it was picked at random, or if the opponents picked the trump suit. Both sides would like this privilege, and they compete in an auction for it.
The dealer starts the auction. When it is a player’s turn in the auction they may:
A bid consists of a number of odd tricks and a suit or “No Trump” (NT). The side that makes the last bid gets the trump suit they bid, and they must take the number of odd tricks that they bid.
For the purposes of bidding, the suits and NT are ranked. From lowest
to highest, they are:
♣, ♦, ♥, ♠, NT.
If you choose to bid, it must be either a higher suit or NT than the previous bid, or more odd tricks than the previous bid. This means that the lowest bid is 1♣, and the highest bid is 7NT
The auction ends after either 4 initial passes, called a pass out, or once someone has bid, after 3 passes in a row.
The last bid determines the contract.
A contract is 4 pieces of information:
A contract is written in the order above. Some example contracts:
The declarer is the person on the winning team that first bid the suit. If the contract is NT, it is the person that first bid NT.
Deal the cards and have an auction. Dealer gets the first chance to bid. If there is a pass out, no one gets any points, deal the next hand. The person to the left of the declarer makes the opening lead. Declarer’s partner is the dummy. See if you made your contract. Don’t try and score the hand using full bridge scoring, just see if you made your contract.
The first thing that you need to know about bridge scoring is that you play a rubber which is a race to get two games. Rubber is an old english word meaning tie-breaker. Whenever one team wins two games, the rubber is over.
In bridge you collect points as you try to get to two games. The partnership to win two games gets a substantial bonus, so they usually win the rubber, but it’s not guaranteed.
If you take the number of tricks in the contract, you made your contract. If you take any extra tricks, they are called overtricks. If you didn’t make your contract, each trick that you were short is called an undertrick.
Points that count towards game are written below the line and other points are written above the line. If you make your contract, your contract score goes below the line, and any overtricks go above the line. Tricks are scored as follows: For ♣ or ♦, each odd trick is 20 points. For ♥ or ♠, each odd trick is 30 points. For NT, the first odd trick is 40 points, and the following tricks are 30 points each.
Once you have won a game, you are called vulnerable. Being vulnerable changes the award the opponents get for each undertrick. This helps prevent a blocking strategy where a partnership with one game outbids the opponents and goes down so they can get their second game. Undertricks give points to the opponents above the line. Each non-vulnerable undertrick costs 50 points, and a vulnerable undertrick costs 100 points.
Some examples: No one is vulnerable. The contract is 2♥, North was
the declarer. N-S took 10 tricks. N-S get 60 points below the line and
60 above.
No one is vulnerable. The contract is 4♦, E is the declarer. E-W take 8
tricks. N-S get 100 points above the line.
No one is vulnerable. The contract is 3NT. South is the declarer. N-S
took 9 tricks. N-S get 100 points below the line and no points above the
line. N-S are now vulnerable. N-S are vulnerable. The contract is 2♠.
North is the declarer. N-S took 7 tricks. E-W get 200 points above the
line.
It is eventually important to understand how doubling and redoubling raises the stakes, but initially it’s fine to look it up if you end up playing a doubled or redoubled contract. The one important thing to remember is that doubling and re-doubling actually doubles and redoubles the contract score. So making 2♥X gives you some number of points above the line, and 120 below the line. Making 1♠XX also gives you some number of points above the line and 120 below.
The team that wins two games gets the rubber bonus. The rubber bonus is 700 points if the opponents won no games, and 500 points if the opponents have won one game.
There is also a bonus for bidding and making a contract of 6 or 7. A contract of 6 is called a small slam and a contract of 7 is called a grand slam.
If you are non vulnerable, a small slam is 500 points and a grand is 1000. If you are vulnerable the bonuses are 750 and 1500.