Contract Bridge

Contract bridge, more usually known as Bridge, is a trick-taking card game for four players who form two teams. The players of one team sit opposite one another. Game play is in two phases: bidding and playing.

History

A number of card games similar to whist can be traced all the way back to the early 16th century. They were all trick-taking games with a variety of minor variations. Whist became the dominant form, and enjoyed a loyal following for centuries.

In the 1890s, the innovation of allowing the dealer to choose a trump suit became popular in the United States and England, and the resultant game was called "bridge whist". In 1904, the concept of using an auction phase to determine which player got to designate the trump suit caught hold, and this variation was known as "auction bridge".

The modern game was the result of innovations to auction bridge made by Harold Vanderbilt, who probably borrowed many of the ideas from elsewhere. He wrote down his rules for contract bridge in 1925, and it became the dominant form of the game within a few years. It has supplanted all other forms of the game, including "auction bridge", so that "bridge" is now synonymous with "contract bridge".

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word bridge is the English pronunciation of biritch, an older name of the game of unknown middle eastern origin. The OED reports speculation that it may come from a Turkish term, bir-uc which translates as "one-three" and is said to refer to the fact that one hand is exposed and three are concealed.

Dealing

The game is played with one complete deck of 52 cards. One player is the dealer, and deals 13 cards to each player. In the next round, the player left to the current dealer will be dealer.

The Auction

The dealer makes the first call, and the bidding continues clockwise until three players in rotation have passed after any call. A call is any bid, a pass, a double or a redouble.

When a player has the turn to bid, he may do any of the following:

• Make a new bid,
• Pass,
• Double if the last preceding bid was made by the opponents, or
• Redouble a bid that has been doubled by the opponent.

A bid must include a number of odd tricks (from one to seven) and a denomination. Odd tricks are the tricks that a team proposes to take in excess of six. A denomination is any suit or notrump specified in a bid.

Each bid must supersede the last preceding bid by naming a greater number of tricks in any denomination, or by naming the same number of tricks in a higher ranking denomination. The rank of the denominations in descending order is notrump, spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs.

When the auction ends the player on the team that has made the highest bid who first bid the denomination of that bid will be the declarer.

When, in a deal, all four players have passed without there being a bid, the deal is scored as a zero and the cards are passed on to the next dealer.

Bidding Systems and Conventions

A pair is allowed to try to pass information about their hands, but this is restricted in two ways:

• Information may only be passed by the bids made and the cards played, not by anything else.
• All information must be fully explained to the opponents.

Thus, one may have all kind of meanings for biddings, as long as they are told to the opponents.

The meaning of the various bids in a partnership are called that partnership's bidding system. There exist a number of different bidding systems, such as Goren, ACOL, Standard American, Precision etcetera.

A bid that means something different than a certain range of points and length in the suit bid and/or a willingness to play in that suit, is called a convention. Many conventions have been invented, some of the most famous are Stayman, Jacoby transfers and Blackwood.

More on contract_bridge

More on Contract Bridge

See also: Card