Where to play
Four-handed bridge, and playing all four hands yourself
Bridge is a game for four players in two partnerships. "Four hands" and "play all four hands" describe ways to play it alone, and they mean two different things: playing every seat yourself, or playing one seat against robots.
Why bridge needs four
Contract bridge deals the entire 52-card pack: 13 cards each to four players in two partnerships. Nothing is held back and nothing is left in a stock.
Because every card is somewhere, a good player can count the hand: work out from the bidding and the cards already played exactly what each opponent still holds.
Without a fourth player there's no partner to bid with and no fourth hand to count.
There are two-player variants, of which honeymoon bridge is the best known, but they play quite differently and don't help much at a real table.
What “playing all four hands” means
When a bridge site offers to let you play four hands, it means one of two things, and they practise different skills.
You play all four seats yourself
All 52 cards are face up to you. You bid every seat, play every card, and know where every honour is before the opening lead.
This is double dummy play, and it's what many "play 4 hands" links give you.
It's useful for one thing: learning how the play of a suit works.
- Establishing a long suit, and what it costs in entries.
- Drawing trumps, and when to stop.
- Counting winners and losers before you play to trick one.
- Why a finesse works when it works.
All of that is visible with the cards face up, and far easier to learn that way.
What it can't teach is the decisions you make in a real game, where you can't see the other hands: finesse or play for the drop, which opponent holds the queen, whether partner's card was a signal.
With every card face up, those decisions never come up. If you only practise this way, you won't have practised them before your first real game.
You play one seat and robots play the rest
You are dealt one hand and bid it; three robots bid and play theirs. When the auction ends, dummy goes down and you see 26 cards, the same 26 a human player sees.
This is single dummy, the same game you play at a club.
It is the better format for practice, because everything that makes the game hard is still there, and it plays at whatever speed you want.
The problem four-handed bridge solves
If you already know the rules, the hard part is often finding a game.
You need three other people who are free at the same time, know the game and want the same kind of game.
Robots solve that. You lose the conversation and, at the top end, the quality of opposition, but for practice they work well.
How to get better
If your goal is to play bridge with people eventually, a sensible practice loop looks like this:
- Play single dummy against bots, one seat, as a normal deal. Bid it properly rather than guessing.
- Replay the board afterwards with all four hands visible. This is where double dummy is useful: you can now see what the right line was and whether the information to find it was available to you at the time.
- Look at the auction as well as the play. If you were in the wrong contract, better card play wouldn't have fixed it.
- Change one thing at a time. Learn one convention, play fifty hands with it, then learn the next.
Four-handed bridge on BridgeArena
A BridgeArena practice table seats you South with robots in the other three seats, and keeps every board so you can replay it afterwards with all four hands showing. To play people instead, you can create a table and invite friends, or set up a challenge, where the same boards are dealt to both of you and compared when you've both finished.