How to play bridge

The table: four players, two partnerships

Bridge is played by four people in two fixed partnerships, sitting opposite their partner. The seats are named after compass points: North and South are one side, East and West the other.

Those names are used constantly, here and everywhere else, because they are how a hand is written down and discussed long after it was played.

You never speak to your partner, never signal, and never see their cards during the auction.

Everything you tell them, you tell them with bids. That is why bids carry such precise meanings, and why conventions exist at all.

The deal, and what a hand is worth

A standard 52-card pack is dealt out, 13 cards each. Aces are high, and there are no jokers.

Nothing is left over — every card is in somebody's hand. That is what makes bridge a game of complete information by the end, and of inference until then.

Before you bid anything, you count what your hand is worth. The standard method is high card points, and it is deliberately crude:

• Ace = 4 points
• King = 3 points
• Queen = 2 points
• Jack = 1 point

There are 40 points in the pack, so an average hand holds 10.

Long suits are worth more than the raw count suggests: a five-card suit often takes tricks with cards that are not honours at all. Most players add a point or so for a good one.

The number to remember is 25. A partnership holding about that much can usually make game, which is the scoring target that matters most.

Your job in the auction is largely to find out whether your side has it, and in which suit.

The auction: bidding for a contract

Starting with the dealer and moving clockwise, each player either passes or makes a bid. A bid is a number from 1 to 7 and a strain — one of the four suits, or notrump, meaning no trump suit at all.

The number is not the number of tricks. It is the number of tricks over six — a historical quirk you simply have to absorb.

So 1♥ promises seven tricks and 4♠ promises ten. The six is called the book.

Each bid must be higher than the last. The strains rank in a fixed order, lowest to highest: ♣ clubs, ♦ diamonds, ♥ hearts, ♠ spades, then notrump.

So 1♠ beats 1♥, and 2♣ beats both.

Hearts and spades are the majors; clubs and diamonds are the minors. That distinction matters, because major-suit games score better.

The auction ends when a bid is followed by three passes. The last bid becomes the contract.

Two other calls exist. Double says you think the opponents cannot make their contract and increases the score either way. Redouble is the reply that says you disagree, and increases it further still.

Declarer, dummy, and the hand that gets laid out

Whichever side won the auction, the player on that side who first named the final strain is the declarer. Their partner becomes the dummy.

After the opening lead, dummy lays their entire hand face up on the table and takes no further part. Declarer plays both hands.

This is the most distinctive thing about bridge, and the thing new players find strangest: one player is doing twice the work and one is doing none.

The play: thirteen tricks

The player to declarer's left leads first — the opening lead, made before dummy goes down, which is why it is the hardest card of the hand to choose. Play then proceeds clockwise.

1. You must follow suit. If a heart is led and you have any heart, you play one. This is the only rule the game is strict about, and breaking it is a revoke, which carries a penalty.
2. If you cannot follow suit, you may play anything: discard a card from another suit, or play a trump.
3. The trick is won by the highest trump played, or if no trump was played, by the highest card of the suit that was led.
4. The winner leads to the next trick. Repeat thirteen times.

In a notrump contract there are no trumps at all, so the highest card of the suit led always wins. Notrump contracts are about establishing long suits and counting winners; suit contracts are about controlling the hand with your trumps.

Scoring, and why 3NT is the most common contract in bridge

If declarer wins at least as many tricks as the contract promised, the contract is made. If not, it goes down, and the defenders score instead.

The tricks bid and made are worth:

• 20 per trick in a minor (♣ or ♦)
• 30 per trick in a major (♥ or ♠)
• 40 for the first trick and 30 thereafter in notrump

Reaching 100 gets you a large game bonus, and that one threshold explains most of bridge bidding. The cheapest routes to it:

• 3NT — nine tricks (40 + 30 + 30).
• 4♥ or 4♠ — ten tricks (4 × 30 = 120).
• 5♣ or 5♦ — eleven tricks (5 × 20).

That is why 3NT is the most bid contract in the game: nine tricks where the minor-suit game needs eleven.

Bidding and making all thirteen tricks is a grand slam; twelve is a small slam. Both carry very large bonuses, which is why partnerships invest so much bidding machinery in finding out whether they have one.

Finally, vulnerability rotates from deal to deal. A vulnerable side scores more for making a contract and loses more for failing, and it changes how much risk is worth taking.

What to learn next

Do not start with conventions. Start with opening the bidding correctly and responding sensibly, because that comes up on every hand.

A partnership that gets it right will beat one that knows twenty conventions and misjudges its openings.

• The bidding cheat sheet — opening bids, responses and rebids, with the point ranges, on one page.
• A glossary of bridge terms — for the words that get used at the table as though everybody already knows them.
• Stayman — the first convention worth learning, and the one almost every partnership plays.