The Book of Card Games: The Complete Rules to the Classics, Family Favorite and Forgotten Games (7 page)

Betting continues until there are only two remaining players. At this point the player who is next to bet may double the previous bet to “see” his opponent, and his opponent has to lay his hand down first. If your hand beats his hand, you show your cards to prove it. If your hand ties or is less than his hand, you throw in your cards and lose the pot. If you choose not to see your opponent, he may choose to see you. If neither person chooses to see the other, both hands are displayed at the same time and the better hand wins the pot.

You may opt to play your hand blind, without looking at your cards. When you do this, your bets cost half as much as an open player’s (a player who has viewed his cards). You may choose to look at your hand before any bet, but then your hand becomes open and you must bet equal amounts going forward. If you are one of the two last players and playing blind, the open player may not see you.

If all of the players fold to you as a blind player, the pot remains, a new ante is played, you keep your previous hand, and you are dealt a second hand. At any time, you may choose to look at either hand. At that point, you decide whether to keep that hand or throw it away. If you keep the hand that you looked at, you throw away the other hand and are now open. If you throw the hand away that you looked at, you keep the other hand and are still blind. If everyone folds to a blind player who has not looked at either pair of cards, at the next deal he must throw one hand away without looking at the cards.

NUMBER OF PLAYERS:
Four

EQUIPMENT:
One standard fifty-two-card deck

TIME:
Two to three hours

PARTNERSHIP:
Yes

COMPLEXITY:
Medium to high

Bridge is a complex game with a strategy that revolves around when to bid or pass, counting cards, and communicating with your partner. It’s also one of the most popular card games in the world, with international bridge leagues and tournaments, which attract bridge professionals from many countries. Of course, the bridge you play with some friends on Saturday night doesn’t need to be quite that intense.

Bridge developed from the card game whist (see following). The name of bridge is said to come from Russian Whist, called “biritch.” In the 1890s, bridge was brought over and introduced to U.S. card aficionados. In the 1900s, a trump suit was added, and a spin-off of auction bridge was introduced. In this method of bridge, a team received points toward winning the game for every trick won above their contract. Across the years, many additional changes were made to the game, but in 1925 Harold Vanderbilt codified the game of contract bridge along with its rules, procedures, and a scoring table. Since the 1930s, contract bridge has been one of the most popular card games played in the world. The difference between contract and auction bridge is that in contract bridge, any tricks above the contract are bonus points rather than helping toward winning a game. The majority of players adopted Vanderbilt’s methods, and today there are millions of contract bridge players. Most people play at home, but there are over 1,000 tournaments a year and 4,200 bridge clubs that players can join! The rules for contract bridge are presented in this section.

Bridge is a team, or partner, game made up of four players divided into two teams of two players sitting across from one another at the table. The players at each table are described by the compass directions: North, East, South, and West.

Bridge opens with any player shuffling the cards and spreading them on the table face down. You each select a card in the middle (not taking any of the four outer cards), and the player who draws the highest card becomes the first dealer. Deal then rotates clockwise around the table for each successive hand. The dealer begins with the player on his left and deals the cards clockwise, one at a time, face down, to each player until he reaches the final card in the deck.

After the deal you’ll participate in a round of bidding to determine who will be the “declarer,” or the player with the highest bid who gets to declare the trump suit. The player to the dealer’s left starts the bidding by either passing or making a bid containing a number and the suit he wishes to have as trump. The number in the bid represents the number of tricks that you believe you can win in excess of six tricks—for example, you bid two, and this means you will win at least eight (six plus two) tricks. When bidding, the suits are ranked from high to low as no trump, spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs.

When it’s your turn, you may choose to bid, pass, double, or redouble. If you bid, your bid must be higher than the previous bid. You can do this by betting a higher number than the previous number bid, or by bidding the same number with a higher suit than the previous suit bid. The lowest bid is a one club, and the highest bid is a seven no trump. If all four players pass on their first turn around the table, the hand is “passed out.” The cards are thrown on the table, and it’s the next dealer’s turn to deal.

Within the bidding process, you may double a bid by the opponent’s team or redouble the opponent’s double. This increases the score or penalty for that bid. If you double or redouble, and another player bids a number or suit higher than the previous bid, your double or redouble is canceled out.

After a player bids and the other three players pass, the bidding stops. The last bid becomes the contract that the bidding team must try to make. The player who made the high bid becomes the declarer, and his goal is to complete the contract. The declarer’s partner is the “dummy.”

The bidding can get relatively complicated, so you’ll want to make sure you understand the rules before participating in a game. The best way to learn is to watch a couple of rounds of bridge before playing yourself. The following is an illustration of bidding, with North as the dealer.

East becomes the declarer, and West becomes the dummy for this hand. The contract is two hearts, meaning that the trump suit is hearts and the declarer must win eight tricks (the number bid plus six) in order to complete the contract. The contract is also doubled, which has implications on the way the hand is scored, as described below.

After the round of bidding has finished and the contract has been decided, it’s time to play out your hands. Your object during this round of play is to capture as many tricks with your partner as you can. If your team contains the declarer and has the contract, you need to win your contract or risk losing many points. If your team did not win the contract, your goal is to prevent your opponents from winning so that you can gain their points. The player to the left of the declarer starts the play by laying down his first card. He may play any card in his hand.

Immediately following the opening card, the dummy must expose his cards by laying them face up on the table, facing the declarer. You should place each suit in its own column with the cards in that column sorted by rank and overlapping each other. The trump suit should be on the left-hand side when the declarer views the cards.

If the trump suit of this hand was hearts, a sample dummy hand as viewed from the declarer would look like: