Bridge is a card game played with a deck of 52 cards, no Jokers. There are 4 players at a table. Each player is referred to as North, East, South and West, depending upon where they sit at the table. North-South players sit opposite each other and are a team or partnership. They play against the East-West pair, the other partnership sitting opposite each other. Each player is dealt 13 cards.
There are 2 parts in a game of bridge:
Part 1) The AUCTION - communication process between the 4 players to determine which team will take the majority of TRICKS.
A TRICK is comprised of 4 cards contributed by each player (one card per player). The player that contributes the "highest ranking card" of the 4 cards wins the trick. There are 13 tricks in each deck of cards.
As in a regular auction, each player makes a BID, which is a declaration of how many tricks the partnership will win. The player making the highest BID wins the CONTRACT, which is the goal of the auction process.
The CONTRACT is a declaration to win a stated number of tricks. Hence, the name of this card game: Contract Bridge
The player that won the contract (player with the highest bid) is the "DECLARER". That player's partnership is the offense which must win the declared number of tricks (or more). The other partnership is the "OPPOSITION", which will play defensively to prevent the declarer's team from winning their declared number of tricks.
The auction process is also referred to as the "Bidding".
Part 2) The PLAY - This is the process where the players try to win, or take, "TRICKS".
• A trick is set of 4 cards, in which each player contributes one of their cards. The deck of cards contains 13 tricks.
• The play begins with one player laying one card face up. This is the "lead". The remaining 3 players in rotation lay one card face up on the table.
• Each of the 3 players must "follow suit", that is they must contribute a card from the same suit that was "lead" by the first player.
• If one of the 3 players does not have a card from the same suit, the player can "discard", that is contribute one card from a different suit of their choice.
If a player discards a "wild card", that player can win that trick.
• The wild card is from the suit that is declared as the wild card suit at the beginning of the play. This wild card suit (clubs, diamonds, hearts, or spades) is called the "TRUMP" suit.
• Any time a trump card is contributed to a trick, the highest value trump card wins the trick (2 is the lowest value, and Ace is the highest value).
• The player who played highest ranking of those 4 cards (either the highest card of the lead suit, or the highest value trump card) wins that "trick".
• This process is repeated 12 more times.
• If the offense takes the number of tricks they declared (or more) they "won" the contract, and are awarded points based upon the number of tricks they won.
• If the opposition prevents the offense from winning the declared number of tricks, the opposition "defeated" the contract and is awarded points based upon the number of tricks they won.
• The team that is awarded the most points is the winner.
• Following suit, discarding, and trumping are important aspects of the trick taking process.
This web site is written for a beginner, and only deals with the first process, the BIDDING. There are many bidding systems, but this web site will only present a simplified version of the "Standard American Yellow Card" (SAYC) bidding system.
Deal the cards !
The four players select a dealer by any method. The chosen dealer dispenses 1 card to each player, beginning with the person to the left of the dealer, and rotating clockwise until all players have 13 cards.
Each player collects their 13 cards and beginds the BIDDING process.