Bridge lessons for absolute beginners.
Lesson 1 – What is the purpose of a game of bridge?
Bridge is a card game for four players. It is played in two teams or in pairs. Teams play as North and South, and East and West with partners sitting across from each other around a table.
The game uses a standard 52-card pack, and each player has 13 cards. Bridge is a trick-playing game. A trick is a 4-card round, in which each player plays one card. One player starts each trick and each player in turn must do the same, if they can. If the game is played with a trump suit and a player cannot follow the suit that was started, he may play a trump card instead.
The trick is won by the person who plays the highest card of the suit that came out, or the person who plays the highest trump card.
The object of the game is to win as many tricks as possible.
Lesson 2 – Duplicate Bridge – What is it?
If you play in a club, online or just with groups of friends, you will often play double bridge. With the double bridge, the cards are not dealt randomly at the beginning of each round. Instead, the predetermined hands are dealt so that each pair plays each hand. In this way, you can compare your partner’s performance with the performance of the other participating players.
Lesson 3 – Value your hand
Before the game begins, each player will sort their cards by suit. There are four suits: spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs. Spades are the highest ranked suit, then hearts, then diamonds, and clubs are the lowest.
Clubs and diamonds are known as the minor suits and hearts and spades are known as the major suits.
To value their hand, each player adds up the number of high card points they have. They count 4 points for each ace held, 3 points for each king, 2 points for each queen, and one for each jack. A card pack contains a total of 40 high card points (HP)
Lesson 4 – Let the Auction Begin
Before the cards are played, the players make “bids”. The object of the auction is to tell your partner something about the number of points you have and the distribution of the cards in your hand.
Once the tender is concluded, the company will have agreed “the contract” in which the game will be played.
There are two types of contract: a suit contract and a no-trump contract.
If a game is played with a suit contract, a card played with the trump suit will beat the cards of the other suits, remembering that a player must play the game if he can.
If a game is played on a no-trump contract, then, as the name suggests, a player cannot win a trick if he beats it. Trumping is also known as “failing.”