Lesson 1

          The game of Contract Bridge involves two skills, the auction, (the series of bids by which the contract is decided) and the play of the cards

1. The method of play.

          The ranking of the cards in each suit in Bridge is the Ace the highest and the 2 the lowest.

The order of the play of the cards is clockwise. The players are referred to as North, East, South and West. Bridge is a partnership game in which North/South form one partnership and East/West the other. When the player who is due to start the play leads a card (places it face upwards on the table) the other 3 players play in turn, clockwise around the table. They must follow suit (play a card of the same suit). The 4 cards played constitute a trick and the player who has played the highest card wins the trick and will then lead a card to start the next trick. If a player doesn't hold a card of the same suit as the suit led he may play any card he likes, but this card cannot win the trick, whatever its rank, unless its a card of the trump suit (if there is one), in which case it WILL win the trick, whatever its rank. Unlike Whist, some hands are played without a trump suit. The process continues until all 52 cards (13 tricks) are played. The trump suit, (or lack of one) is determined by the auction.

2. The Auction.

          As mentioned above, the auction is a series of competitive bids by which the final contract is decided. The suits are ranked, Clubs being the lowest-ranking, followed by Diamonds, Hearts, and Spades in that order. No Trumps outranks all 4 suits. Thus a bid of 1 Heart will outbid 1 Diamond. Any bid at a higher level will overcall one at the lower level. Thus 2 Clubs will overcall any bid at the 1 level, including 1 No Trump. Each bid commits the partnership to making a certain number of tricks with the suit mentioned in the bid as trumps (or, in the case of a bid in No Trumps, without a trump suit). Starting with the dealer, each player, when it is his turn to call, may make a bid or pass. Each successive bid in the auction must be higher (either in a higher-  ranking suit or at a higher level) than the previous bid.  For reasons connected with the scoring, Clubs and Diamonds are known as the Minor suits (the Minors) and Hearts and Spades as the Major suits (the Majors).

          A bid of 1 Club means that the bidder is committing the partnership to winning at least 7 tricks with the Clubs named as trumps. A bid of 3 in any suit commits the partnership to making 9 tricks (6 + 3). The auction ends when all players have had a chance to bid and there have been 3 consecutive passes. The last bid made now becomes the contract and the partnership who made the last bid have now to try to fulfil that contract.

          At the end of the auction, the player who FIRST MENTIONED the suit in which the hand is to be played, irrespective of which partner made the final bid, is called the Declarer and the player on Declarers left now makes the opening lead. Declarers partner then spreads his cards, face upwards, on the table and will take no further part in the play of the hand.

          This hand is known as the Dummy, and Declarer plays Dummy's cards as well as his own. This is the only difference between the play of the cards in Bridge from the play in Whist, and it is this difference that is responsible for the display of far greater skills of card play that Bridge offers.

          The object of bidding in the Auction is two-fold. Firstly, each partnership tries to outbid the other in order to secure the right to try to fulfil a contract and thus score points towards winning the game. Secondly, if one pair does not bid, or after they have stopped bidding, the other pair bid against each other to try to reach a contract that gives the partnership the best chance of scoring enough points to win a Game on that one deal, if their combined strength is sufficient, or to stop in a safe lower contract if it is not. (See notes on Scoring, below.) A secondary aim is to try to prevent the opponents from reaching their optimum contract.

To do this as accurately as possible, the partners need to exchange information about their hands; how many high cards they have and how many cards they hold in the various suits. Unfortunately you are not allowed to say "Partner, I've got the A K Q of Hearts and the Ace and 5 small Clubs." The information has to be exchanged by the use of a conventional system of bids, a sort of language, in which each bid tells partner something about the hand. Since there are so many combinations of cards that any one hand may hold, such a system must, of necessity, be complicated.

3. The Acol System.

          In the UK by far the most widely-used system is know as Acol, after the Acol Bridge Club where it originated. It is more straightforward than most, and that is the system were going to learn.

Hand Valuation in Acol. The first important requirement of any system of bidding is a method of evaluating the trick-taking capacity of the hand. In Acol this is done by using the Milton Work point count. Points are counted for certain card holdings as follows;-

          For each           Ace    count  4 points          King   count  3 points

                        Queen            count  2 points          Jack   count  1 point

          It is important to realize that these points are NOT scored. They are used solely to enable the player to evaluate the trick-taking capacity of his cards. The Milton Work point count is a very reliable method of determining the value of balanced hands, hands which holds no suit of more than 5 cards nor of less than 2 cards. These are hands best played without a trump suit. For evaluating unbalanced hands, which are played in a trump suit, some further modification is required.

Once you have evaluated your hand you are ready to start bidding.

4. Scoring.

          A Rubber of Bridge is a contest of the best-of-three games.

Points are scored in three ways in Bridge;- a) by successfully fulfilling contracts, b) by defeating opponents contracts, c) by bonuses awarded for various reasons. To win a game you have to score 100 points by successfully fulfilling contracts. In Clubs and Diamonds (Minor Suits), each trick of a successful contract (each trick above 6) scores 20 points. In Hearts and Spades (the Major Suits) each trick scores 30 points. In No Trumps the first trick scores 40 points and each subsequent trick 30 points. Thus a contract of 4 Clubs (a contract to make 10 tricks) will score 80 points, 3 Spades (a contract to make 9 tricks) will score 90. A contract of 5 in either Minor suit (11 tricks) will score 100, which will win the game. Similarly a contract of 4 in a Major suit (10 tricks, and scoring 120) or 3 No Trumps (9 tricks and scoring 100) will also win a game. Contracts that score an immediate 100 or more points in one deal are called Game Contracts.

5. Play as Declarer.

          Once Dummy is exposed and your left hand opponent has made the opening you should, BEFORE PLAYING THE FIRST CARD FROM DUMMY, count the tricks you can take without losing the lead. These immediately-available tricks are referred to as top tricks. Consider the following hands. Imagine that you are East playing in a NO Trump contract:-

West           East

9 7 4 2          A K Q 3

9 8 6 2          A K Q J

Q J 10           9 8 2

K J                Q 9

You can take 3 tricks Spades and 4 tricks in Hearts without losing the lead, a total of 7 tricks.

Thus you can make a contract of 1 NT, and you can cash your top tricks. If, however, you were in a contract of 3 NT you would need 9 tricks.

How many top tricks are available in the following card combinations?

7 6 3          7 3 2          A 3 2          A Q 3         A Q 3 2       A K       Q J 6 4
A 4 2         A K 5          K 7 5          K 5 2          K 5             Q J        A K 3 2