Bridge For Dummies®, 4th Edition
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016937574
ISBN 978-1-119-24782-1 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-24784-5 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-24783-8 (ebk)
Bridge, quite simply, is the best card game ever. No other game even comes close. Of course, I may be a little biased. I’ve been playing since I was 11 years old, when my best friend’s father asked our gambling group, “Why don’t you guys find a good game to play?” What I found was a great game, and I’ve never looked back.
What exactly is it about bridge that fascinates countless millions, has fascinated countless millions, and will continue to fascinate countless millions? Let me count the ways:
If you’re an absolute beginner, this is the book for you. I take you on a hand-held tour explaining the fundamentals in terms you can understand. I walk you through the different aspects of the game, showing you real-life examples so you can feel comfortable with the basics before you start to play.
If you have played (or tried to play) bridge before, this book still has much to offer you. I condense my years of experience with the game into tips and hints that can make you a better player. And you don’t have to read the book from start to finish if you don’t want to; just flip it open and find the chapter or part on the topic that you want to know more about.
If you’re a bridge novice, eventually you’ll have to play a few hands to feel like a real bridge player. This book offers an easy-to-follow path that will increase your comfort zone when you actually have to play on your own!
This edition includes an appendix that covers the bidding system most commonly used in the United Kingdom, called Acol. This appendix is a big help to up-and-coming players throughout the United Kingdom. The play of the hand sections in the main part of the book are standard fare throughout the world, and the section on defensive carding is also played by the majority of players worldwide as well.
No, not bridge “conventions” yet! The conventions in this section are the ones I use to help you navigate this book with maximum ease.
For example, I use a few symbols when referring to cards and bids. In a deck of cards, you have four suits: spades (♠), hearts (♥), diamonds (♦), and clubs (♣). When I refer to a particular card, I use abbreviations. For example, the six of spades becomes ♠6, and the jack of hearts transforms into ♥J. However, when discussing a bid or contract, I use 6♠, not ♠6.
I talk a lot about cards in this book. Sometimes I want to show you all the cards in your hand, and sometimes I want to show you the cards in every player’s hand (that’s 52 cards). Instead of listing those cards in the text, I set them aside in figures so you can more easily see who has which cards. The cards in a hand are separated by suit, making it even easier to see each player’s holdings.
In these figures, you may notice that each of the four players has a designated direction: You see a North, a South, an East, and a West. These directions make it easier for you to follow the play as it goes around the table. For most of the book, you are South. If I want you to see something from a different perspective, I tell you where you’re seated.
When I talk about bidding (especially in Parts 3 and 4), I use a table like the following to show you how a bidding sequence progresses.
South | West | North | East |
1♣ | 1NT | Pass | Pass |
Pass |
Don’t worry about what this bidding means. For now, I just want you to understand that you read these tables starting at the upper-left corner, continuing to the right until the fourth player, and then going to the next line, the first player’s second bid. For example, for the preceding sequence, the bidding starts with the first player, South (who bids 1♣) and continues to the right until the fourth player, East (who passes). Then the sequence goes back to South, the first player, who passes.
To top it off, I use a few other general conventions:
Monofont
is used for web addresses.At times, you may think I overrun you with rules, but I’m just giving you guidelines, something to get you started. When you begin to play, you’ll see occasional exceptions to these guidelines. In bridge, “always” and “never” don’t apply. Just remember that bridge is based most of all on common sense. After reading this book, you’ll have a good idea of the basics and what to do when you encounter new situations.
I’m assuming that you’re not going to understand everything you read the first time around. Nobody does. Think of bridge as a foreign language. Patience, patience, patience.
I’m also assuming that you will go out and find three other people who want to play bridge so you can practice. This is the ultimate bliss for a beginner.
And I’m assuming you’re either someone who wants to understand the basics of bridge or a seasoned player who wants to pick up a few new techniques. I hope I’m not foolishly assuming that I can help both groups.
The icons used in this book highlight important topics and help you pick out those that interest you.
In addition to what you’re reading right now, this product also comes with a free access-anywhere Cheat Sheet that gives you a rundown of the four phases of a bridge hand, bidding tips, bridge etiquette, and a chart of the points scored when you make your contract. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com
and search for “Bridge Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.
You can start anywhere you like and read the chapters in any order. If you are completely new to bridge, your best bet is to head straight to Chapter 1 so you can get a feel for the game.
I describe many plays and sample hands throughout this book. To get a real feel for the game, try reading the book with a deck of cards nearby. In fact, you can save yourself weeks or months of time if you lay out the cards that you see in the example diagrams and play the cards as I suggest.
Better yet, try to find three other players who want to play this exciting game. You can read the book together and actually practice playing the hands as you read. Experience is the best teacher, and if you’re not ready for a real hand, you can use the material in this book as a kind of dry run.
If, during the course of reading this book, you feel like you just have to get in on the action, feel free to jump into any game you can find. Play as often as you can. It’s the best way to learn. You can find information about bridge clubs and tournaments in Chapter 21.
Finally, log on to the Net for more bridge info or even online play. Yes, you can play online! Check out Chapter 22 for more on this topic.
Part 1
IN THIS PART …
Get an idea of what you need to play bridge plus an overview of how the game should be played.
Become familiar with the concept of sure tricks and how they can help you in the play of the hand.
Discover how to establish winning tricks at notrump play.
Pick up additional techniques to refine your notrump play.
Chapter 1
IN THIS CHAPTER
Gathering what you need to play bridge
Taking a quick look at the basic points of the game
Building your bridge skills with available resources
You made a good choice, a very good choice, about learning to play bridge. Perhaps I’m biased, but bridge is the best card game ever. You can play bridge all over the world, and wherever you go, you can make new friends automatically by starting up a game of bridge. Bridge can be more than a game — it can be a common bond.
In this chapter, I talk about some basic concepts that you need to have under your belt to get started playing bridge. Consider this chapter your first step into the game. If you read this whole chapter, you’ll graduate from Bridge Boot Camp. Sorry — you don’t get a diploma. But you do get the thrill of knowing what you need to know to start playing bridge.
Before you can begin to play bridge, you need to outfit yourself with some basic supplies. Actually, you may already have some of these items around the house, just begging for you to use them in your bridge game. What do you need? Here’s your bottom-line list:
A deck has 52 cards divided into four suits: spades (♠), hearts (♥), diamonds (♦), and clubs (♣).
The 13 cards in a suit all have a rank — that is, they have a pecking order. The ace is the highest-ranking card, followed by the king, the queen, the jack, and the 10, on down to the lowly 2 (also called the deuce).
In bridge, the players are nameless souls — they are known by directions. When you sit down at a table with three pals to play bridge, imagine that the table is a compass. You’re sitting at due South, your partner sits across from you in the North seat, and your opponents sit East and West.
Figure 1-1 diagrams the playing table. Get acquainted with this diagram: You see some form of it throughout this book, not to mention in newspaper columns and magazines. For me, this diagram was a blessing in disguise — I never could get my directions straight until I started playing bridge.
First and foremost, bridge is a partnership game; you swim together and you sink together. Your opponents are in the same boat. In bridge, you don’t score points individually — you score points as a team. (I cover scoring in Chapter 20, and I suggest you just ignore keeping score until you have a handle on the ins and outs of the game.)
Act 1. Dealing
Act 2. Bidding
Act 3. Playing
Act 4. Scoring
The game starts with each player seated facing his or her partner. The cards are shuffled and placed on the table face down. Each player selects a card, and whoever picks the highest card deals the first hand. The four cards on the table are returned to the deck, the deck is reshuffled, and the player to the dealer’s right cuts the cards and returns them to the dealer. (After each hand, the deal rotates to the left so one person doesn’t get stuck doing all the dealing.)
The cards are dealt one at a time, starting with the player to the dealer’s left and moving in a clockwise rotation until each player has 13 cards.
Bidding in bridge can be compared to an auction. The auctioneer tells you what the minimum bid is, and the first bid starts from that point or higher. Each successive bid must be higher than the last, until someone bids so high that everyone else wants out. When you want out of the bidding in bridge, you say “Pass.” After three consecutive players say “Pass,” the bidding is over. However, if you pass and someone else makes a bid, just as at an auction, you can reenter the bidding. If nobody makes an opening bid and all four players pass consecutively, the bidding is over, the hand is reshuffled and redealt, and a new auction begins.
In real-life auctions, people often bid for silly things, such as John F. Kennedy’s golf clubs or Andy Warhol’s cookie jars. In bridge, you bid for something really valuable — tricks. The whole game revolves around tricks.
Some of you may remember the card game of War from when you were a kid. (If you don’t remember, just pretend that you do and follow along.) In War, two players divide the deck between them. Each player takes a turn placing a card face up on the table. The player with the higher card takes the trick.
In bridge, four people each place a card face up on the table, and the highest card in the suit that has been led takes the trick. The player who takes the trick collects the four cards, puts them face down in a neat pile, and leads to the next trick. Because each player has 13 cards, 13 tricks are fought over and won or lost on each hand.
The last bid (the one followed by three passes) is called the final contract. No, that’s not something the mafia puts out on you. It’s simply the number of tricks that the bidding team must take to score points (see Parts 3 and 4 for more about bidding and Chapter 20 for more about scoring).
After the bidding for tricks is over, the play begins. Either your team or the other team makes the final bid. Because you are the star of this book, assume that your team makes the final bid for nine tricks. Therefore, your goal is to win at least nine of the 13 possible tricks.
If you take nine (or more) tricks, your team scores points. If you take fewer than nine tricks, you’re penalized, and your opponents score points. In the following sections, I describe a few important aspects of playing a hand of bridge.
After the bidding determines who the declarer is (the one who plays the hand), that person’s partner becomes the dummy. The players to the declarer’s left and right are considered the defenders. The West player (assuming that you’re South) leads, or puts down the first card face up in the middle of the table. That first card is called the opening lead, and it can be any card of West’s choosing.
When the opening lead lands on the table, the game really begins to roll. The next person to play is the dummy — but instead of playing a card, the dummy puts her 13 cards face up on the table in four neat vertical columns starting with the highest card, one column for each suit, and then bows out of the action entirely. After she puts down her cards (also called the dummy), she says and does nothing, leaving the other three people to play the rest of the hand. The dummy always puts down the dummy. What a game!
Because the dummy is no longer involved in the action, each time it’s the dummy’s turn to play, you, the declarer, must physically take a card from the dummy and put it in the middle of the table. In addition, you must play a card from your own hand when it’s your turn.
The fact that the declarer gets stuck with playing both hands while the dummy is off munching on snacks may seem a bit unfair. But you do have an advantage over the defenders: You get to see your partner’s cards before you play, which allows you to plan a strategy of how to win those nine tricks (or however many tricks you need to make the final contract).
The opening lead determines which suit the other three players must play. Each of the players must follow suit, meaning that they must play a card in the suit that was led if they have one. For example, pretend that the opening lead from West is a heart. Down comes the dummy, and you (and everyone else at the table) can see the dummy’s hearts as well as your own hearts. Because you must play the same suit that is led if you have a card in that suit, you have to play a heart, any heart that you want, from the dummy. You place the heart of your choice face up on the table and wait for your right-hand opponent (East, assuming that the dummy is North) to play a heart. After she plays a heart, you play a heart from your hand. Voilà: Four hearts now sit on the table. The first trick of the game! Whoever has played the highest heart takes the trick. One trick down and only 12 to go — you’re on a roll!
What if a player doesn’t have a card in the suit that has been led? Then, and only then, can a player choose a card, any card, from another suit and play it. This move is called a discard. When you discard, you’re literally throwing away a card from another suit. A discard can never win a trick.
In general, you discard worthless cards that can’t take tricks, saving good-looking cards that may take tricks later. Sometimes, however, the bidding designates a trump suit (think wild cards). In that case, when a suit is led and you don’t have it, you can either discard from another suit or take the trick by playing a card from the trump suit. For more info, see “Understanding Notrump and Trump Play” later in this chapter.
Approximately 25 percent of the time, you’ll be the declarer; 25 percent of the time, you’ll be the dummy; and the remaining 50 percent of the time, you’ll be on defense! You need to have a good idea of which card to lead to the first trick and how to continue after you see the dummy. You want to be able to take all the tricks your side has coming, trying to defeat the contract. For example, if your opponents bid for nine tricks, you need at least five tricks to defeat the contract. Think of taking five tricks as your goal. Remember, defenders can’t see each other’s hands, so they have to use signals (legal ones) to tell their partner what they have. They do this by making informative leads and discards that announce to the partner (and the declarer) what they have in the suit they are playing.
I show you winning defensive techniques in Part 5.
The player who plays the highest card in the suit that has been led wins the trick. That player sweeps up the four cards and puts them in a neat stack, face down, a little off to the side. The declarer “keeps house” for his team by stacking tricks into piles so everyone can see how many tricks that team has won. The defender (your opponent) who wins the first trick does the same for his or her side.
The play continues until all 13 tricks have been played. After you play to the last trick, each team counts up the number of tricks it has won.
After the smoke clears and the tricks are counted, you know soon enough whether the declarer’s team made its contract (that is, took at least the number of tricks they have contracted for). The score is then registered — see Chapter 20 for more about scoring.
After the hand has been scored, the deal moves one player to the left. So if South dealt the first hand, West is now the dealer. Then North deals the next hand, then East, and then the deal reverts back to South.
Have you ever played a card game that has wild cards? When you play with wild cards, playing a wild card automatically wins the trick for you. Sometimes wild cards can be jokers, deuces, or aces. It doesn’t matter what the card is; if you have one, you know that you have a sure winner. In bridge, you have wild cards, too, called trump cards. However, in bridge, the trump cards are really wild, because they change from hand to hand, depending on the bidding.
The bidding determines whether a hand will be played with trump cards or in a notrump contract (a hand with no trump cards). If the final bid happens to end in some suit as opposed to notrump, that suit becomes the trump suit for the hand. For example, suppose that the final bid is 4♠. This bid determines that spades are trump (or wild) for the entire hand. For more about playing a hand at a trump contract, see Part 2.
More contracts are played at notrump than in any of the four suits. When the final bid ends in notrump, the highest card played in the suit that has been led wins the trick. All the hands that you play in Part 1 are played at notrump.
You know, you’re not in this bridge thing alone. You’ll find help around every corner. You won’t believe how much is available for interested beginners.
To find out more about expanding your bridge experiences, head for Part 6.
Chapter 2
IN THIS CHAPTER
Identifying sure tricks in your hand and the dummy’s hand
Adding sure tricks to your trick pile
If you’re sitting at a blackjack table in Las Vegas and someone catches you counting cards, you’re a goner. However, if you’re at a bridge table and you don’t count cards, you’re also a goner, but in a different way.
When you play a bridge hand, you need to count several things; most importantly, you need to count your tricks. The game of bridge revolves around tricks. You bid for tricks, you take as many tricks as you can in the play of the hand, and your opponents try to take as many tricks as they can on defense. Tricks, tricks, tricks.
In this chapter, I show you how to spot a sure trick in its natural habitat — in your hand or in the dummy. I also show you how to take those sure tricks to your best advantage. (See Chapter 1 for an introduction to tricks and the dummy.)
The old phrase “You need to know where you are to know where you’re going” comes to mind when you’re playing bridge. After you know your final contract (how many tricks you need to take), you then need to figure out how to win all the tricks necessary to make your contract.
Depending on which cards you and your partner hold, your side may hold some definite winners, called sure tricks — tricks you can take at any time right from the get-go. You should be very happy to see sure tricks either in your hand or in the dummy. You can never have too many sure tricks.
Sure tricks depend on whether your team has the ace in a particular suit. Because you get to see the dummy after the opening lead, you can see quite clearly whether any aces are lurking in the dummy. If you notice an ace, the highest ranking card in the suit, why not get greedy and look for a king, the second-highest ranking card in the same suit? Two sure tricks are better than one!
In Figure 2-1, your final contract is for nine tricks. After you settle on the final contract, the play begins. West makes the opening lead and decides to lead the ♠Q. Down comes the dummy, and you swing into action, but first you need to do a little planning. You need to count your sure tricks. What follows in this section is a sample hand and diagrams where I demonstrate how to count sure tricks.
You count your sure tricks one suit at a time. After you know how many tricks you have, you can make further plans about how to win additional tricks. I walk you through each suit in the following sections, showing you how to count sure tricks.
When the dummy comes down, you can see that your partner has three small spades (♠7, ♠6, and ♠5) and you have the ♠A and ♠K, as you see in Figure 2-2.
Because the ♠A and the ♠K are the two highest spades in the suit, you can count two sure spade tricks. (If you or the dummy also held the ♠Q, you could count three sure spade tricks.)
Figure 2-3 shows the hearts that you hold in this hand. Notice that you and the dummy have the six highest hearts in the deck: the ♥AKQJ109 (the highest five of these are known as honor cards).
Your wonderful array of hearts is worth only three sure tricks because both hands have the same number of cards. When you play a heart from one hand, you must play a heart from the other hand. As a result, after you play the ♥AKQ, the dummy won’t have any more hearts left and neither will you. You wind up with only three heart tricks because the suit is equally divided (you have the same number of cards in both hands).
In Figure 2-4, you have only one heart in each hand: the ♥A and the ♥K. All you can take is one lousy heart trick. If you lead the ♥A, you have to play the ♥K from the dummy. If the dummy leads the ♥K first, you have to “overtake” it with your ♥A. This is the only time you can have the ace and king of the same suit between your hand and dummy and take only one trick. It’s too sad for words.
In Figure 2-5, you can see that South holds four diamonds (♦K, ♦Q, ♦J, and ♦5), while North holds only two (♦A and ♦2). When one partner holds more cards in a suit, the suit is unequally divided.
Strong unequally divided suits offer oodles of tricks, provided that you play the suit correctly. For example, take a look at how things play out with the cards in Figure 2-5. Suppose you begin by leading the ♦5 from your hand and play the ♦A from the dummy, which is one trick. Now the lead is in the dummy because the dummy has taken the trick. Continue by playing ♦2 and then play the ♦K from your hand. Now that the lead is back in your hand, play the ♦Q and then the ♦J. Don’t look now, but you’ve just won tricks with each of your honor cards — four in all. Notice if you had played the king first and then the ♦5 over to dummy’s ace, dummy would have no more diamonds and there you’d be with the good queen and jack of diamonds in your hand, perhaps marooned forever!
When the dummy comes down, you may see that neither you nor the dummy has the ace in a particular suit, such as the club suit in Figure 2-6. You have ♣4, ♣3, and ♣2; the dummy has ♣J, ♣10, ♣9, ♣6, and ♣5.
Not all that pretty, is it? The opponents have the ♣A, ♣K, and ♣Q. You have no sure tricks in clubs because you don’t have the ♣A. If neither your hand nor the dummy has the ace in a particular suit, you can’t count any sure tricks in that suit.
After you assess how many sure tricks you have in each suit, you can do some reckoning. You need to add up all your sure tricks and see if you have enough to make your final contract.
Just to get some practice at adding up tricks, go ahead and add up your sure tricks from the hand shown in Figure 2-1. Remember to look at what’s in the dummy’s hand as well as your own cards. The total number of tricks is what’s important, and you have the following:
You’re in luck — you have the nine tricks that you need to make your final contract. Now all you have to do is take them. You can do it.
More often than not, you won’t have enough sure tricks to make your contract. You can see what will become of you in Chapter 3, which deals with various techniques of notrump play designed to teach you how to develop extra tricks when you don’t have all the top cards in a suit.
Having sure tricks is only half the battle; taking those sure tricks is the other half. In the following sections, I show you how to do it.
When you have enough sure tricks between the two hands to make your contract, you don’t have to take the tricks in any particular order. However, a reliable guideline to get you off on the right foot is to start by first playing winning cards in your strongest suit (the suit that offers you the most tricks). In the case of the hand shown in Figure 2-1, start by playing diamonds.
Recall that West’s opening lead was the ♠Q. Suppose you take the trick with the ♠A, and now the lead is in your hand. You then take your four diamond tricks (♦AKQJ), and then you can take three more heart tricks by playing the ♥AKQ. Finally, you take your ninth trick with the ♠K. Your opponents take the last four tricks. No big deal — you’ve taken nine tricks and made your contract.
The cards in Figure 2-7 show another example of the advantage of starting with the short-side honor cards.
In the example shown in Figure 2-7, you decide to play spades, an unequally divided suit. You also (smartly) decide to first play the high honors from the short side (your hand is the short side because you have three cards to dummy’s four cards). Play the ♠A and then the ♠K. You remain with the ♠2, and the dummy has two winning tricks, the ♠Q and ♠J. Lead your ♠2 and take the trick with the dummy’s ♠J. The lead is now in the dummy, and you can take a fourth spade trick with the ♠Q. You have just added four tricks to your trick pile. They can’t stop you now!
Chapter 3
IN THIS CHAPTER
Getting the most out of your lower honor cards
Squeezing extra tricks from your small cards
Winning at bridge is a breeze if you always have enough sure tricks to make your contract. The sad news is that you seldom have enough. You must come up with other ways of taking tricks, ways that may mean temporarily giving up the lead to your opponents. In this chapter, I show you clever techniques to win those extra tricks that you may need to make your contract in notrump play. Specifically, I explain how to establish tricks with lower honor cards and take tricks with small cards. (Chapter 4 explains how to outsmart your opponents by sidestepping their high honor cards and cutting their lines of communication.)
Chapter 1