4 Easy Steps to Being an Ace Bridge Player

If you’ve heard that Bridge is a complex game you’re right – but it’s also easy to learn. Once you have the rules under your belt you’ll enjoy this sophisticated game and be playing like a pro.

The aim in Bridge is simple; you score points by winning tricks.

• What’s known as "Contract" bridge is played by two teams of two.
• The partners face each other across the table, and are known as north-south pairings and east-west pairings.
• A standard pack of 52 cards is dealt out to the four players.

Players conduct an auction, bidding in turn for the "contract."

• If a player bids one diamond, they undertake to win seven of the 13 tricks or one more than half the available tricks with diamonds as trumps.
• The next player can then bid higher in terms of the number of tricks or the trump suit. If you rank these in descending order, they are spades, hearts, diamonds then clubs.
• If you have a strong hand spread over several suits, you can bid to play without a trump suit. This is known as a trump bid and it beats all suits.
• A player wins the contract, for instance four of clubs, when nobody outbids them. This "declarer" is committed to winning 10 tricks or four more than half with clubs as trumps.

• The player to the left of the declarer is known as the "opening lead," and they lay a card to begin.
• The declarer's partner known as the "dummy" then lays all their cards face up on the table, sorted into suits, and takes no further part in the round; the declarer plays for them.
• Each trick is played in the manner of the game whist. This means every player must follow suit if they can, and the highest card wins the trick.
• Once all 13 tricks have been played, points are awarded for each one over six. Points go to the declarer's team if their contract has been met or to the opposing pair if not.

As with other games of strategy, to become skilled at Bridge, you need to develop the ability to take into account all the options during the auction and trick play and to exploit the weaknesses of your opponents.

It’s not so much the hand you have but how you play it!

Learning Bridge takes time but is a rewarding and social game that will give you a great mental workout.