Bridge Bridge http://www.sfetcu.com/taxonomy/term/642/atom/feed 2008-07-31T09:16:45-06:00 Auction bridge http://www.sfetcu.com/content/Auction-bridge 2008-10-21T11:37:44-06:00 2008-10-21T11:37:44-06:00 nicolae Card shuffling

The card game auction bridge was developed from straight bridge and was a predecessor to contract bridge. Around the same time five hundred was created by the United States Playing Card Company in 1904.

]]> Card shuffling

The card game auction bridge was developed from straight bridge and was a predecessor to contract bridge. Around the same time five hundred was created by the United States Playing Card Company in 1904.

The main difference between auction bridge and contract bridge is that in auction bridge a game is scored whenever the required number of tricks (9 in No Trump, 10 in Hearts or Spades, 11 in Clubs or Diamonds) is scored. In contract bridge the number of points from tricks taken past the bid do not count towards making a game. Because of this, accurate bidding becomes much more important in contract bridge: partners have to use the bidding to tell each other what their suits and strengths are, so a judgement can be made as to what the chances are of making a game.

Play

The bidding, play and laws were the same as contract bridge.

Scoring

A scoring table for Auction Bridge, from the Official Rules of Card Games, 1973 is as follows:

Odd-tricks: no trumps are worth 10; spades 9; hearts 8; diamonds 7; clubs 6.

Game was 30 points, and only odd-tricks counted towards game. The first side to win two games won the rubber and scored a 250 point bonus.

Each under-trick was worth 50 points to the opponents.

Small slam was worth 50 points; grand slam was worth 100 points.

Honours were scored as follows: 4 trump honours in one hand 80; 5 trump honours or 4 aces in no trumps in one hand 100. For an addition honour in partner's hand, or for 3 or more honours divided between both hands 10 each.

Contracts could be doubled and redoubled, which doubled or quadrupled the odd-trick and under-trick amounts. In addition there was a bonus of 50 points for making a doubled contract and for each over-trick, this was doubled if the contract was redoubled.

Links

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

]]> Beer card http://www.sfetcu.com/content/Beer-card 2008-09-25T14:46:15-06:00 2008-09-25T14:46:15-06:00 nicolae 7 diamondsThe beer card or the 7 of diamonds is a card in the card game of bridge which is given a special importance in popular bridge sub-culture. The "beer card rule" is not an official part of the rules of bridge but it is played commonly in universities in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

The basic rule is that, if a player wins the last trick of the hand with the 7 of diamonds, his partner must buy them a pint of beer. The additional requirements vary depending whether the beer card trick winner is the declarer or one of the defenders. For the declarer, the requirements are that:

]]> 7 diamondsThe beer card or the 7 of diamonds is a card in the card game of bridge which is given a special importance in popular bridge sub-culture. The "beer card rule" is not an official part of the rules of bridge but it is played commonly in universities in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

The basic rule is that, if a player wins the last trick of the hand with the 7 of diamonds, his partner must buy them a pint of beer. The additional requirements vary depending whether the beer card trick winner is the declarer or one of the defenders. For the declarer, the requirements are that:

  • Must make contract,
  • Must win last trick with the ♦7,
  • Diamonds must not be trumps (though some people play that only diamond part scores are excluded),
  • Must take a justifiable line on the contract to win as many tricks as possible (i.e. not lose tricks to setup the beer or in order to keep the 7 until the last trick),

For a defender, the requirements are that:

  • Contract must be defeated
  • Must win last trick with the beer card
  • Diamonds must not be trumps
  • Must try to win as many tricks as possible (i.e. not lose tricks to setup the beer or in order to keep the 7 until the last trick)

If the contract is doubled then two beers are earned. If the contract is redoubled then four beers are earned.

Example

♠ 7
♥ Q832
♦ AKQT9
♣ Q76

N

S
♠ Q832
♥ AK
♦ J732
♣ AK5

South plays in the inferior contract of three notrump, against which the opponents cash the first four spade tricks. To maximize the chance of getting a beer, declarer must discard two top diamond honors and a small club from dummy. If the diamonds do not break 4-0, it's straightforward to cash nine winners, ending with the beer card. If the diamonds don't break, there's a chance that a defender will be pseudosqueezed and choose to discard a diamond. For declarer to discard three diamond honors risks losing the contract unncessarily, and so forfeits the beer, even if diamonds turn out to break normally.



 

Links

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

]]> Hand Evaluation http://www.sfetcu.com/content/Hand-Evaluation 2008-09-25T14:37:21-06:00 2008-09-25T14:37:21-06:00 nicolae Hand Evaluation

]]> Hand Evaluation

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]]> Bridge Game - e-books and free content http://www.sfetcu.com/content/Bridge-Game-e-books-and-free-content 2008-09-07T21:16:49-06:00 2008-09-07T21:16:49-06:00 nicolae Bidding box

A comprehensive guide of bridge game: online games, variants, suits, hand evaluation, bidding systems, techniques, strategy, tactics.

At its core, bridge is a game of skill played with randomly dealt cards, which makes each deal a game of chance. This is conducive to play as a "friendly game" among four players.

]]> Bidding box

A comprehensive guide of bridge game: online games, variants, suits, hand evaluation, bidding systems, techniques, strategy, tactics.

At its core, bridge is a game of skill played with randomly dealt cards, which makes each deal a game of chance. This is conducive to play as a "friendly game" among four players.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.

Bridge Game eBook

Bridge Game for HTML

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Bridge Game for CPG-Nuke

Bridge Game for PostNuke

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Bridge Game for Mambo and Joomla

]]> Play techniques in bridge game http://www.sfetcu.com/content/Play-techniques-bridge-game 2008-08-19T18:16:11-06:00 2008-08-19T18:16:11-06:00 nicolae Let's Play Bridge

Terence Reese, a prolific author of bridge books, points out that there are only four ways of taking a trick by force, and two of these are very easy:

]]> Let's Play Bridge

Terence Reese, a prolific author of bridge books, points out that there are only four ways of taking a trick by force, and two of these are very easy:

  • playing a high card that no one else can beat
  • trumping an opponent's high card
  • establishing long cards (the last cards in a suit will take tricks if the opponents don't have the suit and are unable to trump)
  • playing for the opponents' high cards to be in a particular position (if their ace is in front of your king, your king may take a trick)

Nearly all trick-taking techniques in bridge can be reduced to one of these four methods.

The optimum play of the cards can require much thought and experience, and is too complicated to describe in a short article. However, some basic ideas of probability may be considered:

Some of the most important probabilities have to do with the position of high cards.

  • The probability that a given opponent holds one particular card, e.g. the king: 50%
  • The probability that a given opponent holds two particular cards, e.g. the king and the queen: approximately 25%
  • The probability that a given opponent holds at least one of two particular cards, e.g. the king or the queen: approximately 75%

When developing long cards, it is important to know the likelihood that the opponents' cards in the suit are evenly divided between them. Generally speaking, if they hold an even number of cards, they are unlikely to be exactly divided; if the opponents have an odd number in the suit, the cards will probably be divided as evenly as possible. For example, if declarer and dummy have eight trumps between them, the opponents' trumps are probably (68% chance) divided 3-2 (one opponent with three trumps, the other with two) and trumps can be drawn in three rounds. If declarer is trying to play with a seven card trump suit, it is more likely that the outstanding trumps are divided 4-2 (48%) than that the cards are evenly divided 3-3 between the opponents (36%).

Basic techniques by declarer

When new to the game, a player should be familiar with these strategies for playing the hand:

  • trumping
  • crossruff
  • establishing long suits
  • finesse
  • holdup (mostly at NT contracts)
  • managing entries
  • drawing trumps
Advanced techniques by declarer

Someone who plays regularly in tournaments should be familiar with these concepts:

  • counting the hand (tracking the distribution of suits and high cards in the opponents' hands using inferences from the bidding and play)
  • coup
  • duck
  • dummy reversal
  • endplay
  • principle of restricted choice
  • safety play
  • squeeze
Basic techniques by defenders
  • opening lead
  • when to lead trump
Advanced techniques by defenders
  • avoiding an endplay or squeeze
  • counting the hand (tracking the distribution of suits and high cards in the unseen hands using inferences from the bidding and play)
  • false carding
  • opening lead—using information from auction
  • signaling
  • uppercut

Example

  ♠ A6  
♥ KQ1053
♦ 83
♣ AJ85
♠ 10954

N

W         E

S

 ♠ KQ872
♥ 96 ♥ A2
♦ KQ9 ♦ J42
♣ K964 ♣ 1072
  ♠ J3  
♥ J874
♦ A10765
♣ Q3

The cards are dealt as in the diagram, and South is the dealer. As neither South nor West have sufficient high card strength to open the bidding, North opens with the bid of 1♥, which denotes a long suit and at least 12 high card points. East overcalls with 1♠, South supports partner's suit with 2♥, and West also supports spades with 2♠. North inserts a game try of 3♣, inviting the partner to bid the game of 4♥ with good club support and overall values, and South complies, having extra values in form of ♦A, fourth trump, and doubleton Queen of clubs. The bidding was:

West North East South
      Pass
Pass 1♥ 1♠ 2♥
2♠ 3♣ Pass 4♥
Pass Pass Pass  

In bidding, North-South were trying to investigate if their cards are worthy for making a game, which yields bonus points if bid and made. East-West were competing with spades, hoping to play a contract in spades at a low level. 4♥ is the final contract, 10 tricks being required for N-S to make with hearts as trumps.

West (left of North, who is the declarer, having been first to bid hearts) has to make the opening lead and chooses the King of spades, playing it face down. After that, South lies his cards on the table and becomes dummy; West turns his leading card face up, and the declarer makes a plan of playing: the bottom line is, since he has to concede trump ace, a spade, and a diamond, he must not lose a trick in clubs.

After a while, the declarer dictates South to play a small spade. West plays low (small card) and North takes the ♠A, gaining the lead. He proceeds by drawing trumps, leading the ♥K. West takes his Ace and cashes the ♠Q. Since he may not continue spades for fear of a ruff and discard, he plays a diamond. Declarer ducks from the table, and East scores the ♦Q. Not having anything better to do, he returns the remaining trump, taken in North's hand. North enters the dummy using ♦A, and leads ♣Q in an attempt to finesse West's King. West covers with the King, North takes the Ace, and proceeds by caching now high ♣J, then ruffs a small club with a dummy's trump. He ruffs a diamond in hand for an entry back, and ruffs the last club in dummy. Finally, he claims the remaining tricks by showing his hand, as it now contains only high trumps and there's no need to continue the play.

(The trick-by-trick notation can be also expressed using a table, but textual explanation is usually preferred, for reader's convenience. Plays of small cards or discards are not explicated, unless they were important for the outcome).

North-South have scored the required 10 tricks, and their opponents took the remaining 3. The contract is fulfilled, and North enters +620 for his side (North-South are in charge for bookkeeping in duplicate tournaments) in the traveling sheet. Every player returns his own cards into the board, and the next deal is played.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

]]> Bridge Game Strategy - Bidding systems and conventions http://www.sfetcu.com/content/Bridge-Game-Strategy-Bidding-systems-and-conventions 2008-08-08T14:54:34-06:00 2008-08-08T14:54:34-06:00 nicolae US Playing card co playing cards

Much complexity in bridge arises from the difficulty of successfully arriving at a good final contract in the auction. This is a fundamentally difficult problem: the two players in a partnership must try to communicate enough information about their hands to ultimately arrive at a makeable contract, but the information they can exchange is restricted in two ways:

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Much complexity in bridge arises from the difficulty of successfully arriving at a good final contract in the auction. This is a fundamentally difficult problem: the two players in a partnership must try to communicate enough information about their hands to ultimately arrive at a makeable contract, but the information they can exchange is restricted in two ways:

  • Information may only be passed by the calls made and later by the cards played, and not by any other means.
  • The agreed-upon meaning of all information passed must be available to the opponents.

A bidding system is the typical solution to this problem: each player evaluates his or her own hand and makes bids to give or request information from their partner, with the goal of eventually arriving at an ideal contract. Bids, doubles, redoubles, and even passes can be either natural or conventional. A natural bid is a proposal to reach a contract in the named suit. A conventional bid is an attempt to communicate, offering and/or asking for information about the partnerships' hands, that is not intended to be a proposal for the final contract. A wide variety of bidding systems have been developed over the course of the 20th century. However, most modern systems have well-established common ground.

First of all, a fairly universal system of high card points is used to give a basic evaluation of the strength of a hand. Aces are counted as 4 points, kings as 3, queens as 2, and jacks as 1 point; therefore, the deck contains 40 points. 26 points shared between partners is considered sufficient for a partnership to bid, and make, game in a major or in no trump. In addition, the distribution of the cards in a hand into suits may also contribute to the strength of a hand and be counted as distribution points. Because 26 points is usually considered sufficient to make game, 13 points in one hand is considered sufficient to open the bidding (that is, make the first bid in the auction), by bidding 1 of a suit.

A one no trump opening bid reflects a hand that has relatively balanced suits and high cards, and usually refers to a hand with 15-17 high card points. In some systems the number of points expected from a 1NT opening bid changes, but it always refers to a relatively narrow range of points.

Opening bids of 2 or higher are reserved for two types of bids: unusually strong bids and preemptive bids. Unusually strong bids communicate an especially high number of points; the availability of unusually strong bids allows a player with a weak hand to safely pass when their partner opens the bidding at one of a suit. Preemptive bids are often made with weak hands that especially favor a particular suit. For instance, with a hand of ♠ AK98742 ♥ 73 ♦ 42 ♣ 76, an opening bid of 3♠ is a very reasonable sacrificial bid, designed to make it difficult for the opposing team to determine a contract for themselves (which is good here, since they are likely to have the bulk of the points).

Most systems include the weak two bid convention, in which opening bids of 2♥, 2♦, or 2♠ are reserved for preemptive bids, while 2♣ is used for very strong hands. This is a first example of a conventional bid: an opening bid of 2♣ in no way suggests 2♣ as a final contract: indeed, in these systems 2♣ may be bid without any clubs.

Another common convention is the 5-card major convention, in which an opening bid of 1♥ or 1♠ promises at least 5 cards in that suit. This leads to some awkward bids, for instance, when a player has four cards in each major, and is forced to open the bidding with 1 of a 3-card minor suit.

Doubles are sometimes used in bidding conventions. A natural, or penalty double, is one used to try to gain extra points when the defenders are confident of setting (defeating) the contract. The most common example of a conventional double is the takeout double of a low-level bid, implying support for the unbid suits and asking partner to choose one of them.

There are many other conventions. Some of the most famous are Stayman, Jacoby transfers and Blackwood.

Bidding systems depart from these basic ideas in varying degrees. Standard American, for instance, is a collection of conventions designed to bolster the accuracy and power of these basic ideas, while Precision Club is a highly conventional system that uses the 1♣ opening bid for strong hands (but sets the threshold rather lower than most other systems) and requires many other changes in order to handle other situations. Many experts today use a system called 2/1 game forcing. In the UK, Acol is the standard system. There are even a variety of techniques used for hand evaluation. The most basic is the Milton Work point count, but this is sometimes augmented by other guidelines such as losing trick count, law of total tricks or Zar Points.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

]]> History of the contract bridge http://www.sfetcu.com/content/History-contract-bridge 2008-07-31T09:16:45-06:00 2008-07-31T09:16:45-06:00 nicolae The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge

A number of card games similar to whist can be traced all the way back to the early 16th century. They were all trick-taking games with a variety of variations. Whist became the dominant form, and enjoyed a loyal following for centuries.

]]> The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge

A number of card games similar to whist can be traced all the way back to the early 16th century. They were all trick-taking games with a variety of variations. Whist became the dominant form, and enjoyed a loyal following for centuries.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word bridge is the English pronunciation of biritch, an older name of the game of unknown Middle Eastern origin; the oldest known rule book, from 1886, calls it "Biritch, or Russian Whist". The OED reports speculation that the word may come from a Turkish term bir-üç, or "one-three", supposedly referring to the one exposed and three concealed hands.) This game, known today by the retronyms bridge-whist and straight bridge, became popular in the United States and the UK in the 1890s.

Biritch featured several significant developments from Whist: the trump suit was either chosen by the dealer, or he could pass the choice to his partner; there was a call of no trumps; and the dealer's partner laid his cards on the table as dummy to be played by the dealer. It also featured other characteristics found in modern bridge: points scored above and below the line; game was 3NT, 4H and 5D (although 8 club tricks and 15 spade tricks were needed!); the score could be doubled and redoubled; there were slam bonuses.

In 1904 auction bridge arose where the players bid in a competitive auction to decide the contract and declarer. The object became to make at least as many tricks as were contracted for and penalties were introduced for failing to do so.

The modern game of contract bridge was the result of innovations to the scoring of auction bridge made by Harold Stirling Vanderbilt and others. The most significant change was that only tricks contracted for were counted below the line towards game and for slam bonuses, which resulted in bidding becoming much more challenging and interesting. Also new was the concept of vulnerability to make it more expensive to sacrifice to protect the lead in a rubber, and the various scores were adjusted to produce a more balanced game. Vanderbilt wrote down his rules in 1925, and within a few years contract bridge had so supplanted other forms of the game that "bridge" became synonymous with "contract bridge."

These days most bridge played is tournament bridge.

Tournaments

Tournaments were possible because of duplicate bridge, a variation of the game where many sets of players play with the same hands. Duplicate had occasionally been used for whist matches, as early as 1857. For some reason, duplicate was not thought to be suitable for bridge, and so it wasn't until the 1920s that (auction) bridge tournaments became popular.

In 1925 when contract bridge first evolved, bridge tournaments were becoming popular, but the rules were somewhat in flux, and several different organizing bodies were involved in tournament sponsorship: the American Bridge League (formerly the American Auction Bridge League, which changed its name in 1929), the American Whist League, and the United States Bridge Federation. In 1935, the first officially recognized world championship was held. By 1937, however, the American Contract Bridge League had come to power (a union of the ABL and the USBF), and it remains the principal organizing body for bridge tournaments in North America. In 1958, the World Bridge Federation was founded, as bridge had become an international activity.

Today, the ACBL has over 160,000 members and runs 1100 tournaments per year with 3200 officially-associated bridge clubs.

Bidding boxes and bidding screens

Bidding box Bidding box

In tournaments, "bidding boxes" are frequently used. A bidding box is a box of cards, each bearing the name of one of the legal calls in bridge. A player wishing to make a call displays the appropriate card from the box, rather than making a verbal declaration. This prevents unauthorized information from being conveyed via voice inflection. In top national and international events, "bidding screens" are used. These are diagonal screens which are placed across the table, preventing a player from seeing his partner during the game.

Important Bridge Players

Terence Reese
Charles Goren
Samuel Stayman
Ely Culbertson
Oswald Jacoby
Helen Sobel Smith
Easley Blackwood Sr.
Giorgio Belladonna
Benito Garozzo
Bob Hamman
Omar Sharif
Jeff Meckstroth
Eric Rodwell

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

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