Chapter 1

Going to Bridge Boot Camp

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.

Starting a Game with the Right Stuff

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:

• Four warm bodies, including yours. Just find three friends who are interested in playing. Don't worry that no one knows what he's doing. Everyone begins knowing nothing; some of us even end up that way.
• A table - a square one is best. In a pinch, you can play on a blanket, on a bed, indoors, outdoors, or even on a computer if you can't find a game.
• One deck of playing cards (remove the jokers).
• A pencil and a piece of paper to keep score on. You can use any old piece of paper - a legal pad, the back of a grocery list, or even an ancient piece of papyrus will do.

I've been playing bridge for a long time now, so let me offer you a few hints on how you can make getting started with the game a little easier:

• Watch a real bridge game to observe the mechanics of the game.
• Follow the sample hands in this book by laying out the cards to correspond with the cards in the figures. Doing so gives you a feel for the cards and makes the explanations easier to follow.

Ranking the Cards

A deck has 52 cards divided into four suits: spades (), hearts (), diamonds (), and clubs ().

Each suit has 13 cards: the AKQJ10 (which are called the honor cards) and the 98765432 (the spot cards).

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).

The more high-ranking cards you have in your hand, the better. The more honor cards you have, the stronger your hand. You can never have too many honor cards.

Knowing Your Directions

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.

In Parts 1 and 2 of this book, you're South for every hand, and your partner is North. Just as in the opera, where the tenor always gets the girl, in a bridge diagram, you're represented as South - you are called the declarer, and you always get to play the hand. Your partner, North, is always the dummy (no slur intended!). Don't worry about what these terms mean just yet - the idea is that you play every hand from the South position. Keep in mind that in real life, South doesn't play every hand - just in this book, every newspaper column, and most bridge books!

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.

© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

FIGURE 1-1: You're South, your partner is North, and your opponents are East and West.

Playing the Game in Four Acts

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.)

Each hand of bridge is divided into four acts, which occur in the same order:

Act 1. Dealing

Act 2. Bidding

Act 3. Playing

Act 4. Scoring

Act 1: Dealing

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.

Wait until the dealer distributes all the cards before you pick up your hand. That's bridge etiquette lesson number one. When each player has 13 cards, pick up and sort your hand using the following tips:

• You can sort the cards in any number of ways, but I recommend sorting your cards into the four suits.
• Alternate your black suits (clubs and spades) with your red suits (diamonds and hearts) so you don't confuse a black spade for a black club or a red diamond for a red heart. It's a bit disconcerting to think you're playing a heart, only to see a diamond come floating out of your hand.
• Hold your cards back, way back, so only you can see them. Think vertically. Winning at bridge is difficult when your opponents can see your hand.

Act 2: Bidding for tricks

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.

Think of bidding as an estimation of how many of those 13 tricks your side (or their side) thinks it can take. The bidding starts with the dealer and moves to his left in a clockwise rotation. Each player gets a chance to bid, and a player can either bid or pass when his turn rolls around. The least you can bid is for seven tricks, and the maximum you can bid is for all 13. The bidding goes around and around the table, with each player either bidding or passing until three players in a row say "Pass." (See Chapter 9 for bidding basics.)

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).

Act 3: Playing the hand

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.

The opening lead and the...