The Times Beginner’s Guide to Bridge: All you need to play the game. Andrew Robson

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      Bridge involves taking tricks. A trick consists of one card from each player. Each player holds 13 cards, making 13 tricks per deal. The more tricks you and your partner win, the better; your side needs to win a minimum of seven tricks in the deal in order to score points towards a game (see pp. 220–4 for more on the points required to make a game).

One player has the lead for each trick, i.e. he or she plays the first card of the trick. For the first trick, the player on lead is seated to the left of the dealer; for the next and later tricks it is the player who won the previous trick.

      After the opening lead, the play proceeds in clockwise order. If you hold a card in the same suit as the first card of the trick then you must play it (‘follow suit’). If not, you can play any card of another suit: unless it’s a trump card (see p. 12), a card of a another suit will not win you the trick so you will generally ‘throw away’ a low card.

      The highest card in the lead suit wins the trick. If a trump card is played to a trick led in another suit, the highest card of the trump suit – rather than the highest card in the lead suit – wins the trick. Whoever wins the trick leads to the next trick.

      In the following example (a), East can choose any card to lead; he chooses ♥3. The other players must follow suit, i.e. play a card in the lead suit (hearts) – if they have a card in that suit. Play proceeds clockwise, with South playing second, West third and North last. West wins the trick and leads to the next trick.

      A trick won by West

      In the next trick (b), North plays the winning card, ♣Q. East, North’s opponent, plays a low card (♣4) because he doesn’t have a ♣K or ♣A to beat North’s ♣Q. South, on the other hand, would not waste a high card to overtake ♣Q because she is in partnership with North, who is already winning the trick.

      The next trick is won by North

       must know

       Everything in bridge is done clockwise, for example, dealing and play proceed in clockwise order – and bidding too.

      A trump

      Cards in the trump (or ‘boss’) suit outrank all other cards. The trump suit is determined during the first phase of the game – the bidding.

      Look again at (a) on p. 11. Imagine that North is about to play the last card to the trick. There are two ways he can win this trick. First, if he holds ♥A then this will beat his opponent’s ♥K. Second, if he doesn’t hold ♥A, and he has no other hearts in his hand, then he can (but is not compelled to) play a card of the trump suit, if one has been chosen. With a trump card he will automatically win the trick, even if he trumps with the lowly two.

      In the following example (a) diamonds are trumps and South (who won the previous trick) leads. When West’s ♥K is beaten by North’s ♥A, West’s partner, East, comes to the rescue: East has no hearts so can trump with ♦3, which wins the trick.

      Trumps are diamonds

      Overtrumping

      If another player trumps, and you (also) have no cards in the lead suit, you have the option of overtrumping that player. In (b), clubs are trumps and West leads. South doesn’t hold a spade so can overtrump East’s ♣4 with ♣7, and win the trick. Note that if East had followed with a spade, South would not need to trump because his partner (North) would be winning the trick with ♠A.

      Overtrumping with clubs as trumps

       must know

       Never lose sight of the fact that bridge is a partnership game – you play as a team with the person sitting opposite.

      Your 13 cards – your ‘hand’

      Once the cards have been dealt you can pick up your cards and sort them into suits. Place the highest card at one end of each suit, the lowest card at the other. Split up the colours (black-red-black-red or red-black-red-black) to avoid muddling the suits; hearts and diamonds are particularly easy to confuse.

      The following diagram shows a typical bridge hand, in ranking order.

      To save space, this will generally be represented as:

      Notice the distribution, or ‘shape’, of the hand. It contains a four-card suit, a three-card suit, a two-card suit and another four-card suit. The number of cards in each suit determines the suit ‘length’ – a shorter length has fewer cards; a longer length has more cards. Rearranging the suit lengths, in the example we have a 4432 distribution. The more you play, the more you’ll realize that distribution is the key to bridge and can more than compensate for a low point score (see the following section).

      Counting points

      There is a unique method in bridge of evaluating the power of your hand – its trick-taking potential – based on the high cards. For each ace, the best card in the suit, you count four points, each king counts three, each queen is two and each jack (knave) one. No points are counted for tens and below.

      As soon as you’ve sorted your hand and noted its distribution, you should count your points. There are 40 points in the whole pack – four aces, four kings, four queens and four jacks. The average number of points in any one hand is ten (one ace, one king, one queen and one jack). The hand in the previous diagram contains only seven points; if this were yours you should hope that your partner has a few more points.

      Useful tip

      Tens and nines may not count as points, but they are nevertheless potentially useful cards, and better than twos and threes.

      Making tricks

      The basic card-playing principles involved in making tricks are best learnt before tackling the bidding part of bridge – even though the bidding occurs first in practice. They will give you a feel for how many tricks to aim for at the bidding stage.

      Counting tricks

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