Bridge - A Description for Grandma

Rules of Bridge this link will take you to another website which explains in depth the rules of bridge

 

Bridge is a game that many think is just for elderly people in retirement homes. These people are mostly correct, this game requires a lot of time in order to be able to learn and perfect which makes it ideal for people with a lot of free time. Last weekend I learned how to play bridge from the youth division II world champions. I personally really enjoy learning a new game especially one that has a lot of interesting rules. This game has special appeal to me because I have heard of people playing it and even watched it being played but have never understood its rules or play style.

You need four people to play bridge these people work in pairs to win the game. This partnership is very difficult to play with because you cannot communicate with your partner to decide how to bid you basically just put yourself out there and hope that your partner has what you need and can guess what you mean when you make a certain move.

The basic game play is very similar to hearts where there is a lead suit and the highest of the lead suit wins the trick (in bridge this isn’t always true because there is usually a trump suit) the goal of bridge is to win the most tricks between you and your partner. The trump suit is decided by the highest bid. The bidding process is when each player basically guesses how many tricks they will win and what they want the trump suit to be. You would select the trump suit as the suit in which you are the strongest. If you are the highest bid and you don’t get the number of tricks you say you will then the other team gets the difference between the tricks you took and your bid.

This makes bidding one of the biggest strategic points of the game. When you have played bridge for a while you begin to understand what a good hand is and what isn’t for example if you have a lot of face cards that is typically a good hand to bid high on, although a hand with no face cards but all the other cards of a single suit is an excellent hand because you can win hands with that as your trump suit. Often though you have a combination of both and most of your bidding comes on instinct. You can also use other people bids as clues as to what their hand might be.

I really enjoyed playing this game, even though I lost every hand I played, because it combines the hand to hand strategies of hearts with a need for big picture thinking and planning ahead as to how many tricks you want to win. It also lets you play as a team which adds a fun and unexpected element to any game.

Youth Division II Bridge Champions