Bridge

Contract bridge, usually known simply as bridge, is a trick-taking card game of skill and chance (the relative proportions depending on the variant played). It is played by four players who form two partnerships; the partners sit opposite each other at a table. more...

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The game consists of the auction (often called bidding) and play, after which the hand is scored.

The bidding ends with a contract, which is a declaration by one partnership that their side will take at least a stated number of tricks, with a specified suit as trump or without trumps. The rules of play are similar to other trick-taking games, with addition of the feature that one player's hand is displayed face up on the table as the \"dummy\".

Much of bridge's popularity owes to the possibility that it can be played in tournaments of an arbitrarily large number of players; this form is referred to as duplicate bridge. Competitions in duplicate bridge range from everyday ones in numerous small clubs to World Championships and Olympiads.

Game play

See Contract bridge glossary for an explanation of unfamiliar words or phrases in this article.

Two partnerships of two players each are needed to play bridge. The four players sit around a table with partners opposite one another. The compass directions are often used to refer to the four players, aligned with their seating pattern. Thus, South and North form one partnership and East and West form the other.

A session of bridge consists of several deals (also called hands or boards). A hand is dealt, the bidding (or auction) proceeds to a conclusion and then the hand is played. Finally, the hand's result is scored.

The goal of a single deal is to achieve the highest score with given cards. The score is affected by two principal factors: the number of tricks bid in the auction, and the number of tricks taken during play. The concept of contract, which distinguishes contract bridge from its predecessors, refers to a statement by one partnership that they shall take at least a certain number of tricks, with a given suit as trumps, or without trumps. The contract consists of two components: level and strain (also called denomination). Level represents the number of tricks to be taken above the first six (referred to as the book) — this treatment (and the requirement that the lowest possible level is one) ensures that at least a majority of the tricks must be taken by the partnership who wins the contract. Since there are 13 possible tricks, there are seven levels, numbered 1-7, corresponding to 7-13 tricks to take. Five strains are ranked, from lowest to highest, as clubs (♣), diamonds (♦), hearts (♥), spades (♠), and no trump (NT). The two lower-ranked strains (♣ and ♦) are called the minor suits (or minors), and the higher-ranked strains (♥ and ♠) are called majors.

Read more at Wikipedia.org