[Storm]

Anybody play Bridge? I've tried getting into it, but it's hard to find groups. Further, it seems to me that how to bid, once you know how to count points, should be intuitive. But a lot of people seem to think there are certain rules that must be followed. Perhaps I'm just being a naive beginner thinking I can think through the hands instead of memorizing rules?

So, questions:

Do you or would you like to Bridge? How do you decide how to bid?

[bobabrowncoat]

I like playing card games a lot. I used to play Rummy 500 with my family every night for years. Unfortunately, no one I know knows how to play Bridge and doesn't want to learn. It looks interesting.

[Storm]

The basic rules aren't that hard to learn. The scoring is a mess, though. Luckily you can get apps and programs to do it now. :D

If it weren't for the fact it requires exactly 4 people - no more and no less, I would consider it the perfect group game. It's cheap (deck of cards), and you can play for as long or as short a period of time as you want. Further, there are built-in breaks for at least 1 person every hand.

It's basically spades except in addition to bidding to how many tricks your team will take, you're also bidding on which suit (if any) will be the trump cards that round. Most of the game is therefore played in the bidding - although playing out the round still required some thinking.

[deconspire]

My mom plays in a league or something. I get how to play it, but the bidding and scoring turns my brain into mush.

If anyone could give a concise explanation on common bidding styles I'd be all
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[Storm]

Ok, here's how I bid. I'm sure people who are actually good at Bridge will cringe.

So, during bidding each team is trying to win the contract. If you win the contract, then you and your partner have to make 6 tricks + the number you bid. You also get to decide the trump suit. If you end up making those tricks, you get extra points. If you lose the bidding, you and your partner are trying to prevent the other team from making their contract.

To bid, you have to bid higher than the previous bid in both suit and number. The order for the suits is as follows;

Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, Spades, No Trump

So, if someone bids 1 Heart, to beat it you can bid 1 Spade or 1 No Trump, or start over at 2 Clubs, 2 Diamonds, or 2 Hearts.

The bidding stops when 3 people in a row have passed. Then you play out the round.

Now, the hard part about bidding in Bridge is that it's not just your hand that matters, it's also your partner's hand. If you have a couple of high cards in a suit, it doesn't matter if your partner has nothing in that suit. But you can't look or talk to your partner directly about what they have - you have to communicate it through bidding.

So, first you count the points in your hand to see its strength.

Jacks - 1 point
Queens - 2 points
Kings - 3 points
Ace - 4 points

5 cards in one suit - 1 point
6 cards in one suit - 2 points
7 cards in one suit - 3 points
8 cards in one suit - 4 points

Once you get the point value, I use this chart I pulled from the ACBL website:

	With 0 to 12 points, pass. With 13 or more points, open the bidding with one of your longest suits. With 15 to 17 high-card points and a balanced hand (one where all suits are represented with at least two or more cards), open 1NT (notrump).

Note that this chart is for the opening bid for you and your partner only. After that, it's response time. So, if your partner passes, you know they have a sucky hand. If they start with 1 in some random suite (or 2 if the other team has already bid), you know they are strongest in that suit and have some high cards. If they open 1 No Trump, you know they have a rockin' hand.

This is all pretty standard Bridge stuff, but here is where I go intuitive/crazy beginner? I just think about it. So if they've bid 1 Hearts, and I look at my hand and I've got no or only a few Hearts, I'm going to go with my best suit to let them know that I'm weak in Hearts, but I have another suit that will work. If, however, I have a fair amount of hearts - like say 5, I'm going to bump it up to 2 Hearts even if they are low in the hopes we can just trump the other team down.

There are endless varieties, so I just kind of think about it.

[Tristan]

An interesting run-down. It's like no other card game. It sounds so cool. My grandmother told me she saw a lot of her friends blow their college days playing bridge (in the manner that many of today's college educations go up the right nostril), so she was reluctant to teach me.

[deconspire]

^^ That is a better basic explanation for how to bid (and consequently, play) than any I've heard. Thank you!
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[Storm]

Yes, I wonder if part of the reason you don't see a lot of new players is because only people who have been playing for decades are really playing it - which means they are all really good. It would be like if the only people who played online video games had all been playing for decades and knew the ends and outs of everything.