Bridge is a very popular game and is widely played around the world. It is played online, it is played in clubs, it is played in people’s houses. It is so popular that virtually every cruise ship has a bridge card game room, and many bridge vacations take place in a variety of locations around the world.

It’s fun, it’s sociable, it’s a great way to meet new friends and keep your brain active. Therefore, it is not surprising that every year many people decide that they want to learn to play.

Here are some tips, suggestions, and some ground rules to get you started.

Basic rules

To play bridge you need four people, a table, and a standard pack of 52 cards (discard jokers). Players form associations and partners sit across from each other. Each player is assigned one of the four cardinal points as they sit around the table. East and West are one association and North and South are the other.

At the beginning of a game, each player receives 13 cards. They classify the cards into suits and then value their hand. To value a hand, the player counts 4 points for each Ace he has, 3 for each King, 2 for each Queen and 1 for each Jack.

As an example, imagine that you have been dealt this hand:

A, J 10 5 spades, KQ 7 hearts, QJ 6 5 diamonds, K 2 clubs.

You have 1 Ace (worth 4 points), 2 Kings (worth 6 total points), 2 Queens (worth 4 total points), and 2 Jacks (worth 2 total points). So the value of your hand is 16 points.

Bridge is a trick-playing game and each trick included 4 cards, one from each player. At the beginning of each trick, the player who won the previous trick plays a card. The other players must play a card of the same suit, if they have one. If they don’t, they can play another suit. If a “trump” suit is used, playing a trump suit card will win the trick, as long as another player does not play a higher trump card.

It is decided whether or not a trump suit is used before the card game begins, when the players make their “offers.” The goal of bridge is to win at least the number of tricks that your partner has said he will do if he wins the bid. The main purpose of the auction is to provide your partner with information about the contents of his hand to help him decide how many tricks he thinks he can win.

In the auction, players bid clockwise. A player will not open the auction unless he has at least 12 points in his hand. If all players have less than 12 points, the cards are dealt again, although the final player has the option of opening with less than 12 points if he thinks his hand is worth doing.

Once a player has opened the auction, two main decisions must be made. The other partnership has to decide whether to bid against the opener and his partner, or whether to let the opener and the partner continue to bid unopposed. Meanwhile, opener and his partner are trying to exchange information about the composition of their hands to decide how many tricks they think they can win.

There are 13 tricks in every bridge game. The first 6 tricks are not bid, so a bid of 1 means that the player believes that he can win 7 tricks (6 +1). Bids can be matching or non-winning bids. If the game is played with a suit offer, then a player can win a trick by “trumping” a card of that suit IF he does not have a card of the suit being played. If the game is played on No Trumps, the Trumps are not played. (Note here that bridge players are often referred to as missing.)

Those are the ground rules that it helps to know before learning about the intricacies of bidding.

Advice

Practice. As with many things, practice is the best way to learn. If you sign up for a class or take lessons online, it helps to try to play between sessions. There are many downloadable websites or applications that allow you to play bridge against “robots” or fictional players. The best thing about robots is that they have infinite patience and they don’t really care if you make the wrong moves. A great way to learn and have fun in the comfort of your home.

Learn one thing at a time. Learning how to make bridge offers can seem overwhelming with many conventions and rules. If you try to learn too much at once, it will seem overwhelming. Find a good teacher or site online and learn one topic at a time. Don’t try to rush, make sure you have understood each topic before going ahead and trying to learn something new. As I have told many of my own students: “This is not a competition. Learn at your own pace.”

Don’t spend too much time on each learning session. If you spend too many hours at a time trying to learn a topic, you will get stressed out and start to get confused. For beginners, one hour at a time, if you are learning at home, is sufficient. Take a break. If you try to learn too much at once, you will simply forget everything.

Revision. If you enroll in a local bridge course, try to review the topics you have learned before the next lesson. This, along with a little practice at home, will help you remember the topics you learn. Don’t try to get ahead of your teacher. Take it easy, that way you will learn more in the long run.