Learn Bridge

Bridge is a partnership game for four people with an ordinary deck, and it runs as two games in sequence: an auction in which the two sides bid for the right to name trumps, then the play, where one side tries to take the number of tricks it promised.

Its reputation for difficulty comes from depth rather than from the rules. The rules fit in an evening.

Start here

• How to Play Bridge: A Beginner’s Guide: the auction, the play, and how a contract is scored.
• How to Practice So It Sticks: why playing more is the slow way, and what to drill instead.

What the guide covers

• Counting your hand: high card points, and what the number is for
• What a bid actually promises, and the book of six that trips up every beginner
• The auction: the order of denominations, passing, doubling, and when it ends
• Declarer and dummy, and why one player plays both hands
• The play of a trick, following suit, and when trumps win
• Game, part-score and vulnerability, and why five contracts come up over and over
• Acol versus Standard American, and the 1NT difference that will confuse you at a new table
• Stayman and Blackwood, the two conventions you will meet immediately
• Rubber bridge and duplicate, and which one a club night means

Ask which system before you sit down

The rules of bridge are fixed. The bidding system is not: it is a language a partnership agrees on and makes available to the opponents, and the same bid means different things at different tables. Under Acol the 1NT opening normally shows 12 to 14 points; under Standard American it shows 15 to 17.

Learn one, then ask before you play. It is the single most avoidable way to have a bad first night.

Bridge in the Stoa Games app

Bridge is not in the app yet. American Mahjong is the game we teach in full today, both in the app and in the guides here. Bridge will follow the same shape: lessons in a sensible order, then drills that ask you to choose a bid and explain why another one was better.