How to Make Your Bridge Contract with Extra Winners
In bridge, you need to look at a hand and determine whether you need to create any extra winners to make your contract. Count your losers (in your hand and the dummy’s), suit by suit, and determine whether [more…]
Turning Small Cards into Winning Tricks in Bridge
Whenever the dummy presents you with a five- or six-card side suit, you may have a chance to turn one or more of the small cards in that side suit into winning tricks. What you have to do is play the suit [more…]
Bridge: Setting Up a Long Suit with a Finesse
When you’re missing a critical high card in the dummy’s long suit in a hand of bridge, usually a king, you may have to rely on a finesse. A finesse involves leading from weakness to strength, trying to [more…]
How to Take Bridge Tricks in Long Suits
In bridge, trump cards can prove invaluable when you need to establish the dummy’s long side suit. Tiny trumps can fell your opponents’ aces, kings, and queens in the suit you’re establishing. You can [more…]
Bridge: Make a Grand Slam by Establishing a Long Suit
Establishing a suit in bridge may seem like a ton of work, but the rewards can be great. You may even accomplish a grand slam (taking all 13 tricks) by establishing a side suit. The risks when bidding [more…]
How to Play Bridge Online
You're never without a bridge partner if you play online. The Internet provides a vital forum for bridge players all over the world. Currently, you can find hundreds of bridge-related websites that offer [more…]
Bridge: Playing Third Hand against a Trump Contract
Regardless of your bridge partner's opening lead, you want to be prepared when it comes your turn to play third hand, which means that you're the third person to play to the trick. You need to know what [more…]
How to Make Your Contract in Bridge
Bridge scoring revolves around the final contract (as determined by the bidding) and the number of tricks actually taken by the side buying the contract. If your final contract is 3, your goal is to win [more…]
How to Chart Your Bridge Points
If you don’t want to keep your bridge points tallied in your head, you can use this chart instead. Just look up your bridge tally on this chart instead of fooling with a bunch of math every time you need [more…]
How to Score Doubled Contracts in Bridge
You can double a contract if your opponents arrive at a final contract that either you or your partner think is just too high. For example, if the opponents bid 7NT [more…]
How to Score Redoubled Contracts in Bridge
Some players treat a penalty double in a hand of bridge as a personal insult. Those players are prone to say, “Redouble” (“I double-dare you”), quadrupling the stakes! When a contract is redoubled and [more…]
How to Handle Penalties in Bridge
If you don’t make your contract in bridge, you’re penalized when it comes to reckoning time at the end of the hand. Penalties consist of points you give to the other team for not taking enough tricks in [more…]
How to Score Slams in Bridge
Slam contracts in bridge give you immediate bonuses. Bidding to the six level (a small slam) or bidding to the seven level (a grand slam) is exciting and also perilous. Bidding to the six level means that [more…]
How to Play Second Hand with the Dummy on Your Left in Bridge
When the dummy is on your left in a hand of bridge, you can see what’s in the hand that plays after you do. So, if you’re playing second hand (the second person to play) and the dummy is visible, you usually [more…]
Bridge: Playing Second Hand with the Dummy on Your Right
In bridge, when the dummy is on your right and leads a suit, you’re second to play, so you play second hand. You can use some clever strategies to play a smart second hand defense. Obviously, following [more…]
How to Score a Bridge Rubber
In bridge, to make game, you need to score 100 points. The first team to score game twice wins the rubber. Scoring in bridge is a cumulative process that takes in several factors when you play an actual [more…]
How to Save Trumps in the Dummy in Bridge
In a hand of bridge, your opponents watch you try to trump your losers in the dummy when you lead the dummy’s short suit, and they don’t like it. You’re trumping their tricks! But for every strategy in [more…]
How to Play Second Hand in Bridge
What should your strategy be for defending when you play second to a trick, or second hand? Whenever you play second hand, either the declarer or the dummy has led the suit initially. Your plays are governed [more…]
Bridge: Making an Opening Lead against a Trump Contract
Because you have the advantage of the opening lead in a bridge hand with a trump contract, you can map out your defensive strategy depending on the bidding and your hand. You have several options for opening [more…]
Bridge: Playing Third Hand against a Notrump Contract
Your partner makes an opening lead. The dummy comes down, the declarer plays a card from the dummy, and suddenly it’s your turn to play, making you third hand. [more…]
Bridge: Making the Opening Lead against a Notrump Contract
Your opening lead in a hand of bridge tells your partner quite a lot about what you have in the suit you’re leading. The information you relay in the opening lead, in turn, helps your partner plan the [more…]
Points Scored by Making Your Contract in Bridge
This handy table for bridge players shows how many points you score if you make your contract. Your bridge score depends upon which suit you end up in [more…]
The Four Phases of a Bridge Hand
Each hand of bridge is divided into four phases, which always occur in the same order: dealing, bidding for tricks, playing the hand, and scoring. [more…]
Bidding Tips for Winning Bridge Games
In bridge, bidding is considered the most important aspect of the game. It's a given that a good bidder equals a winning bridge player. Here are a few bidding tips to start you off: [more…]
Bridge Etiquette: Bidding Do's and Don'ts
In bridge, bidding is an exchange of information. During bidding, you're trying to telegraph details about your cards to your partner. Your first impulse may be to develop some special bidding conventions [more…]
