Bridge Lesson 1: Four Players, Two Partnerships

Bridge is played by four people in two partnerships: the two players who sit opposite each other are partners, and they play as a team against the other pair. In this lesson you learn who plays with whom, how the cards are dealt, which way the game moves around the table and the two stages every deal goes through.

This is lesson 1 of our free beginner course. You need no earlier knowledge, only a deck of cards and three friends, or the robots on BridgeDummy (more on that below).

Bridge players name the four seats after the points of a compass: North, East, South and West. They are only labels, so that everybody can talk about the same seat.

• North and South are partners. They sit opposite each other.
• East and West are partners. They also sit opposite each other.

So the person on your left and the person on your right are your opponents, and the person across the table is your partner. In every article and puzzle on BridgeDummy you are South, which makes North your partner, West your left-hand opponent and East your right-hand opponent. Players shorten these to LHO and RHO.

Partners share everything: every trick one of you wins counts for both of you, and you score as one side. You never win or lose alone in bridge.

Bridge uses a normal deck of 52 cards with no jokers. There are four suits of 13 cards each: spades ♠, hearts ♥, diamonds ♦ and clubs ♣. In each suit the cards rank from the ace down:

A K Q J 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

The ace is always the highest card and the two the lowest. The ace, king, queen and jack are the honors, together with the ten in some books. You will meet the order of the suits themselves in lesson 6, when we look at bidding.

All 52 cards are dealt, so every player gets exactly 13 cards. One player is the dealer. The cards are shuffled, and the dealer gives them out one at a time, face down, starting with the player on the left and going around the table until the deck is gone. Nobody looks at a card until the deal is finished.

Pick up your 13 cards and sort them by suit. Put the suits in alternating colors so a black card does not hide among the other black suit. Count your cards: if you hold 12 or 14, say so before anyone plays.

This is what a full deal looks like in a bridge book or on a bridge site. Each hand is written suit by suit, with the highest card first. Your hand, South, is at the bottom. Your partner's hand is at the top. West is on the left and East on the right, exactly where those players sit when you look at the table from your chair.

Count any hand in the diagram: it has 13 cards.

One rule covers the whole game: everything moves clockwise, to the left.

1. The dealer deals the cards to the left, one at a time.
2. The dealer makes the first call in the bidding, then the player on the left, and so on around the table.
3. In the play, each player plays a card in turn, again to the left.
4. On the next deal, the dealer's job moves one seat to the left.

So if North deals the first deal, East deals the second, South the third and West the fourth. Then it is North's turn again. In a club game (duplicate bridge) the cards come in plastic holders called boards, already dealt. Each board is marked with its number, the dealer and which side is vulnerable, a scoring word you meet in the contract lesson. You keep your cards in front of you during play instead of throwing them into the middle, so the same deal can be played again at another table. Read more in our guide to duplicate bridge.

Every deal has two stages, always in this order.

1. The auction (the bidding). The four players take turns to make a call. Each bid is a promise: "our side will win at least this many tricks, with this suit as trumps (or with no trumps)". The bidding goes around and around until a bid is followed by three passes in a row. The last bid becomes the contract. (If all four players pass at the start, nobody plays the deal: the cards are thrown in.)

2. The play. One player of the side that won the auction becomes declarer and tries to make the contract. The other side, the defenders, try to stop them. The 13 cards of each hand are played out in 13 rounds called tricks. When the play ends, you count the tricks your side won and score the deal.

That is the whole game in two sentences: bid to name a target, then play to reach it (or to stop the other side reaching theirs). The next five lessons fill in the details. This course starts with the play, because bidding only makes sense once you know what a trick is. If you want an even softer start, try MiniBridge on BridgeDummy: a short version of the game with no bidding, built for first-time players. You play it against robots, with an undo button and a "Why?" button that explains every card a robot plays.

A few habits make the table friendly and keep the game fair:

• Keep your cards hidden. Hold them so that only you can see them. Your partner must not see your hand any more than the opponents can.
• No table talk. You may not tell partner what you hold or what to do, by words, faces or the speed of your play. Bridge is a game of describing your cards with bids and plays, never by hints.
• Sort and count. Sort by suit, count to 13 and check again.

To see the layout in action, open the free double dummy analyzer, enter a deal and play it card by card. Each hand sits in its compass seat, so the seat names soon feel natural.

Previous: the course overview. Next: Lesson 2: Tricks and Following Suit, where you play your first trick.