Bridge Positions: North, South, East, West and Their Roles

The four positions in bridge are North, South, East and West. North and South play as partners against East and West, and on every deal those seats take on roles: one player deals, one becomes declarer, declarer's partner becomes dummy, and the other two defend.

The seat names come from the compass, and they are just labels: nobody actually faces north. They matter because every bridge book, scoresheet and app uses them to describe a deal. Once you can read "West leads, East wins and returns the suit" without thinking, the rest of bridge writing becomes much easier to follow.

Picture a square table seen from above, like a map:

Two rules to remember:

1. Partners sit opposite each other. North-South is one side, East-West the other.
2. Play goes clockwise: North, East, South, West, and back to North. So the next player after you is always on your left.

In bridge diagrams, North is at the top, South at the bottom, West on the left and East on the right. Most books and apps put the reader in the South seat, and so does BridgeDummy: in every puzzle you are South, your partner is North, and you choose your call or lead from that chair.

No seat is luckier or stronger. Cards are dealt at random, so each seat gets the same chance of a good hand.

In duplicate bridge, the seat matters even less. Every pair that sits North-South on a board holds exactly the same cards, and you are compared only with them. A bad hand costs you nothing if you do as well as the others with the same bad hand.

What does change is when you speak. The dealer bids first, and that matters a lot, as you will see in the section on first, second, third and fourth seat below. At a club, some players prefer North because North often keeps the score and handles the scoring device. That is a habit, not a rule.

On the first deal, the dealer is chosen by drawing cards (in home games) or set by the board (in duplicate). The dealer:

• Deals the cards in a home game, one at a time, clockwise.
• Makes the first call in the auction.

On the next deal, the role passes one seat to the left. So if North deals hand 1, East deals hand 2, South hand 3 and West hand 4.

In duplicate, the dealer is printed on each board. Boards 1, 5, 9 and 13 are dealt by North, 2, 6, 10 and 14 by East, 3, 7, 11 and 15 by South, and 4, 8, 12 and 16 by West. The pattern repeats every four boards.

Once the auction is over, each seat gets one of three roles for the play.

Declarer is the player of the side that won the auction who first named the strain of the final contract. If you opened 1♠ and partner later bid 4♠, you are declarer even though partner made the last bid. Declarer plays both hands of the partnership and needs to make the number of tricks the contract promises.

Dummy is declarer's partner. After the opening lead, dummy spreads all 13 cards face up on the table, sorted by suit with trumps on dummy's right. From then on, declarer chooses every card from dummy. Dummy takes no part in the play, apart from a few rights: dummy may warn declarer against leading from the wrong hand, may ask about a failure to follow suit, and may call the director once play ends.

Being dummy is a short break. Use it to watch the play and learn.

The two players of the other side are the defenders. The defender on declarer's left makes the opening lead. The other defender sits behind dummy, which helps: that defender always sees dummy's cards before deciding what to play.

Defenders cooperate with no extra information beyond the cards they play. That is why defensive signals, such as high-low to show an even number of cards, matter so much. The main ideas are in bridge signals and bridge defense tips.

LHO means left-hand opponent and RHO means right-hand opponent. They describe the opponents relative to the player being discussed.

• If you are South, your LHO is West and your RHO is East.
• For North, LHO is East and RHO is West.
• You also hear "the player behind you", meaning your LHO, who plays after you to each trick.

The terms show up everywhere: "RHO opens 1♥", "LHO doubles", "lead through strength, up to weakness" (meaning lead through the hand on your partner's right). Your RHO calls just before you, and your LHO plays just after you.

In the auction, the seats are also numbered by the order of calls, starting from the dealer. These names matter only until someone opens the bidding:

The fourth seat is also called the pass-out seat. Later in an auction, "balancing" or "protecting" refers to bidding in the pass-out seat when the opponents have stopped low.

Vulnerability is a scoring condition for a side on a given deal. When your side is vulnerable, your bonuses for games and slams are bigger, and your penalties for going down are bigger too.

• Duplicate: each board shows the vulnerability: None, North-South, East-West or Both (also called All). It follows a fixed 16-board cycle.
• Chicago: four deals in a set. Neither side is vulnerable on the first, the dealer's side on the second and third, and both sides on the fourth.
• Rubber bridge: a side becomes vulnerable after winning one game in the rubber.

Vulnerability changes bidding decisions all the time: you preempt more freely when not vulnerable against vulnerable opponents, and you need a better hand to overcall when vulnerable. The numbers are in undertrick penalties.

North (first seat, the dealer) has 8 high card points and passes. Later North becomes dummy.

East (second seat) has 8 points and passes too.

South (third seat) has 15 points and a five-card spade suit and opens 1♠. South will be declarer, because South named spades first.

West (fourth seat) has 9 points, too few for a takeout double, and no long suit to overcall, so West passes.

North raises to 2♠ with four-card support and 8 points. East passes, South has nothing extra for game opposite a simple raise, and the auction ends. The contract is 2♠ by South.

The play. West is South's LHO, so West makes the opening lead: the ♣J, top of a sequence. North spreads the dummy. East, sitting behind dummy, sees North's ♣Q before playing. South takes five spades and three diamonds (the ♦J finesse works, because West holds the ♦Q), loses five tricks in hearts and clubs, and makes eight tricks: 2♠ made, worth 110 to North-South at duplicate scoring.

To see seats in action with real choices, try BridgeDummy's Lead Gym: robots bid a random deal around the table, you sit on lead, and you see how each lead scores. For the rules that go with each role, read the rules of bridge, and for the vocabulary, the bridge terms glossary.