How a Bridge Hand is Played
	Index of Lessons

The Organization of the Game

Bridge is a partnership game. Four people play at a square table, each one sitting on one of the four sides, and each player faces the center of the table.

The person sitting opposite you is your partner, and the two of you play as a team against the other partnership. By convention, the four seats are referred to as "North", "East", "South" and "West". Which seat is "North" is entirely arbitrary, but once that seat is identified, the other seats are named, clockwise from North, "East", "South" and "West". North's partner is South; East's partner is West.

When the game begins, the four players determine who will partner whom. One partnership will sit North-South, the other will sit East-West. One person will be chosen to keep score. The four players will draw cards to determine who will deal first. Whoever is dealing in any given hand is, naturally, referred to as the "dealer." After the first hand, the obligation to deal moves clockwise around the table.

The Object of the Game

As with many card games, the object of Bridge is to score more points than the opponents. Points are scored in two ways. (1) If you "won" the auction, your team can score points for fulfilling the promise you made during the bidding. (2) If your team did not "win" the auction, you can still score points if you can prevent your opponents from fulfilling the promise they made.

Rankings of Suits and Cards

Since Bridge is played with a normal deck of cards, one must remember that there are four suits. The suits and their symbols are:

Spades Hearts Diamonds Clubs

In Bridge, the suits are "ranked" from highest to lowest. In the graphic at left, the suits are listed in that order. Spades is the highest-ranking suit, followed, in descending order, by hearts, diamonds and clubs. Definition: Higher-ranking Suit A "higher-ranking suit" refers to any suit that is higher in rank than the suit in question. For example, if we are discussing the diamond suit, then hearts and spades are both higher-ranking suits. To put it another way, the only suit higher in rank than hearts is spades.

Within each suit there are 13 cards; the cards are also ranked. In each suit, the Ace of that suit is ranked highest. The other twelve cards, in descending order of rank, are: King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2. In the club suit, for example, the King is higher in rank than the Queen, and the 7 is higher in rank than the 6.

	How a Bridge Hand is Played
	Index of Lessons