TRICKS, TRUMPS and NO-TRUMPS
Bridge is a trick-taking game – you might have played others, like hearts or whist – so one player ‘leads’ a card and the others play clockwise, in turn, and must play a card of the same suit that has been led if they have one (otherwise they discard a card that they don’t want from another suit, or if there is a trump suit – see below – they can play that). Cards are placed face-up on the table, in front of each player. This set of four cards (one from each player) forms a ‘trick’. The highest card wins the trick but remember, you are playing in partnership, so if your partner is already winning the trick you wouldn’t play a higher card to beat them. You would let them win that trick for your side and save your high card for another trick.
Here, West has led the four of hearts, North has played the 8, East hopes to win with their king but is beaten by South’s ace. One trick to North/South, and now South, whose card won that trick, leads to the next trick.
At the start of the game, one player becomes declarer and they play both their own hand and their partner’s hand. Who gets to be declarer depends on whether you are playing minibridge or the full version of the game, and we will explain in each section how this works.
The declarer’s partner is called the ‘Dummy’ because they play no active role in the play of that particular deal other than to place all of their cards face-up on the table for all to see and then to play whichever card declarer calls for from the dummy hand when it’s their turn to play. In the picture South is declarer so her partner, North’s hand is placed face-up on the table for everyone to see at the start of the hand, and play continues with South telling North which cards to play in turn.
Sometimes one of the four suits is chosen to be ‘trumps’ for that particular deal. This happens via the bidding, or in minibridge the declarer chooses trumps. This means that the suit has special power to win tricks even when just a low card is played from that suit. However, you are only allowed to use a trump card if you don’t have any cards in the suit that has been led.
So here, spades have been chosen as trumps. West has led the four of hearts. Dummy (North) and East have ‘followed suit’, playing the same suit that has been led. South has run out of hearts (or wasn’t dealt any to start with) so they can’t play one. If there was no trump suit (we call this playing in ‘no-trumps’) South would just discard a card from another suit. However, because spades are trumps this time they can play just a small spade and it wins the trick, beating East’s ace.
At the end of each trick each player turns their card face down in front of them. If their partnership has won the trick, they turn the card so it lies vertically and the opposing partnership, who have lost the trick, place their cards horizontally. The same happens with the next trick, and so on through all 13 tricks, with each card being placed overlapping in front of the players.