Learning to play your cards right
Sally Brock explains how a slick new deal sidesteps the bidding and simplifies rules of the game
Traditionally, bridge has been a difficult game to teach. In chess, for example, it is relatively easy to teach how the pieces move to someone who has never played before. Within five or ten minutes a person can play, not very well, perhaps, but can at least sit at a chessboard and play without moving the pawns backwards or rooks diagonally.
In bridge, before you even get to the play there is the bidding. What the students want is a handful of cards and to get on with the game but there is so much to learn before this can start.
Ten years or so ago, someone invented MiniBridge - apparently simultaneously in France and The Netherlands. This was the single greatest aid to the teaching of bridge that there has ever been. MiniBridge sidesteps the bidding, so elementary bridge can be taught in roughly the same time it takes to teach the moves of chess. Teachers can then introduce the bidding at their leisure, when they feel the class is ready.
Four people sit around a table - they are generally referred to by the points of the compass: North, East, South and West. If they wish they can cut for partners - and partnerships play facing each other, East and West or North and South.
One player deals and divides the pack into four piles of 13 cards. Then each player picks up a pile of cards and sorts them into suits, arranging each suit in order. Each player adds up his high-card points - that is four for an ace, three for a king, two for a queen and one for a jack.
The dealer (let's say South) starts by announcing how many points he holds. The player on the dealer's left (West) goes next, followed by the other two players in a clockwise direction.
The total should add up to 40. If it doesn't, try again. The partnership with the higher total becomes the declaring side and of these two players, the one with the higher total becomes the declarer (or the first to speak if there is a tie). The opponents are known as the defending side. For example, South has 14 points; West 10 points; North 8 points, and East 8 points. North-South are the declaring partnership because they have 22 points compared with East-West's 18. South is the declarer because he has 14 points compared with North's eight.
At this point, declarer's partner (North) puts his cards down, face upwards on the table. This is called the dummy. Dummy's cards should be arranged tidily, in order, one card half behind another, in four columns, one for each suit.
Declarer now studies the two hands and decides whether he would like to play in a suit contract or in no trumps. Generally speaking if, when he adds together the number of cards in both his hand and the dummy, his longest suit is of eight cards or more, he should go for the suit contract, or otherwise settle for no trumps.
Once declarer has stated the contract, the player on his left (West) makes the opening lead and play begins.
Declarer plays dummy's cards as well as his own. In the first instance, his aim is simply to make as many tricks as possible. Later it is possible to add targets in the play that are related to the number of high-card points held by the declaring partnership.
From the opening lead onwards, the game is exactly as bridge proper, but in that game the bidding decides who will be declarer, what suit (if any) will be trumps and how many tricks declarer aims to take.
As part of the Mind Sports Olympiad, on August 24, 25 and 26 at 10am, there will be a MiniBridge tournament preceded by a short lesson. Everyone is welcome - just turn up and try it.
For a booklet explaining MiniBridge write to the EBU, Broadfields, Bicester Road, Aylesbury, Bucks HP19 3BG; tel: 01296 394414, marking the envelope "Times MiniBridge".
