Playing Bridge

Being part of a block who has nothing better to do during their breaks besides coming together in groups of four to play card games is one great block to be in. A quartet of players, regardless who they may be, would often gather in a particular area to play one of the following games: Pusoy-Dos, Bridge or Hearts. For this entry, I'll be focusing on the game of Bridge; in particular, Mystery Bridge.

Here's a simple explanation of how the game is played. With four players, the card deck of 52 is divided equally amongst them (13 per player). Bridge is a team game, and pairs (often across one another) try to work together to gather a pile of cards enough to win the game, dependent on the bid. In Mystery Bridge, whoever wins the bid will choose a card. Whoever has that card is their partner.

For us, the bidding starts with whoever dealt the cards. To bid means to technically assign a particular suit as a 'trump', deemed highest among all other suits. On some occasions, there can be no trump, meaning that all suits are equal in value so to speak. The bidding level is alphabetical, with Clubs being the lowest, then Diamonds, then Hearts, then Spades. The highest one is No Trump.

The number of piles of cards needed by each pair is determined by the number. Normally, a bid would be "1 (insert desired suit here)". The number tends to increase until all other three players pass. If nobody made a bid, the trump would immediately be 1 No Trump.

If the bid was 1, then there will be a race to 7 piles for each pair.

If 2, the winning team needs to get 8 piles, while the other pair, 6.

If 3, the winning team needs to get 9 piles, while the other pair, 5.

If 4, the winning team needs to get 10 piles, while the other pair, 4.

If 5, the winning team needs to get 11 piles, while the other pair, 3.

Rarely does the bid go up to 5 unless the hand of a player is really good.

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Now that I've explained the game as best as I can, I'll move on to a particular game I had with my blockmates Tiff, Neil and Gie over lunch to end my blog entry. So it was our last game before we headed off to Math class. In my hand, I recall having the following cards: A, K, Q, 9, 8 and 7 of clubs and A, K and Q of diamonds among my 13 cards. I raised the bid to 3 No Trump where everybody passed. Since it was a game of Mystery Bridge, I declared that my partner would be whoever had the Ace of Spades, to which I believe I only had about one or two. So since it was a no trump game, I was the first to make a move.

And wouldn't you know it, by the end of the game, I on my own won with the mentioned cards. I exhausted the clubs and played the three highest Diamond cards and got the 9 piles all by myself. ^____________________________^v

Epic win, epic win.