Winning Bridge
These Help pages can be downloaded here with the Winning Bridge Shareware game for Microsoft Windows 98, ME, 2000 and XP.
If you would rather read a book, take a look at the Help Index page for some suggestions.
Bridge Basics
For an explanation of some of the terms used in Bridge refer to Bridge Basics Terminology
Bridge is a card game for two pairs of players using a pack of 52 playing of cards (without jokers).
In Winning Bridge the players are placed at the cardinal points of the compass: North, East, South and West. You are South and your partner is North, East and West play together.
There are four suits which are ranked as follows:
Clubs
Diamonds
Hearts
Spades.
There is a fifth "suit" that is used in bidding called No Trumps, which is ranked higher than spades.
Each suit has 13 cards with the 2 the lowest ranked card and the Ace the highest ranked. The 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace are called "Honours".
At the start of a hand, a card is dealt to each player in turn until all the cards in the pack have been dealt: each player then has 13 cards.
The cards are then considered in two phases:
Bidding also known as the Auction