What Is a Bridge Deck?

Bridge is played in teams, with teammates sitting opposite from each other.

Bridge is a card game based around taking tricks. Invented in the 1920s, it is played both socially and in competitive leagues today. Each player makes bets at the start of each hand concerning the number of tricks he thinks he will be able to take. Points are awarded based on the number of tricks taken. There are several versions of bridge, each with slightly different rules and goals. Bridge decks are slightly different than standard decks of cards.

The Basic Deck

In its most basic form, bridge can be played with an ordinary deck of cards. To make a deck suitable for bridge, you just have to remove the jokers. This makes a basic bridge deck 52 cards in size.

The Traditional Deck

It is traditional to shuffle two decks together to play bridge, after the jokers have been removed from both decks. Ordinary bridge decks have 104 cards. With more cards, there are more opportunities to take tricks, as there are more high cards. This makes it more difficult to anticipate how the tricks will play out and can make betting odds more difficult to accurately assess.

Duplicate Bridge Decks

Duplicate bridge is a variation of bridge that requires each team to play both the cards they were originally dealt and the cards their opponents were dealt in a second game. This evens out the influence of pure luck and ensures that victory depends more on skill. In duplicate bridge, 16 different "boards" are set up. Each board is used to hold a single hand's deals, so that they can be played once by each team. Duplicate bridge therefore uses 16 packs of cards, one for each board. As in other forms of bridge, the jokers are removed. Duplicate bridge could be played with a traditional 104 card deck for each board, as well.

Bridge Card Ranks

Bridge decks are ranked with the twos as the cards with the lowest value. Aces are the highest valued cards in a bridge deck. Spades have the highest rank, followed by hearts. Diamonds are the next highest, and clubs are the lowest ranked cards in a Bridge deck. Though scoring of the cards of each suit is the same when it comes to determining victory, the ranking matters during bidding, where bids on more valuable suits beat bids on equivalent hands with less valuable suits.

References

• American Contract Bridge League: How to Play Bridge
• Card Game Rules: Bridge Rules
• Card Game Rules: Duplicate Bridge Rules

Resources

• American Contract Bridge League: Find a Teacher