You Hold…

Learning the Game 2 - What is Bidding?

by Tom on April 19th, 2006

The life cycle of a bridge hand has 2 very distinct phases: bidding and play. The concept of bidding may be somewhat familiar to those of you who have played Spades or Pinochle. The idea is to try to determine how successful you and your partner can be in the card play as a team. In other words, to reach a good “contract”.

In Spades, the bidding phase is straightforward. The person on dealer’s left starts by naming how many tricks they think they can win. Proceeding clockwise, each player gets one turn to name how many tricks they can win, and the team totals become the goal. You play the cards with spades as “trump” and score the hand based on whether the stated goals were achieved or not.

Bidding in Bridge is similar in nature, but there are a couple of important differences:

• You do not have to bid. At each player’s turn to bid, they may choose to “Pass” (or “No Bid”)
• There can be more than one round of bidding. Bidding continues until 3 consecutive players have chose to Pass, so long as everyone has had at least one bid. The complete bidding, all the rounds taken together, is called the auction.
• Bids consist of both a level and a strain. That is, a bid consists of two parts. The first is a number from 1 to 7 which says “I am going to win X+6 tricks.” The second part is one of the 4 suits (Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts or Spades) or “No Trump”. This indicates if there is a trump suit, and if so which suit. [If you don’t know what trump is, don’t worry. We’ll get there later.]
• Auctions are hierarchial. That is, there is a definite order to bidding from lowest to highest. Once any player has taken a bid, any subsequent bids by any player must be higher.

Because of the differences in the dynamics, Bridge auctions have more of a conversational nature to them than a similar auction in Spades. For example, a Spades player may have to decide whether a King in a side suit is worth a trick or not without any input from your partner. In Bridge, there are times when you have the opportunity to express that doubt about your trick and partner can help decide if it is worth a trick or not.

Key points to remember:

• Bidding is a conversation. You are talking to your partner to try to get to the best contract.
• Bidding sets the stage for card play. The strongest hand you can ever hold won’t mean much if your bidding is unsuccessful. Conversely, an otherwise weak hand might be made much more valuable that it seemingly should with good bidding.
• Bidding is a hierarchy. You can only move up the ladder, not down.

Share This

POSTED IN: Beginners