Better Bridge in Barry County July 9 2015

Better Bridge in Barry County

By Gerald Stein

Duplicate Bridge: Part One

If you have played Rubber Bridge for a long time, you have certainly felt that sometimes you have been sitting in the wrong seat all night. Your opponents have been dealt all of the high cards in the deck; they have made game after game, scoring 700 rubbers while you and your partner complain about getting such lousy cards. After twenty hands, you are ready to go home and have a cold glass of root beer. If any of this sounds familiar to you, perhaps you should investigate Duplicate Bridge and see how if differs from Rubber Bridge.

Because bridge is such a popular game, many variations on how to play have been developed. One such popular variation is called Duplicate Bridge. It gets its name from the fact that each hand of bridge is dealt and placed in metal or plastic boards. These boards are essentially cardholders and are passed around to the other tables so that each hand is duplicated many times throughout the evening. The object of Duplicate Bridge is for the players to do the best that they can with each hand. The cards are not thrown into the center of the table as is the common method with Rubber Bridge, but rather they are placed in front of each player. Winning tricks are pointed toward the winning pair; losing tricks are pointed away from the losing pair. At a glance, you can tell how many tricks have been won by each side. All four players keep the same method of scoring tricks. At the end of the hand, before they are returned to the board, everyone must agree to the number of tricks won and lost by each side. Only then are the cards returned to the exact location from which they were taken. Scoring follows immediately on just that hand.

What is the purpose of this kind of play? Because the boards are individually played and scored, the object is for each pair to do the very best against all of the other teams who will play the same hands later in the evening. The element of luck is now taken away, and skill becomes more of a factor. For example, if you have been having one of those horrific nights of not getting cards and you have been sitting East/West all night with your partner, there is some satisfaction knowing that every other East/West pair in the room will also have to play those same cards. The way to do well in Duplicate Bridge is to take the cards that you have been dealt, good or bad, and make the best of the situation. If you and your partner score better than all of the other East/West teams despite the bad cards, you will do well in Duplicate Bridge. Your real opponents at each table, then, are not the North/South pair, but all of the other East/West pairs that will play the same cards that you have just played. You have to beat all of the teams who will play the same cards that you played earlier.

In a typical duplicate game, twenty or more hands are played each session. Consequently, there needs to be at least twenty duplicate boards and twenty decks of cards. Bridge suppliers like Baron Barclay sell duplicate kits for home and club play with 32 boards, scoring materials, and the 32 decks of cards in a nice carrying case. See www.baronbarclay.com for details. Duplicate games need at least two tables to compare scores with others, but typically, there are 4-12 or more tables of duplicate bridge played in a session. Each table receives two or three or four boards at a time. These are played, returned to their rightful location, and scored. When all of the boards are finished, the director, a type of referee or the host of the evening, will move the boards from your table and give you more new boards to play. No shuffling is needed as this was done earlier by the director. Play more bridge is the duplicate player’s motto.

At the end of the evening, it is the director’s responsibility to determine how well each pair did against every other pair. For every pair that you have beaten on each hand, you will receive one point; for every pair that you have tied, you will receive a half point; for every pair that beats you, you will receive zero points. All of your points earned will be tallied, and the ultimate winners of the evening are those teams who have accumulated the most points. Usually, the top three places are determined as the winners of the session. In large games, there could be top winners for the North/South team as well as winners for the East/West team.

For a variation on Rubber Bridge, try a home game with duplicate boards. You will find that getting bad cards all evening will not be as trying if you know others have to play the same cards that you had earlier. Because the cards are returned to the boards, it is also possible to look at a particular hand at the end of the evening, and see how others played the same cards. Duplicate bridge in a fun and challenging alternative to Rubber Bridge. Give it a try and see if you might discover a new way to play bridge.

 

Gerald Stein

July 4, 2015

Number of words: 979

 

Bridge Notes: Next time, in Part two, learn how to score each hand in a duplicate bridge game. Slips of paper called travelers go with each board as they travel around the tables. Do not peek at the scores until you have played the hand, and then you will score your hand with all of the others who have played that same hand.