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Contract bridge, or simply bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard 52-card deck. In its basic format, it is played by four players in two competing partnerships, with partners sitting opposite each other around a table. Millions of people play bridge worldwide in clubs, tournaments, online and with friends at home, making it one of the world's most popular card games, particularly among seniors. The World Bridge Federation (WBF) is the governing body for international competitive bridge, with numerous other bodies governing it at the regional level.
Oh hell or contract whist is a trick-taking card game of British origin in which the object is to take exactly the number of tricks bid. It was first described by B. C. Westall around 1930 and originally called oh! well. It was said to have been introduced into America via the New York clubs in 1931. Phillips and Westall describe it as "one of the best round games."
A trick-taking game is a card or tile-based game in which play of a hand centers on a series of finite rounds or units of play, called tricks, which are each evaluated to determine a winner or taker of that trick. The object of such games then may be closely tied to the number of tricks taken, as in plain-trick games such as contract bridge, whist, and spades, or to the value of the cards contained in taken tricks, as in point-trick games such as pinochle, the tarot family, briscola, and most evasion games like hearts. Trick-and-draw games are trick-taking games in which the players can fill up their hands after each trick. In most variants, players are free to play any card into a trick in the first phase of the game, but must follow suit as soon as the stock is depleted. Trick-avoidance games like reversis or polignac are those in which the aim is to avoid taking some or all tricks.
Whist is a classic English trick-taking card game which was widely played in the 18th and 19th centuries. Although the rules are simple, there is scope for strategic play.
500 or Five Hundred is a trick-taking game developed in the United States from Euchre. Euchre was extended to a 10 card game with bidding and a Misère contract similar to Russian Preference, producing a cutthroat three-player game like Preference and a four-player game played in partnerships like Whist which is the most popular modern form, although with special packs it can be played by up to six players.
Auction bridge was first form of Bridge where players bid to declare a contract in their chosen trump suit or no trumps. It was first recorded as being played in Bath around 1904. The Bath Club and Portland Club met in 1908 and issued a super-set of rules for Bridge that covered the bidding and penalty for failing to make a contract in Auction Bridge. Early forms were rudimentary and unbalanced and the British and Americans could not agree over the bidding ranking and use of artificial bids, resulting in The Whist Club of New York and The Portland Club issuing competing sets of rules.
Spades is a trick-taking card game devised in the United States in the 1930s. It can be played as either a partnership or solo/"cutthroat" game. The object is to take the number of tricks that were bid before play of the hand began. Spades is a descendant of the Whist family of card games, which also includes Bridge, Hearts, and Oh Hell. Its major difference as compared to other Whist variants is that, instead of trump being decided by the highest bidder or at random, the Spade suit always trumps, hence the name.
Solo whist is the English form of Wiezen, a simple game of the Boston family played in the Low Countries. It is a trick-taking card game for four players in which players can bid to make eight tricks in trumps with any partner, or a solo contract playing against the other three players. Thus it combines both partnership and cut-throat play. Scoring is with small stakes won or paid out on each hand.
The game of French Tarot is a trick-taking strategy tarot card game played by three to five players using a traditional 78-card tarot deck. The game is the second most popular card game in France and is also played in French-speaking Canada. It should not be confused with French tarot, which refers to all aspects of cartomancy and games using tarot cards in France.
Rubber bridge is a form of contract bridge played by two competing pairs using a particular method of scoring. A rubber is completed when one pair becomes first to win two games, each game presenting a score of 100 or more contract points; a new game ensues until one pair has won two games to conclude the rubber. Owing to the availability of various additional bonus and penalty points in the scoring, it is possible, though less common, to win the rubber by amassing more total points despite losing two games out of three. Rubber bridge involves a high degree of skill but there is also a fair amount of luck involved in who gets the best cards. A popular variation of rubber bridge is known as Chicago.
Pedro is an American trick-taking card game of the All Fours family based on Auction Pitch. Its most popular variant is known as Cinch, Double Pedro or High Five which was developed in Denver, Colorado around 1885 and soon regarded as the most important American member of the All Fours family. Although it went out of fashion with the rise of Auction Bridge, it is still widely played on the western coast of the United States and in its southern states, being the dominant game in some locations in Louisiana. Forms of the game have been reported from Nicaragua, the Azores, Niobe NY, Italy and Finland. The game is primarily played by four players in fixed partnerships, but can also be played by 2–6 individual players.
Preferans or Russian Preference is a 10-card plain-trick game with bidding, played by three or four players with a 32-card Piquet deck. It is a sophisticated variant of the Austrian game Préférence, which in turn descends from Spanish Ombre and French Boston. It is renowned in the card game world for its many complicated rules and insistence on strategical approaches.
Vint is a Russian card-game, similar to both bridge and whist and it is sometimes referred to as Russian whist. Vint means a screw in Russian, and the name is given to the game because the four players, each in turn, propose, bid and overbid each other until one, having bid higher than the others care to follow, makes the trump, and his vis-a-vis plays as his partner.
These terms are used in contract bridge, using duplicate or rubber scoring. Some of them are also used in whist, bid whist, the obsolete game auction bridge, and other trick-taking games. This glossary supplements the Glossary of card game terms.
Shelem, also called Rok or similar, is an Iranian trick-taking card game with four players in two partnerships, bidding and competing against each other. Bidding and trump are declared in every hand by the bidding winner. Both the name and the point structure of this game are similar to the American game Rook, there being a possible connection between the two games. Though it isn't clear from which game it is derived.
Quadrille is a card game that was highly popular in the 18th century at the French court and among the British nobility, especially women. A variant of the three-player, Spanish card game Ombre, it is played by four players, both in varying alliances and solo games, using a pack of 40 cards. Developed in southern France in the late 17th century, it took off in Paris and London in the early 19th century, it being "to the good taste of the French nation" and to women, principally of the middle and upper classes, among whom it became their favourite game. Having become "one of the great European games for about a hundred years" by the mid-19th century, Quadrille had fallen out of fashion, superseded by Whist and Boston.
The following is a glossary of terms used in card games. Besides the terms listed here, there are thousands of common and uncommon slang terms. Terms in this glossary should not be game-specific, but apply to a wide range of card games played with non-proprietary packs. It should not include terms solely related to casino or banking games. For glossaries that relate primarily to one game or family of similar games, see Game-specific glossaries.
German Solo or just Solo is a German 8-card plain-trick game for 4 individual players using a 32-card, German- or French-suited Skat pack. It is essentially a simplification of Quadrille, itself a 4-player adaptation of Ombre. As in Quadrille, players bid for the privilege of declaring trumps and deciding whether to play alone or with a partner. Along with Ombre, Tarock and Schafkopf, German Solo influenced the development of Skat. Parlett calls it a "neat little descendant of Quadrille" and "a pleasant introduction" to the Ombre family of games.
Préférence, frequently spelt Preference, is a Central and Eastern European 10-card plain-trick game with bidding, played by three players with a 32-card Piquet deck, and probably originating in early 19th century Austria, becoming the second most popular game in Vienna by 1980. It also took off in Russia where it was played by the higher echelons of society, the regional variant known as Preferans being still very popular in that country, while other variants are played from Lithuania to Greece.
Call-ace whist or Danish whist is a card game for four players playing in variable partnerships. It is the most popular form of Whist in Denmark, where it is often just called "Whist". It has a well developed bidding system and has imported from the traditional Danish game of Skærvindsel the feature of determining the partnerships by 'calling an ace'. John McLeod records that there is also a version of Danish whist in which there are fixed partnerships.
References
- ↑ First Steps of Bridge in the West: Collinson's 'Biritch by Thierry Depaulis and Jac Fuchs in the Playing-Card Journal of the International Playing-Card Society, Volume 32, No. 2, Sept-Oct 2003. Collinson's rules are in a miniature bound book of 56 pages about 3 by 5 inches between plain brown hard covers; of the 56 pages, only 4 are printed on - the first 2 and the last 50 are blank. For the text, see wikisource:Biritch, or Russian Whist.
- ↑ (Foster 1889)
- ↑ (Elwell 1905 and Benedict 1900)
- ↑ (Melrose 1901)
- ↑ (Bergholt 1915)
