I've thought about this long enough so I'm going to try teaching y'all how to play bridge:
We are going to start with how to evaluate a hand and a little bidding introduction:
Let's see how this "quick" introduction goes
This is a four player game with two teams of two.
To start let's go over the types of cards in the game. Bridge uses a standard deck of 52 cards; 4 suits with 13 cards each. Every Card is dealt out so each player will have 13 cards each. Card ranks go from 2's as the lowest and increase sequentially with Aces being the highest. The highest ranked cards; Ace, king, queen, and jack, are typically referred to as "honors." The other things to keep in mind are the suits of the cards. We'll dive into this more later, but what you need to know at the moment is the different "Major" and "Minor" suits. Minor suits are the Clubs and Diamonds while Major suits are Hearts and Spades. The suits also have ranks that will be important later when we get to the bidding, but they are Highest to lowest: Spades, Hearts, Diamonds, and Clubs. Again, clubs being the lowest rank.
Now let's talk about High Card Points, or HCP. HCP are the points you have in your hand from holding honors. The points for each honor are tied to their rank with Aces being 4, Kings 3, Queens 2, and Jacks 1. There are other points you count that aren't HCP, but for right now let's just stick with HCPs only.
Ok, before we start with the bidding, let's try looking at a hand to try and evaluate it with what we know so far.
Alright, let's look at the honors and count up the HCPs.
Note the "x" indicates a low level card that is not an honor.
S: K Q x
H: x x
C: J x x
D: A Q x x x
Again, point value A:4 K:3 Q:2 J:1
So we have 12 HCPs!
Before we start bidding let's take a look at your bidding box.
It consists of the four suites and No Trump bidding cards. They are designed to be in order of rank with No Trump (NT) the highest. It should hopefully help keep you informed on what bids are still legal. For instance if someone opens the bidding with 1 NT then all the "1" level suit bids are no longer bidable, but if someone instead had opened 1 Club, then everything above the club suit is legal.
Along with those there are also the "Pass" cards which are simply used when one cannot bid or chooses to stop bidding. The bidding ends after 3 consecutive passes excluding an instance where the first 3 players pass. For instance.
North: Opening 1 Spade
East: pass
South: pass
West: pass. Bidding ends and the contract is 1 Spade for North - South
North: pass
East: pass
South: pass. The bidding doesn't end here as West is still given a chance to open the bidding
West: can either bid something or if they pass the bidding ends and the hand is not played.
There are some other cards in there we are not going to touch on today, don't worry about them for now.
Let's start the bidding now
For convenience I'll be teaching bidding using Standard American Yellow Card as that is what I was taught when I first started all those years ago.
Bidding is the first thing done before the hand is played. Bidding is used to set up the trump suit and develop a contract for one of the teams.
The dealer is always the first to bid and it continues clockwise. To open bidding you need to have at least 12 points in your hand, otherwise you should just pass. We'll discuss weak openings and preempts in another post, for now I'm going to keep it simple.
Let's use the hand we evaluated earlier to figure out what you should bid. Obviously, with 12 points you shouldn't pass, so what should you open with?
If you guessed 1 Diamond, that is correct! It would seem obvious at least because it's the strongest suit in hand, but let's explain why you wouldn't open the bidding with the other suits, because this will be important.
Remember which suits were Majors and Minors? Spades and Hearts are majors while Diamonds and Clubs are minors. This distinction is important for bidding and scoring. It is imperative that you only open a Major suit if you have 5 cards in it. So to open 1 spade or 1 heart you'll need to have 5 spades or 5 hearts respectively. Obviously there is no 5 card major suits in this hand, so you'll need to simply open with your best minor suit. It is important to note that the minimum number of cards needed in a minor suit is only 3. These minimum opening requirements will be quite important to remember as bidding is how you communicate what you have in your hand to your partner.
Continuing with the bidding we'll just ignore the opponents hands for now and just assume they pass each time. We'll get into overcalls in a different post.
So now let's take a look at the partners hand. (You don't get to look at their hand normally during this)
So we have:
S: A x x
H: A J x x
C: A K x x x
D: J
An impressive 17 point hand, which is overkill for the minimum needed to respond to an opening bid. Responding only needs 6 - 8 points.
Now obviously in this hand we don't like diamonds so we're going to want to bid a different suit. This is a good time to bring up "having a fit." A fit in a suit is having a total of at least 8 cards in said suit between yourself and your partner. See why knowing how many cards you promise with an opening bid matters. Now as a responder you don't need a 5 card major, you only need a 4 card major, so while the clubs suit might look more appealing it's important to bid 1 heart. Another note is that to bid clubs at this point you would need to go to the 2 level as clubs are outranked by diamonds.
Alright, so back to the first hand. Remember the fit requirements for trump suits are 8 cards, and your partner's bid technically only promises 4 so between the both of you you only have 6. Clearly, this is not a good fit. At this point mentioning a 4 card major is an option, but we don't have one here as there are only 3 cards in the Spade suit. What we do have though is at least 1 honor (or in this case "stopper") in each of the suits that our partner hasn't bid. This is why the 1 NT bid is made.
I will say though, that rebidding diamonds at the 2 level wouldn't be the worst thing either, it's just not as strong of a bid, and mildly is fibbing slightly since rebidding a suit tends to show extra support, typically an extra card compared to the minimum opening. The 1 NT is just a better descriptor of your hand for your partner.
sorry this next part might get kinda fucking confusing and complicated, so we will save it for the moment and get back to it later. For now let's just say your partner passes after your 1 NT bid giving you two a 1 NT contract, that means you'll have to take 7 tricks. To figure out how many tricks you need just add 6 to the level of the contract.
Before we continue back to the 17 point hand of our partner I need to take a moment to discuss "game level bidding." Game level is different for NT, the majors, and the minors. NTs game level is 3, Spades/Hearts are 4, and diamonds/clubs are 5. Game level is important for scoring. For instance making 2 NT contract and getting an extra trick is less points than making a 3 NT contract and getting the exact number of tricks. It's the same for a 3 Spades/Hearts contract making 4. If you'd been in a 4 level contract you'd get more points. This is not the same as a 1 Spade making 2 however. Anything below game is the same points regardless of if you take an extra trick or not, so a 2 Diamond making 3 is the same as simply bidding and making a 3 level contract.
So to determine if you and your partner should be in a game level contract you just have to determine the amount points between you and your partner. Game level points for each suit and NT is NT: 26, Spades/Hearts: 26, and Diamonds/Clubs: 29.
So your partner sitting there with 17 points knows that since you opened you have at least 12, which gives you 29 points together, more than enough for game in NT. Because your partner knows that they are going to immediately jump to 3 NT skipping the invitational 2 NT bid. A 2 NT bid would be asking you to either take it to game or pass depending on how good your own hand is, but your partner already knows that their hand makes it 100% viable.
Quick reference guide
High Card Points
Ace: 4
King: 3
Queen: 2
Jack: 1
Opening points: 12 - 13
Responding points: 6 - 8
Bidding rankings: NT, Spades, Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs
Game level bids and points:
NT: 3 level, 26 points
Spades/Hearts: 4 level, 26 points
Diamonds/Clubs: 5 level, 29 points
