It was 1925 and Harold Vanderbilt, America's Cup yachtsman and expert card player, had invited a bunch of his best friends to cruise through the Panama Canal. Vanderbilt had a new idea for bridge scoring he wanted to try out on the cruise, so he brought many of his card-playing friends and their wives.
Before the cruise, bridge scoring was simpler: clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades, and notrump scored 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 points times the number of tricks beyond six that you made, towards a "game" of 30 points, with a "rubber" bonus given to the first partnership to win two games. Thus, it took nine tricks (3 x 10) in notrump, ten (4 x 8 or 9) in a major, and eleven (5 x 6 or 7) in a minor, to make a game in one single deal. Going down cost 50 points a trick, but making 12 or 13 tricks gave you an automatic slam bonus, even if you did not bid that high. Similarly, if you only bid to 2NT and made an overtrick, you would get 30 points, all of it towards game. Early 1920s experts were irritated with this idea that you could earn a game or slam bonus without actually having to risk bidding that high.
Vanderbilt's new scoring system made for such an exciting form of bridge that it swept the nation and the world in a few short months. The first change was to separate scores towards game from bonuses and penalties. Game was now 100 points but only the tricks you bid for counted. Clubs and diamonds were worth 20 per trick (after the first six), hearts and spades 30, and notrump, originally 35, was quickly changed to 30 per trick with an overall bonus of 10, to make all scores divisible by 10 and encourage playing for a cent a point (which actually is a fairly high stake if you're not as rich as Vanderbilt was!). The number of tricks needed for game in one hand stayed the same as before. But bidding 2♥ and making two overtricks now gave you a score of 60 "below the line" and another 60 "above the line," the above the line part not counting towards game. Right away, bidding changed: in the old game, it would end when one side stopped bidding and the other side found a suitable denomination to play in. Now, the auction winners had to carefully consider how high they should go.
Other Vanderbilt innovations were large bonuses for bidding and making slams, a bonus of 200 extra for winning two games to nil rather than two to one, and an increase in penalties and bonuses for partnerships that had won one game. The men searched to find a simple word to describe this condition until one of the ladies (exactly who this was, sadly, was lost to history) suggested the word 'vulnerable!' At the end of the cruise, Vanderbilt gave everyone a typed copy of the scoring table. Soon his scoring table was on the 55th card (following two jokers) in new packs, and contract bridge was everywhere!
Duplicate tournaments use contract bridge scoring with only a few extra rules. In duplicate, we need a separate score for each deal, nothing gained in one deal ever carries over to the next. A partnership may make a game on one deal and be non-vulnerable on the next; each new board is a new situation. Basic strategy requires a knowledge of the four tiers: partscores, games, small slams, and grand slams.
Going down costs 50 per trick if non-vulnerable and 100 vulnerable. If doubled, the penalty for going down more than one trick increases very quickly (and redoubled is twice as much):
On many hands a profitable sacrifice is possible: you may be able to bid 4♠ over 4♥ and get doubled but still come out better, if for example 4♥ was going to make for 420 and in 4♠ you only go down 300. Vulnerability is critical in these decisions, and the 1987 change cracked down on wild sacrifices against slams in favorable vulnerability conditions.
Once a deal has a bunch of different scores from being played at several tables, it is matchpointed. The director, these days with the help of a computer*, will give every pair a matchpoint score based on this simple rule: for each pair playing the same direction as you did that you get a better score than, you get one matchpoint; one-half if you get the same score. The most you can get on a board is the number of times it is played, minus one. The North-South and East-West pairs at the same table will split the matchpoints on each board, and the pair with the most matchpoints at the end wins the game.
Note that it doesn't matter in a pairs game how many points you beat other pairs by: you'll get one matchpoint for being 10 better and one matchpoint for being 1000 better or more. (Team games, where players enter as teams of four, are different and we'll discuss that fun format another time.) It also doesn't matter how many aces and kings you and your partner pick up over the course of the evening. Good defense often gets you matchpoints over other tables where the defenders slipped and let through an extra overtrick!
Most scoring programs convert your matchpoint total to a percentage and in most pairs games a score of 60% of the available matchpoints will be winning or close to winning. You'll usually have a few 'tops' and a few 'bottoms' in a session, and it can be instructive to look at the results and see where a different bid or play would make a large difference. Most clubs these days post results online with a diagram of each hand and the results everyone got, all collected by the computer from the scoring units. Even if you struggle in your first few games, you can track progress and rejoice when you break average or win some ACBL masterpoints for the first time!
* Until the 1990s, most clubs and tournaments scored by hand. It was an amazing sight to see a single director score up a huge tournament game, adding rows of numbers in his head on a sheet of paper covering two bridge tables, surrounded by a big crowd waiting for the final scores to be added up!
An example deal: Couldn't find a deal that illustrates the theme of BBB#2 (bridge scoring), but this is a pretty cool play problem!
Let's first look at this from a scoring standpoint. The 4♦ call is a pre-emptive bid, designed to take up bidding space and make it difficult for North-South to find their best spot. South's 4♥ call should have some values and fairly long hearts to introduce a suit at the four level; based on this standard, South's hand is quite good. West's 5♦ call is almost certainly a sacrifice, hoping to go down for a smaller minus than North-South will make in 4♥ (420 or 620 depending on vulnerability, plus 30 per overtrick). The riskiest this could be would be if E-W only were vulnerable: now 5♦ down one doubled would be the limit (-200), one more down (-500) would be more than the value of North-South's non-vulnerable game. North's jump to 6♥ is a gamble, based on distribution but could be disastrous if South begins with a loser in clubs and hearts. South might have bid 4♥ with the 2♥ instead of the ace and the Q♣ instead of the ace, but that seems a bit of a stretch. If 5♦ goes down only one and East-West can make ten tricks, they have a profitable sacrifice in 7♦ doubled: depending on vulnerability, down three is only -500 or -800 against a slam worth 980 or 1430! But while 4♥ sounds like an almost certain make on the auction, 6♥ may be pushing it a bit. Nobody likes to sacrifice against a slam that is going down!
West leads the A♦ against your 6♥ contract as South. You have eight heart tricks and two aces and need two more tricks. What's your plan?
Getting from ten to eleven is easy. You can ruff the diamond opening lead in dummy. This gives you a diamond ruff, eight hearts in declarer's hand, and two aces. The twelfth trick is harder and there are several options:
West leads the A♦ against your 6♥ contract as South. You have eight heart tricks and two aces and need two more tricks. What's your plan?
The best play, surprisingly, is to discard a club from dummy and let them have the first trick! If they continue diamonds, ruff in hand and pitch a second club from dummy, cash the A♣ and ruff two clubs high: this line succeeds as long as both defenders have at least one club. If the defenders switch to spades, play the A♠ and ruff a spade, then return twice with trumps to ruff two more spades (with high trumps). Now you succeed even if the player with the K♠ has four of the missing five spades, since you did not use an entry to dummy at trick one by ruffing a diamond, as long as you carefully save the 3♥ to use as a third trump entry to dummy's 5♥! This play fails only if spades break 5-0, or you played the 3♥ to dummy's queen or ten earlier.
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