Award-Winning Game
Winner - Starting Small: Minigames

Like Bridge but cannot find more than two players? Never bothered to learn the fiddly bidding system? Want to get rid of the Byzantine scoring system? Try the new two-player Bridge variant: Guess Who Bridge, which draws influence also from the children's game Guess Who.

Equipment

• Two players
• Two table-top card holders capable of holding 13 cards each. (If you do not have card holders, they are easy to make out of cardboard and duct tape. See the image at the end of this document.)
• Standard 52 card deck of playing-cards
• 140 units worth poker chips

Preparations

Each player is given 70 units in poker chips. The first dealer is chosen by appropriate random means. After that the turn to deal alternates.

Deal

The human players sit facing each others. In addition to the human players, there are two android players represented by the card holders. One card holder is in the dealer's left and another in the other player's right. (Note that the card holders change place between deals to keep the game fair for both players.)

The cards are shuffled and dealt so that each player, human and android, receives 13 cards; the humans keep their cards in their hands, and the androids' cards are put in the card holders. Each human sees the cards of the android 'sitting' next to him.

Each human plays as the partner of the android whose cards he does not see. (Hence, everyone sits in between two opponents.)

Bidding

The human players bid for the number of odd tricks (the number of odd tricks won by a team = the number of tricks won by a team minus 6) their partnership will win. Each bid consists of the number of odd tricks (1-7) and the trump denomination (From lowest to highest: Clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades, no trump ). Each bid must either have a greater number of odd tricks than the previous, or the same number of odd tricks and a higher trump denomination.

The dealer bids first, and only the human players take part in the bidding.

If a player does not wish to bid, he may pass. If a player thinks the opponent has bid too high, the player can double.

The bidding goes on until (1) both players pass without making a bid (2) one player passes after another's bid or (3) one player doubles after another's bid.

The highest bid becomes the contract, and the player who bid it becomes the declarer. The trump denomination of the highest bid is the trump suit. If the highest bid was no trump or no bid was made, the game is played without a trump suit.

Card play

All players, both human and android, participate in the card play. If there's a contract, the card play is started by the player in the declarer's left, if no bid was made, by the dealer.

The game is an ordinary trick-taking game. The players must follow suit, but there are no further restrictions regarding the choice of the card. The trick is won by the highest trump in in, or if there are no trumps in the trick, by the highest card of the lead suit. The winner of the trick starts the next one.

When it is the android's turn to play a card, the partner of the android gives a command that determines the card the android plays. The command consists of three parts: Rank range (from the lowest allowed card to the highest allowed card), suit and preference (highest or lowest). The rank range can be anything from 2-A to a single card. The android plays a card of the named suit that is in the range. If the android has several such cards, it plays the highest or lowest of them according to the preference part of the command.

If the android cannot play a card named by the command (i.e. the android either does not have such a card, or the android has cards of the lead suit and is commanded to play some other card), the android returns an error message that contains exactly the information that it is an error message. In the case of an error message, the player who gave the command pays one unit in poker chips to his opponent and gives a new command. This is repeated until the android plays a card.

The player can also give the command 'anything goes', in which case the opponent chooses freely (but subject to the follow suit rule) the card the android plays.

Questions

Whenever it's a player's turn either to bid or to play a card or his partner android's turn to play a card, the player can ask questions about the partner android's hand. The questions must be such that they have a yes/no answer, and the answer can depend only on the cards the android has in his hand at the moment. The opponent answers the questions truthfully. When the player asks, he pays one unit in poker chips to his opponent per question. (Note: The questions are asked and answered one at a time, so further questions may depend on the answers of the previous questions.)

(Strategy hint: To evaluate the strength of a hand, bridge players use the HCP count. Ace=4HCP, King=3HCP, Queen=2HCP and Jack=1HCP. Other cards are worth zero HCP. The strength of a hand is the sum of HCP it contains. Thus, questions such as "Does the android have at least 10 HCP?" give a good estimate of the playing strength of the android's hand. Another useful category of questions are the questions of the type "Does the android have at least four cards of the heart suit?" It is usually thought that a game of four odd tricks requires the partnership have combined 26HCP and eight trump cards.)

Scoring

The scoring phase occurs after all the cards have been played into tricks.

If the declarer's partnership has combined at least the number of tricks indicated by the contract, they are said to have made the contract. (Note that the contract is given in odd tricks, so the number of tricks required to make the contract is contract + 6.) If the declarer's partnership got more tricks than the contract required, the extra tricks are called overtricks. (Example: The contract was 2 in hearts, and the declarer's partnership got 9 tricks. The contract required 2+6=8 tricks, so there's one overtrick.)

If the declarer's partnership got fewer tricks than the conrtact required, the tricks missing from the contract are called undertricks. (Example: The contract was 3 in hearts, and the declarer's partnership got 5 tricks. The contract required 6+3 =9 tricks, so there are 9-5 = 4 undertricks.)

If the declarer's partnership made the contract, the opponent pays a 10 unit rake to the bank, 5 units for each odd trick in the contract to the declarer, and one unit for each overtrick to the declarer. (Example: The contract was 2 in hearts, and the declarer's partnership got 9 tricks. The opponent pays 10 units for the bank, and 2 x 5 + 1 = 11 units for the declarer.)

If the declarer's partnership did not make the contract, the declarer pays a 10 unit rake to the bank and 5 units for each undertrick to his opponent.

If the contract was doubled, the payment for each trick in the contract and for each undertrick is 10 units instead of 5. In a doubled contract, each overtrick is worth 5 units instead of 1.

If no bid was made, the player who got fewer tricks pays a 10 unit rake to the bank and 1 unit for each odd trick to his opponent.

(Note that the bank has no other function in the game except that it collects the rake and thus ensures that the number of chips in the game decreases.)

End of game

If either of the players has fewer than 20 units in poker chips after the scoring phase, the game ends and that player loses the game. (If both have fewer than 20 chips, the player with fewer chips loses the game. If tied, the player who paid the last rake loses.) Otherwise, the game continues with a new deal; the game lasts so many deals that either of the player has fewer than 20 chips after a scoring phase of a deal.