How To Play Bridge With Your Friends While Social Isolating

How Can Four People Play Bridge Remotely?

(March 2020) These are difficult times and many people have asked us how they can play bridge with their friends when they have all been told to stay at home.  We all have to mindful of social distancing and many folk are choosing to self isolate to protect themselves and their friends and family.  For many people their regular bridge games are a social highlight and there is no need to miss out – here at Blueberry Bridge we can help you.

The folk at No Fear Bridge have put together some set hands so that you can  still play bridge with your friends, whilst staying safe in your own home.

What You Need

  • You will need to use a video meeting app.  Suggestions include Skype, Facebook, Facetime, What’sApp, Google calling, Zoom.  All allow multiple people to take part in the same call.  You can see and talk to each other and enjoy your game of bridge while staying safe at home.

I suggest you do a practice run to make sure everyone is comfortable with your chosen calling /video meeting app.  You can us any device – a laptop, phone, tablet.  But you might find a smaller device easier to use if you want to move it to show your cards.

  • Before you start playing – you will need to decide who is playing N, S, E or W.

Once you’ve decided, each person should download the relevant sheet, which shows just their own hands.

Download the North hands HERE (as a .jpg image) or HERE (as a Word document)

Download the South hands HERE (as a .jpg image) or HERE (as a Word document)

Download the West hands HERE (as a .jpg image) or HERE (as a Word document)

Download the East hands HERE (as a .jpg image) or HERE (as a Word document)

  • Paper and pen – to keep track of the bidding, which cards have been played and which partnership have won each trick.

Playing the game

Decide which hand you are playing.  There are 24 hands to choose from.

Each player selects their cards from their own pack to make up their hand.

Bidding proceeds as normal.  Make sure everyone has heard each bid.  If you use bidding boxes you might like to select your bid and show it to the camera on  your device so everyone can see it.  But this is where your paper and pen will come in handy – write down each player’s bid.

Play commences as usual, but when the dummy hand is laid out, the person who holds those cards can tell everyone else which cards are in the hand (and/or show it to the camera on their device so everyone can see it).  Everyone else can then place a dummy hand on their own table, removing cards as they are played, so everyone can see which cards are in dummy.

About The Set Hands

All these hands were originally played in a duplicate bridge session at bridgeclubs.live.com, so we also have a sheet of other players’ results so you can compare your own performance with the original results – download it HERE

Another fun way of enjoying bridge together would be to access some of the fun activities on the No Fear Bridge website – www.nofearbridge.co.uk (or www.nofearbridge.com  if you live in the US).  

Try the daily quiz and see who can get their name nearest the top of the leader board.

However you choose to play remotely while self isolating or maintaining social distancing, have fun.