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Play your first hand

Your first hand is the last step of Bridge Basics, and it is the first time you play a whole deal. Three hands, in order, each one leaving you a little more of it to do. Every deal is the same contract, 1NT by you, which needs seven tricks of the thirteen.

  1. Finish the Bridge Basics Test. The last card offers Play your first hand, and Learn’s Bridge Basics card carries the same step underneath the test. Lesson 8 offers it too, quietly, if you want it before the test.

  2. Hand one starts with the contract and no auction to sit through: you are told what you are playing and what you need. Tap to begin.

    The first guided hand, with the sure winners lit and the rest dimmed Open this picture full size.
    Step 2: the lit cards are the ones to play.

  3. Only some cards can be tapped, and those are the ones ringed in gold. The dimmed ones are still legal bridge, and you can still read them, but on these first two hands we steer you past the choices that would cost you the contract. Tap a dimmed card and we say so in a line, rather than doing nothing.

  4. Dummy’s cards, the hand across the table, are played for you on hand one. We caption the first couple so you can see what dummy is for.

  5. A line above your hand says what we are doing and why, before you play, and how it went afterwards. It says it in full the first time, shorter the second, and then leaves you to it, because by the third time it is not news.

  6. Hand two hands dummy over to you: both hands are yours to play, which is what declaring really is. Before your first card we stop and count the tricks that cannot be taken off you, and the hand waits until you tap Got it.

    The counting moment on the second hand, with a Got it button Open this picture full size.
    Step 6: the count comes first, and the hand waits for you.

  7. Hand three says nothing and lights nothing. Every legal card is yours to play, the Hint button is there if you want it, and this one can be lost. If it goes down, play it again: the same deal is waiting and nothing about your record suffers.

  8. After the third hand we point you at Hand Evaluation, the next topic, and you can replay the three hands whenever you like from Practice, under Bridge Basics.

Your first hand is part of Bridge Basics, so it is free, in both bidding systems, with or without a Plus plan.