Bridge is a card game played by four people in two partnerships. The players sit opposite their partners at a square table. Conventionally, the four positions are named after the points of a compass: North, East, South, and West. North and South form one partnership, playing against East and West.

The game uses a standard 52-card deck. One player, the dealer, shuffles the cards and deals them out one by one in a clockwise direction. Each player receives a hand of 13 cards. The role of dealer rotates clockwise around the table with each new hand.

The fundamental goal in Bridge is to win tricks for your partnership. A hand of Bridge consists of 13 tricks in total. So, what exactly is a trick?

One player starts a trick by playing a card from their hand face-up on the table. This is called the "opening lead." The other three players must then play a card of the same suit if they have one. This is known as "following suit."

The player who played the highest-ranking card of the suit that was led wins the trick. That player then collects the four cards and leads the first card to the next trick. The Ace is the highest card in each suit, followed by the King, Queen, Jack, 10, and so on, down to the 2.

Let's walk through an example. Imagine South is on lead and plays the King of Spades. Play proceeds clockwise.

In this case, all players had spades, so they had to play one. East played the Ace of Spades, which is the highest spade on the table. Therefore, the East-West partnership wins this trick. East will now lead a card to start the next trick.

What if a player doesn't have any cards of the suit that was led? They can play any card from another suit. This is called a "discard." Discarding a card from a different suit can't win the trick (unless it's a trump card, which is a more advanced concept we'll ignore for now).

The hand continues for 13 tricks until all cards have been played. The partnership that wins the majority of the tricks wins the hand. Your primary objective is simple: work with your partner to win more tricks than your opponents.

Now that you understand the basic flow of the game, let's test your knowledge.

Mastering these fundamentals is the first step. Once you're comfortable with how tricks are played and won, you can begin to explore the deeper strategies of Bridge.