page_title: Contract bridge
section_title: History and etymology
hierarchical_section_title: Contract bridge / History and etymology
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of a meeting of the bridge club of Frances Shimer College in 1941-1942, from the 1942 Shimer yearbook. Now a liberal arts college in Chicago with a Great Books curriculum, Shimer was then a four-year women's junior college in Mount Carroll, Illinois; consequently, all parts were played by women. Published in the school's 1942 yearbook, which does not contain a copyright notice. Additionally in the public domain due to the terms of dedication of the Shimer College Collection (which includes a copy of this yearbook) to NIU in 1979, which vested literary rights in the collection in the public.
context_page_description: Contract bridge, or simply bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard 52-card deck. In its basic format, it is played by four players in two competing partnerships, with partners sitting opposite each other around a table. Millions of people play bridge worldwide in clubs, tournaments, online and with friends at home, making it one of the world's most popular card games, particularly among seniors. The World Bridge Federation is the governing body for international competitive bridge, with numerous other bodies governing bridge at the regional level.
  The game consists of a number of deals, each progressing through four phases. The cards are dealt to the players, and then the players ‘’call’’ in an auction seeking to take the contract, specifying how many tricks the partnership receiving the contract needs to take to receive points for the deal. During the auction, partners endeavor to exchange information about their hands, including overall strength and distribution of the suits. The cards are then played, the declaring side trying to fulfill the contract, and the defenders trying to stop the declaring side from achieving its goal.
context_section_description: Bridge is a member of the family of trick-taking games and is a development of Whist, which had become the dominant such game and enjoyed a loyal following for centuries. The idea of a trick-taking 52-card game has its first documented origins in Italy and France. The French physician and author Rabelais (1493–1553) mentions a game called "La Triomphe" in one of his works. In 1526 the Italian Francesco Berni wrote the oldest known (as of 1960) textbook on a game very similar to Whist, known as "Triomfi". Also, a Spanish textbook in Latin from the first half of the 16th century, "Triumphens Historicus", deals with the same subject.
  Bridge departed from whist with the creation of "Biritch" in the 19th century, and evolved through the late 19th and early 20th centuries to form the present game. The first rule book for bridge, dated 1886, is Biritch, or Russian Whist written by John Collinson, an English financier working in Ottoman Istanbul. It and his subsequent letter to The Saturday Review dated May 28, 1906, document the origin of Biritch as being the Russian community in Istanbul. The word biritch is thought to be a transliteration of the Russian word Бирюч (бирчий, бирич), an occupation of a diplomatic clerk or an announcer. Another theory is that British soldiers invented the game bridge while serving in the Crimean War, and named it after the Galata Bridge, which they crossed on their way to a coffeehouse to play cards.
  Biritch had many significant bridge-like developments: dealer chose the trump suit, or nominated his partner to do so; there was a call of no trumps (biritch); dealer's partner's hand became dummy; points were scored above and below the line; game was 3NT, 4♥ and 5♦ (although 8 club odd tricks and 15 spade odd tricks were needed); the score could be doubled and redoubled; and there were slam bonuses. It has some features in common with Solo Whist. This game, and variants of it known as "bridge" and "bridge whist", became popular in the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1890s despite the long-established dominance of whist. Its breakthrough was its acceptance  in 1894 by Lord Brougham at London's Portland Club.
  In 1904 auction bridge was developed, in which the players bid in a competitive auction to decide the contract and declarer. The object became to make at least as many tricks as were contracted for, and penalties were introduced for failing to do so. Auction bridge bidding beyond winning the auction is pointless. If taking all 13 tricks, there is no difference in score between a 1♠ and a 7♠ final bid, as no bonus for game, small slam or grand slam exists.
  The modern game of contract bridge was the result of innovations to the scoring of auction bridge by Harold Stirling Vanderbilt and others. The most significant change was that only the tricks contracted for were scored below the line toward game or a slam bonus, a change that resulted in bidding becoming much more challenging and interesting. Also new was the concept of "vulnerability", making sacrifices to protect the lead in a rubber more expensive. The various scores were adjusted to produce a more balanced and interesting game. Vanderbilt set out his rules in 1925, and within a few years contract bridge had so supplanted other forms of the game that "bridge" became synonymous with "contract bridge".
  In the US and many other countries, most of the bridge played today is duplicate bridge, which is played at clubs, in tournaments and online. The number of people playing contract bridge has declined since its peak in the 1940s, when a survey found it was played in 44% of US households. The game is still widely played, especially amongst retirees, and in 2005 the ACBL estimated there were 25 million players in the US.
caption: Bridge club at Shimer College, 1942.
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