Contract Bridge: Rubber Club

Contract Bridge: Rubber Club is our own single-player take on the great partnership card game. You sit South, your computer partner sits North, and two computer opponents sit East and West. Every deal has two parts: the auction, where both teams bid for the right to name trumps, and the play, where you try to win the tricks you bid for.

The bidding box works in two taps: pick a level, pick a suit or no trumps, and before you commit, the game tells you what that call means in our system. The whole auction stays on the table, and you can tap any call, yours or the computer's, to see what it showed: "Opening 1♥: 5+ hearts and 11–21 points", "Stayman: asks partner for a four-card major", and so on. The system is a plain natural one: five-card majors, a 15–17 point 1NT, Stayman and transfers, weak twos, a strong 2♣, takeout doubles, overcalls and Blackwood, all explained on the How to play pages.

In the play, cards you can't play are dimmed, so there is no guessing about following suit. When your team wins the auction you play both your hand and your partner's, the dummy. The computer players think the way a good player does: early in the hand they follow the classic rules of leading and following, and from the middle of the hand on they deal out the cards they can't see in many ways that fit the auction and the play so far, solve each layout, and choose the card that works best on average. That runs in the background, so the table never freezes.

Scoring is classic rubber bridge. Tricks you bid and make go below the line; 100 there wins a game, and the first team to win two games takes the rubber and its bonus. Overtricks, slams, doubled contracts, honours and penalties go above the line, and a vulnerable side scores and loses more. After every hand you see the score item by item and all four hands, and the score sheet is one tap away.

Undo is free: take back your last call or card as often as you like. When the rest of the tricks are surely yours, Claim takes them all at once. The only paid item is a hint, which costs gems and suggests a call by our system or the card the computer would play from your seat. Contract Bridge: Rubber Club is free to play in your browser with no download or sign-up, and its cards, sound effects and music are all made for the game.