Singapore Bridge rules

The table and the goal

Singapore Bridge is a four-player trick-taking game. Partnerships change on every deal: the winning bidder chooses a hidden partner by calling one exact card.

• Use a standard 52-card deck without jokers.
• Within each suit, cards rank from 2 (lowest) through 10, jack, queen, king, and ace (highest).
• Each player receives 13 private cards and always controls only their own hand.
• The declaring partnership tries to make its contract; the two defenders try to stop it.

How a trick works

A trick is one round of four cards, one from each player. There are 13 tricks in a deal.

1. The leader plays the first card. Its suit is the led suit for that trick.
2. Play continues clockwise. If you hold the led suit, you must play that suit. Otherwise, you may play any card.
3. The highest trump wins if any trump was played; otherwise, the highest card of the led suit wins. Cards from other suits cannot win.
4. The trick winner collects the trick and leads the next one.

Bidding for the contract

The player to the dealer’s left calls first, then calls continue clockwise. A bid combines a level from 1 to 7 with a suit or no trump.

Denominations, lowest to highest

• Every new bid must rank above the previous bid. After 1NT, the cheapest legal bid is 2♣, but a player may skip directly to any higher bid.
• Pass declines to bid on that turn. A player may bid later if the auction returns to them before it ends.
• Three consecutive passes after a bid end the auction. Four passes before any bid wash the deal. Double and redouble are not used.
• The server also redeals before bidding if any hand has fewer than 4 strength points: ace = 4, king = 3, queen = 2, jack = 1, plus 1 for every card beyond the fourth card in a suit.

Calling the hidden partner

The final winning bidder becomes declarer and publicly calls one exact card after the auction.

• The contract belongs to declarer, who chooses the called card.
• Declarer must call a card not held in their own hand. Calling yourself or playing alone is not allowed.
• The holder is declarer’s partner and knows this privately. The other two players are defenders. The partnership becomes public only when the called card is played.
• There is no dummy or exposed hand. All four players continue playing their own cards.

Opening lead and trump

• In a suit contract, the player to declarer’s left leads the first trick.
• In a no-trump contract, declarer leads the first trick and no suit can trump another.
• In a suit contract, playing a trump when unable to follow the led suit breaks trump. Trump can then be led on later tricks.
• Before trump is broken, it cannot be led unless the leader’s hand contains only trump cards.

Individual scoring

Only the two players on the winning side score. Points are added to each winner’s individual session total.

Overtricks add no bonus. Defender points are capped at 64 for seven or more undertricks; the two players on the losing side receive 0.

The four-deal session

A complete game contains four scored deals, giving every player one turn as dealer.

• The dealer position moves clockwise after each scored deal.
• A washed deal is redealt and does not use one of the four scored deals.
• After four scored deals, players are ranked by their accumulated individual points.