Why play duplicate?
We all have endured interminable sessions of rubber bridge where we never got an opening hand and rarely had any support when partner opened. Or perhaps the opponents found a grand slam early on and we spent the rest of the session trying to catch up. Or perhaps we blundered into a bad contract and went down four tricks, doubled and vulnerable, and spent the rest of the session trying to dig our way out. Or perhaps we were playing for the first time with a group who turned out to be “social players” in the worst sense of the term. They talked incessantly about everything but the game and when they finally turned to the cards they bid badly and played even worse.
And perhaps most maddingly, in rubber bridge you are always hostage to the luck of the draw. It is possible to play good cards badly enough to lose but it is not possibble to play bad cards well enough to win.
Switch to duplicate and leave those irritations behind. Bidding and playing the hand are not much different from rubber bridge. However, the game structure and scoring method change it into an entirely different game. There are five major departures from rubber bridge, each of which is essential and together are pure genius.
First, the cards are dealt at the beginning of the session and each set of four hands is placed into a metal or plastic tray-like device called a “board,” with a slot for each hand, and they are never re-dealt. Instead, they are passed from table to table in a predetermined manner as the session progresses and players move from table to table in a pattern called a “movement.”
In a small game (less than seven tables) each board will be played as many times as there are tables; e.g., in a five table game each board will be played five times. A traveling score sheet accompanies the board to record the results as the hand is played by different players.
Second, the hands are completely independent of one another. Dealer and vulnerability are engraved into the board and are not determined by what happened in a previous hand. It preserves the notions of rotating the opening bidder and vulnerability while keeping the hands independent of one another. There are no such things as legs, part-scores, or above-and-below-the-line.
Third, the scoring method, called match-point scoring, removes the luck of the draw from the game by ensuring that your partnership’s final score is determined only against pairs who played the same cards that you played. It’s why you can get really awful hands all evening and still win; all you have to do is take one more trick than everyone else who had to play those awful hands. (See details elsewhere on this site.)
Fourth, match-point scoring also causes every hand to be equally weighted in determining the final score. The top board you get for taking an extra trick on defense against a minor-suit, part-score contract counts exactly the same as the top board you get for being the only pair that bid and made 7NT. Similarly, the bottom board you get for going down four tricks, doubled and vulnerable, is no worse than the bottom board you get for allowing the opponents to make one extra trick in a minor-suit, part-score contract. Because all hands are equally important, the bidding is a bit more competitive than in rubber bridge, especially for part-score contracts. Match-point scoring is addressed in detail elsewhere on this website.
Fifth and finally, the players mostly are there to play bridge, not socialize, so the game usually proceeds without a lot of idle chatter. (See “Duplicate Bridge Etiquette” elsewhere on this site.) It makes a huge difference if you are even a reasonably serious player. (Please stick to rubber bridge if you are not.)
To summarize, a bad player can lose at rubber bridge even with good cards but even the best player cannot win at rubber bridge with bad cards. Duplicate bridge factors out the luck of the draw. It is played as a series of completely independent hands, each of which is equally important in determining the winners. Nothing carries over from one hand to the next; there is no such thing as “having a leg.” That explains why the bidding is more aggressive, as each pair tries to maximize its score on every hand. Each pair’s final ranking is determined only in comparison to the other pairs who played the same hands. So what if you get lousy cards all night? All you have to do is squeeze out one more trick than everyone else who had to play those same lousy cards and you will be a winner at the end of the evening.