Mafiascum.net

The game will consist of four hands played in teams of two, north and south playing against east and west. Neither team is vulnerable for the first hand, the dealer's opponents are vulnerable in the second and third hands, and both sides are vulnerable in the last hand. The effects of vulnerability will be explained in the section on scoring.


Bidding starts with the dealer, who may choose to bid or pass. Bids are composed of a level followed by a strain. The level is the number of odd tricks (the number of tricks beyond the book of six) bid, while the strain represents the trump suit if any. Each player, in turn, either bids higher than the last bid (if there was one) or pass. A bid is higher than the previous if:

1. it is of a higher level, or
   
2. if it is of the same level but a higher strain. Notrump outranks spades, which outranks hearts, which outranks diamonds, which outranks clubs.

The allowed bids, therefore, range from one club as the lowest to seven notrump as the highest.

You may also, in lieu of bidding or passing, double your opponent's last bid or redouble your opponent's double. Note that you cannot redouble your opponent's bid if they had made a bid since. The effects of doubling and redoubling will be explained in the section on scoring.

Bids, passes, doubles, and redoubles must all be bolded. I do not care about marking alertable and jump bids in any form.

If all players pass on their first opportunity, the hand is neither played nor counted as one of the four hands in the game and there will be a redeal with the same dealer. Otherwise, after three consecutive passes, the last bidder's side is awarded the contract. The bidder on that side that first bid the trump suit (or notrump, if that is applicable) is the declarer, his or her partner is the dummy. (I am not being mean—that is the actual term.)

It is not only legal, but standard, to agree on meanings and conventions for bids. If you are unfamiliar with this, my recommendation to you is to partner up with a player who is and discuss it with him or her, but American players usually learn Standard American or a system based on it (2/1 game forcing is increasing in popularity), while most British players learn Acol. For other parts of the world, generally Acol is used in Ireland and New Zealand while the rest of the world typically uses Standard American and its variants.


The player after the declarer plays to the first trick and may play any card by bolding it. Then, the dummy or I (whichever of us is available first) will expose his or her hand to all players. Declarer must play cards for the dummy and must play a card of the same suit as the opening leader if possible; otherwise, any card from the dummy is legal. The other two players then play, following suit if able. The highest trump wins; if nobody has played trump, the highest card of the suit led wins.

The second through thirteenth tricks are led by the player who won the last trick. As before, declarer always plays for dummy. After all thirteen tricks are played (or earlier, if a side can prove that it will win or lose the rest of the tricks), the hand is scored.

Discussing card signaling follows the same rules as discussing bidding systems.


The value of each contract is 20x points for a minor suit (clubs or diamonds) contract, 30x points for a major suit (hearts or spades) contract, and 30x + 10 points for a notrump contract. In each of these, x represents the level of the contract, so, for example, a 4NT contract is worth 30(4) + 10 = 130 points. These values are doubled for a doubled contract and quadrupled for a redoubled contract.

Each overtrick scores as follows:

	Not vulnerable	Vulnerable
Undoubled (♣ or ♦)	20	20
Undoubled (♥, ♠, or NT)	30	30
Doubled	100	200
Redoubled	200	400

Making a doubled contract is worth 50 points, while making a redoubled contract is worth 100 points.

The bonus for game (a contract worth 100 points or more) is 300 points when not vulnerable and 500 points when vulnerable. If you make a part score (a contract not valuable enough for game), the bonus is 50 points whether vulnerable or not.

Bonuses for slam are scored above the line as follows:

	Not vulnerable	Vulnerable
Small slam (6-level contract)	500	750
Grand slam (7-level contract)	1,000	1,500

If you set your opponents' contract, you score for each undertrick as follows:

	Not vulnerable	Vulnerable
Undoubled	50	100
Doubled (first undertrick)	100	200
Doubled (next two undertricks)	200	300
Doubled (each undertrick thereafter)	300	300
Redoubled (first undertrick)	200	400
Redoubled (next two undertricks)	400	600
Redoubled (each undertrick thereafter)	600	600

The highest score after four hands wins.

• Don't edit. Once you make a bid or play a card, it stands unless the rules don't let it—if that's the case, then make your correction in another post.
  
• If you go 48 hours without an action, I will prod you. After another 24 hours, I will replace you.
  
• Your PM will contain cards in both pictorial and textual form, with the text version nominally being a backup for the picture version. (This also goes if I am the one posting the dummy hand.) Since you are expected to keep track of what you've played, you may find it useful to copy and paste the text version of your hand (and the dummy's!) to a separate file and delete cards from it as they are played.
  
• If you shorthand both cards and bids, it is easier for me to tell which is which if you follow bridge literature convention of putting the suit before the rank when playing a card (C2 or ♣2, not 2C or 2♣, for the two of clubs). If you forget, don't worry—I can figure out which is which from context. Your PM will contain the characters for the card suits if you'd rather copy and paste those than abbreviate suits to their first letter.
  
• It helps to mark led cards (e.g.
  Lead: ♠A
  ) and to update the number of tricks each side won after each trick (e.g. "Declarer has 3/9, defenders have 1 trick").
  
• As a rule, I'll only post as needed. If you need me for a clarification, let me know.
  
• And last but not least, use your common sense. Don't say anything about your hand that the other side shouldn't know about, don't hinder your partner because you want to be a jerk, etc. Play nice and play fair. I'll eject and replace players that don't.

Karen's Bridge Library (for Standard American or 2/1)
Printable cheat sheet for bidding Standard American (use A4 paper for best results)
Printable cheat sheet for bidding Acol (use A4 paper for best results)
Helpful documents from ACBL (scroll down to Bidding Toolkit for a database of many useful conventions)

• North:
  JDGA
  replaces dybeck
  
  
• East:
  penguin_alien
  
• South:
  Mitillos
  
• West (Dealer):
  Thurhame
  replaces Elmo TeH AzN

720 points
600 points

I'll play East seat if that works out. I play Standard American.

ego

I'll play any system except Precision or Polish.

In post 3, dybeck wrote:I'll play any system except Precision or Polish.

There's a Standard American player sitting east, if you want to be her partner.

I'm happy with SAYC... Although if you get an Acol player it would probably make more sense to pair the two of us up.

I'll mark you as "preferentially Acol", then.

I may be interested. Please stand-by to see if dybeck agrees.

I'm definitely good to partner Mitillos!

In post 8, dybeck wrote:I'm definitely good to partner Mitillos!

You two have been seated under the assumption that Mitillos wants his South seat back; please let me know if you'd rather switch places.

I don't mind either way.

The problem is not that it takes a long time to play, the problem is that it takes a long time to find people

penguin_alien, if you want to start advertising that you need a partner, I don't mind.

I can play both south and west.

I could play but I have no idea

In post 13, Elmo TeH AzN wrote:I could play but I have no idea

Does going through the last game help at all? (It was scored differently than this game will be, but the TL;DR version of scoring this time can be printed off from here.)

If you decide you're willing to give this a try, be aware that I can only help you with the rules of the game. If you need help with what the bids mean beyond what I have stated in the OP, you must ask your partner, and she can't give you an unfair advantage.

Happy to give it a whirl, Elmo! I'm no expert myself; only been playing a year or so.

/in

Ill figure this out

Dealing.

All hands are out. For this deal, I will allow 72 hours to bid for the first go around the table to give people time to discuss systems; after everyone's bid once, I will reduce the time limit to 48 hours for all subsequent bids.

Forgot to mention that dybeck opens the bidding.

@Elmo: When someone from our team bids, you can also ask the other person how they interpret that bid. Although, in this case, we're going to use the Acol sheet, as given in the first post, so you can also just check there, generally.

No bid.

Pass

Aaaaand pass.

Pass

New deal when I get home.