DEVIL’S BRIDGE

Hey there! Ever heard of Devil’s Bridge? It’s a cool card game that you can play with 3 to 7 people. The goal of the game is to guess the exact number of tricks you’ll be able to win. But beware! If you take more or fewer tricks than you guessed, you’ll lose.

Before the game starts, it’s important to decide on a target score that everyone will play towards.

GETTING STARTED

So, to kick things off, we need a dealer. We can choose the first dealer randomly, and then the deal will keep going around in a clockwise direction.

The deck of cards is shuffled, and each player is given their cards, one at a time. The number of cards each player gets depends on how many people are playing. Next, we flip over a card to reveal the trump suit for that hand. This suit is super special and can beat all the other suits. The rest of the cards are stacked up, with the trump card on top.

In Devil’s Bridge, we use a series of hands to play the game. The number of cards we play with depends on how many players are in the game. Here’s a breakdown:

• If there are 3-5 players, each player gets 10 cards.
• If there are 6 players, each player gets 8 cards.
• If there are 7 players, each player gets 7 cards.

We start each hand with one card, and then add one more card in each round until we reach the maximum number of cards. After that, each round decreases the number of cards by one until we have a one-card hand. Let me give you an example where the maximum number of cards is 8:

First round: 1 card

Second round: 2 cards

Third round: 3 cards

And so on, until we reach the maximum of 8 cards. Then, the rounds decrease until we have a one-card hand again. So, the series would look like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. That means we have a total of 15 hands in each game.

Now, for the final hand, each player will receive one card, but here’s the twist: no one is allowed to look at their own card. Instead, we place the card on our foreheads so that everyone else can see it. It adds an extra layer of excitement and mystery to the game!

Card Ranking

Let me start by telling you how the cards are ranked in Devil’s Bridge. The highest card is the Ace, followed by the King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, and finally the lowest card, 2.

Bidding

When it comes to bidding in the game, it’s important to understand how it works. The bidding process starts with the player to the left of the dealer, and then moves clockwise back to the dealer. The dealer will have the final bid.

Each player must make a bid, indicating the number of tricks they believe they can take with their hand. A trick is a round of play where each player plays one card. It’s important to note that players can choose to bid zero tricks if they believe they won’t win any.

Players have the option to change their bid as long as the player to their left has not yet placed a bid. However, there is a hook – the dealer is not allowed to bid a number that would make the total amount of tricks bid equal to the total number of tricks available. This ensures that there will always be an overbid or an underbid.

The dealer has the flexibility to change their bid until the first card is played. Once the first card is played, the bidding is finalized, and the gameplay begins.

When we start the game, I sit to the left of the dealer and I’m the one who gets to play the first card. It can be any suit, even the trump suit. After that, we keep playing in a clockwise direction. The other players have to follow suit. But if they can’t, they can play any card they want, even trumps.

The person who plays the highest-ranked trump card wins the trick. And if there are no trump cards played, then the person who plays the highest value card of the initial suit wins the trick. The winner of a trick gets to play the first card in the next trick. We keep doing this until we’ve played all the tricks. Then we deal the next hand and start playing again, until we’ve dealt all the hands and won all the tricks.

SCORING

Before we start the game, we need to choose someone to keep score. This person could be a player or someone outside of the game. But if it’s a player, we have to be careful and make sure they play fair. Scoring in Devil’s Bridge can be done in a few different ways.

The easiest way to score is by giving 10 points plus the number of tricks a player bid. So if they bid 5 and actually won 5 tricks, they would get a total score of 15. If they didn’t win as many tricks as they bid, we put a ‘1’ in front of the successful bids and cross out the unsuccessful ones.

Another common way to score is by giving each player 1 point for every trick they win, plus 10 points if they win the exact number of tricks they bid.