Basic Bridge Vocabulary

Balanced - A hand pattern with no singleton or void and at most one doubleton; i.e., 4-3-3-3, 4-4-3-2 or 5-3-3-2

Bid - A call that names a number and a suit or no trump. A bid is a prediction of the number of tricks the bidder thinks s/he can take in collaboration with their partner, and with which suit as trump. The bid includes a number (from one to seven, representing how many tricks beyond six the bidder proposes to make) and a suit or "no trump."

Book –the assumption that the bidder can take at least six tricks

Call - Any bid, pass, double or redouble

Contract - The number of tricks bid and the trump suit (or lack thereof)

Declarer - The player who, for his side, first names the suit or no trump of the final bid and will play the hand

Defender - Either of the two players who are declarer’s opponents

Doubleton - A holding of exactly two cards in a suit

Dummy - The partner of the declarer; or the cards of that player

Forcing - The condition of a bid that partner must not allow it to become the final contract

Game - A trick score of 100 or more, which can be made with a single bid of at least 3 NT, 4 , 4 , 5  or 5 

Game forcing - The condition of a bid that requires the partnership to keep bidding until game is reached

Grand slam - Any seven-bid; a contract to win all 13 tricks

Honor - Any of the cards: ace, king, queen, jack or ten

Jump - A bid that skips one level of bidding

Jump shift - A jump in an unbid suit

Lead - The first card played to any trick

New suit - A suit that has not been bid; an unbid suit

Opening bid - The first bid made in the bidding

Opening lead - The first lead made in the play, which must be made by the defender to the left of declarer

Overcall - A bid as the first action by your side after an opponent has opened the bidding

Partner – The person sitting opposite. One way to choose partners is to draw cards. The two highest cards are partners against the two lowest, and the highest card deals. Partnerships can be prearranged if desired and just draw to see who deals first.

Raise - A bid that increases the level in partner’s last bid suit

Rebid - The second or subsequent bid by the same player

Response - The first bid made by a player after his partner has just previously bid or doubled

Sequence - Two or more touching cards in a suit, such as J-10; an honor sequence like Q-J-10 is an excellent lead

Singleton - A holding of exactly one card in a suit

Slam - Any six-bid; or as a general term, any six- or seven-bid

Stopper - Protection in a suit, generally for no-trump play, at least as good as the ace, K-x, Q-x-x or J-x-x-x

Top tricks - Tricks that can be won immediately with high cards

Trick - each trick consists of one card from each player, the player that plays the highest card in the suit of the lead wins the trick unless any of the cards are in the trump suit, then the highest trump card wins the trick (similar to the card game "Hearts").

Trump fit - A combined holding between you and partner of at least eight cards in a suit that you expect to be trumps

Void - A holding of no cards in a suit; a nonexistent suit

Used with permission from Richard Pavlicek granted May , 2006: Copyright © 2004 Richard Pavlicek. All rights reserved.