About Free Printable Contract Bridge Rules
Free printable Contract Bridge rules — auction bidding, suit ranking, declarer and dummy, follow-suit play, doubling, slams, scoring, and the rubber bonus.
How to use
- Choose your print style. Full color uses purple accents and red-and-black suit symbols — great as a reference card for the bridge table. Ink-saver (black & white) switches to a grayscale layout for a cheap classroom or club-night handout.
- Choose whether to show diagrams. Diagrams on (the default) includes a table-seating diagram for the two partnerships, the denomination bidding ladder, and a sample score-pad grid showing the above-the-line / below-the-line scoring layout. Switch to text only for the most compact, fewest-pages version.
- Read the preview to confirm the layout — rules flow from the objective and setup through the auction (Pass, Bid, Double, Redouble), declarer and dummy, opening lead and follow-suit play, doubling, slams and honors, the full scoring table, and common variants (Chicago, Duplicate, Honeymoon).
- Click Print Rules to send it to your printer or save it as a PDF. The illustrated guide prints cleanly across two or three letter / A4 pages; choose text only for a more compact summary.
Frequently asked questions
How many players are needed for Contract Bridge?
Contract Bridge is played by exactly 4 players in 2 fixed partnerships. Partners sit opposite each other across the table — North-South form one partnership and East-West the other. Bridge is fundamentally a partnership game; the 2-player variant 'Honeymoon Bridge' exists but plays very differently. For 5 or 6 people, players take turns sitting out between rubbers, or run two tables in parallel.
What is the difference between a bid, a contract, and a trick?
A bid is an auction call: a number from 1 to 7 plus a denomination (e.g. '2 Hearts'). The number is odd tricks — tricks ABOVE 6 — so a bid of 2 commits to winning 8 tricks total (6 + 2). The contract is the final bid after three consecutive passes. A trick is one round of four cards played; the highest trump, or highest card of the suit led if no trump was played, wins it.
What does 'above the line' and 'below the line' mean?
The score pad is drawn as a large +: vertical line splits We vs They; horizontal line splits into two halves. BELOW records only contract trick points (which count toward winning a 100-point game). ABOVE records everything else — overtricks, undertricks, slams, doubles, honors, and the rubber bonus. Above-the-line points count only toward the final rubber total, never toward making game.
What is a slam in bridge?
A Small Slam is a bid contract of 6 (winning 12 tricks). A Grand Slam is a bid contract of 7 (winning all 13). Both award large above-the-line bonuses but only if successfully bid and made — 500 / 750 for Small Slam (not vulnerable / vulnerable), 1000 / 1500 for Grand Slam. You do NOT get a slam bonus for accidentally taking the tricks — you must have BID the slam during the auction.
What does 'vulnerable' mean?
A side is vulnerable once it has won one game in the current rubber. Vulnerability increases both slam bonuses and undertrick penalties. A side that has not yet won a game is not vulnerable. The first game is played with both sides not vulnerable; after a game is won, that side stays vulnerable for the rest of the rubber.
What other printable game rules do you have?
Part of ToolFluency’s library of free online tools for Printables. No account needed, no data leaves your device.