Online Poker: Bridge: Poker card game

Cut-Throat Bridge

Many suggestions have been made to make bridge suitable for three players. The most satisfactory is townie but what has become known as Cut-throat Bridge is the original and the simplest of the three-handed variations.

The players take seats at random and after drawing for deal, shuffling and cutting in the regular way, the dealer deals thirteen cards each to the three players and to a fourth hand that is temporarily set aside.

The auction, beginning with the dealer, is conducted as in the parent game, and when a player’s bid, double or redouble has been passed by the other two players, the player on his left leads to the first trick. The player who has obtained the final contract then sorts the fourth hand, spreads it in front of him on the table, and plays it as his dummy, against the other two players in partnership with each other.

Play poker bridge and scoring are the same as in the parent game, except that if a player loses his contract both his opponents score the penalty points. The winner of a rubber receives a bonus of 700 points if neither opponent has won a game, but 500 points if either has.

Very clearly the game is a gamble, because the players must bid in the hope of finding the cards they need in the dummy hand.

A variation designed to make the game less speculative is for every player to be dealt seventeen cards and the fifty-second card face downwards to the dummy. After looking at their cards, and before bidding them, every player contributes four of them, face downwards, to the dummy. This way, every player knows four out of the thirteen cards that he is bidding for.

In another variation, instead of bidding for the dummy, an agreed number of deals (that must be divisible by three) are played, and, in turn, every player plays the dummy against the other two playing in partnership.

In this variation rubbers are not played, but the player who bids and makes game scores a bonus of 300 points. There is no vulnerability.