Card games: 500 vs bridge

I was on holiday in Queensland, Australia, recently and (as you do when you’re on holiday in Australia) we played the card game 500. This article compares the game of 500 with its more formal cousin, Bridge.

500 is known as the national card game of Australia. I took an informal poll and most (non immigrant) Australians will know of the game, even if they last played it at a school camp and are a bit vague now on the rules.

500 is actually of American origin according to Wikipedia. The US Playing Card Company copyrighted and marketed the rules in 1904. Although high school & university students of today have YouTube and internet gaming to distract them, board and card games are still very popular. My university age son (I know, this is a small sample) plays board games with friends regularly.

That said, one night on our holiday we were at a pub and decided to play 500 and we asked the generation Z bartender for a deck of cards. “I don’t know what that is”, she said. Maybe the music was a bit loud and she didn’t hear us?

Bridge is a popular, albeit ageing game. The website bridgebase.com typically has 12 thousand players online at any one moment, and the Australian bridge federation has a healthy 35 thousand members. It also has a regularly updated obituary section and most of the players I know personally are past retirement age. This is a shame — it’s a terrific game!

Let’s get down to comparing the rules of 500 and bridge. Bridge scores an early point over 500 for having standardised rules, whereas there are many local variations in the case of 500. If you don’t know the rules of either 500 or bridge, then reading the rules of two different games placed side by side in full detail will be hopelessly confusing — I won’t cover all nuances of the play and scoring in what follows.

Number of players

500 allows for 2–6 players. For the 6 handed game you can buy playing cards in Australia with the standard 52 playing cards, plus the 11 to 13 of the red suits (Hearts and Diamonds), and 11 & 12 of the black suits (Spades and Clubs), per the image above. These, together with the Joker, make 63 cards in total. If you are playing 4 handed you subtract cards from the standard 52 card deck, described below.

Bridge always has 4 players, a point for 500 over bridge then for accomodating different numbers of participants. For simplicity I’ll just compare the 4 handed game.

Both games have an auction phase and a game phase, with 2 partners playing opposite each other.

Deck

500 with 4 players is played with the 2s, 3s and the 2 black suit 4s removed, and a Joker added, for a 43 card deck (52–10+1). 10 cards are dealt to each player, and 3 cards are placed in the middle as a kitty.

Bridge is played with a standard 52 card deck. 13 cards are dealt to each player.

The aim of 500 is for the partnership to take as many of the 10 tricks available as possible; similarly for bridge, albeit there are 13 tricks available. Making ‘tricks’ will be discussed further in the play section below.

The auction

In both games, the partnerships bid at auction to make a certain number of tricks. Winning the auction gives the winner (“declarer”) certain privileges. Firstly, declarer get to choose the trump suit and in 500 declarer gets to exchange 3 cards for those in the kitty. In bridge declarer gets to see both his / her own and his / her partner’s cards.

500: the lowest starting bid in the auction is to make 6 out of 10 tricks with spades as trumps (“6 spades”) which is worth 40 points if made. Players must make higher bids in turn, in order 6 Clubs — 60 points, 6 Diamonds — 80 points, 6 Hearts — 100 points, 6 No trumps — 120 points, 7 Spades 140 points, etc, …, up to 10 No trumps, worth 520 points. As the name of the game implies, the goal is to accumulate 500 points before your opponents do.

Bridge: the lowest starting bid is to make 7 out of 13 Clubs (bidding “1 Club”, conventionally the first 6 tricks are not stated) — worth 20 points if made. The suit order is Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts and Spades (alphabetical order), with the minor suits (Clubs and Diamonds) worth 20 points per trick and the major suits (Hearts and Spades) worth 30 points per trick.

The goal in bridge is to make 100 points, or 5+ tricks in a minor suit and 4+ tricks in a major suit. “No trump” contacts have the off-beat scoring of 40 points for the 1st trick and 30 points thereafter, so that a contract of “3 no trumps” equals 100 points (equals game). From the defence partnership’s perspective, they need to take more than 2 tricks (minor contract), 3 tricks (major contract) or 4 tricks (no trumps) to defeat the contract.

Apart from the different order of the suits, the auction looks very similar for the two games. Bridge’s point scoring seems a bit more arbitrary, but is significantly more sophisticated. There are more available levels of bidding in Bridge (7) vs 500 (5) allowing more communication between the partnerships.

I haven’t yet described the penalties for not making your contract, but these are lower in bridge so that partnerships can stretch to bid to the game level (e.g. 50 per trick defeated versus 600 for making a vulnerable 3 no trump). In 500 by contrast the penalty for going down is minus the score for making the contract (e.g. -140 points for failing to make 7 Spades) which incentivises conservative bidding. Most contracts end after one or two utterances from each player, at the 6 or 7 level.

The rules of 500 don’t allow a player that passes to subsequently bid, which again reduces the communication possibilities, particularly for hands that aren’t good enough to open but might be good enough to respond with.

Bridge has additional availble bids to “double” the opponents contract (which in turn can be “re-doubled”). This increases the rewards for making the contract, as well as the penalties for going down. Although only a minority of contracts end up doubled, the “double” bid is often used artificially which increases the scope for communication.

On the other hand, 500 does have the interesting possibly of bidding a “Misere” which is worth 250 points (i.e. between an 8 spade and 8 club bid), which is to contract to make 0 tricks. The game becomes 3 handed, with the bidder’s partner sitting out. There is also a more extreme bid “Open Misere” (500 points), where the bidder has to play face up.

The scoring

I’ve discussed the basic scoring above. Scoring in 500 wins kudos for being simpler than bridge, though arguably bridge is richer because of it’s more complex system. In addition to the above, in bridge one may also contract to make 12 or 13 tricks, a “slam” or “grand-slam” respectively. These score significantly more points, but it is a big judgement call whether to contract for a game that’s a sure thing versus a contract that will lose points if only 1 or 2 tricks are lost. There are a whole sub-category of bidding conventions to try to ascertain whether a slam is possible.

Bridge also has the concept of “vulnerable” and “non vulnerable” contracts, harking back to the time when players mostly played rubber bridge and vulnerability depended on the results of previous games. Online these days each hand is played on a standalone basis, and vulnerability is assigned randomly.

The implication of being vulnerable is that the reward for making a game or slam is increased, but the penalty for going down is increased too.

To complicate things futher, when playing online the website will deal the same hand to 16 different virtual tables. The scores will be determined as described above but this will then be converted to another score called “IMPS” (international match points) which is a function of the difference between your result from the average of the 16 tables.

While this all sounds hopelessly complicated, it really turns bridge into a game of skill: if you get dealt good cards you still have to get a higher score with those cards than the 15 other tables in order to get a good IMPS score.

The Play — winning tricks.

The play is very similar for 500 and bridge. The player to declarer’s left (bridge) or the declarer (500) leads a card and, proceeding clock-wise, all players have to follow suit if they can. Highest card in the led suit wins the “trick”, and the winner starts the next trick. This continues until all the cards have been played, for 10 tricks in 500 and 13 tricks for bridge.

Declarer’s privilege

In bridge the declarer’s partner seated opposite lays down his/her cards face up. Declarer therfore had the privilege of being able to see all his partnership’s cards, though of course the defenders can see 26 of the 52 cards available too. If a player can’t see the King of spades, say, there are only two other hands it can be in. By the time all the tricks have been played the location of every card is revealed.

In 500 recall that only 40 cards were dealt originally and there are 3 cards in the kitty. Declarer has the privilege of picking up the 3 cards in the kitty and discarding 3 cards back to the kitty.

The declarer’s privilege in bridge means that the skill level is a lot higher — declarer simply has a lot more information at hand.

Trump and bower cards

If the contract is in a trump suit, hearts say, then if another suit is led and a player can’t follow in that suit they can play a heart. In a no trump contract this card would be worthless, but with hearts as trumps this card now beats (’trumps’) the original lead.

In the case of 500 the order of the trump suit in hearts is: Joker, Jack of hearts (“right bower”), Jack of Diamonds (“left bower”), Ace of Hearts, King of Hearts, Queen, Ten,9, 8, etc. Similarly, if trumps are in a black suit the 2 black Jacks (Spades and Clubs) have special status. Bridge doesn’t have a Joker or the bowers.

In bridge, simple hand evaluation assigns a value of 4 points for an Ace, 3 for a King, 2 for a Queen and 1 for a Jack. There are therefore 40 “high card points” in the deck, and 10 in each hand.

Things are a bit more complicated because of the Jacks in 500. Black Jacks are worth more than the Ace if the black suits (Spades or Clubs) are trumps but considerably shrink in value if the contract is in no trumps or one of the red suits are trumps. This makes hand evaluation more complicated (though, perhaps, simply more random).

Victory

In 500 the aim of the game is to accumulate 500 points, as the name implies. In contract bridge the aim of the game was historically to accumulate 100 points for a game, and the best of 3 games made a rubber. Nowadays, however, vulnerability is assigned randomly and the game continues for an arbitrary number of dealt hands.

Final verdict

So, which is the better game?

I’m not sure this has a definitive answer. As a social game for a holiday in Queensland (particularly in Queensland), 500 has a definite edge. It has enough complexity to engage, while being easy enough to learn the basic strategy in an evening.

Bridge is by far the richer game. I’ve played the game for decades and still sometimes find myself unsure of the conventional response to even a first or second bid. As a competitive game it beats 500 hands down — I’m not sure that 500 tournaments are even held.

I would love to see a generation Ys and Zs take the trouble to learn the rules of bridge (30 minutes) followed up by the conventions of auction and subtleties of play (a lifetime)!