Bridge

Bridge is a trick taking card game for four players in two partnerships, combining a competitive bidding auction that sets a contract with card play to fulfil or defeat it. It descends from the English trick taking game whist, played since at least the sixteenth century, by way of an intermediate nineteenth century form called bridge whist and then auction bridge, developed around 1904. The modern contract form, in which the bidding auction itself determines the score rather than only the choice of trump suit, was codified in 1925 by the American businessman Harold Vanderbilt, who worked out its scoring table during a Caribbean cruise aboard the SS Finland. Contract bridge is now played both socially and, in its duplicate form, as an organized mind sport under bodies including the World Bridge Federation.