Board (bridge)

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In duplicate bridge, a board is a device used to pass a pre-dealt bridge hand from table to table, keeping the cards belonging to each of the four players separate. More generally, the term board refers to one "deal" or "hand" of play. In online bridge, there are no physical boards, of course, but the software emulates all the features.

Each board contains distinctive markings:

• Board number – Used to ensure the correct board is played at the correct time.
• Compass – Used to orient the board properly with respect to the four players at a table.
• Dealer – Designates which player is the "dealer"; in duplicate bridge, this is used only to designate the player whose turn it is to make the first call of the auction.
• Vulnerability (red lettering plus red pocket inserts) – Shows which of the partnerships (if any) are vulnerable. (See bridge scoring for the effects of vulnerability on scoring.)

[edit] Set

A set of boards for duplicate bridge normally contains 36 boards. (The actual number of boards used in a particular session will vary depending on the number of players and other factors.) The dealer and vulnerability markings are standardized for each board number, utilizing all the permutations. The dealer is rotated clockwise in subsequent boards. Four combinations of vulnerabilities also change, but they are also shifted circularily after every 4 boards. Thus, a set of 16 boards has the following markings:

Board	Dealer	Vul.		Board	Dealer	Vul.		Board	Dealer	Vul.		Board	Dealer	Vul.
1	N	None		5	N	N-S		9	N	E-W		13	N	All
2	E	N-S		6	E	E-W		10	E	All		14	E	None
3	S	E-W		7	S	All		11	S	None		15	S	N-S
4	W	All		8	W	None		12	W	N-S		16	W	E-W

The scheme is repeated in the subsequent sets of 16 (i.e. boards 17-32, 33-48 etc).

[edit] Pockets

A board contains four pockets, each designed to hold thirteen playing cards. At the beginning of a session, the cards are distributed to the pockets in one of several ways:

1. Shuffle and play – a player at the first table to receive the board removes the cards from all four pockets, shuffles, cuts, deals them into four piles, and puts one pile into each pocket. It does not matter which player prepares which board. Usually, each table receives a number of boards and the players will prepare the different boards simultaneously.
2. Predealt – the sponsoring agency has prearranged the cards in the boards, and the boards are given to the players "ready to play".
3. Computer dealt – a number of boards are delivered to each table with the instruction to "sort into suits". A player takes each board and sorts the cards into suits and (usually) by rank, and places one suit face up in each pocket. Hand records are distributed to each table showing which cards are to be dealt to each hand. (Such hand records are usually prepared in advance by a computer program using a pseudorandom number generator.) The players cooperate in dealing the cards according to the hand record and placing the correct cards in each pocket. Of course, these boards will be passed to another table and never be played by the players preparing them.

No matter how the boards are prepared, they are not shuffled again during the session, and the cards in all pockets are kept face-down. Sometimes, at the end of a session or the beginning of a new session, a card or cards will be placed in the board face-up. This indicates that the board has not yet been prepared for the new session.

Apart from the cards, on pairs tournaments the board also carries a traveling sheet — a paper form where competitors at each table enter their scores. The board may contain a dedicated pocket for the traveling sheet, or it can be placed atop of one card pocket (usually, North's, since North-South pairs are responsible for filling it in).

[edit] Play

Play of each board proceeds as follows:

1. The north player positions the board in the center of the table (perhaps at the top of a stack of boards).
2. Each player removes the cards from the pocket in front of her.
3. Each player counts her cards before looking at any card face. The director is summoned if any player does not have exactly thirteen cards.
4. The players look at their cards (without showing any card face to any other player at the table) and optionally arrange them according to personal preference.
5. The player designated as the dealer on the board makes the first call.
6. The bidding is completed and play proceeds.
7. To play to a trick, each player shows a card face or places a card face up on the table in front of her. The cards belonging to two different players are never mixed together like they are in rubber bridge.
8. After four cards are played to a trick, each player turns her card face down and places it in a row in front of her, overlapping left to right. If her side won the trick, it is placed straight up (normal to the table edge); otherwise, it is laid sideways (parallel with the table edge). This is used to determine how many tricks each side has won at any time.
9. After the play, the scoring is agreed, and then each player gathers her own cards, shuffles them (with themselves only), and replaces them in the board pocket from which they came. The shuffle ensures that the next player can make no inference from the ordering of the cards in her pocket.