Rules & Strategy584 words
Why a vulnerable game pays 500
The bridge score sheet looks arbitrary until you notice it has two layers. Trick points decide whether you made a game; the bonus table decides what the game is worth, and vulnerability is the only variable in it.
What is in this piece — 6 sections
Ask a new player what a bridge contract is worth and you will usually get a number that mixes two different things together. The duplicate score sheet has two layers, and almost every piece of confusion about it comes from reading them as one.
Layer one: trick points
Trick points come from the contract itself — how many tricks you undertook beyond six, and in what denomination. Minors pay least per trick, majors more, no-trumps most with an extra for the first trick. These are the only points that decide a single question: did you bid a game? The line is 100 trick points in one deal. Below it you have a part score; at or above it you have a game.
Layer two: the bonus table
Everything else on the sheet is a bonus, and the bonuses are flat amounts that do not care how you got there:
| Achievement | Not vulnerable | Vulnerable |
|---|---|---|
| Part score | 50 | 50 |
| Game | 300 | 500 |
| Small slam (12 tricks bid and made) | 500 | 750 |
| Grand slam (13 tricks bid and made) | 1000 | 1500 |
| Making a doubled contract | 50 | 50 |
Now the question in the headline answers itself. A vulnerable game pays 500 rather than 300 because vulnerability is the one thing the bonus table is indexed on — and it cuts both ways, because the penalties for going down are harsher when vulnerable too. The bonus is not a reward for difficulty. It is the other side of a risk the scoring has already priced.
The part that trips people up
Two traps, both avoidable.
Slam bonuses stack on the game bonus; they do not replace it. A vulnerable small slam collects its trick points, the 500 game bonus and the 750 slam bonus. People who read the slam row alone come out hundreds of points short.
Honours do not exist in duplicate. Rubber bridge awards points for holding high cards in the trump suit. Duplicate does not. A score sheet brought from a kitchen-table rubber game will not add up at a club, and this is usually why.
Why the scoring is the game
Bridge is unusual among card games in that the scoring table is not an accounting afterthought — it is the thing you are playing. The 100-point game line is what makes three no-trumps the most-bid contract in the world; the 300/500 split is what makes a vulnerable sacrifice a calculation rather than a feeling; the slam bonuses are what make the difference between bidding six and bidding seven worth an argument that has lasted a century. Change one number in that table and the whole bidding system built on top of it has to be rewritten.
How to check a score
- Add the trick points first. Game or part score?
- Add exactly one game-or-part-score bonus from the table, chosen by vulnerability.
- Add a slam bonus only if the slam was bid, not merely made.
- Add 50 if the contract was doubled and made.
- Then stop. If you are reaching for a fifth rule in duplicate, you are probably importing one from rubber bridge.
Why the game resists simplification in the first place is the subject of the project's own essay, why bridge is still one of the most complex card games, and the same desk carries the piece on strategic thinking. Desk index: Rules & Strategy; full index: the archive.
What we read
Every figure above comes from one of these documents. If a number is not in them, it is not in this piece.