Bridge; My New Hobby

An enjoyable evening of bridge turns into a murder investigation when the flamboyant host Mr Shaitana is found dead. Can the four invited investigators - Hercule Poirot, Superintendent Battle, Colonel Race and Ariadne Oliver - discover which of the other four guests is the killer? All four had the opportunity - and all four have something to hide. After all, their host seemed certain that each of them had already got away with murder.
This is one of Christie's 'locked room' mysteries. Will Cuppy wrote in Books (New York Herald Tribune), "We always say there's nobody quite like Agatha Christie when she puts her mind to it, and that's what she has done in Cards on the Table."

Trick. Four cards played in clockwise succession by each of the four players, starting at trick one with a card from the player to the left of the declarer (the player who first named the denomination of the final contract) and later starting with the player who won the previous trick. There are 13 tricks in the play of each deal.

Auction. The process by which the final contract is achieved. The dealer starts the auction with a bid or a pass. A deal is passed out if there are four successive passes at the start, but in most cases the auction continues until there are three consecutive passes.

Contract. The number and denomination (suit or no-trump) representing the number of tricks your side must win. If you and your partner bid to 3 %u2663, for example, you have contracted to take nine tricks with clubs as trumps. If you fulfill your contract, you can earn a bonus. If you fail, you incur a penalty. Contracts go all the way from 1 %u2663 (seven tricks) to 7NT (13 tricks).

Game. Whenever your side fulfills a contract that produces a score of 100 or more (see the next chapter for scoring basics), you have earned a game bonus. You can earn a game bonus by bidding and making 3NT, 4 %u2665, 4 %u2660, 5 %u2663, or 5 %u2666.

Call. Any bid, pass, double, or redouble. A bid is always a call, but a call is not necessarily a bid. A bid requires a number and a suit (or no-trump). Pass, double, and redouble are calls, not bids.

Hand. Thirteen cards. This is different from a deal, which is all fifty-two cards dealt and played by the four competitors. Players refer so often to a full deal as a "hand" that the terms have become interchangeable.

Duplicate. The form of the game played at bridge clubs and tournaments. Cards are not mixed up and reshuffled when a deal is over. The same deals are played over and over by different players, and the scoring comes from comparisons after all the rounds have been played in a session.