Bridge grew out of whist, with an 1886 Biritch rule book
Contract bridge seats four players in two partnerships around a 52-card deck, bidding auctions for contracts before taking tricks. Casual rubber bridge differs from duplicate events that replay identical deals. Descended from whist via nineteenth-century Biritch, the first known bridge rule book dates to 1886.
During the auction, bids are the only permitted way for partners to share information about their hands, such as strength and suit distribution. The declaring side then tries to make its contract while the defenders try to stop it, and the score depends on tricks taken, the contract and other factors that vary by form of the game. In duplicate, the same deal is played at two or more tables so results can be compared.
Trick-taking games with 52 cards are first documented in Italy and France. Rabelais mentions one called La Triomphe, and a 1539 Latin dialogue by Juan Luis Vives has characters playing Spanish Triumph. Whist became the dominant descendant for centuries. The 1886 rule book, Biritch, or Russian Whist, was written by John Collinson, an English financier in Ottoman Constantinople, who later traced the game to the city's Russian community in a 1906 letter to The Saturday Review. Biritch may come from a Russian word for a herald or clerk; a rival story credits Crimean War soldiers who crossed the Galata Bridge to play cards.
Biritch already had many modern features: the dealer or his partner named trumps or called no trumps, the partner's hand became dummy, points went above and below the line, doubles, redoubles and slam bonuses existed. Bridge and bridge whist spread through Britain and America in the 1890s, their breakthrough coming when Lord Brougham accepted the game at London's Portland Club in 1894.
Auction bridge in 1904 made players bid competitively and penalised falling short, but overbidding earned nothing extra. Harold Stirling Vanderbilt's 1925 rules counted only contracted tricks toward game and slam and added vulnerability, which made sacrifices costlier. Within a few years contract bridge had eclipsed other forms.
Source: Contract bridge
