Board (bridge)

Rectangular aluminum board showing board number, position orientation and dealer information. Vulnerability is shown both by the notation 'Vul.' adjacent to the applicale side's pockets and by their red coloration.

In duplicate bridge, a board is an item of equipment that holds one deal, or one deck of 52 cards distributed in four hands of 13 cards each. The design permits the entire deal of four hands to be passed, carried or stacked securely with the cards hidden from view. This is required for duplicate bridge tournaments, where the same deal is played several times and so the composition of each hand must be preserved during and after each play of each deal. First used in 1891, then called "trays", boards have evolved in shape, size and material to a rectangular shape such as that illustrated; most are now made of plastic, which has replaced metal (usually aluminium) and leather boards formerly used. Most designs include a slot or pocket to hold a paper travelling score sheet.

Leather or pliable plastic wallet-style board. Note that the West side of the board is aligned with the West side of the movement card underneath it.

Each board is usually marked with the following information:

• Board number – (usually in the sequence '1' to '32') identifies the deal and helps to order the play of multiple deals;
• Compass directions – used to match the four hands to the four players at a table;
• Dealer – designates which player is the "dealer"; this designates the player who is to make the first call of the auction;
• Vulnerability – (often represented by color code: a "vulnerable" partnership is usually shown in red) designates which of the two partnerships are vulnerable: neither, North–South, West–East, or both.

Colloquially, the term board may refer to one deal plus its bidding and play. ("Do you remember Board 1?")

When bridge is played online, there are no physical boards, nor physical cards, but the software emulates all of the features of duplicate boards and the unit of the game is commonly called a board.

Set of boards

Stacked boards with cards inserted. These plastic boards are marked in German. In this design there is a slot for the travelling scoresheet in the underside of the board.

A set of boards for duplicate bridge typically contains 32 boards. (The actual number of boards used in a particular session depends on the type of tournament, the number of tables, and the choice of movement used. Often some of the higher numbered boards (e.g. 28 to 32) are not required to be used.) The dealer and vulnerability markings for each board number are standardized in the laws of the game, utilizing all the possible permutations. The dealer is rotated clockwise in successively numbered boards. Four combinations of vulnerabilities also change, but they are also shifted circularly 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.).

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 – before the start of play, someone removes the cards from all four pockets, shuffles them, deals them into four equal piles, and puts one pile into each pocket. It does not matter which player prepares which board. Often 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, in pairs tournaments and sometimes also in teams tournaments the board also carries a travelling sheet — a paper form where players enter their scores each time the board is played. The board may contain a dedicated pocket for the travelling sheet, or it can be placed in a slot underneath the board.

Play

Play of each board proceeds as follows:

• The North player positions the board in the centre of the table (perhaps at the top of a stack of boards), making sure that it is correctly oriented so that each player's cards are nearest to him.
• Each player removes the cards from the pocket corresponding to their playing position at the table (i.e. North, East, West or South).
• Each player counts his cards before looking at any card face. The director is summoned if any player does not have exactly thirteen cards.
• The players look at their cards (without showing any card face to any other player at the table) and optionally arranges them in order (e.g. by suits) according to personal preference.

The orientation of the played cards in the foreground indicates that the partnership has lost the third, seventh and ninth tricks and won all of the other ten.

• The player designated as the dealer on the board makes the first call.
• The bidding is completed and play proceeds.
• To play to a trick, each player shows a card face or places a card face up on the table in front of him. The cards are not mixed together as they are in rubber bridge trick collection.
• After four cards are played to a trick, each player turns his card face down and places it in a row in front of him, overlapping left to right. If that player's side won the trick, it is placed straight up (pointing towards one's partner); otherwise, it is laid sideways (facing your opponents), so that it is clear how many tricks each side has won at any time. If a player places the card the wrong way, his partner may point out the error.
• After the play, the number of tricks won by each side is agreed, and then each player gathers only his own cards, shuffles them and replaces them face down 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 the pocket.
• The travelling scoresheet is removed from its slot, the score and other details for the board are written on the scoresheet by North and checked by East, and the scoresheet is then replaced in its pocket or slot in the board.