The Origins of Bridge: From Whist to the Game We Know Today

Ever wonder how we ended up spending our evenings arguing over whether 2NT shows 20-21 or 18-19? The game we love didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Bridge has a family tree, and like most families, it’s full of interesting characters, unexpected twists, and the occasional black sheep.

Whist: Where It All Began

Picture London in the 1740s. Coffee houses filled with smoke, gossip, and card games. The game everyone played was called Whist, and it was basically bridge without the bidding. Four players, partners sitting opposite, thirteen tricks to fight over. The highest card in the suit led won the trick. Trump was determined by turning up the last card dealt. Simple, elegant, and apparently addictive enough that people wrote entire books about it.

Edmond Hoyle published his A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist in 1742, and suddenly Whist had rules everyone agreed on. Well, mostly agreed on. His book went through dozens of editions and made him so famous that “according to Hoyle” became shorthand for “the right way to do something.” Not bad for a guy writing about card games.

By the 1800s, Whist was THE game in England and America. Whist clubs formed. Tournaments happened. People got very serious about it. But here’s the thing about Whist: once you dealt the cards, that was it. No discussion about how high to bid. No debates about whether your partner should have raised. Just play the cards and see what happens.

Some players found that boring.

Bridge Whist: The Plot Thickens

Sometime in the 1880s (the exact date is lost to history, which drives bridge historians crazy), someone had a brilliant idea: what if the dealer could name the trump suit? Or even play without trumps?

This new variation picked up the name “Bridge Whist” or just “Bridge.” The name probably comes from the Russian word “biritch,” though some people think it’s from the English “biritch,” and honestly, nobody knows for sure. What we do know is that by 1886, a pamphlet was circulating in London with rules for “Biritch, or Russian Whist.”

The key innovation? The dealer’s partner became the “dummy” and laid down their cards after the opening lead. Suddenly you could see half the cards between your partnership. This changed everything. You weren’t just playing your own hand anymore. You were planning a campaign, plotting a strategy, figuring out how to extract every possible trick from the combined assets.

People loved it. But there was still something missing: the competitive element. If the dealer just named trump, where was the skill in that?

Auction Bridge: Now We’re Talking

Enter Auction Bridge, which appeared around 1904. The big change? Now all four players could bid for the right to name trump. You competed with the opponents to see who could make the highest contract. Suddenly bridge required a whole new skill set: evaluation, judgment, partnership communication through bids.

The game spread like wildfire. The first official rules were published in England in 1908. American players embraced it. By 1912, Auction Bridge had pretty much replaced Whist in clubs across England and America. Auction Bridge clubs formed, tournaments ran, and the game developed its first stars.

But Auction Bridge had a weird scoring system. You could make overtricks and they counted the same as bid tricks toward game. So if you bid 2♠ and made five, those three extra tricks counted just as much as the two you bid. This led to conservative bidding. Why risk bidding game when you could limp into a part-score and make it on power?

The result? Duller auctions than the game deserved. Less risk, less excitement, less skill in the bidding.

Enter Harold Vanderbilt

This is where our story takes a turn onto a cruise ship. It’s October 1925, and Harold Stirling Vanderbilt (yes, THOSE Vanderbilts) is on a steamship from Los Angeles to Havana. He’s traveling with friends, playing Auction Bridge to pass the time, and getting annoyed with the scoring.

Vanderbilt was a champion sailor, a railroad magnate, and apparently a man who couldn’t leave well enough alone. During that voyage, he worked out a new scoring system that would reward bidding to the level you could actually make. The key insight? Only bid tricks count toward game. Overtricks give you points, sure, but they don’t get you to game.

He called it Contract Bridge.

This one change transformed the game. Suddenly you had to evaluate your hand accurately and bid to the right level. Bid too low and you’d miss game bonuses. Bid too high and you’d go down. The risk-reward calculation became the heart of the game.

Vanderbilt also introduced the concept of vulnerability, borrowed from Plafond (a bridge variant popular in France). He standardized the bonus for slams. He worked out the scoring for doubles and redoubles. In one ocean voyage, he basically created the scoring system we still use today.

On November 1, 1925, the ship docked in Havana. Vanderbilt had his rules written out. He showed them to friends, who showed them to other players. Within months, Contract Bridge was spreading through New York clubs.

The Takeover

The transition from Auction to Contract happened fast. By 1927, the Whist Club of New York had adopted Contract Bridge. In 1928, they published the first official Laws of Contract Bridge. Auction Bridge didn’t die immediately (tournaments ran into the 1930s), but Contract clearly had the momentum.

What made Contract Bridge stick when dozens of other card game variations failed? A few things:

First, the scoring system created genuine strategy in bidding. You had to think, evaluate, take calculated risks. Every hand presented choices.

Second, the timing was perfect. The 1920s saw rising prosperity and leisure time. Radio was bringing people together with shared experiences. Contract Bridge became a social phenomenon, not just a card game.

Third, and this is crucial: Ely Culbertson showed up.

The Evangelist

Ely Culbertson deserves his own article (and he’ll get one when we talk about the Culbertson-Lenz match), but his role in popularizing Contract Bridge can’t be overstated. He was a promoter, a showman, a businessman, and a bridge theorist all rolled into one controversial package.

Culbertson published books, started a magazine, organized tournaments, and generally made Contract Bridge into a phenomenon. By 1931, he claimed 15 million Americans played the game. That’s one in eight people. Bridge clubs were everywhere. Department stores sold bridge tables. Radio programs featured bridge lessons.

Was Contract Bridge a better game than Auction Bridge? Absolutely. Would it have taken over as completely without Culbertson’s promotional genius? Probably not as quickly.

What We Inherited

When you sit down at a bridge table today, you’re playing essentially the same game Vanderbilt invented in 1925. The scoring is nearly identical. The concepts of game, partscore, vulnerability, and slams all came from that cruise ship voyage.

Sure, we’ve refined things. The bidding systems are more sophisticated. We have Stayman, Jacoby Transfers, Blackwood, and a thousand other conventions that would baffle a 1925 player. The defense has gotten sharper. The card play more precise.

But the core game? That’s Vanderbilt’s creation, built on the foundation of Auction Bridge, which evolved from Bridge Whist, which came from Whist.

Next time you open 1NT, remember: you’re part of a tradition stretching back nearly three centuries. The game has changed, evolved, and improved. But that feeling when you make a tight contract or find the killing defense? Players in 1750 felt that too.

They just didn’t have as many conventions to argue about afterward.

The Bottom Line

Bridge went from a simple trick-taking game to the most sophisticated card game in the world over about 150 years. Each evolution added something: dealer’s choice of trump, competitive bidding, strategic scoring. By 1925, all the pieces were in place.

What Vanderbilt did was put them together in just the right way. And what Culbertson did was make sure everyone knew about it.

The rest, as they say, is history. Or in our case, it’s Thursday night at the bridge club, arguing about whether 1♠-2♥-2NT-3♣ shows clubs or is fourth suit forcing.

Some things never change.