GamerDad.com
Matt Carlson
August 2006
USA

My final formal stop was at the Out of the Box booth which they shared with Rio Grande Games. The big thing at Out of the Box is the new card game aBridged. This game is an attempt to help interest non-bridge players in the game of Bridge. To learn to play bridge, one must first learn a very complicated set of bidding rules. aBridged does away with all the bidding complications and tries to focus in on card play. For example, bridge players know that an Ace is worth four points, and a king is worth three points when bidding. In aBridged, there are no face cards (cards are colored and numbered 2 to 14), so cards numbered 14 have four little dots on them while 13s have three little dots. It is very easy to quickly spot and add up your point totals before the bidding round. Players also don't bid on a specific suit, the trump suit is decided just before the cards are dealt out. Also, there isn't a bid for a number of tricks, the default is for players to need to take10 tricks to score points. If no one wishes to attempt a full bid, there is a backup system where players may be able to attempt only 7 tricks for far fewer points. The game has been a huge success in Bridge circles, even though it isn't meant to be a direct route to learning Bridge itself. In a way, it has streamlined Bridge to make it accessible to a casual player and I think that it has done so in a very elegant way. I highly recommend it as a trick-taking game that is very family friendly. I say all this despite the hand I played I had almost no points and was thoroughly trounced by (I believe) Larry Levy from the boardgame magazine Counter.

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