The Back Alley Bridge card game, online with three friends or the computer

What Back Alley Bridge is, and where it comes from

Back Alley, also called Back Alley Bridge, Back Street Bridge and sometimes Blooper, is a trick-taking game for four in two partnerships. Pagat.com, the source this table follows, files it in its Auction Whist group and says it originated in the American military, probably during World War II, and that the version with jokers may date from the Vietnam war. Pagat hedges both dates, and so do we. It also keeps an archived post from a US Marine Corps stories site with another set of rules. The two disagree in places, so we say which rules we deal and where pagat left a gap.

It is not contract bridge: there is no auction for a suit, no declarer and no dummy, just four hands played by the people holding them. It is not Oh Hell either, though pagat calls the changing number of cards and the random trump reminiscent of it. In Oh Hell you aim for exactly your bid. Here you aim for at least your bid, and every extra trick scores. If you know Spades you are halfway there, since partners add their bids in both. The differences are that trumps come from a turned card, the number of cards changes every deal, and two jokers outrank everything.

Back Alley Bridge card game rules: the deal, the bid, the trump

Four players, two partnerships, partners across. The pack is 52 cards plus two jokers, the big blooper and the little blooper. Every deal gives each of you the same number of cards, and that number changes deal by deal. The next card off the pack is turned face up and its suit is trumps. If it is a blooper, there are no trumps that deal and both bloopers are out: whoever held the other one swaps it for the next card, and nobody else sees the swap.

Then everyone bids once, the person left of the dealer first and the dealer last. You can pass, which counts as zero, bid any whole number up to one less than the cards dealt, or bid board, which means every trick. A bid does not have to beat the one before it. Your side’s target is your bid plus your partner’s, so a pass and a three make three. If all four pass, the cards are thrown in and the next dealer deals the same number again.

The bloopers, and the trump you may not lead

The big blooper is the top trump and the little blooper is second, then the trump ace down to the two. Follow suit if you can; if you cannot, play anything. The highest trump in a trick wins it, or else the highest card of the suit led. The highest bidder leads the first trick, a board bid beating any number, and after that whoever won the last trick leads. You may not lead a trump, a blooper included, until a trump has been played to an earlier trick, unless you bid board.

A blooper led binds everybody else. Lead the big blooper and each of the other three must play their highest trump. Lead the little blooper and each must play their lowest. Say hearts are trumps and the big blooper is led. Your hand is the five and king of hearts, the nine of spades and the two of clubs. You must play the king. Had the little blooper been led, it would have to be the five. Hold no trump at all and any card will do. The little blooper can still lose a trick, because someone whose only trump is the big blooper has to play it.

Back Alley Bridge scoring, with a worked deal

Your side’s target is the sum of its two bids. Reach it and you score five points a trick bid, plus one for every extra trick. Miss it by any margin and you lose five points a trick bid. A worked deal: five cards each, hearts trump. You bid two, your partner bids one, so the target is three. Win four tricks and you score five times three plus one, which is 16. Win two and you lose 15. If you and your partner both pass, the target is zero and each trick you take is worth a point.

Board is all or nothing. Take every trick and you score ten points a trick; miss even one and you lose ten a trick. On five cards that is 50 either way. The second board bid of the deal is a double board, the third a triple, the fourth a quadruple, worth two, three and four times as much. A side that bid board counts only its highest, and its partner’s number stops mattering. The table does the arithmetic and keeps the running score, so there is no score sheet to print.

Short game, full game, and where we chose

Pagat’s full game runs from thirteen cards down to one and back up to thirteen: 26 deals, 182 tricks. Pagat says 26 deals in one sentence and 25 two sentences later, then lists 25 as a variation with a single one-card deal. We deal 26. The default is a short game of our own, seven down to one, one again, and back up to seven: 14 deals and 56 tricks. The host picks in the lobby, and at the computer table two buttons start either one. With four people, a short game takes about 18 to 37 minutes if each card takes you three to six seconds and each bid four to nine, and the full game about 50 to 100.

Where pagat is silent, we chose, and say so. A board bid outranks any number for the first lead, which pagat implies but does not state. A hand of nothing but trumps may lead one, a rule from another written version; pagat’s says nothing, and without it that hand would have no legal lead. If one side bids board and the other bids numbers, each is scored on its own bid. A tie at the end plays one more deal with no bidding, seven cards or thirteen, and the side with more tricks wins. We skip Boston, rainbow, blind bids, individual play and the card passing from the Marine Corps post.

What the table does, and what it does not

You can play with three friends, or on your own. With friends, you press Play with three friends, send a link per seat, and play once all four seats are filled: the host and guest 2 are one side, guests 1 and 3 the other. Chat is open, voice is opt-in, and nothing is downloaded or signed up for. The limit is that a room needs four people, and there are no computer seats inside one. On your own, the computer table seats you with a computer partner across and two computer opponents, and one player is enough.

The table always says whose turn it is and shows the trump in words. When it is your turn to play, your legal cards are ringed and the rest dimmed. Press a dimmed one and it tells you why: trumps are not broken, you must follow suit, you must follow a trump with a trump or a blooper, or a blooper was led and you must play your highest trump, or your lowest. After each trick it shows the last trick and who won it, and each side’s target beside the tricks it has so far. Ask for more tricks than there are and it warns you, without stopping you. The bloopers are typeset cards named in words, so red and black are never the only clue.

The computer counts its hand card by card: more than a trick for the big blooper, about one for the little blooper and the trump ace, and even a low trump counts for almost half. It bids for its side and half believes what its partner bid. It leads a side ace when it has one. When its partner is winning the trick it throws its cheapest card. Otherwise it takes the trick with the cheapest card that wins, and once its side has made its target it will not spend a trump to do it. It always plays the trump a blooper forces, and it reads only what its own seat can see, never your hand.

Partners at a real table may not signal, and the Marine Corps post says no signals, though a reader’s note on the same post says the most important rule, at least in the bush, was to cheat if you were not caught. We do not police it, and a room has chat, so that one is on you.

Back Alley has more rules than most games here, and the best card game to play with friends is the one where everyone knows the rules or nobody does. So send everyone the how-to page first, where a seven-card deal plays out on the real table, and open the table after. It is free, like every table here. You might meet an ad occasionally; the plan is discreet ones. There is surely an app somewhere, but here you just open a page and play.