Bridge

The only form of bridge that's widely played today is contract bridge. This was invented in the 1920s as a variation on what had become known as auction bridge.

Bridge is believed to have originated among the Russian community in Istanbul, in the late 19th century, when it developed from whist (which can be traced back to the 16th century). In Russian it was known as biritch - a word that means the herald of a prince or nobleman. When first played in English-speaking countries it was known as Russian whist.

Auction bridge - where players bid for the right to make a contract - was developed in 1904, and contract bridge came about when Harold Vanderbilt (great-grandson of the American shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt) developed a scoring system for it. The main innovation that Vanderbilt introduced is that in contract bridge, only the tricks that you bid for count towards your match score.

According to the English Bridge Union, the two kinds of bridge are "rubber which is normally played at home for leisure, and duplicate bridge which is used for competitions". These are in essence two different ways of playing contract bridge.

In rubber bridge, a game consists of several deals and the scores are carried forward from each deal into the next; the game continues until one pair has achieved a certain score. This is not suitable for tournament play (where several games are in progress simultaneously), as the score carried forward would affect tactics in the next deal, making it meaningless to compare the scores in the different games. Duplicate bridge eliminates this issue by having the same deal played by each group of players and each deal scored separately.

There are some further, lesser-known variations. For example, in the form known as Chicago (or four-deal bridge), the game is complete after four deals. As the name implies, this style of bridge originated in the USA and I am not aware of its being played in the UK.