As if Bridge wasn’t complicated enough, another concept you need to become familiar with is that of Vulnerability.

A Vulnerable condition may apply to one or other pair, both pairs or neither according to the hand being played. Being Vulnerable is a double edged sword. The bonus points when making a Game or Slam Contract are higher. However the penalties when failing to make a contract are also higher. (We touch on this in the lesson of Scoring). But to summarise, the bonuses available are:

 

When you fail to make a contract, the penalty points when Non Vulnerable are 50 pts for each trick you are under the contract. When Vulnerable, these double of 100 pts for each “undertrick”

How do we know when we’re Vulnerable or not?

The position on Vulnerability in Rubber Bridge is different from Duplicate (what you’re likely to play in a club or on-line).   Here, we are looking at Duplicate Bridge.

When we are playing Duplicate the situation on Vulnerability changes over a sixteen hand cycle.  If you are playing with duplicate boards you don’t need to remember this as the condition will be marked on the Board.

The pairs being Vulnerable will be shown normally in RED. The pairs that are Non Vulnerable are normally shown in GREEN.

The sixteen-board cycle is:

As a beginner you don’t need to be too concerned about vulnerability. As you progress however you increasingly need to take it into account.

Generally speaking when you have what is Favourable Vulnerability i.e. you are Not Vulnerable and your opponents are, you can be more ambitious in your bidding, knowing that losing a contract by one or two tricks can be much better than your opponents making a Vulnerable contract.

Needless to say, it doesn’t always work out like that!