Two to four players, four Portland bridges, twenty-five ways to break the rules
Bridge City Poker is a climbing and shedding card game for two to four players, designed by Lee Gianou and published by Portland Game Collective. Every trick, someone leads a poker-style meld and everyone else tries to top it. Win the trick and you keep your hand small; lose it and you draw. Mixed into the deck are power cards that bend the rules of the trick — but every power you play counts against you at the end. The player who finishes with the lowest score wins.
The deck is made of bridge cards in four suits, each named after a bridge over the Willamette: Tilikum, Hawthorne, Fremont and Saint John's. How many ranks are used depends on the table:
| Players | Bridge cards | Hand | Rounds |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 1–12 in each suit (48) | 11 | 3 |
| 3 | 1–14 in each suit (56) | 9 | 3 |
| 4 | 0–14 in each suit (60) | 7 | 4 |
Before the game, five power cards are chosen out of 25 and shuffled into the deck. Everyone knows which five are in play. Each power shows how it is played — on its own, together with a meld, either way, or only by the player who has the lead — and a point value from +1 to +4.
Every play to a trick is a meld, and each one is compared only with melds of its own type:
| Meld | What it is | Ranked by |
|---|---|---|
| Single | one card | its number |
| Pair | two of the same number | the number |
| Triple | three of the same number | the number |
| Full house | a triple plus a pair | the triple |
| Run | three, four or five numbers in a row, any suits | its lowest card; the length must match the lead |
| Flush | five cards of one suit | a later flush beats an earlier one |
Suits matter only for flushes — and for a few power cards.
1. The leader plays. The player who leads puts down a meld (or a power card) and may not pass. That sets the type for the whole trick.
2. One action each. Going round the table, everyone else does exactly one thing: play a meld of the same type that is equal or higher, play a power card on its own, throw away power cards from their hand, or pass. A tie goes to whoever played last.
3. Draw. The winner draws nothing and leads the next trick. Everyone else refills from the deck:
| What you did | 3–4 players | 2 players |
|---|---|---|
| Won the trick | 0 | 0 |
| Played a solo power | 0 | 0 |
| Played a meld and lost | 1 | 2 |
| Discarded power cards | 1 | 2 |
| Passed | 2 | 3 |
Power cards you played stay face up in front of you — they will score. Every other card played to the trick is discarded.
Powers are where the game gets its character. A few examples from the 25:
The suggested first set is Halt, Cycle, Follow, Ditch and Wild. The browser version also offers PGC's themed sets, a random five, your own choice of five, or no powers at all.
Shedding. The moment a player has no cards left — by playing them, or because some power took them away — the trick is finished, nobody draws, and the round is over.
Decking. If the deck cannot give everyone their full draw, nobody draws: the rest of the deck is discarded and one last trick is played. If a draw empties the deck exactly, two more tricks are played.
A player who shed scores the points of the powers they played, minus 5. Everyone else first burns a bridge: they pick one suit and throw away every card of it from their hand. Unplayed powers are dropped for free. Then they score their played powers plus the face value of the bridge cards still in hand.
After the last round the lowest total wins. A tie plays one more round.
Four players can play as two teams of partners sitting opposite. Two team-only powers join the deck — Give Lead and Merge — with three others. A team that wins a trick does not draw at all, both partners must shed to end the round with the −5, and the team counts the higher of its two scores.
The browser version plays the full game for two, three or four players, plus the four-player team game, against computer opponents in three levels — Easy, Normal and Hard — with a guided tutorial round to learn the basics. You can also play online with friends through a room code; empty chairs are filled by the computer. In English and German, free, with no download and no signup.
Two to four. With four you can also play as two teams of two. The number of players sets how many cards are in the deck, the hand size and the number of rounds.
About twenty to forty-five minutes: three rounds with two or three players, four rounds with four.
Yes. The deckades version runs in your browser with no download, account or payment, against computer opponents or online with friends using a room code.
A climbing and shedding card game, in the family of games like Tichu or President: each trick must be beaten with a higher meld of the same type, and the goal is to get rid of your cards. Power cards add effects that change the rules of a trick.
The lowest. Cards left in your hand and power cards you played add points; emptying your hand first takes 5 off.
At the end of a round, every player who did not shed chooses one suit — one bridge — and discards all cards of that suit from their hand before counting the rest.
If the deck cannot give every player their full draw, nobody draws, the rest of the deck is discarded and one final trick is played. That is called decking.
The starter set: Halt, Cycle, Follow, Ditch and Wild. They show the main ideas — stopping draws, trading cards, forcing suits and bending numbers — without too much at once.