Duplicate Scoring Basics
If you’ve only played rubber bridge at home, duplicate scoring might seem backwards at first. You make 3NT with an overtrick, score up your 430 points, and somehow get a terrible result. What gives?
Duplicate bridge isn’t about how many points you score. It’s about how you did compared to everyone else who played the same hand.
Why Duplicate Exists
Rubber bridge has a fundamental problem: card distribution matters more than skill. If you get dealt strong hands all night, you win. If you get garbage, you lose. That’s fun for a social game but terrible for competition.
Duplicate fixes this by having everyone play the same deals. You sit North-South on Board 7, and so does every other North-South pair in the room. Your 3NT contract is the same 3NT contract they’re playing. The cards don’t matter anymore. What matters is whether you did better or worse than the field.
This means you’re not competing against the opponents at your table. You’re competing against everyone else who held your cards.
The Basic Setup
You and your partner stay in the same direction (North-South or East-West) all session. The boards rotate around the room. Board 1 comes to your table, you play it, then it moves to the next table. Meanwhile, Board 2 arrives.
After you finish, the director enters everyone’s results into the scoring program. For each board, you get compared to everyone else who played the same direction. Did you score more than them? Less? That determines your score.
Matchpoints: The Standard Game
Most club games and many tournaments use matchpoint scoring. Here’s how it works.
For each board, you get one matchpoint for every pair you beat, and half a matchpoint for every pair you tie. If there are 13 North-South pairs in the game, that’s a “top” of 12 (since you can beat 12 other pairs). Beat everyone? 12 matchpoints. Tie with everyone? 6 matchpoints. Worst result? Zero.
Let’s say you’re in 4♠ and make it exactly. That’s +420. Here’s how everyone else did:
- 3 pairs made 4♠ with an overtrick: +450
- 4 pairs made 4♠ exactly: +420
- 3 pairs went down in 4♠: -50
- 2 pairs stopped in 3♠ and made 4: +170
- 1 pair played in 3NT and went down: -50
You beat 6 pairs (the ones who scored less than +420). You tied with 3 pairs (who also made 4♠ exactly). You lost to 3 pairs (who made the overtrick).
Your score: 6 matchpoints for the pairs you beat, plus 1.5 matchpoints for the pairs you tied (half a point for each of the 3 ties). That’s 7.5 out of 12.
The scoring program converts this to a percentage: 7.5/12 = 62.5%. That’s above average, but not great. Those overtricks cost you.
Why Overtricks Matter So Much
In rubber bridge, making 4♠ with an overtrick instead of exactly scores you an extra 30 points. Nice, but not game-changing.
In matchpoints, that overtrick can be the difference between a top and a bottom. Look at the example above. The difference between +420 and +450 is just 30 points, but it moved you from 62.5% to 87.5% (10.5 out of 12).
This changes everything about how you play. In rubber bridge, your focus is making your contract. In matchpoints, you need to think about what everyone else is doing. If the field is in 4♠, you need to beat their result. That means taking every finesse, looking for overtricks, and sometimes taking risks that would be crazy in rubber bridge.
The Concept of “The Field”
When you’re playing duplicate, you’re constantly thinking about “the field.” What did everyone else bid? What contract are they in? How did they play it?
Sometimes you get to a weird contract and have no idea if it’s good or bad. You’re in 3NT while everyone else might be in 4♥. If you make 3NT for +400 and they make 4♥ for +420, you lose. If they go down in 4♥ for -50, your +400 is a top.
The key is this: you don’t need to get the absolute best result on every board. You just need to beat the other pairs. Sometimes that means being aggressive. Sometimes it means taking the safe route that you know everyone else will take.
IMPs: Team Scoring
The other common scoring method is IMPs (International Match Points). This is used for team games, where your foursome plays against another foursome.
IMPs compare your result on a board directly to your teammates. If your teammates are sitting North-South at the other table, you’re sitting East-West. You play the same boards but from opposite sides.
After both tables finish, you compare results. If your table scored +420 in 4♠ and your teammates scored -450 (the opponents made 4♠ with overtrick), you lost 30 points on the board. That converts to 1 IMP.
The IMP scale is designed so bigger swings matter more, but not proportionally more. Losing 30 points costs 1 IMP. Losing 600 points costs 10 IMPs. Losing 1500 points costs 17 IMPs. The scale is logarithmic, which sounds fancy but just means big swings don’t dominate the match.
This makes IMP strategy different from matchpoints. Overtricks matter less. Making your contract matters more. You’re not worried about beating the field. You’re worried about not getting blown out on a hand.
Converting to Percentages
Most games report results as percentages. For matchpoints, this is straightforward: your matchpoints divided by the top, times 100.
For IMPs, it’s more complex. The scoring program looks at how many IMPs you won or lost, compares it to the expected range for the number of boards played, and converts that to a percentage. Win a lot of IMPs? You’ll be over 60%. Lose IMPs? You’ll be below 40%.
In general:
- 60%+ is a good game
- 55-60% is above average
- 50-55% is average to slightly above
- 45-50% is below average
- Below 45% is a rough session
Comparing the Two
Matchpoints and IMPs feel like different games. In matchpoints, every board matters equally. A disaster on one board can be balanced by several good boards. The goal is consistency. Get slightly above average on most boards, avoid complete bottoms, and you’ll do well.
In IMPs, some boards matter more than others. If you bid and make a slam that the other table missed, you win big. If you go down in that slam while they made a safe game, you lose big. The key is making good decisions on close calls, because those are where matches are won or lost.
Most players find matchpoints more tactical and IMPs more strategic. Matchpoints rewards aggressive play and squeezing out extra tricks. IMPs rewards sound bidding and not taking unnecessary risks in the play.
What About Your Opponents?
Here’s the weird part for new duplicate players: at your table, you’re playing against your opponents, but you’re not really competing against them. You’re competing against the other pairs who held your cards.
If your opponents make a mistake and go down in a cold contract, that’s great for you. But it’s only great because you’re assuming the opponents at other tables didn’t make the same mistake. If everyone’s opponents butchered the hand, you all get average.
The reverse is also true. If your opponents play brilliantly and beat you on a board, that might actually be a good result for you if the opponents at other tables did the same thing. Everyone goes down, everyone gets average.
This is why duplicate players always want to know what happened at other tables. You can’t evaluate your result until you know what the field did.
Getting Started
When you play your first duplicate game, don’t worry too much about matchpoint strategy. Focus on making your contracts and avoiding big mistakes. As you play more, you’ll develop a feel for when to push for overtricks and when to play safe.
The scoring will seem odd at first. You’ll have sessions where you feel like you played well but scored poorly, or sessions where you made mistakes but lucked into a good score. That’s normal. Over time, good play wins at duplicate just like it does in rubber bridge. It just might take 20 boards instead of 20 hands to see it.
The beauty of duplicate is that everyone gets the same cards. When you have a good session, you know you earned it. The cards didn’t win for you. You did.