Electronic bridge game system

Claim 1

An electronic game playing system for performing in the place of at least one of the plurality of human players which normally play bridge card games selected functions normally performed by one or more of the players comprising: memory means for storing data required for the play of the game including data representative of the identity of cards to be played by the system, data representative of cards played by the players and the system, data representative of each bid in a sequence of a plurality of bids made by the player and the system, and including data received by system data input means; system data input means including card input means for receiving selected card identity data and bid input means for receiving bid data representative of each of a sequence of bids by the players; means for producing positional identity data representative of the relative position of each of the card hands; bid response means for selecting a sequence of one or more bid values for each of the card hands being played by the system in response to the card identity data for each such hand and in response to each prior bid in the sequence of said bid data stored in said memory means in accordance with preselected criteria stored in memory; contract value memory means responsive to a selected sequence of bids for storing data representative of the last bid prior to said selected sequence and for storing the positional identity data representative of the card hand making said last bid; card playing means for selecting data representative of a card from the cards in each of the card hand being played by the system in response to the identity of cards played by the human players, the identity of cards in the hand being played by the system and the value stored in said contract value memory means in accordance with preselected playing criteria; and display means for displaying the bid values selected by the system and the identity of the each card selected by the system.