Editing Duplicate bridge (section)

===Contrast with rubber bridge===
Duplicate bridge, especially matchpoint games, differs significantly from [[rubber bridge]] in scoring technique, and therefore occasionally somewhat in tactics for bidding and play. Whereas the goal in rubber bridge is to win more points than the pair of people you are playing against, in duplicate bridge the goal is to do better than other pairs playing exactly the same cards. Because of this, strategies are different. In rubber (as in IMP scoring), 30 points above the line for an overtrick is unimportant and hardly worth risking a set. In match-points duplicate, it is common for those 30 points to mean you get a top score instead of average &ndash; and may be worth risking going down. In rubber, an occasional 800-point penalty is disastrous, but in matchpoints it is no worse than any other bottom score. International match points is in the middle of these extremes. Huge penalties are worse than small penalties, but 30 point differences are only moderately important.

A more subtle difference is in the bidding of [[Contract bridge glossary#P|partscore]] hands. In duplicate bridge, once a pair recognizes that they are playing for part score (less than a game), their objective is to win the auction  with the minimum bid. In rubber bridge, it may occasionally be desirable to bid above this minimum as points below the line may be needed to complete a game.

Duplicate bridge also has the unique advantage of largely neutralizing a run of bad luck with the cards because a pair that has had poor hands all night may still have the highest score for the session{{snd}}as long as they play their cards more skillfully than the other pairs with the same poor hands. That said, in such cases these pairs will probably have had fewer opportunities to exercise those skills, and their results may depend more heavily on the expertise of their opponents.