This is brilliant... Except for the bits about it being too hard...
Are you aware that most clubs run lessons, and they start with the basics, and over time you build on it and become better the more you play and discuss with others - the advantage of duplicate meaning that at the end of the day, everyone's played the same cards, so the debrief at the end is meaningful and constructive.
Sincerely, an avid Bridge player since 2009 when my youngest started kindergarten.
I LOVE it. It's played on many levels. There are social players, locally competitive players, nationally Competitive players, internationally Competitive players, and professional players.
Find your national bridge association, they'll put you in contact with your nearest club, and they'll let you know when the next set of lessons start. In New Zealand it's NZBridge.co.nz
I love the optimism that Americans might collectively decide to return to "a game that invites us to bend and stretch our minds into surprising new shapes." I wish I could envision personally investing the mental energy and discipline in learning how to play bridge competently! Perhaps after retirement?
Frank this is great! I grew up playing (and loving) Bridge, and I give a variant of this essay as a lecture in my systems design class every year. Then I play with any students brave enough. The perceived difficulty of playing well is largely clustered in the bidding metagame and dependent on the conventions.
When we were trying to learn we taught our son James and his friend Ophir the basics, they must have been 16 or so at the time. And they were surprisingly good because they were super aggro and would fight for every auction, which, while not optimal, was better than the timid, overly-cautious approach a lot of beginners have.
And if they had gone to a bridge club to learn they would have been humiliated and beaten for taking this very sensible first order heuristic as a strategy - the bidding conventions and modern style are the biggest gatekeeper to learning and it doesn't have to be - the game just really wants you to play with a group at your same exposure/skill level and has no system for building that pairing. Make an ELO/handicap/matching system that worked and you'd make Bridge wildly more accessible.
Great article! As someone who loved reading the write-ups of Bridge games in the local newspaper long before learning to play myself I totally understand all levels of your fascination. Nowadays I play a hand or two with my Irish in-laws who are obsessed with the game and I can assure you that it's actually surprisingly easy to get going for someone with card game experience. Playing out the hands is intuitive, the auction is formulaic. The scoring/betting is really just trying to aim as high as possible. It's a game that's juicy from the get-go and you will win rounds before you can remember what a "balanced hand" is. I used a cheat sheet (a.k.a. "the flipper") for my first ~5 games but it gets easier quite fast. It still is a game that I could play for the rest of my life and keep learning. There are Tarock variants that are more complicated (and even more spicy in their meta) though.
Love this! My parents are obsessed with bridge - they play hands every morning with breakfast. Over the pandemic I learned how to play with them online on Bridgebase every Thursday afternoon, being the partner of our family friend Reine who was then in her 90s (sadly she has since died). I absolutely loved learning, and Reine was sharp as a tack - she also had so many good expressions that I still hear in my head when playing ("one, two, that'll do!"). Now Martin and I play when visiting with my parents and I love it, though I find bidding pretty hard still!
This is brilliant... Except for the bits about it being too hard...
Are you aware that most clubs run lessons, and they start with the basics, and over time you build on it and become better the more you play and discuss with others - the advantage of duplicate meaning that at the end of the day, everyone's played the same cards, so the debrief at the end is meaningful and constructive.
Sincerely, an avid Bridge player since 2009 when my youngest started kindergarten.
I LOVE it. It's played on many levels. There are social players, locally competitive players, nationally Competitive players, internationally Competitive players, and professional players.
Find your national bridge association, they'll put you in contact with your nearest club, and they'll let you know when the next set of lessons start. In New Zealand it's NZBridge.co.nz
fab writing - i still don’t really understand Bridge but i think that’s to be expected :)
I love the optimism that Americans might collectively decide to return to "a game that invites us to bend and stretch our minds into surprising new shapes." I wish I could envision personally investing the mental energy and discipline in learning how to play bridge competently! Perhaps after retirement?
Frank this is great! I grew up playing (and loving) Bridge, and I give a variant of this essay as a lecture in my systems design class every year. Then I play with any students brave enough. The perceived difficulty of playing well is largely clustered in the bidding metagame and dependent on the conventions.
When we were trying to learn we taught our son James and his friend Ophir the basics, they must have been 16 or so at the time. And they were surprisingly good because they were super aggro and would fight for every auction, which, while not optimal, was better than the timid, overly-cautious approach a lot of beginners have.
And if they had gone to a bridge club to learn they would have been humiliated and beaten for taking this very sensible first order heuristic as a strategy - the bidding conventions and modern style are the biggest gatekeeper to learning and it doesn't have to be - the game just really wants you to play with a group at your same exposure/skill level and has no system for building that pairing. Make an ELO/handicap/matching system that worked and you'd make Bridge wildly more accessible.
Great article! As someone who loved reading the write-ups of Bridge games in the local newspaper long before learning to play myself I totally understand all levels of your fascination. Nowadays I play a hand or two with my Irish in-laws who are obsessed with the game and I can assure you that it's actually surprisingly easy to get going for someone with card game experience. Playing out the hands is intuitive, the auction is formulaic. The scoring/betting is really just trying to aim as high as possible. It's a game that's juicy from the get-go and you will win rounds before you can remember what a "balanced hand" is. I used a cheat sheet (a.k.a. "the flipper") for my first ~5 games but it gets easier quite fast. It still is a game that I could play for the rest of my life and keep learning. There are Tarock variants that are more complicated (and even more spicy in their meta) though.
Love this! My parents are obsessed with bridge - they play hands every morning with breakfast. Over the pandemic I learned how to play with them online on Bridgebase every Thursday afternoon, being the partner of our family friend Reine who was then in her 90s (sadly she has since died). I absolutely loved learning, and Reine was sharp as a tack - she also had so many good expressions that I still hear in my head when playing ("one, two, that'll do!"). Now Martin and I play when visiting with my parents and I love it, though I find bidding pretty hard still!