Learning+Bridge

Learning Contract Bridge I grew up in a game-playing house. We had the usual (for those days) collection of children’s board games, Candyland, Uncle Wiggly, and Chutes and Ladders. I remember playing checkers with my father before I was in kindergarten, I played Chinese checkers and Parcheesi with my grandmother at about the same age. Family games nights grew to include Monopoly, Life, Careers, and Sorry. My father taught me chess when I was in elementary school. My friends in junior high school were fanatics for Stratego and Risk. But card games were even more prevalent. War, Go Fish, Old Maid, Slap Jack, and Rummy were childhood favorites. Later the more challenging games of Pinochle, Cribbage, Casino, Pitch, and Hearts became family standards as I and my siblings grew up. But always, always, there was a special reverence for Bridge. Bridge had been //the// social game for my grandparents generation and my parents and their friends also played frequently. Bridge requires four players, in two teams of two, so as soon as my younger sister could hold 13 cards, she and I received our first bridge lessons. My mother had read somewhere that the best way to teach bridge is to play for money as that focuses the mind of a child. Our stakes were 1/40 of a cent per point, meaning that a really large loss might cost 25 cents. The play of the cards in bridge is complex, but not radically more difficult than other trick-based games. The bidding, however, the factor that defines contract bridge, is a life-long study. At first I learned by playing and by listening to the coaching of our parents, particularly my mother who belonged to a number of bridge clubs and still, at 84, gives lessons to local beginners. I also started reading the newspaper bridge columns and soon noticed that the analysis there was much more sophisticated than what I was receiving at home. I went to the library and discovered a whole shelf of books devoted to bridge and began a serious study of the game. In those days the “Goren” or “Standard American” bidding system was most widespread and was replacing the older systems my parents had grown up with. Unfortunately my generation never took to bridge in anything like the numbers of the older generations and the difficulty of getting four players of comparable skill together at one time with a few hours to devote made non-family games a rarity, at least until I started law school. In law school I met a fellow student, John Compton, who was as much a fan and much more experienced in current bridge theory than I. We became regular partners and my game got much, much, better. We started going to sanctioned tournaments, I joined the American Contract Bridge League, and became serious about the game. Tournaments exposed me to better players, more advanced bidding systems, and the concept of “duplicate” bridge in which the luck factor is minimized because the same cards are played by each partnership and the scoring is based on how well your team did as compared to others playing the same cards. Once out of law school and into the real world, I found little opportunity to play bridge. After I retired, however, I joined a local bridge club and began playing seriously again. I took lessons to try to catch up on the changes in play during my 30 year absence from competition and am playing well again. As I look back on how I learned I see six important factors. First, I saw my parents play and listened to them extol it as the queen of card games. Second, I was encouraged to play and play well by my parents. Third, I discovered written analysis of the game and studied it. Fourth, I played a lot. Fifth, I found a mentor-partner and we pushed each other to play well. Sixth, I started playing in sanctioned tournaments and got to know many more good players and systems. Or, to reduce the process further, I had desire, opportunity, instruction, and practice. All probably almost universal requirements for learning something well.