For those willing to drive a short distance, there
are several games played every week in Punta Gorda,
Port Charlotte, Venice and North Port.
Bridge is certainly a game that requires lifelong
learning, not to mention it keeps the mind sharp.
“I started teaching a class a few years ago and
I promised to teach everything I knew about the
game,” Richard said. “I’ve been playing for 50 years
and I’m still learning more all the time.”
When Richard explained that a recent group he
was teaching, one woman raised her hand and said
There are several competing theories regarding
an ancient form of bridge: it originated
in India, Turkey, Russia, almost wherever
you want it to. But the modern game of contract
bridge certainly originated with Harold.
S. Vanderbilt on his yacht in 1925.
Duplicate bridge is the most widely used
variation of contract bridge in club and
tournament play. It is called duplicate because
the same bridge deal (i.e. the specifi c
arrangement of the 52 cards into the four
hands) is played at each table and scoring
is based on relative performance. In this
way, every hand, whether strong or weak, is
played in competition with others playing
identical cards, and the element of skill is
heightened while that of chance is reduced.
Duplicate bridge stands in contrast to rubber
bridge, where each hand is freshly dealt
and where scores may be more affected by
chance in the short run.
Bridge boards, simple four-way card holders,
are used to enable each player’s hand to
be passed intact to the next table that must
play the deal, and fi nal scores are calculated
by comparing each pair’s result with others
who played the same hand. Bidding boxes
are often used to facilitate the mechanics of
bidding, prevent inadvertent passing of information,
and minimize the noise level. Screens
are used in higher levels of competition and
were introduced to reduce the chance of
passing unauthorized information to one’s
partner.
In duplicate bridge, a player normally plays
with the same partner throughout an event.
The two are known as a “pair.” There are two
exceptions: in team events with up to six
members swapping partners for portions
of the event, and in individual tournaments,
in which players change partners for each
round.
The essential features of all bridge games,
are that four persons play, two against two as
partners; a standard 52-card deck of playing
cards is dealt out one at a time, clockwise
around the table, so that each player
holds 13 cards; and the object of play is to
win tricks, each trick consisting of one card
played by each player. Another feature is that
one suit may be designated the trump suit
(i.e., any card in that suit may take any card
of the other suits), but the methods of designating
the trump suit (or of determining that
a deal will be played without trumps) differ
in the various bridge games, as explained
below.
Since about 1896 bridge whist, auction
bridge, and contract bridge have successively
been the principal intellectual card games
of the English-speaking countries. The third
game of the series, contract bridge, spread
throughout the world and in some respects
constituted a social phenomenon unparalleled
in the history of games. In addition to
millions of casual players worldwide, there
exist numerous national federations affi liated
with the World Bridge Federation (WBF),
which organizes international tournaments
for more-serious competitors. Its largest
affi liated member is the American Contract
Bridge League (ACBL) with nearly 160,000
members.
History of the Game
she’d been playing for 80 years and she’s also still
learning.
“She was 94 years-old at the time,” he said.
The arrival of personal computers and the
Internet opened up new opportunities for instruction
and play. Once a hand is completed, the score
is tallied by a computer and the electronic scoring
machine fi nishes the game.
“We still do quite a bit of it by hand,”
Richard said.
March/April 2020 GASPARILLA MAGAZINE 67