My friend, Peggy Cantelou, says she has been playing bridge since she was in junior high school, that the mothers of her set were determined that their daughters would be proficient in the game. I do not doubt that in the least. I do not think the girls of my own youth started quite so early, but by the time we graduated from high school, we needed to be able to play the game to be socially adept.
Of course, there were some, like me, who did hot have the game-playing mind and for whom bridge began as a painful ordeal. I can remember sitting at a bridge table actually praying not to get a good hand because I feared having to play it. How times change! Unfortunately, they did not change fast enough for me to insist that my daughters play. I fear I short-changed my children in the game department, because now I firmly believe playing games is a big step in brain development. Sorry, girls. Mea culpa. (They turned out OK, however.)
We had a lot of senior parties during our own high school days, and many of those were bridge parties; so we had to adjust. By the time we got to college, it had caught on in a big way.
MSCW (now Mississippi University for Women) allowed smoking only in designated smoking rooms. Since many more people smoked in those days, the smoke-filled rooms were always occupied, and there was usually a bridge game in progress. When one student had to leave for class, someone else just took her place.
About that time we noticed the fellas were learning, too. Visiting the grill at Mississippi State, one could see the same marathon games in progress.
I think really good bridge players need to have some mathematical talent, and that leaves me out of the expert category, but I have really learned to enjoy the game.
Bridge has a lot to recommend it, even beyond being the means of good social interaction. It is a game that requires both luck and skill. A good pair of hands gives partners a chance to excel, but there are some hands so bad, no amount of skill can overcome. There is always the anticipation of that good fit.
I understand both Warren Buffet and Bill Gates enjoy playing bridge. That fact should tell us something about what kind of person responds to its demands.
Social phenomenon
Bridge as we know it derived from three card games: bridge whist, auction bridge and contract bridge. Since 1896 it has been the principal intellectual card game of English-speaking countries. Contract bridge spread through the world as a social phenomenon unparalleled in the history of games. By the second half of the 20th century there were an estimated 50 million players of contract bridge, about half of them in the United States. Literature of the game filled more than 9,000 volumes and 100 periodicals. Bidding systems include the French, British, and Italian.
The first form of the game was whist, which has been obsolete since 1910. Auction and contract bridge followed in the 1930s. A similar game, called Khedive, however, developed in Constantinople in 1870 and another one in Greece before that. Khedive became biritch and was played on the French Riviera in the 1870s.
Bridge was the first game of the whist family to appeal to women as well as men. In the winter of 1931-32, bridge experts Ely and Josephine Culbertson won a match called “the bridge battle of the century.”
In the early 1930s bridge was a white-hot fad in the United States, South America and Europe. By the second half of the 20th century two-thirds of the U.S. and British newspapers carried bridge columns.
Several bidding systems developed and were widely used, but there were hundreds of systems proposed.
In the days when my friends and I were “young-marrieds” and when we became “stay-at-home moms,” before so many women went back to work, ladies’ bridge clubs of several tables proliferated. In those days we tried hard to make our games real bridge parties, pulling out the white linens, the sterling silver and our best china. Now we have gotten older and, if not wiser, at least lazier. We do not have to “put on the dog” to host a bridge game, nor do we have to invite a crowd. It is just as much fun — maybe more — to set up one table and serve some simple refreshments. After all, the game is the thing. It is a game with a long and challenging history and enticing possibilities.
Now, if you will excuse me, I must go to set up my card table. My foursome is coming over.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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