dbdance10

Okay, so I'm a little late to the party here. But for what it's worth: I'm growing a little frustrated with the ACBL's hand-wringing over the scarcity of young players. At the junior reception at each national tournament, the few young people typically in attendance are bombarded by Board members who beg us to share the magical secret of how to popularize bridge among our friends. But as was explained so clearly by so many of the above posters, the first step is hardly a mystery: hire a serious marketing firm. Sure, there are other ways to reach out immediately to youth. But to me, it seems sadly clear that the reason that we have not successfully reached out to young people is that there is no real desire among either ACBL members or their leaders to do so. "Senior Regionals" are wildly popular, as are senior events in general. And even in forums where young players are theoretically welcome, the environment is hardly welcoming. Many of my bridge friends are talented players between the age of 14 and 35 or so who have yet to achieve national acclaim. They are enthusiastic about the game and play regularly at local and regional (and some national) tournaments. Despite the inevitable "it's so nice to see young people" the first few times they play at a club, the locals often turn against these players. They psych too much. They claim too early. They play weird conventions, like transfers in competitive auctions. Some of them play... (gasp)... something called relay precision, and who the hell knows what's going on in those auctions. And don't even get me started on the ones who sometimes have to stifle a giggle when they play dummy. In short, they win a lot, and they do things that "aren't bridge." Whatever that means. The local ladies and gentlemen, bless their hearts, do not like playing against these young people. They fear them and find them disrespectful. Okay, so many of these complaints are unique to really bad (or really cranky) fields. My friends should just play in more tournaments, you say? Sure! Two years ago, a few friends and I were playing the side events at the Reno nationals. Through a concerted effort (not a joke), we had accumulated approximately 280 points a piece. Life masterhood narrowly eluded us, and we were on a quest to achieve it before we died (or graduated). Here were our choices, as presented by the directors: we could play in bracket 13 of a 13-bracket KO ("our bracket"), or we could play in bracket 1. Ask us today, and we would take bracket 1 in a heartbeat. But at the time, we weren't quite ready to face the nation's top experts who happened to be out of national events that day. We begged to be allowed to play bracket 2, or 3, or 4, to no avail. So we entered bracket 13, "our bracket." Three out of four of our opponents withdrew at the half. Several complained to the directors, as one of our pairs was playing an absolutely absurd relay precision system. They were upset not because the system was illegal, but because we were playing it in bracket 13 for pete's sake. We won. Whoop-di-do. No one was happy. We would never get those two days of our lives back again. And the future was hardly brighter: unless we could find teammates with quite a few points, we would languish for years in the lowest brackets, or simply lose right away in bracket 1. This prospect nearly scared me away from the game. Which is saying something. When I described his problem to various ACBL executives, it was explained to me that my problem really only affected a very small demographic. The bigger problem, it seems, occurs with teams that have accumulated too many points for their skill level and who seek to "play down." As I understand it, the ACBL is currently undertaking a concerted effort to address THAT issue (teams of LOLs who justifiably seek entrance into lower brackets), but there has been little or no movement on the flip side of the question. This has turned into a rant. If you are still reading, my sincerest apologies. And if you are still reading and happen to have some authority re the bracket problem, please please please get on that thanks.

We have no idea whether that's true or not, because we've never even remotely tried to give the sexes an equal playing field. Be cautious when you cite "genetics"--that's often just a cop-out.

I think the basic problem is that very few women play bridge at the level of the most elite men. Rather than accept this situation as somehow inevitable or biologically predetermined, the ACBL should do everything in its power to encourage more young women to enter the game and to make the game itself a more hospitable environment for women players. The existence of the separate women's events is probably part of the problem. In the events for juniors or seniors or limited masterpoints holders, there is a legitimate basis for presuming that the people who fit the category are "disadvantaged" as players. Juniors necessarily have less experience playing the game. As we grow older beyond a certain age, our mental faculties diminish. And players with fewer masterpoints are by definition in our system presumptively less skilled. Women are different. There is no account for women's relative lack of success at bridge that does not implicate systemic inequalities: the myth that girls are just "bad at math" that keeps us out of the quantitative fields, or the one that we "don't like competition" that discourages us from all things competitive in the first place. Attributing inequalities to biology just distracts us from identifying and fixing the social factors that give rise to those inequalities. Some of those factors in bridge are within the power of the bridge community to remedy. Think about the verbal abuse that many women endure at the bridge table from their male partners. Women are disproportionately the victims of name-calling and expressions of disgust when they make mistakes--real or imagined. By tolerating such abuse, the community implicitly sanctions the destructive message it contains. The existence of women's events may also be a factor: professional women players are under pressure to compete in the women's events rather than the open events, regardless of their ability. The gender-restricted events also implies that women are inferior, which may be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let's not kid ourselves though. Eliminate the women's events, and the most immediate effect will not be "equality" between men and women in bridge. In the short run, women may nearly disappear from the top ranks of the game. Clients will not realize overnight that their previous biases against hiring women experts were wrong-headed. It is unrealistic to think that women, long discriminated against both in the game and in society, are now just awaiting the elimination of the separate-but-not-equal events to take their equal place in bridge. Eliminate the discrimination, sure, but be ready to deal with the underlying causes of the inequality.