Bridge dying?

[matmat]

I consider LA to be a semi-major hub of bridge in the scheme of things for the US. You can't name 10 players under the age of 40 who are lasting, will be here in 40 years type players. There may be 4-5 for the entire 10+ million of us, but just check on the median age in any bridge club. When your average patron is 75 years old, and u can count the number of people under 40 playing in your club on one hand, the writing is on the wall.

 

I would be counting the 55-65 year-old novices instead, actually.

[JLOGIC]

I don't think the LA area has been a semi-major hub of bridge for a long time.

[JLOGIC]

Something I noticed throughout my life, all the young players I knew who played a lot in college either:

 

A) Got a job, and maybe a family, after college, and basically stopped playing bridge, except maybe sometimes on BBO. What can they do? Entry level jobs don't give you much vacation time, and you're probably not going to spend it playing bridge even if you were a big bridge enthusiast.

 

B) Started playing professionally.

 

It seems like those are really the only options for a college graduate. I suppose it's possible for some people to stick with it and show up on weekends at nationals or regionals (though this is still pretty expensive) and maybe marry a bridge player or something, but it's still costly and time consuming and not productive. Look at a guy like John Barth who was a super promising player, maybe one of the most promising young players in a long time, and could have easily chosen to become a pro imo, he is now married and has a good job and more power to him but I have not even spoken to him in over a year.

 

The good thing about these guys is I know at some point they will be rich, have more free time, and come back to bridge. But these are the guys who got good while they had time to do so, the post college crowd who hasn't even learned the game yet really has no chance. I think if we get people started young though it will lead to them coming back in their 40s and playing for a long time anyways, and playing well. And maybe they can keep playing on BBO.

 

It's funny because Jdonn loves bridge so much and has managed to continue to play, but it has definitely hurt his work life, I know he even quit his job in order to play in the world junior championships, and continually debates becoming a full time bridge pro so that he can play more.

[rduran1216]

very few people play the game in college. All the people who talk about how they used to play talk about how student unions were filled with rubber bridge games, and thats how students spent their free time. One of the major cruxes to why bridge is dying is that statistically NOBODY(less than .0001%) under the age of 50 plays.

[JLOGIC]

Was gonna take exception to the statement bridge is dying, but then I noticed I am the one who started this thread! I think this might have been the first thread I ever started on BBF.

[JLOGIC]

Also I may have posted this in this thread already, but we have to reach out to the spades community. Spades is one of the most popular games on yahoo (which is a huge gaming site), and probably way more than half that play are under 30. Many have played over 5000 games of spades there. Clearly those are young people who spend a lot of time playing a trick taking game with a partner where you must evaluate how many tricks you'll take with spades as a trump suit...they're perfect!

 

I played today with one of the top 10 spades players on yahoo, probably top 1. He is also a bridge player, and posts here sometimes. He says that he has tried to get his friends (other top spades players) to play, and while most gave up, some have stuck with it. That is just one person, perhaps he added 3 more young people who will play bridge and be good at it/stick with it forever. I don't know what it would take to market bridge to the spades community, but that is just the complete nuts. Imagine an influx of hundreds of teenagers playing on BBO/at their clubs/whatever, who are already predisposed to spending lots of time playing cards with a partner...it's orgasmic to think about.

[nige1]

Also I may have posted this in this thread already, but we have to reach out to the spades community. Spades is one of the most popular games on yahoo (which is a huge gaming site), and probably way more than half that play are under 30. Many have played over 5000 games of spades there. Clearly those are young people who spend a lot of time playing a trick taking game with a partner where you must evaluate how many tricks you'll take with spades as a trump suit...they're perfect! I played today with one of the top 10 spades players on yahoo, probably top 1. He is also a bridge player, and posts here sometimes. He says that he has tried to get his friends (other top spades players) to play, and while most gave up, some have stuck with it. That is just one person, perhaps he added 3 more young people who will play bridge and be good at it/stick with it forever. I don't know what it would take to market bridge to the spades community, but that is just the complete nuts. Imagine an influx of hundreds of teenagers playing on BBO/at their clubs/whatever, who are already predisposed to spending lots of time playing cards with a partner...it's orgasmic to think about.

Spades is fun but I was put of by the lack of lead/signalling agreements (some time ago -- perhaps things have changed).Anyway, Bridge administrations should rush to take up JLOGIC's suggestion and direct a marketing drive at this untapped source of players.

[Vampyr]

the post college crowd who hasn't even learned the game yet really has no chance.

 

What do you mean by this? They have no chance to become pros or players on their national teams? Maybe so, but in the clubs I play at many of the players started after college (if they went, you know what I mean) and play regularly and quite well. Also I guess we are lucky in London, because in most clubs there are very few people over 60, let alone 65.

[mycroft]

I have said before, and I will say again, that a lot of our "newer" members for the last 10 years have been "learned in college, gave it up for work, retired and looking for something to do the 8 months of the year they can't golf, saw 'bridge lessons', thought 'I remember enjoying that way back when, let's give it another try', become addicted" people.

 

And whether or not we see any under 40s play other than the "juniors who become professionals", if we don't keep reaching out to the schools, and the colleges, we won't get any of *those* people in 30 years.

 

Now, they'll never be Class-A players, but then again, many of the current new sponsors are in the same boat as above, except that they can semi-retire at 35 if they choose to, and have never lost the interest in the game they had as (high-level, granted) juniors. So, maybe it's worth it to the Class-A players to cultivate the "next generation" of 40-years-from-now anyway, because that's also the next generation of the people who pay their salaries.

 

But make no mistake, we won't get many players *now* out of it.

[awm]

As a Los Angeles resident (for another week anyway) I will say that I do not think Los Angeles is any kind of hub for bridge. It's a big city of course, so the number/proximity of bridge players may be higher than some other places. But bridge in northern california (for example) has a much younger crowd and a lot more international-caliber players. For example, the only players I can think of who live in the LA area and play (or at least seriously contend to play) on US national teams are Jill Meyers (women) and Roger Lee (juniors). In contrast northern california has a whole bunch (Ron Smith, Kit Woolsey, and Chip Martel immediately come to mind as participants on US open teams, and there are a huge number of others I'm not listing especially once we include women/juniors).

 

Justin is right that a lot of people give up serious bridge after college due to career/family concerns. However, people who started early will often come back to the game later in life (when they retire, or kids go off to college). My wife and I may be exceptions to the "giving up serious bridge if not playing pro" but in our case it's significant that we are both bridge players (marrying a non-bridge player usually greatly cuts down on the bridge playing time) and that we have no plans to have kids (which increases our free time, despite both having non-bridge jobs). These two things don't necessarily apply to many people, and even for us work sometimes gets in the way of going to nationals.

[Foxx]

Look at a guy like John Barth who was a super promising player, maybe one of the most promising young players in a long time, and could have easily chosen to become a pro imo, he is now married and has a good job and more power to him but I have not even spoken to him in over a year.

 

I used to be close friends with John Barth... I thought he DID go pro, at least he was being hired by clients for a while...

 

Do you know if he married another bridge player?

[matmat]

This should be moved to the water cooler RIP thread.

[whereagles]

a lot of people give up serious bridge after college due to career/family concerns.

 

People only have time to work, and this has a tendency to worsen. Hobbies in general, and especially the more technically demanding ones like chess or bridge, will soon become a thing for the rich (who have time to spare), some geeks and a few pros.

 

Changing this requires a change in society and that can take decades, if it ever happens.

[nige1]

People only have time to work, and this has a tendency to worsen. Hobbies in general, and especially the more technically demanding ones like chess or bridge, will soon become a thing for the rich (who have time to spare), some geeks and a few pros. Changing this requires a change in society and that can take decades, if it ever happens.

My impression is that, over the years, the number days worked, number of hours worked, and amount of work done has fallen. Most jobs have been de-skilled. Permanent employees spend some of their work-time, surfing the net and playing on-line games. Many of these games are as addictive as Bridge but have simpler rules and are more suitable for players with a short attention span.

[rduran1216]

As a Los Angeles resident (for another week anyway) I will say that I do not think Los Angeles is any kind of hub for bridge. It's a big city of course, so the number/proximity of bridge players may be higher than some other places. But bridge in northern california (for example) has a much younger crowd and a lot more international-caliber players. For example, the only players I can think of who live in the LA area and play (or at least seriously contend to play) on US national teams are Jill Meyers (women) and Roger Lee (juniors). In contrast northern california has a whole bunch (Ron Smith, Kit Woolsey, and Chip Martel immediately come to mind as participants on US open teams, and there are a huge number of others I'm not listing especially once we include women/juniors).

 

Justin is right that a lot of people give up serious bridge after college due to career/family concerns. However, people who started early will often come back to the game later in life (when they retire, or kids go off to college). My wife and I may be exceptions to the "giving up serious bridge if not playing pro" but in our case it's significant that we are both bridge players (marrying a non-bridge player usually greatly cuts down on the bridge playing time) and that we have no plans to have kids (which increases our free time, despite both having non-bridge jobs). These two things don't necessarily apply to many people, and even for us work sometimes gets in the way of going to nationals.

 

I meant more of a hub for pros to get clients, than a hub for strong players, I completely agree with ur sentiment.

[dustinst22]

Also I may have posted this in this thread already, but we have to reach out to the spades community. Spades is one of the most popular games on yahoo (which is a huge gaming site), and probably way more than half that play are under 30. Many have played over 5000 games of spades there. Clearly those are young people who spend a lot of time playing a trick taking game with a partner where you must evaluate how many tricks you'll take with spades as a trump suit...they're perfect!

 

I played today with one of the top 10 spades players on yahoo, probably top 1. He is also a bridge player, and posts here sometimes. He says that he has tried to get his friends (other top spades players) to play, and while most gave up, some have stuck with it. That is just one person, perhaps he added 3 more young people who will play bridge and be good at it/stick with it forever. I don't know what it would take to market bridge to the spades community, but that is just the complete nuts. Imagine an influx of hundreds of teenagers playing on BBO/at their clubs/whatever, who are already predisposed to spending lots of time playing cards with a partner...it's orgasmic to think about.

 

 

I think if Bridgebase created a place to play spades, and even have a duplicate version of the game that could be a good start. Get Spades players used to the concept of duplicate scoring, then slowly integrate them into the Bridge world. I know if this were in existence right now, it wouldn't be that hard to get a pretty good # of these players to come over. I 100% agree with you.

 

Bridge used to be a game only retirees could play because working people didn't have the time. That was before the Internet. Today if you have time to play spades online, you have time to learn Bridge. And like you said there are 10's of thousands of 20-30 yr olds playing 5+ hours per day. It's that simple. If the ACBL and Bridgebase made a concentrated effort at getting these players, I think it could potentially be huge. The key is to present the game in a way that makes the switch very easy, you almost have to have a version of bridge that doesn't have an auction (i.e. minibridge or as I suggested maybe duplicate spades?). It's the bidding that drives people away. They get addicted by the play. So first get them addicted to the crack, then once they're hooked they can learn the bidding.

[hrothgar]

I think if Bridgebase created a place to play spades, and even have a duplicate version of the game that could be a good start. Get Spades players used to the concept of duplicate scoring, then slowly integrate them into the Bridge world. I know if this were in existence right now, it wouldn't be that hard to get a pretty good # of these players to come over. I 100% agree with you.

 

FWIW, I think that this is a really good suggestion, however, I wonder whether the idea can be extended...

 

Personally, I started playing Hearts, I moved on to playing Spades, and fairly quickly made the leap over to playing bridge.

 

From my own perspective, Hearts is significantly easier than Spades, which is much easier than Bridge.

If I had to make a guess, I'd say that the number of Heart players is much greater than the number of Spade players (I don't have a well informed opinion about the relative popularity of Spades versus Bridge)

 

It's interesting to contemplate a "CardBase" Online that supported Hearts, Spades, Minibridge, and Bridge.

 

We could cream Hearts players off to Spades, migrate Spades players to Minibridge, and migrate the Minibridge crowd into Bridge.

 

It's unclear how feasible this stragegy would be...

 

Hearts is a very popular game. One can easily imagine that supporting an online hearts community would require a lot of hardware / bandwidth. I have no idea whether the advertising value of a hearts player is versus the $$$ it would cost to support them. (I'm also incredibly skeptical about treating hearts as a loss leader)

 

Its probably best to stage things.

Even if it eventually makes sense to go after hearts, target spades to begin with...

 

(Wow, talked myslef right around in a circle)

[Phil]

I think Dustin's idea is great. Bridge descended from Whist, which is really close to Spades.

 

How about an exhibition match between some Spades / Bridge players? They can start at Yahoo for Spades, and migrate to BBO for the Bridge portion.

 

I wonder how hard it would be to add Spades as a choice on BBO?

[xxhong]

There is an even larger community in China playing shengji, which is also a variant of trick taking games. The goal of Shengji is to take as many points as possible. Points are 5, 10 and K. 10 and K are 10 points, 5 is 5 points. So the side that takes the trick would score all the point cards played in that trick. Declaring side's goal is to take 60 or more points. Defending side's goal is to take 40 or more points. I think about one out of four Chinese play this card game. That also explains why many Chinese bridge beginners play much better than other places but bid considerably worse. Also this game can be played using 2, 3, 4 or even more decks of cards and by 6 or 8 players.

 

Also I may have posted this in this thread already, but we have to reach out to the spades community. Spades is one of the most popular games on yahoo (which is a huge gaming site), and probably way more than half that play are under 30. Many have played over 5000 games of spades there. Clearly those are young people who spend a lot of time playing a trick taking game with a partner where you must evaluate how many tricks you'll take with spades as a trump suit...they're perfect!

 

I played today with one of the top 10 spades players on yahoo, probably top 1. He is also a bridge player, and posts here sometimes. He says that he has tried to get his friends (other top spades players) to play, and while most gave up, some have stuck with it. That is just one person, perhaps he added 3 more young people who will play bridge and be good at it/stick with it forever. I don't know what it would take to market bridge to the spades community, but that is just the complete nuts. Imagine an influx of hundreds of teenagers playing on BBO/at their clubs/whatever, who are already predisposed to spending lots of time playing cards with a partner...it's orgasmic to think about.

[JLOGIC]

Sorry to post a link to my own blog, but in 2006 I wrote a post about how to promote bridge to people:

 

http://justinlall.wordpress.com/2006/04/29/promoting-bridge/

 

Relevant excerpt:

 

"We also must wonder, what existing markets can we tap into that include young people? There are certainly some people we can advertise the game itself to. It’s obvious that the millions of teenagers that play spades, a trick taking game similar to bridge, are such an easy market to attract to bridge. They devote some time to playing card games, they already understand the basic rules of bridge, and they are willing to spend some time to learn a game. As I write this there are almost 7,000 people playing spades on Yahoo. Most are teenagers. Why are we not actively trying to get these people to play bridge? It makes absolutely no sense.

 

Other board games, card games, and strategy games have young players who would be quite interested in learning the king of all card games. We need to make a site that we can direct those people to, and somehow make the site available to them. That was probably the goal of Bridge Is Cool, but something more appealing to this type of person is needed. The more times that prize money and huge amounts of strategy are mentioned the better."

 

Also, I totally agree with dustin that it would be awesome if BBO offered a spades room. I'm pretty sure I posted that on here a long time ago, but of course BBO is a company that is trying to make money, and I'm not sure if it would help them at all. Still, a huge bridge and spades site would be awesome and make it natural for people to move from spades to bridge. We have to tap into the spades market imo.

[Elianna]

There is an even larger community in China playing shengji, which is also a variant of trick taking games. The goal of Shengji is to take as many points as possible. Points are 5, 10 and K. 10 and K are 10 points, 5 is 5 points. So the side that takes the trick would score all the point cards played in that trick. Declaring side's goal is to take 60 or more points. Defending side's goal is to take 40 or more points. I think about one out of four Chinese play this card game. That also explains why many Chinese bridge beginners play much better than other places but bid considerably worse. Also this game can be played using 2, 3, 4 or even more decks of cards and by 6 or 8 players.

 

There's also a Persian trick-taking game, Hokm. Or something of the sort.

[Vampyr]

Why are we not actively trying to get these people to play bridge? It makes absolutely no sense.

 

 

Because people would rather sit on the idea for five years?

[relknes]

A few people have mentioned putting bridge on TV, which is a fun idea, but it needs some "Bells and whistles" so to speak to make it palatable the the general public.

Poker was on TV for decades, but didn't get popular until they introduced the "Hole cams" that let the audience and commentators see the player's cards. Statistics litter the screen so that people at home know as much about what is happening as the pros (or at least they can feel like they do). It became popular on TV in part because people could understand the player's dilemmas and think "What would I do here?"

To make bridge work on TV, you would need commentators who could explain the hand in a way that people with only a basic knowledge of the game could understand the dilema and ask "What would I do?"

Immagine, for instance, the player's cards displayed at the bottom of the screen and a commentator saying:

"Well, a lot of beginners would bid 4 Notrump here, the Blackwood Convention" (a sidebar pops up saying "Blackwood is a convention that allows your partner to tell you how many aces they have) "but Fantoni knows that, with his heart void, knowing which aces partner has is just as important as knowing how many, so he is probably going to continue on with a cuebid instead."

Or imagine a comentator saying "Well, I would expect Meckstroth to open 1 spade here, but wait, he opens 1 club instead!" (a sidebar pops up saying "Meckstroth plays Precision, a system where all 16+ hands are opened with 1 club") "This seems a little dubious to me, but he apparently decided that the suit quality justified upgrading this hand to 16 points."

Or "He knows he has to lead one of the black suits here, so he is probably either going to lead the 6 of spades or the 3 of clubs" (a sidebar pops up saying "Typically, when leading from a suit not headed by a sequence, the fourth highest card is led)

etc.

These sorts of things are needed to get people interested who don't already know what's going on.

Also, it helps if there is a couple million dollars on the line...

[mgoetze]

There is an even larger community in China playing shengji, which is also a variant of trick taking games. The goal of Shengji is to take as many points as possible. Points are 5, 10 and K. 10 and K are 10 points, 5 is 5 points. So the side that takes the trick would score all the point cards played in that trick.

 

I guess it would go a bit far to include the not-every-trick-is-the-same group of games. Skat is similarily popular in Germany.

 

Another game which is much closer to Bridge is the Finnish game of Tuppi.

[wickedbid1]

One thing about the youth/senior bridge discussion:

 

How many of today's senior "newcomers" learned bridge (at least coffeetable bridge) in university, couldn't keep it up when they got a job/family, and see a beginners class after retirement and think "you know, I enjoyed that back then, I should see if I still would"? I know there's a lot from personal discussion - in fact, I'm one of them, even though you have to change "retirement" to "go back for grad school", so it was only a 4 year hiatus.

 

Even if they don't become LM at 30/TD at 25/Tournament rated Director at 33 and play or direct three times a week, even if they never play a duplicate game after their classes, even if we lose them in a year - it is much more likely that when I'm over median age, I'll see them at the table, after *they* come back when their kids are grown if we catch them now.

 

Grad school = retirement... nice work if u can get it :)