Bridge in Europe vs USA

[Gerben42]

For a while I've been interested in the differences between Bridge in the US and Bridge in Europe. I'd like input if what I write here is correct, and why it is this way.

 

Professionals

 

In the USA, there seem to be a lot of pros who play with clients, or on teams with clients.

 

In Europe however this is very rare, but there are lots of professional bridge teachers and people who profesionally run a bridge club.

 

Tournaments

 

In the USA, tournaments in general don't give you prize money (what about prizes like bridge books, wine, kitchenware?). In Europe, only weekly club nights have no prize money, everything else has either prize money or prizes.

 

Ranking players

 

In the USA, masterpoints seem to be way more important for ranking players than in Europe. Here a player's strength is usually estimated by what league he is playing in.

 

Bridge holidays

 

There are many people who make their living organizing bridge holidays here. In the US, most players who go on a bridge holiday would attend a Regional or National tournament, which last longer than European tourneys.

 

Festivals for tournament players

 

In Europe, tourney players play in weekend-tournaments like national championships, or go to bridge festivals like Slupsk (PL) or Deauville (F). In the US, the tourney players play at the same nationals as the crowd, but in events the crowd may not or dare not enter like the Reisinger.

[awm]

A few comments perhaps:

 

The US has lots of professional bridge teachers as well. While the top-tier pros make a pretty good living, aspiring bridge pros often raise some money by teaching the game as well. Of course, these days a lot of aspiring bridge pros make their money playing poker. There do seem to be few people making a living running a bridge club -- a lot of club games are held once a week at local churches or community centers rather than a dedicated club. Of course, there are people making a living running a bridge club, it just seems not to be the norm for clubs in the US.

 

The US tournaments do actually give out prizes. But typically the prizes are not very valuable, and not a big incentive to play. For example, most of my glassware comes from winning events at regional tournaments. At nationals I got a keychain flashlight for a section top. I agree that prize money is virtually never given out, with the exception of free trips to nationals for the north american pairs and grand national teams events.

 

Masterpoints are definitely used to rank players here in the US. Anyone sensible knows that they are not very accurate, but they're still used for determining knockout brackets, stratification of events, and even seeding for big events like the spingold. One of the big differences is that "league matches" and such seem to be very popular in Europe; I know in England they have regular team matches held at people's homes. There's nothing like that anywhere I've lived in the states, although here in LA there is a regular money bridge team game (not a league).

 

I'm not sure we have "bridge holidays" the way they seem to in Europe (I know I see a lot of ads on BBO for bridge vacations). There are a lot of "bridge cruises" and people have repeatedly told me I should take the director's exam so Elianna and I can take "free cruises" by directing games. Of course, the crowd that goes on bridge cruises is usually retirees and doesn't include the stronger players. There are a lot of retired folks who seem to play bridge virtually full time in the US, traveling from regional to regional (obviously the bridge professionals do this too, but this is in addition to them and their sponsors).

 

The only tournaments I'm aware of in the US that don't have special games for novices and intermediates are the team trials and the cavendish. Other tournaments are usually attended by a wide range of folks, from the very best players (usually playing pro) to beginners. Typically an effort is made to create separate events, but in many cases it's possible to "play up" -- almost anyone can play in the spingold or reisinger (I think there's some silly requirement like having 100 masterpoints, which is extremely low). But the existence of many parallel events deters many people from doing this.

[mycroft]

"A player's strength is usually estimated by what league he is playing in."

 

There's a reason that works in Europe, and not over here.

 

Let's see, for Canada, there are 5 hotspots (two very big, the other three somewhat smaller) for bridge, and two more that have a few very good players.

 

Mapping those hotspots on a map of Europe, we have:

 

Vancouver == Lisbon, Portugal

Calgary == Valencia, Spain

Edmonton == Zaragoza, Spain

Toronto == Minsk, Belarus

Montreal == Moscow

 

with the two minor spots being Berlin and Samara.

 

We don't have face-to-face leagues that travel much outside our cities - and we definitely don't have a second league.

 

The U.S. is similar, although there are concentrations that could support high-level leagues in Coastal California (about the length of England), Texas (three big concentrations), Florida (about the size of Italy from Naples north), and the NE corridor (Berlin to Frankfurt, more or less). Please note that this latter mapping doesn't match relative distances - there are *large European Country*-length distances between each of those four.

 

Yet again, "In North America, 100 years is a long time; in Europe, 100 miles is a long distance" rears its ugly head.

 

Michael.

[ArtK78]

In North America, we do not have leagues in the European sense. We do have local competitions, many of which have long histories.

 

In my area (Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey) we have the Solomon Teams. In its current format, it is a round-robin team game leading to KO finals in three brackets - A, B and C. The teams play 8 double-matches in the Round Robin phase. The Round Robin phase is conduced in two separate divisions of 8 teams (or so). Each match consists of two 12 board matches scored at Victory Points. Typically there are about 16 teams in competition, about 9 or 10 "A" teams, 3 or 4 "B" teams and 2 or 3 "C" teams. At the conclusion of the Round Robin phase, the top 8 teams (regardless of strata) qualify for the "A" knockouts, the top 4 "B" and "C" teams qualify for the "B" knockouts, and the top 2 or 3 "C" teams (depending on turnout) qualify for the "C" knockouts. If a "B" or "C" team qualifies for more than one knockout, they can play in both (or all three) of them.

 

In the New York City area, there is the Von Zedwitz double knockouts.

 

I know that Delaware runs a team competition in the form of a league, and that Washington DC also has a team competition similar to the Solomons in Philadelphia.

 

No doubt there are others in other areas of the country.

[JanM]

Masterpoints are definitely used to rank players here in the US. Anyone sensible knows that they are not very accurate, but they're still used for determining knockout brackets, stratification of events, and even seeding for big events like the spingold.

The Vanderbilt and Spingold are actually seeded based on "V/S/R seeding points" - points based on high finishes in those three team events, which decay over time (10% per year), in addition to MPs, in order that the vagaries of MPs not impact the high seeds in the events. Of course, once you get below the top 16 or so, most people don't have any of these seeding points and then MPs are all that's available. The team trials are seeded on the basis of V/S/R points plus positioning points awarded for high finishes in the three main events during the preceding year - these go away each year. The trials, and I think maybe also Vanderbilt and Spingold, also cap the number of seeding points awarded for MPs.

In bracketed KOs, you'll get thrown out if you understate your MP holding, but not if you overstate it.

[mycroft]

...and my DIC is the person who has the unenviable job of seeding the thing. Which was fine 5, 10 years ago, but having to guess-seed "this years Swedish Junior Champions", or a team of 4 you know and the latest Dutch/Norwegian/Polish/Italian stars must be fun.

 

If you care about the seeding point system (heh. I'm about average on the geek rating on this forum. Of course some of you care), the various appendices at http://www.acbl.org/play/Conditions-of-Contest.html will be of interest.

 

Michael.