Starting bridge at a late age - how good could one get?

[655321]

I disagree.

 

Bridge is different from chess, go and other games. It just doesn't require the same level of pure, extended, concentrated brain power as those other games. It's almost like comparing marathon running with equestrian or lawn bowls. If a 15 year old and a 40 year old each spend ten years becoming as good as they possibly can, and all other factors are equal, it is pretty much a toss up as to who will be better at the end of the ten years.

 

I disagree.

 

Whether or not your statement about level of brain power is true or not, it is completely irrelevant to the OP question about actually learning the skills that you will be applying during this period of concentrated brain power. It is simply not true to say that a 15 year old and a 40 year old learn equally well. Our brains absorb knowledge much more easily and effectively when we are 15 than when we are 40.

[Zelandakh]

Let me expand a bit on my OP.

 

In other activities, even people who reach the top at a young age, can't seem maintain that level into middle-age, let alone old age. This is not just true of overtly physical activities (like football) or even "semi-physical" activities (like snooker), but also of mental activities like chess. There are very few chess players who maintain a world class level once they are over 50 let alone 60 or 70. Obviously, they are still very good compared to most other chess players, but they are not consistently challenging for the world title or winning major tournaments. This suggests that someone taking up chess at a late age could never reach that level.

 

Now is Bridge different? Or is Bob Hamman different?!

Chess is an excellent example but nor particularly relevant to bridge. It is widely accepted that it is almost impossible to reach the pinnacle of the game without having achieved an extremely high level at a yery young age. I think the magic mark is somewhere around age 13. There is a special reason for this however, in that chess masters typically use a form of "re-wiring" in their brains where they re-use the face recognition part for chess positions. This is one of the reason why chess players are no better than anyone else at constructing positions which have no relation to chess but are much better at constructing actual chess positions. To my knowledge no such change in brain activity has been discovered.

 

Naturally there are is the odd exception to this rule, the best known example most likely being Victor Korchnoi. It should also be noted that Korchnoi was a player whose thought processes were so far removed from standard that even other GMs often had difficulty in following them. This difference in style was almost certainly due to the comparatively late start. When chess, where starting at a young age is so critical, has such exceptions then it seems highly likely (to me) that bridge would have even more exceptions. Of course we are also talking about a higher cut-off point in bridge so perhaps that is a slightly unfair comparison. Nonetheless I would say that an exceptional player could start bridge in their thirties and still reach the top echelons of the game.

[Cyberyeti]

I would guess that all of the top 100 bridge players* in the world started under 30. I cannot think of anyone who didn't off the top of my head, someone may exist but I doubt it.

 

*-excluding clients if you are looking at some official ranking.

This was a sort of point I was going to make. If you can afford to play with top pros almost immediately on taking up the game, and play a vast amount, you can accelerate your learning and become a decent player pretty quickly. It is unlikely you can become truly top class, but you can play at a very decent level.

 

My grandfather started teaching me when I was 7 or 8 and I played my first masterpointed bridge at 11 :) hasn't helped that much :(

[SimonFa]

We need to differentiate here between “Open” and “Seniors” (with seniors now 60+).

 

I am asking the Aussies to come in on this post (shoot it down or provide more info).

 

I read an article once about an Aussie senior woman who took up bridge at a late age. She became a very good player and was invited to a selection tournament (I believe it was in the mid-1980’s) to represent Australia in the Seniors. She didn’t qualify in the end but that fact that she was invited proves that you can still become very competitive. How old was she when invited? Can’t remember.

 

She isn't named but she gets a mention in Ron Klinger's book Improve Your Bridge Memory as one of his students.

 

Also, Dinah Caplan made the England team for there Lady Milne Trophy in 2011 when she was well in to her 70s. However I believe she was a long standing social bridge player before deciding to take it up seriously.

[32519]

She isn't named but she gets a mention in Ron Klinger's book Improve Your Bridge Memory as one of his students.

 

Also, Dinah Caplan made the England team for there Lady Milne Trophy in 2011 when she was well in to her 70s. However I believe she was a long standing social bridge player before deciding to take it up seriously.

 

I’ve got that book of Ron Klinger and reread what was said.

 

Page 12: “How Age Affects Memory.”

We use the barest fraction of our mental capacities. There are no limits to what we can achieve with the mental resources at our disposal provided that we have the will to do so. A positive mental attitude is absolutely necessary and one of my favourite experiences concerns a lady who started in my beginner classes a few years ago and was absolutely fascinated by the game. She played regularly and feverishly and about three years after those classes she reached the final of a national selection tournament. She did not make the national team, but reaching the final itself was a colossal achievement, for when she started the beginners classes she was eighty-one!

 

Wow! Have another look at that number.

 

What separates bridge from physical sports is that you can remain competitive until the day they bury you.

[Thymallus]

"Bounce" by Matthew Syed (a book that sets out to debunk the idea of talent with respect to sports and is well worth reading) and "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell suggest that 10,000 hours of purposeful practice, i.e study, teaching and serious play with critical analysis are required to reach true expertise in a given pusuit.

 

This equates to approx 3 and a half years of 8 hours a day 7 days a week, 365 days a year bridge.

 

It's not hard to see why this is nearly impossible to achieve if you start in your 40s.

[mfa1010]

Interesting thread.

I don't think that it is impossible to get there from a somewhat older age.

But you'll need a) the enthusiasm, b) the time and c) top players as hangarounds. Apart from talent.

Almost all players that start late miss out on all a)-c).

[y66]

I am late to this thread. Sorry if someone has already mentioned this. One of the most interesting stories in the bridge world last year, in addition to USA2 men's team, was the success of the USA2 women's team captained by Geeske Joel, who started playing bridge fairly late. BridgeWinners story here.