Who plays bridge?

[jogs]

Has there ever been an official study? Do active bridge players have a lower incidence of Alzheimer's?

[barmar]

I'm not sure if there's been a study specifically about bridge, but I think there have been studies that showed that frequent mental excercise reduces dementia.

[Vampyr]

To respond to an issue raised earlier, the way to get younger players into the game is to have a strong schools program, and assist in setting up university bridge clubs.

[ArtK78]

I think "earned masterpoints" is intended as a proxy for "actively plays bridge". Clubs only report masterpoint winners, not everyone who played in the games, so it's the most complete information they have. Since most club games and tournaments are stratified, even poor players get points once in a while, so masterpoint winners is not a bad approximation of active players.

 

Statistics about people who are members but never actually play don't seem very important. They're probably also a tiny fraction of the membership -- how many people would keep paying ACBL dues if they don't care to play? So I doubt the difference biases the statistics significantly.

As my regular partner became the Tournament Chairman for the Philadelphia Unit of the ACBL about 2 years ago, and has rather successfully pursued methods to increase attendance at our tournaments, I learned a few things about who plays bridge from him.

 

For one thing, it turns out that a very sizable portion of ACBL members do not earn any masterpoints in any given year. Of the 168,000 or so members, over 20,000 have less than 5 masterpoints. And that is not because they are new members - it is because they don't earn masterpoints.

 

Now, you said "earned masterpoints" is inteded as a proxy for "actively plays bridge." But there is a significant portion of bridge players who do not go to bridge clubs or tournaments. They never play in any games that award masterpoints. They play in home games or at Country Clubs or at money bridge clubs, but not at any clubs or tournaments that award masterpoints. I would venture to say that none of us lives in that world, and they do not live in our world. But the two bridge playing worlds definitely co-exist.

[Bbradley62]

But there is a significant portion of bridge players who do not go to bridge clubs or tournaments. They never play in any games that award masterpoints. They play in home games or at Country Clubs or at money bridge clubs, but not at any clubs or tournaments that award masterpoints. I would venture to say that none of us lives in that world, and they do not live in our world. But the two bridge playing worlds definitely co-exist.

For most of the 1970s and 1980s, my parents ran their parish's Ladies Bridge Club and Couples Bridge Club. Best I can remember, each year there were about 20 pairs of ladies and about a dozen couples who played, which presumably rivaled the size of our club games. Maybe there were 3 ACBL members among the parish leagues. Although the leagues have long since disbanded, many of the players, now in their 70s and 80s, still regularly play house bridge together. A couple of them are even BBO members. None of them would ever have any interest in playing ACBL events.

[mycroft]

Oddly enough, it's not *that* hard to get young people to play bridge.

 

It is hard to keep them once they're married and have children.

 

It is very common around here for people to get "back into" bridge on retirement, having played it in University, and giving it up for time.

 

Which is why I see the "we're not keeping the juniors, let's keep aiming our recruitment at the new retirees" as so shortsighted.

 

But that's just me.

[StevenG]

To respond to an issue raised earlier, the way to get younger players into the game is to have a strong schools program, and assist in setting up university bridge clubs.

That may help for parts of the country, but I don't see it being a practical general strategy.

 

The last page of the EBU AGM minutes http://www.ebu.co.uk/documents/minutes-and-reports/agm/2013/02-october.pdf shows the distribution of juniors, county by county. It is clear there are several clusters around the large cities and top universities, but that the numbers are trivially small in the rest of the country. Bedfordshire now has no juniors, and I would think it quite feasible that we might never have another one. (We had very few anyway - those that came from Bedford School mostly stopped playing on going to university; the few that continued usually reaffiliated somewhere else. There is now no bridge teaching at Bedford School, so even that source has dried up.)

 

The only people coming into the game are retirees, or those with adult children. Of these, the numbers that wish to play serious bridge are very small. Non-affiliated clubs are surviving reasonably well, but otherwise the situation doesn't look at all promising.

[helene_t]

wow when I was in Lancaster, a few years ago, we had four Junior Camrose players in the Lancaster club alone, and two of our members tought bridge at local primary schools. Now there is only one junior in the whole county :(

 

I wonder where the 25 juniors in Yorkshire are. I think I have run into only three or four of them, having lived here for three years.

[uday]

My original intent in running the survey was to understand why our solitaire games ( all available for anonymous play on our website at www.bridgebase.com ) are so popular

 

Just play bridge - a stream of totalpoint hands

Bridge 4 -a stream of sets of 4 totalpoint hands, a daily leaderboard for top N scores, atari style ( ie, you enter intitials if u break through)

Video Bridge - a video bridge variant where you "gamble" with fake money

 

All the games are anonymous, and all the game use the faster/dumber basic bot.

 

Is there a large group of players out there that "just wants to play bridge" in the sense that my uncle Herb just wants to play Minesweeper? Maybe we, who play duplicate bridge, are too walled off from the "real" bridge players out there.

 

Anyway, that's what drove us to try the survey on a whim. I'm not as interested in teaching bridge with these tools ( they aren't suitable ) as much as I am in servicing people who might not be interested enough to register and join the BBO community

[barmar]

Is there a large group of players out there that "just wants to play bridge" in the sense that my uncle Herb just wants to play Minesweeper? Maybe we, who play duplicate bridge, are too walled off from the "real" bridge players out there.

I think people have different desires for different times.

 

My mother plays social bridge with her friends, but on her computer she plays a simple video poker game. I love duplicate bridge, but when I'm watching TV I play a solitaire game called Forty Thieves almost obsessively.

 

That's where I think our solitaire bridge fits in -- they're relatively mindless, for when you don't want a really taxing game.

[Vampyr]

That's where I think our solitaire bridge fits in -- they're relatively mindless, for when you don't want a really taxing game.

 

Not only that. Bridge requires four people, no more, no fewer. It can be difficult to regularly put together a gathering of that exact number (or multiples thereof).

[Cromlyn]

uday said: ‘My original intent in running the survey was to understand why our solitaire games ( all available for anonymous play on our website at www.bridgebase.com ) are so popular’ and I would like to address this.

 

There is a school of thought (probably originating with rubber players) that if one plays a basic game of bridge (basic as in bidding with very few conventions) but being proficient in declarer play and astute in defence one can play with a great number of partners.

 

If BBO had an area which could accommodate a natural bidding system with minimal conventions it might encourage club players out there to play online.

 

In such an environment these players would gain experience of internet bridge, meet other like-minded people and form partnerships and some hopefully would progress to more competitive bridge.

 

In the UK we have some competitions known as ‘no fears’ where one is only allowed to use minimal conventions. I personally do not like these but players who would not dream of playing in competitions enter these. I can, however, see the appeal to those who do not have serious partnerships and it would also have an appeal, even to me, when you are going to play with a pickup partner.

[Cyberyeti]

Oddly enough, it's not *that* hard to get young people to play bridge.

 

It is hard to keep them once they're married and have children.

 

It is very common around here for people to get "back into" bridge on retirement, having played it in University, and giving it up for time.

 

Which is why I see the "we're not keeping the juniors, let's keep aiming our recruitment at the new retirees" as so shortsighted.

 

But that's just me.

 

The people I played with at university 25-30 years ago were the basis of teams that won the junior worlds, the gold cup etc (I couldn't get into the university first team). Andrew Dyson played for a bit after that but I haven't seen him for a fair while, John Hobson gave up to further his career, Ed Linfield plays much less than he used to, Richard Plackett has recently returned to bridge. I don't think either of my two partners from that time play much any more.

 

Norfolk is listed with no juniors (I'm surprised we're not listed with 1, we were the year before), and I've only seen 2 people much under 30 that have played here in the recent past, and in my late 40s, I'm still one of our "young" players, there are only 3 people who can play much above kitchen bridge standard in the county that are younger than me.

[Bbradley62]

I recently stumbled across an old ACBL survey from 2005 that claimed that the USA hosts 25 million bridge players...

Today I stumbled across what I think is an excellent demonstration of "who plays bridge". I presume that Frank Stewart's widely-published bridge column is targeted to "the bridge playing public". Today's column includes this:

You hold ♠63, ♥A873, ♦64, ♣KQT72. Partner deals and opens 1♥ and next player passes. What do you bid?

Answer: At one time, the proper response would have been a "temporizing" 2 clubs. No direct heart raise was correct. Players now use "limit" raises; most would jump to three hearts...

If "the bridge-playing public" is not familiar with limit raises, then this group is completely separate from ACBL club/tournament players. Of course, this dichotomy is not unique to bridge. Showing amazing similarity to the ACBL survey, a 2005 participation study by the United States Tennis Assn (USTA) and the Tennis Industry Association (TIA) determined that 24.7 million Americans played tennis. There are 330,000 players in USTA leagues. (Some, but not all that many, play tournaments and not leagues.) I expect that similar numbers could be quoted for chess. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but it seems that if BBO wants to tap into "the bridge playing public", one possible start would be [as has been suggested multiple times in this forum] creating a House Bridge Club running parallel to the MBC to bring like-minded players together.

[gordontd]

Today I stumbled across what I think is an excellent demonstration of "who plays bridge". I presume that Frank Stewart's widely-published bridge column is targeted to "the bridge playing public".

I wonder if he's likely to know any more than the rest of us who "the bridge playing public" consists of. I'm not sure that I would take this as more accurate than the best guesses of the rest of us.

[nige1]

Looking around the room at tournaments, or at the clubs where you play, may support this idea but if you looked at the memberships of all bridge clubs in England you would find more women than men playing.

Agree. Also, IMO, if you include "Kitchen bridge", "Lunch-time Bridge", and "Bridge classes", then women are more plentiful then men.

[mike777]

If nothing else I think people forget if 20 some million play bridge worldwide....If you are in the top ten thousand that is not nothing.

 

Now note many say there are only some 100 or so worldwide true current world class players, current world class level players

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On a separate note....I think it shows that current top robots are really pretty good compared to the 20+ million or so.

Not so much compared to your top 100. I would go out on a limb and say robots are better than the median ACBL player

 

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"Who plays bridge?"

 

 

at some point ..not today..robots may play more deals on bbo than humans.

It would be very interesting to know what % of deals in 2013 were played on bbo by robots....1%?? .001%?

[jogs]

 

The only people coming into the game are retirees, or those with adult children. Of these, the numbers that wish to play serious bridge are very small. Non-affiliated clubs are surviving reasonably well, but otherwise the situation doesn't look at all promising.

 

The bridge community must convinced the retirees that playing bridge is better from them than playing golf. Also playing bridge is cheaper.

[Antrax]

Is there a large group of players out there that "just wants to play bridge" in the sense that my uncle Herb just wants to play Minesweeper? Maybe we, who play duplicate bridge, are too walled off from the "real" bridge players out there.

Not sure if I'm representative, but I don't really have time to play seriously, and don't want the relevant parts of my brain to atrophy. The various quick play options are great for that, since bots don't care if you drop out suddenly after playing 5 hands, they play a system you know in advance and even at basic play you need to count the hand and bid normally to get good results, so it's challenging enough.

[mycroft]

The bridge community must convinced the retirees that playing bridge is better from them than playing golf. Also playing bridge is cheaper.

And, at least for 6 months in the year, possible in a way that golf is not. Of course, many of our players get around that by moving to Arizona for the winter and golfing there.

 

But retirees golf because they learned to earlier in their life, for professional reasons or otherwise; same with bridge. New bridge players are hard to get at 60; returnees that now have the time for it less so.