An Abridged History of the Game (John Aquino)

An (a)Bridged History of the Game
To address the future, we need to understand the past

By John Aquino

Contract Bridge has evolved from the game of Whist — a version which dates back to the 16th Century. Whist is a trick taking game for four people who play as two partnerships. In its basic form the entire deck is dealt and the last card designates the trump suit. The first book on Whist was Edmond Hoyle's Short Treatise which appeared in 1742. Bridge differs from Whist in that each hand begins with an auction to determine the number of tricks that the highest bidder in the auction must take and which suit, if any, will be trumps. In bridge one of the four hands called 'dummy' is turned face up after the first card has been played.

 The origin of the name of 'Bridge' is not clear. Some scholars of the game feel that it was brought to England when troops returned from the Crimean War (1853–56). Legend has it that British soldiers stationed in Constantinople used to cross the Galata Bridge to go to the coffee houses where cards were played — hence the name 'Bridge'. Others say that the name Bridge is adapted from the game of Russian whist called 'Biritch'.

 In 1903 British civil servants playing whist in India developed a practice of bidding for the privilege of naming the trump suit. This auction gave rise to the name of 'Auction Bridge' which was brought back to England during the time of the Raj. The first rules of the new game from India were formalised in 1908 at the Portland Club in London and included the dual components of 'bidding' and 'play'.

 A luminary on the Auction Bridge scene was Milton Work. Milton Work gave the game the point count method of valuing hands (ie A=4hcp; K=3hcp; Q=2hcp; and J=1hcp). This method of valuing hands continues to this day. Like so many who have left a legacy to the game of bridge, Work was a lawyer but in the 1920's he closed his law practice and focussed his time entirely on his new found passion for bridge.

 The next historic milestone in the development of bridge is traced back to Halloween Night in 1925. On October 31, 1925, New York socialite Harold Vanderbilt was on a cruise aboard the SS Finland. With the ship waiting its turn to cross the Panama Canal, Vanderbilt and his travelling companions sat down to their game of auction bridge and devised a superior scoring system. He introduced the concept of 'vulnerability' where the vulnerable side would be subject to greater penalties and rewards during the game. Vanderbilt took his new version of the game back to New York and within two years the game's popularity had exploded and it became the game for the 'in set'. Vanderbilt also had another passion when he was not at the bridge table – yachting – where he led the US to three America's Cup victories.

 The print media has played a significant role in the popularisation of the game. An edge of notoriety was brought to the game in the late 1920s. Newspapers in Chicago reported on the game where a woman was suing her husband for divorce because he trumped her ace! On October 1, 1929, the world's press again put the spotlight on the emerging game of Contract Bridge when they reported the following story. A newly married couple, John and Myrtle Bennett, were playing a game of rubber bridge. After John opened 1♠ his wife jumped to 4♠ and John went down two tricks. After an acrimonious exchange, in which Myrtle was publically humiliated, she left the table and re-appeared with a revolver and shot her husband. This story made headlines in all major newspapers. After a long legal case the jury acquitted Mrs Bennett (who subsequently collected on her husband’s life insurance!)

 Marketer Ely Culbertson rode the publicity afforded by the above controversies and further popularised the game. Born in Rumania he arrived in the US in 1920 after the first world war. He refined the bidding system and developed a new bidding style which he called the 'Approach Forcing System'. His system was described in great detail in his The Blue Book. The book was a phenomenal success topping the charts in all book sales in 1931. In relative terms it is probably the most successful bridge book written. In the early 1930s approximately 80% of the 20 million American bridge players used a system described as 'Culbertson'.

 During the 1930s the love of the game flourished on both sides of the Atlantic. A craze for the relatively new game had set in. It was a game that was sociable and challenging and couples took it up by the millions. In America the craze for the game peaked in the 1940s when it is said to have been played in almost 44% of all American homes.

 Meanwhile across the Atlantic at a small bridge club in Acol Road, Hampstead in London, a new bridge bidding style was starting to emerge. Acol, with its weak no trump and four card majors while trying to keep all bidding as natural as possible, became the basic approach to the game for a majority of players in England. Its followers included players such as SJ Simon, Boris Shapiro, Nico Gardiner and Terence Reese.

 With the advent of the great depression bridge's popularity continued to grow exponentially with New York's super rich passing on the baton to the less well heeled. Bridge became a cheap way in which four people could be transported into another world for the cost of a pack of cards.

 Bridge by the end of the 1930's had truly become a 'global passion'. In Australia bridge had taken hold with bridge clubs sprouting up all around the country. The first interstate bridge match was held in 1933 between Victoria and NSW and included much media hype about Victoria 'taking on the upstarts from north of the border'. The match was held in Sydney at David Jones – and was won by the upstarts NSW!

 'Halsted', a columnist with The West Australian, reported on 26 May 1933 (pg. 6) that 'Bridge is killing, to a great extent, the art of conversation. Nowadays, when a number of people gather together , their first impulse is to divide into fours for bridge …. If they are serious players, conversation will be taboo and the silence broken only to bid ….or conduct a post mortem.'

 In America however another bridge revolution was waiting in the wings and soon to take centre stage. Charles Goren was to give American bridge players what was arguably the cornerstone of the new game. His style was to evolve into what is now called Standard American. He wrote a number of books on the theory of bridge and in 1949 his Point Count Bidding in Contract Bridge became a best seller. Suddenly everyone was playing 'Goren'. Charles Goren made it to the cover of Time magazine. The main article explained the rules of the game. (Other bridge players have also found their face on the cover of Time — Winston Churchill in 1941, General Eisenhower in 1945, Mahatma Gandhi in 1947, Bill Gates in 1984, and Deng Xiaoping in 1986 – but not for their skill at bridge).

When asked how it felt playing with a great bridge expert Goren's long time bridge partner Helen Sobel Smith (1910 - 1969) responded by pointing at Goren saying "ask him"! Helen Sobel Smith has come to be regarded as arguably the greatest woman bridge player. Bridge has featured in a number of novels but perhaps no more flamboyantly than in Ian Fleming's Moonraker. A centrepiece of this book is his use of the most famous bridge hand as part of the plot. The 'Duke of Cumberland hand', which dates back to the days of Whist, is used by James Bond to snare the villain Hugo Drax. With only 7 points in his hand Bond bids a grand slam which is doubled and redoubled. Bond makes the contract.

 The 1950s saw the emergence of "World Championships" which were initially dominated by the Americans. In 1957 Italy's Blue Team burst onto the scene as a bridge force and won an incredible 10 consecutive Bermuda Bowl victories. (The Bermuda Bowl is considered the World Cup of Bridge).

 All sports seem to spawn controversy from time to time. Bridge's 'Buenos Aires Affair' in 1965 received considerable media attention. At the Bermuda Bowl world championships in Buenos Aires the English pair of Reese and Shapiro were accused of cheating by the Americans and the team immediately withdrew – forfeiting all matches. There were other scandals to rock the world of bridge in following years. Screens and bidding boxes were introduced at the Bermuda Bowl in 1975.

 With the advent of TV and the era of flower power / free love the world had new forms of distraction and in the late 1960s and early 1970s bridge saw a decline in its popularity. The game had also started to become incredibly complex with experts spawning conventions to give them an edge in bidding. For the ordinary player the game was becoming increasingly difficult to follow and intimidating for beginners. This complexity to the game and a plethora of rules that started to emerge was a turn off for many — and especially for young players.

 Chess by comparison does not seem to have experienced the same drop off. The match of the century in 1972 between American Bobby Fischer and Russian Boris Spassky(the then world champion) put a spotlight on the game and created a surge of interest in chess. In terms of comparing these two 'elite' mind sport games it is interesting to note that computer programs have now been developed that can out play the best chess players. In comparison bridge computer programs are still a long way from matching top bridge players.

 From the pantheon of bridge greats is the following list :

Harold Vanderbilt (1884–1970)
Ely Culbertson (1891–1955)
Charles Goren (1901–1991)
Oswald Jacoby (1902–1984)
Easley Blackwood (1903–1992),
Howard Schenken (1905–1979)
Sam Stayman (1909–1993)
Helen Sobel Smith (1910–1969)
Terence Reese(1913–1998)
Giorgio Belladonna (b. 1923)
Pietro Forquet (b. 1925)
Tim Seres (1925–2007)
Benito Garozzo (b 1927)
Bob Hamman (b 1938)
Paul Soloway (1941–2007)
Paul Chemla (b 1944)
Gabriel Chagas(b 1944)
Zia Mahmood (b1946)
Jeff Meckstroth (b 1956)
Eric Rodwell (b 1957)
Cezary Balicki(b 1958)

 Famous acolytes /addicts of the game have included two of the world's richest in Bill Gates and Warren Buffett (who occasionally partner each other). Famous sports people like Martina Navratilova and artists like Omar Sharif are also devoted to the game. Omar Sharif has played the game at the very highest level.

 In Australia NSW has dominated the national scene over the years. And Australia's most successful player has been Tim Seres who sadly passed away in 2007. Despite its relatively small population Australia has been a keen competitor on the world bridge stage and made its own contributions to the development of the game — an example of which is the Moscito system of bidding developed by Paul Marston one of Australia's eminent bridge players. Another significant contributor to the game has been Ron Klinger who is one of the game's most prolific authors. With more than 50 bridge books to his name his Guide to Better Card Play won Book of the Year Award from the American Bridge Teachers' Association.

Meanwhile in Western Australia … Henry Christie and his partner Jeff Lathbury became the first West Australians to win a national bridge title in 1971. In 1988 a WA Womens Team won a national bridge title. This was followed in 1992 when a WA team won the national open title at the ANC. Perth hosted the Bermuda Bowl and Venice Cups in 1989 and in 1994 the Far East Championships. An iconic figure on the WA bridge scene from the 1950s to his death in 1983 was Hans Rosendorff.

 With the large and growing affluent middle classes in China and India some bridge scholars anticipate that there will be a growing interest in the game from this part of the world and it is likely that future champions will be of Asian origin. Symbolically it is interesting to note the 2007 World Bridge Championships were held in Shanghai.

 Computers and the internet have recently influenced the evolution of the game. Computers have been a boon to players because of the number of educational programs that can be delivered via a computer. Computers are also a good way in which beginners can practice in private and play many hands quickly. The internet has also opened a new frontier to the game. Here you can practice or play with a partner who lives on the other side of the world. This new world of virtual bridge may attract a younger more technologically savvy demographic to the game. The green baize may already be a thing of the past.

 In recent years scientific health research has concluded that bridge is good both for your brain and body. In 2000 a study in Berkeley University shows that there are significant health benefits from playing bridge – including that it boosts the immune system. It is also said to delay the onset of memory loss and dementia as people age because players are required to use maths, strategy and concentration. A 2003 medical study found that "playing chess, bridge, or a musical instrument, significantly reduces the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia". A 2006 study concluded that children who learn to play bridge can increase academic performance because "bridge is a game that develops inferential reasoning skills, which are very difficult to teach elementary students".

 As the population ages it is likely that there will be a resurgent interest in taking up a game that offers health benefits and a positive social environment. It is also a game that can be played at a high level regardless of age. Bridge has become an international language and is one of the few games played today by people of all ages, races, and nationalities — truly a game for all seasons!

John Aquino

 Published in December 2013 Edition of Trumps Plus