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Wednesday, May 31, 2006
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How to play.. Bridge
I’VE always had problems with card games.
It’s not that I can’t add up or can’t distinguish between the suits – it’s more that I can never remember the rules of whatever game I’m playing.
So, it was with trepidation that I went to spend the morning with Peterborough Bridge Club, which meets in its own rooms at the New England Complex, in Lincoln Road.
And that was before I realised it would take me much longer than one short session to pick up the game.
Trevor King, chairman of the society which has been meeting since May 1956, explained that the basic game was very similar to a card game I could remember – knockout whist – where high cards and trump cards take your opponent’s hand in rounds called tricks.
Where the difference arose was that you were playing opposite a partner, and the skill came in predicting how many tricks you were going to win in a game before a card was even laid down.
This was calculated using a high card point system, with aces scoring four points, kings three points, queens two points and jacks one point.
In any given deal, 40 points were available on the table and a partnership would need more than half the points to gain the advantage.
At least that’s as far as I could work out, for up to that point, my head was already swimming, and that was before we got down to the technicalities of the auction – where partners let each other know what cards they have in their hand using special bidding systems.
Trevor told me it could take up to 20 sessions to get confident with the rules and playing properly.
The club runs beginners’ classes throughout the year to get people started on Thursdays, and by arrangement on Wednesday mornings.
It is a great game for brushing up mental arithmetic, as well as keeping the mind sharp, which is why it is often played by older people.
But the Peterborough club itself is open to all ages, with the youngest member being the son of the club’s treasurer Mark Tilley – nine-year-old Kieran – and the oldest being about 90.
Trevor said: “Many people who learn bridge were taught by their relatives, and often people play together socially in fours at home. As a club, we play competitive bridge with everyone playing the same hands as they go around the room.”
In a three-hour session, between 20 and 30 pre-dealt hands would go around the room – all dealt by computer in the club’s office.
From June to March, the club, which is part of the English Bridge Union, took part in several competitions, including the Club Championship, Teams League and Multi-Partner Pairs.
It fielded five teams in the Northants County League, and members often play for the county against other East Anglian teams.
There are frequent simultaneous events, where clubs across the country play with the same hands and results are compared on the internet.
At the other end of the scale, the group also holds social bridge evenings on two Saturdays of the month.
It is undoubtedly a great social game and a good way to meet people. But, as secretary Sheila Evans-Evans warned me, it is not a game you can pick up from the first meeting – something that was pretty plain to me from the start!.