ACBL recently launched the TryBridge campaign, with a goal to introduce the game to new players of all ages and demographics. Bridge forums everywhere have debated recruitment from all angles, but I’m always intrigued with the comparison to chess.
Why is that the wrong comparison?
The starting position in chess is the same in every game, and all players have access to the same information at all times
Poker seems more similar to bridge than chess, and it shows with the overlap of high caliber players.
Bridge and poker involve both skill and luck – there is enough luck to give weaker players a chance on any given hand, or even a session of 24 hands. How a player emotionally handles these frequent “bad beats” is part of the skill of the game! Bridge is about learning the correct percentage plays, and not dwelling on any particular result.
Bridge requires a minimum of 4 players, and unfortunately multiplayer games tend to reveal the toxic side of personalities
There aren’t many people to blame when you lose a game of chess. However, if you’ve ever tried bughouse, a variant of chess with 2 boards and 4 players, the old joke is there are at least 3 other people you can blame for the loss.
I’ve been very fortunate to start off early with excellent, supportive bridge mentors. I often cringe when I see partnerships yelling at each other following some bidding or defensive blunder – and all too often both of them are wrong! And remember, we’re talking about fully grown, mature adults…
Chess has physical pieces. Bridge uses a deck of cards.
I first learned chess in kindergarten because of sibling rivalry. My older brother joined the after-school chess club for 4th and 5th graders held in the basement of our elementary school in Cape May Court House, NJ. The board and pieces looked appealing and intriguing, so I wanted to learn! Even in our small town, about a dozen kids came to chess club every week and we had a great time, blissfully unaware of how bad we were.
Bridge came much later. It was yet another card game, more complex than hearts and spades, AND you sit out 25% of the time! Luckily, a teacher at Math Camp patiently taught a group of us one summer in Seattle.
At the end of the 4 weeks, he took us to a local bridge club, my first duplicate game. To this day I have no idea how a huge pack of novice teenagers survived 24 boards. One kid threw the “STOP” card mid-hand and ran off for a bathroom break. Tons of fun, but I sincerely hope our teacher called ahead of time to warn the directors!