Bridge is Good for the Mind for Everyone, Not Just Seniors

Bridge has gained a stigma of being an old person's game, which is terribly misleading. Yes, there are more senior citizens playing the game than 20-somethings but it's not because old people like the game more. In fact, it really should be a young person's game because a good memory, good and quick reasoning skills are required. It is very mentally challenging, even moreso than chess, which many consider to be the ultimate mind game.

If you haven't had the opportunity to play bridge, it is a card game usually played with a partner against another pair. It is a lot like spades in that you contract to win a certain number of tricks and there is (usually) a trump suit, and cards in the trump suit beat anything else. The main difference lies in the bidding, which is almost like learning a mini-language. In bidding you aim to share information about your hand with your partner (and the opponents) so you can accurate pick a trump suit and how many tricks you can win with that suit as trumps. The trick is that in bidding, there are only 15 words you can use: the numbers 1-7, clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades, notrump, double, redouble, and pass. Another main difference between bridge and spades is that there is a dummy. After the bidding, one person puts his/her hand flat on the table and his partner, the one that won the contract by bidding the highest, gets to play his hand and the dummy's.

But what makes bridge such a great game is when it is played duplicate style. This is the competitive scoring method that is used in all the major tournaments. The same hands are played several times and your result is compared with the other people's result. So the winner is determined by who does best with the cards they are dealt, so even if you have a bad hand, you can still win by playing those bad cards better than the other people who play the same cards. People who are dealt the best hands are not at an advantage in duplicate bridge.

Many people have speculated as to why bridge is not longer very popular among young people and there are several reasons. It takes a long time to learn and with all the competing entertainment like tv, video games, poker, computers, people just don't have the patience to learn. But it is very rewarding when you do learn and see yourself improve. Playing at the bridge club takes a long time. A typical duplicate bridge club game lasts 3-3.5 hours and tournaments last the whole weekend, or sometimes longer. Young people really don't have the time needed for bridge to be a major hobby. With school and work and kids, there isn't much time left, but senior citizens have lots of time. Many young people play bridge but for the most part they are single and have no responsibilities like a kid. But even for them, they may not be able to go to tournaments much, but a club game a week is very healthy. Try it out and maybe you'll find that bridge once a week is more rewarding than poker and beer once a week.