The Future of Bridge 1996 to Today – Part 1
I was reviewing the next issue of Canadian Master Point magazine that will soon be posted on www.ebooksbridge.com for a free download. (Stay tuned for more about that). The editorial written in October 1996 talks about the future of bridge. Since that was more than twelve years ago we have seen at least a bit of that future and I find it interesting to see if things are getting better or not. The editorial was in part a response to “A Report On The Future Of Bridge” which looked at ways to get membership in the ACBL increasing (rather than declining as it was at the time).
Has the bridge population declined? There is more than one answer to that question. The first part is ACBL membership. ACBL membership did decline in the 1990’s at about 1-2% a year but has seemed to stabilize recently. There are currently slightly less than 160,000 members of the ACBL. This is a slight reduction from 1998 when according to Alan Truscott
Alan Trucott BRIDGE; More Players in the World, But Fewer in North America
there were more than 166,000 members but the memberships seems to have stabilized for now. In 2002 more than 67% of ACBL members were over 65 and only 4% under 45. It is scary that I am younger than most ACBL members even though I have five grandchildren.
But what about the general population, the people who play bridge at home or in a church hall and never joined “organized” bridge. Are the number of bridge players on a decline in North America? In the world? I have no idea and so far I cannot find any source that has any credible numbers. However, we have a wonderful large population of bridge teachers and lots of bridge classes. People are learning to play bridge. But anecdotally my experience is that when I talk to people about bridge they all say things like my mother, grandmother or aunt plays bridge. Young people on the whole often seem to have not heard of the game at all. Certainly the contrast with poker is astonishing and I would say that we still have a lot of work to do. I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has any ideas about how to estimate the number of social bridge players.
One of the themes in 1996 was the proliferation of bridge conventions and how complicated it was to understand what was happening at the bridge table. This was compounded by the complexity of the alert system.
One suggestion (which we liked at the time) was the idea of a Classic Bridge games in which limited conventions would be allowed and no alerts would be required while others could play in games with unlimited conventions and innovations. To some extent the ACBL has done just that. Conventions are limited based on the level and nature of the game. So that (darn it) I can’t play Multi in a lot of events including unlimited two or three board a round matchpoint events. Has this solved the problem? My answer is yes and no. In restricted events conventions are limited and that has to give a comfortable feeling to less experienced players. But, I think the way that events have played out innovation in North American bridge has been reduced and players are less familiar with newer ideas than in Europe and other part of the world. Also the alert system is so byzantine and confusing that when I play in ACBL events I find that nobody at the table knows what should be alerted a lot of the time even though I am playing in expert events. If the top bracket in a knockout doesn’t understand the alert system something is wrong.
In a post on the popular bridge posting site www.rec.games.bridge. the author hypothesized that the huge decline in organized bridge in the last 50 years was caused by the increased complexity of bridge systems
HERE IS MY HYPOTHESIS: I BELIEVE THAT THE HISTORY OF BRIDGE SHOWS THAT
THE MORE COMPLICATED THE BIDDING, THE LESS INTEREST PEOPLE HAVE IN
LEARNING THE GAME. AND, AS A COROLLARY: THE SIMPLER THE BIDDING, THE
**MORE** INTEREST PEOPLE HAVE IN THE GAME.
To see more The decline and fall of the ACBL and bridge in North America
It is true that the harder it is to get started playing bridge the fewer bridge players there will likely be. But do you really need to know that many conventions to play. I think not. There are a lot of people that have a lot of fun playing SAYC.
What do you think? Is bridge dying? Are complex conventions part of the cause?
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Let’s distinguish between ‘bridge’ and ‘tournament bridge’, both of which face challenges.
Bridge itself has timeshifted, IMHO. My generation learned the game at university — those same kids nowadays are playing video games or surfing the Net. Today, people come to bridge as adults, likely without their parents to set them an example. In the days pre Internet and even pre TV, people socialized in their homes more, and often they played games: card games, board games, whatever. No longer. So my belief is that fewer people play the game. Card games in general are much less played than they used to be (you have to recognize after all that poker isn’t a card game — not like bridge or gin or cribbage — it’s simply a gambling game that happens to use cards as its medium, but could equally well use Mah Jong tiles or dominoes). The local bridge club struggles to survive — Toronto lost its oldest and best just a year or two ago. Online bridge sites, where you can drop in for a few hands any time of the day or night, perhaps suit the modern lifestyle more.
Bridge has a huge learning curve; indeed, I’m not sure any more how anyone learns it. And that’s if they try to learn a simple basic system like Standard or Acol. It is very much like learning a new language — and we all know that the older you are, the harder that gets.
The tournament game is a ballgame of a different colour 🙂 If everyone were honest and ethical, there would be little need for complex procedures or convention restrictions. When we played in Australia last Fall, it was ‘anything goes’, and we had little difficulty even when we encountered conventions that would never be sanctioned here. But ACBL events are full of barrack-room lawyers and sharp operators, all looking for a quasi-legal edge. Meanwhile event fragmentation and proliferation has reduced fields to a shadow of that they used to be, in both quantity and quality. The Master Point system is a bad joke. And to top it all off, it gets more and more expensive.
Every time I go to a Nationals, I fill out my registration card, and firmly write in ‘0’ against the question about the number of sessions I am planning to play. Curiously, no-one has ever contacted me to ask about that answer.
Why has bridge time shifted? Is it just that there are other things to do? I think there always was lots to do even in the 60’s. Maybe more, just different. I agree that bridge on the web may suit more people but why aren’t there lots more people playing bridge on the web. In twenty years will there be almost anyone playing bridge?
Does restricting conventions and having games like “easybridge” help to get people started? I wonder how easy it is to learn bridge if you don’t start until you are 40.
I agree with Ray regarding there are two kinds of bridge.
The game bridge is being played all over the world in lunch rooms, community centers, on the internet, kitchen tables and so on without ACBL sanction. Most of the time without having to pay a fee to play. Bridge is written and read in every majoy newspaper. The game Bridge will never die.
However I am not so sure about tournament bridge. The cost of playing in clubs and tournaments are getting much too expensive for the average Joe. At soon as one achived Life Master status in the ACBL world, most stop playing in tournamnets.
I am not sure the decline of ACBL game has that much to do with Systems, as most ACBL games do not allow destructive conventions.
Mah Jong is not a simple game as some may think. It is ture One try to make the hand and win but One also has to be careful and watch the discarded tiles. There is much defensive play in the game, not discarding the tile that others need to make a winning hand is just as important.
Go Man U Go!
Micahel, you misunderstood my comment about Mah Jong, which wasn’t on the game itself — I was just pointing out that you didn’t need cards to play poker 🙂
(a different Michael than above)
I personally think the clamping down of conventions the ACBL does *hurts* the spread of the game. The majority of younger players and/or newer players to bridge enjoy learning/creating new systems.
The rating system also hurts as a younger player can’t be rated as highly as a very experienced player (which hurts for things like bracketed KO – but also just for keeping score).
To get more young people playing though really one has to concentrate where the young people are – either online or in schools. Until there are bridge teams/club in schools (and I’d advocate for high school or earlier) or until BBO becomes as popular as XBox there will never be more than a trickle of young people.
The rating problem can be solved, simply by improving it.
getting more people interested in playing is also simple:more premiums and promotions.
An of course, learning in schools is an elemental need.
PLS answer me this: HOW many players do you estimaterd are in the States, and in the WORLD??
My address is : gesimonf@hotmail.com
Many tks and regards Geza
If you would like to know why bridge is dying, I will give you my experiences in trying to learn it. The first time, the players supposedly “teaching” me would play entire hands at lightning speed, then say, “So you see what we did and why?” and then zoom into the next hand without ever explaining anything. The second time, my husband and I tried learning together. The experienced players treated us as a nuisance at best, and at worst as so much bloody meat in the water for them to butcher. THEY had a fabulous time; we were disgusted at how cut-throat and hypercompetitive they were.
Maybe if experienced players would actually want to take the time to explain every single thing patiently, newbies might stick with it. As for my husband and I, we ditched Bridge and decided to stick with Rummy and Pinochle–less complicated, more friendlyl
[…] noticed that I got a recently comment on a blog I wrote a little while ago called Why Bridge Is Dying Part 1. At the time I suggested that complex conventions were not really the problem because you could […]