Views from Soledad Canyon: Reflections on Bridge -- as Belton Initiates Free Lessons for Beginners Saturday!

[I posted this Sunday column days early because it contains news on free bridge-playing lessons for beginners starting Saturday morning (3June), 10 - 11:30, at Belton Bridge Center. See below for details. If you're reading this later, and play bridge or want to learn, contact Belton.]

Ever played bridge?

It’s fun! And whether we’re young folks developing sharp minds or older folks hoping to retain what we can, bridge is a pleasant and effective tool.

A friend called it “pickleball for the brain.” Although he sits at the bridge table often, and rarely tries moving around the pickleball court, he’s kind of right. Both the sport and the card game entertain while giving us healthy exercise and a reasonable mix of competition and collegiality. Pickleball is a bit more social and less cutthroat than squash, or pickup basketball, without being too easy. Bridge is more complex than Rummy but more accessible and somewhat less dependent on memory than chess.

Four people play, two partners sitting opposite each other against a second pair. All 52 cards are dealt, 13 to each player.

It’s a trick-taking game, like Hearts or Spades, but there is usually a trump suit. (If Spades are trump, and someone leads a suit in which you have no more cards, you may “trump” with a spade, and even the spade deuce beats the Ace of the suit led.) Before the play, unlike Hearts or Spades, the players review their hands and may “bid” in an auction. Each bid is a prediction. Bidding “One spade” means, “If Spades are trump, partner and I can win seven of the 13 tricks (six plus the one).” Players can also bid No-Trump. Bidding continues until three consecutive bidders pass. Then the last-named suit serves as trump for that hand.

Partners may not communicate with each other except through bidding and play. Some bids have specialized meanings that are made known to everyone. The game rewards good judgment, keen observation, resourcefulness, logic, and sometimes taking risks. Luck plays a role, but doesn’t dominate.

People can enjoy bridge for lifetimes without ever learning complex bidding systems or playing tournaments. My parents played, as did my maternal grandparents. (Playing bridge together likely helped my grandparents adjust to the fact that their daughter, in Maine’s far North (“Down East”), was marrying a Jewish guy from New York.) I learned young. Played only at home. At 23, when I arrived in New Mexico I found that most afternoons in Corbett Center’s lunchroom, there were several tables of bridge, mostly students and some professors or visitors playing, sometimes for money. I started playing seriously, and learned there were subtleties to the bidding that my parents had never contemplated. Sometimes four of us would play all night, for smallish stakes. I even started playing “duplicate” out at the country club, now recently demolished.

Although for decades I hardly played, except visiting my parents, I always read newspapers’ Bridge columns. In 2019, a friend got me playing again.

General Dwight Eisenhower, later President Eisenhower during my childhood, was one of our more famous bridge addicts. Addiction to bridge was reportedly the reason Deng Xiao-ping (before being “rehabilitated” and leading China) was pushed from power during China’s Cultural Revolution. Actor Omar Sharif got so proficient he took over one of the most famous bridge columns.

You can play at home or on on-line. “Duplicate” bridge allows several pairs to bid and play identical hands, then compare how they did, enhancing the fun.

Belton Bridge Center, at 1214 East Madrid, hosts local games, and will hold Beginners’ Lessons Saturdays at 10-11:30 a.m,, starting Saturday, June 3.

Call (575) 524 – 3031 for more information, or email LeanBridgeLasCruces@gmail.com to register.

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[I’m posting here the above column, which is scheduled to appear Sunday in the Las Cruces Sun-News, now, because it mentions the start of free beginning bridge lessons Saturday, 3 June, at the Belton Bridge Center at 1214 Madrid. As noted just above, those will continue on Saturdays, 10 -11:30 am, and are open to everyone. A lot of folks have expressed interest to me in learning the game, and others who’ve never thought of it would definitely enjoy it. So I urge you to check it out by seeing if the first lesson appeals to you.]

Deng Xiaoping playing bridge

“Bridge is like music. It is a world language. It should become a bridge for mutual understanding, communication, and friendship between people in China and the rest of the world.”

– Deng Xiaoping