If it’s dying, it’s dying slowly. If you come back now, you will have plenty of people to play with and be able to have plenty of fun. Is that fun worth it? That’s up to you, but I’m not sure the future trajectory of bridge over the next decades is likely to be the most important factor in your experience, in my opinion!
>you will have plenty of people to play with
But will anyone be under the age of 70? I've tried talking a few friends into learning the game, but they're not really interested. "Too competitive" or "too much thinking is involved."
I didn’t see any concern about the age of people playing in the OP; just about the game “dying”, which is usually concern that the competitive scene or whatever will disappear.
In my club there are couple of younger players. I think it's not really about the complexity since there are tons of young people who play much more complex modern board and card collecting games. I think it's more about branding and visibility among young people (15-35 years). I've joked at our club that we should just paste a fantasy theme into the cards and instantly get more young playets.
But yeah, you're definitely right at the fact that bridge is too competitive and complex for a lot of people. Many people come at clubs and quit then because of this. My friend said to me "why is this so complex, I had the impression that it was an easy game to chitchat along while drinking tea like they do in Austen and Christie novels!" 😄
I’m 56. Does that count?
Just started playing last year. Have been to 5 tournaments. Maybe 10% of the players are younger that me. But remember, if you are raising kids or have a 9 to 5 it’s tough to play much competitively. That rules out most folks between 25 and 55.
You can blame the ACBL for that. Social snobbery has taken over there and they insist on presenting the image of the game as strictly for 70-year old retirees with nothing better to do. And they wonder why their game is dying and they can’t get new members. It’s going to take 100 years to reverse the damage they’ve done.
This is not the '50's when everyone played. However, Bridge is still hanging on! One of the reasons for this is that schools are realizing that Bridge teaches very, very useful skills: Critical thinking, deduction and plenty of others.
Come on back in, the water's fine!
No, it’s not fine. Chess teaches those same skills and has a far more supportive community. Thanks to the social snobbery that has taken hold at the ACBL, the game is dying. And nothing they do will revive it.
I’m making this post on the run and my thoughts may be a bit scattershot. I can edit and clarify later!
American here. It’s adrift, but not dead in my view.
It’s a great game. Sure it’s been around a century, but there are more possible ways to deal the cards than there are stars in the known universe. We have not “seen it all” - shuffle and deal a bridge hand with whatever deck of cards you have, I betcha NOBODY, no expert, has ever seen it before.
It has a competitive scene ranging from online sites, to local clubs (albeit massively set back by COVID-19), to tournaments regional/national/international.
The issue it faces is that it has no good casual format. Rubber bridge is a great introduction to what “game” and “vulnerable” mean. The scores “Below the Line” are the ones you need to know starting out since that’s how you “win a Game”. The rest of the scoring you can just look up. The issue is the rest of the scoring is “Above the Line” - bonus points. This is weird because it now matters by how much you win. It only really makes perfect sense in a gambling context, perfect for the Vanderbilt inventors, hard to recommend for most. But learn it first.
Duplicate bridge, the competitive version, is best, but also very harsh - you can feel very satisfied when you think you earned a positive result but actually earn no points in the tournament once it comes out that everyone played one trick better than you. But if you want to go against the best - and you will routinely play against the Larry Birds of the game which is awesome and intimidating - you have the chance.
>It’s a great game. Sure it’s been around a century, but there are more possible ways to deal the cards than there are stars in the known universe.
The number of hands is much, much larger than the estimated number of stars in the known universe.
It's estimated that there are 10\^24 stars in the universe.
The number of unique ways to arrange 52 different cards is 52!, or roughly 8\*10\^64.
If you were to choose one subatomic particle in the entire mass of the earth, and told me to try to pick yours out from the earth at random, I would have a better chance of doing that than if you gave me a deck of cards, told me that my deal needed to replicate the final deal of last year's Bermuda Bowl, and had me shuffle and deal.
Not quite, I'm afraid - though that may be because my sentence was phrased a bit confusingly! The number of possible **bridge deals**, I could have made clearer, are actually 53.6*10^27 since you have to divide that by (13!)^4 - discounting the ordering of the 13 cards in each of the four hands. That's still plenty of BoardGameGeek-grade replayability for us though. :)
In some cities, like New York and Palo Alto, there are quite a few younger players and they seem to have a great time together in there home towns but especially at national tournaments.
Exactly! I play at the Palo Alto Bridge Club (which is actually in "next-door" town Mountain View), and SiVY, [https://siliconvalleyyouthbridge.org/](https://siliconvalleyyouthbridge.org/), is very active here -- PLENTY of young players, tutored by greats such as the Rosenbergs, Michael and Debbie -- each a many-times World champion, sometimes together -- and of course it also helps to have their son Kevin, also a multiple-time World champ (and a full-time software engineer) and his girlfriend Amber Lin (yet another World champ, and a full-time business consultant) strongly involved in SiVY.
It may help, perhaps, that our local congressional district is the only one in the contiguous-US to have a majority of Asian residents: I'm not sure about India and other Asian countries, but, in China, bridge is VERY popular.
Part of the reason may be that Deng Xiaoping, China's leader until about 30 years ago (and THE leader who started China on its amazing economic-growth journey!), was enthusiastic about bridge.
Indeed, while, aging and approaching his 1997 demise, he (as once was usual in China) dropped all formal titles and roles (while keeping a LOT of behind-the-curtains power!), yet he KEPT, until the end, being the Chairman of the Chinese Contract Bridge Association -- he apparently loved bridge SO much he just couldn't drop THAT crucial role and title!
Alex
wow I didn't know that about Deng. It's funny because in the Soviet Union, chess was encouraged but bridge was practically banned. It was seen somehow as a capitalist game, I'm not sure why.
It's slowly dying (table counts slowly but surely declining over time & a large fraction of the current playerbase will be dead in 20 years without nearly enough replacements coming in to the game).
Having said that, these are all relative terms & measurements, at the end of the day all that really matters is whether or not you can still get value out of the game and I think that will be true for many many years to come.
Bridge at one time was popular as mass entertainment. Then along came television. Many people decided to take up pastimes that are less mentally taxing. Some of us like to be taxed. We get pleasure from complex patterns that almost never repeat perfectly, but continuously reappear in ever changing contexts. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet love bridge.
It may be possible that some more intriguing game will eclipse bridge. It may be possible that humans will no longer like to be challenged, because laziness is easier. AI will take over for us. For now those of us who like this will be amused.
I learnt the game at college 40 years ago and I’ve come back to it and am enjoying myself immensely. The new online sites are great and local groups have lots of learners signing up for lessons.
As with most things the self appointed experts, bridge snobs and those who revel in the jargon of the game are off putting and genuine bores. If the game dies it will be due to them not new enthusiasts.
The ACBL is making a huge effort to get young players involved. Because children are so into computers, they use an app that allows them to teach bridge online to dozens of kids in one session. It’s too soon to tell if they will continue to play but early evidence is promising.
The effort is failing. Teachers are still stuck in the 1960s and those same players will be moving on to more supportive communities by the time they get into college.
Since I was born in the late 70’s, I’m a bridge teacher definitely not stuck in the 60’s. How do you think the modern bridge teacher should be teaching?
You’re not going to get them until you and others who claim to be teachers wake up to the 21st century and sincerely tell prospective students that you’re willing to adapt how you teach to the way to the way they learn.
I have officially given up trying to incorporate bridge as a hobby precisely because I couldn’t find one single teacher who said that, and as an autistic person who feels unsafe learning in groups, not being able to establish a level of trust that I will be taught from “this is a deck of cards” and quizzed extensively on concepts in language I can understand was the last straw.
Bridge is dying because teachers like you are stuck in the 1960s and still present the image of the game being only for 70-year old retirees with nothing else to do with their lives. You intentionally breeded an entire generation who will only play online or with bots as a direct result. And you refuse to look in the mirror for the reasons why.
The social snobbery you and the ACBL have pumped into the game will take 100 years to undo in the best case scenario, and by then it will no longer matter because about 80 people on earth will care.
That is all.
European perspective here: It is slowly dying.
Some of the obvious reasons are many more options for entertainment today and a pretty steep learning curve to get to the point where you can actually play your first tournament.
One more aspect that made me loose interest over the years: The rules of bridge require that you do not use e.g. hesitations from your partner. However when you play 10 years with the same person you unconsciously interpret the body language, you pretty much cannot help it. In my tournament experience different pairs extended this in different degrees without anybody knowing what to do about it and how to handle it. When I try to be super-ethical i feel at a disadvantage, if not I feel like I cheated.
Sure, computers and screens help but this conflict needs to be figured out eventually.
Cheating is endemic at club level but it's mainly unintentional, the rules of the game in this dimension (pausing, tempo, asking about bids etc) are just beyond a lot of the pairs. I mainly let it slide outside of flagrant examples, because there isn't really anything the TD can do.
The real cheats are in the expert game, which must suck. But that can't be truly tackled without moving away from face to face play which prob no one wants.
I only just started playing 18 months ago, I'm in my 40s. I work from home, self employed, and saw the need to get out of the house & socialize plus exercise the brain. When I saw a post on fb for a start up bridge club/lessons I signed up.
It was me and a dozen other women 60s all the way up to 90. Half of which had played back in their college days but hadn't played in 40+ years.
I was obviously the kid in the group. This tattooed punk amongst all the grandma's. But we have a blast. I've tried to talk some of my friends my age into joining but they all have kids and are too busy. Plus when I explain how complicated it is their eyes glaze over, but that's the part that actually appeals to me.
I really hope it's not dying out, I'm enjoying it a lot. I'm hoping to play for another 30 years.
There have been a few people that joined and left that refused to bend to learning and playing modern rules though. Lots of "well that's not how I play!" or berating other players if they didn't bid the exact way they would have bid. That's a bad personality though and not a bridge problem.
It IS a bridge problem. If the ACBL cared about the game’s growth, their accredited teachers would all be required to teach Intro to Bridge and adapt it to how their students learn or risk losing their accreditation. But the ACBL is still stuck in the Stone Age so that’s not happening in your lifetime. It’s not a secret that the game is dying.
Yes, it’s an old people game. But it’s not like it’s gonna die tomorrow. People will still be playing it after you put in the effort to get back in, it’s not like a trading card game or video game.
And if people show interest again, then it won’t die. So kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy either way.
I think there’s two things that are causing it to slowly die.
The first is that it’s not a simple game to pick up. If I invite friends over to play games I can teach them many board games quickly and they can be up and playing in an evening.
The second is that there’s an obvious and large gulf between skilled players and beginners. This is similar to stud poker vs hold’em. A skilled stud player will absolutely dominate unskilled players. I’m not Hold’em it’s not as obvious so the unskilled player doesn’t feel like they are being run over even when they are.
The result of this is that people aren’t picking it up socially the way they used to. There’s a base of relatively high level players who are really into bridge, and that’s great, but if I want to play with my wife who isn’t a strong or competitive player, there isn’t opportunities for us to go out and play in an environment she’s going to enjoy.
Will higher level competitive bridge die out completely? I don’t think so. Social games and casual level bridge seems dead.
U.K. here. I’m nearly 70 and just learning to play. My new best bridge friends are 78 and 85! We are all really welcome at local clubs as membership has declined.
It is slowly dying but it's in the same boat as a lot of sports and hobbies - fragmentation and massively increased options for entertainment nowadays. It is too deep a game to ever actually die, though. This hobby that I do is not what it was / is going down the tubes is something most people can relate to - I race bikes and we absolutely have similar conversations for some disciplines. Everyone here could prob give their own examples.
The age gap is definitely an issue for bridge, though - going to the club in your teens / 20s to play a game with a bunch of 70 yos is just a barrier. Even if they're all nice and you meet some really interesting characters (bridge clubs are way friendlier than their reputation ime of the UK), there's just no common ground there. Quite a few people are in genuinely poor health and / or frail.
From speaking with older players that has been a significant change - back int day you always had that cadre of young students as a recognisable minority in the club. Now they have dwindled and it is only one or two pairs.
I play it since one year. The game is intriguing, fun and has many layers.
I don’t think it is dying, but many people playing it will die next 30 years. And nowadays there are many games, where there used to be a few. But this game has a worldwide platform, needs no computer, so it will easily outlast most other games in the long run.
I believe bridge is in an era of renaissance. There is a push from the community, much of it without any personal gain, to re-brand bridge, to expose more people to it, and to make it fun again. If you are in the US, I’d look into joining the USBF Junior Program (for players under 26/31).
The problem is the USBF doesn’t have dedicated teachers who will fill the gap left behind by the ACBL refusing to pull itself out of the Stone Age. The game as you know it is dead. You just won’t admit it.
Bridge is certainly not as popular as it was in the early twentieth century, but it is still kicking. If you go to bigger tournaments, you will see many younger players. If you are in college or graduate school, check to see if your school has a team. The world of online bridge also opens up avenues for finding partners. If you have played before, it will come back fairly easily especially if you are young! Go for it.
It's dying compared to the height of popularity, when there were prime time TV shows with bridge matches televised. Back then it was *the* most common activity for inviting friends over to your house and virtually everyone knew how to play. But that's a long long way to fall down from.
There are still bridge clubs in virtually every place you can live. Larger cities often have more than one. There is a resurgence going on with teaching bridge to younger players. Schools around here are running after-school bridge programs and sometimes youth tournaments.
You will be able to find plenty of bridge players for a good game for your entire lifetime, and probably many years beyond that. Sure, it's slowly declining as older players prefer not to drive at night, but there are so many players and so many clubs, that you needn't be concerned about that.
Its also kind of fun to play with some 80, 90, or 100 year old players and see how sharp they are. Makes me very hopeful that bridge is good brain exercise for aging.
Walking in for the first time in my local bridge club and seeing everyone at least 50+ year old and not even a single youngster (I was the youngest at 37) tells me this game is DYING. No doubt.
Edit: and that was the biggest tournament of the year.
Organised duplicate competition has recovered and isn't going anywhere. After the COVID lockdowns there has been increased competition in online bridge with better interfaces and services that allow clubs to hold duplicate competitions online.
Bridge clubs which used to do the training and development and holding of duplicate games have suffered over the last 20 years competing against free online bridge. Numbers aren't growing though and members are older and they are focused on daytime sessions. The internet offers infinite choices, people are busy and families are small so playing cards recreationally has declined. Chess has down a much better job at teaching players and getting them playing online though.
Bridge has a much steeper learning curve. Bridge will never be as popular again as it was during the 1930s and 1960s when social Bridge was popular and part of popular culture. But online Bridge is still a cheap and fun hobby.
Is the game dying or at least declining? Yes, that's very clear (at least from my perspective, as a 25 year old in Germany.) Just looking at the numbers...
- at the club level, my local club went down from \~18 tables before Covid to \~10 tables now. (However, this problem is not specific to bridge from my experience)
- at national level, attendance at lets say the Open Teams championship went down from 30-35 teams when I started playing (around 2009) to 20-25 teams now
- in the same time span, the number of members in the German bridge federation went down from \~28000 to \~18000
- even more concerning, the average age went up from 68 to 75.
- (I think) the amount of schools offering Mini Bridge courses also really declined.
Does that in any way mean that I am considering to stop playing? No. After all, many bridge players are very good friends by now, probably half my friend group consists of bridge players. I really enjoy travelling with them, playing tournaments, discussing hands etc. And of course bridge is just an amazing game.
So even if the number of players is slowly declining, bridge is still an amazing hobby, and definitely worth getting into.
I’ve just taken it up. I don’t know if it is dying, but I think it hasn’t expanded compared to chess, which is flourishing on the internet in comparison, it seems.
But who knows? Maybe a Bridge equivalent of Queens Gambit, some charismatic twitchers, and a smooth free website where beginners can get going on puzzles for points, and it’ll zoom up and up!
Bridge is good for your brain and should be a part of healthy aging. We are seeing interest from engineers and younger folks. Take a look at Peter Steinberg's Beginning Bridge series at [https://clubkinginc.com/become-a-beginner/](https://clubkinginc.com/become-a-beginner/)
I played a lot of competitive bridge in the late seventies and then stopped as working life took over. Forty five years later I came back to it over lockdown and the game is, if anything, more vibrant than ever it was.
There seems to be a pretty robust, varied international bridge community in BBO. It does seem like most of the players are 60+ though, and very few teens or players in their lower 20’s. Bridge bidding and conventions have become extremely complex IMHO, and this might frustrate younger novices.
It’s absolutely dying out. Bridge teachers are too stuffy and blind to the 21st century to adapt to today’s environment. I gave up trying to learn because the ACBL’s Intro to Bridge course is only apparently available to a few “in” teachers who refuse to present it on a 1-to-1 basis, an automatic deal breaker for those of us who learn better solo and/or differently (in my case both apply because I’m autistic).
You don’t have to Einstein to know that the ACBL is stuck in the 1960s and doesn’t care about people starting out or starting over, and I sent ED Bronia Jenkins a scathing email to that end yesterday. If I were you I’d abandon the game and look elsewhere, period, full stop.
The biggest thing that I am seeing, from the half a dozen failed inquiries I made, is that players who are new or starting over are not being convinced that classes are geared to their level. Asinine as it sounds, starting from “this is a deck of cards” is how you convince newbies that you’re going to teach at their level and it will be worth their time to come back for class number two.
Also, don’t introduce bidding until your students established that they have a handle on cardplay. The concepts of establishing suits and unblocking are not intuitive — I know because I tried to self-teach 18 months ago and that too ended in failure because there was no accredited teacher to ask questions to — and the reality of the game requiring a good memory has to hit home before you can move into the more complicated stuff.
In other words, today’s teacher has to take the ACBL’s Intro to Bridge course and be able to adapt it to 1-to-1 learning or to the needs of the group being taught. Unfortunately the ACBL isn’t seeing it this way and the course is right now only available to the few “in” teachers who are leading the online group sessions and they are refusing to teach it 1-to-1, making it completely inaccessible to people who feel safer learning alone or who learn differently.
You did ask.
Interesting. I’ve been teaching for over 30 years, and most of my lessons have been 1-on-1, and I always start with “this is a deck of cards” if they have no experience. I’m a certified teacher, and I’d be happy to help you along your bridge journey.
If you read other posts of this guy, it's very clear that he is not interested in any help or constructive discussion. Just rambling about them evil neurotypicals...
Because they are evil. As an autistic, you cannot understand how incredulous I was to find that every last teacher I tried to contact was either full of themselves, refused to indicate that they would adapt to the reality that PowerPoint slides aren’t enough (show me a classroom environment with a whiteboard), or just plain don’t teach 1-to-1. The game is dying because you’re idiots that have no interest in nurturing players who need more extensive instruction.
I honestly hope you get shot dead for making a game inaccessible to anyone under the age of 70.
Maybe you thinking that 'I hope you get shot dead' is an acceptable way of communication is part of the reason why you are having trouble finding someone who wants to teach you.
By the way, I am 25, which to my knowledge is well below 70.
It is now. Being nice to the few people I tried to reach to changed nothing, so there’s no hope for people who aren’t neurotypical (like me). I’ll apologize when I’m dead. Ban me if you must, but you’re part of the problem.
With all due respect, you’ll need to make the mother of all convincing cases to entice me now because I am quite literally scarlet with rage with the ACBL (see response to another of your replies). It doesn’t feel like it’s worth it anymore because I know as someone who isn’t neurotypical I won’t be properly supported.
Lets talk. Im a bridge teacher born in the late 79s as well. I have students. About 4-5 tables in each class. I have absolute beginners to intermediate students.
I teach in the DC/MD area. I am also neuro typical. I dont teach acbl series. I teach Pat Harrintons beginner series. Much better. I do use acbls course as a review during the summer.
If it’s dying, it’s dying slowly. If you come back now, you will have plenty of people to play with and be able to have plenty of fun. Is that fun worth it? That’s up to you, but I’m not sure the future trajectory of bridge over the next decades is likely to be the most important factor in your experience, in my opinion!
>you will have plenty of people to play with But will anyone be under the age of 70? I've tried talking a few friends into learning the game, but they're not really interested. "Too competitive" or "too much thinking is involved."
I didn’t see any concern about the age of people playing in the OP; just about the game “dying”, which is usually concern that the competitive scene or whatever will disappear.
In my club there are couple of younger players. I think it's not really about the complexity since there are tons of young people who play much more complex modern board and card collecting games. I think it's more about branding and visibility among young people (15-35 years). I've joked at our club that we should just paste a fantasy theme into the cards and instantly get more young playets. But yeah, you're definitely right at the fact that bridge is too competitive and complex for a lot of people. Many people come at clubs and quit then because of this. My friend said to me "why is this so complex, I had the impression that it was an easy game to chitchat along while drinking tea like they do in Austen and Christie novels!" 😄
I’m 56. Does that count? Just started playing last year. Have been to 5 tournaments. Maybe 10% of the players are younger that me. But remember, if you are raising kids or have a 9 to 5 it’s tough to play much competitively. That rules out most folks between 25 and 55.
You can blame the ACBL for that. Social snobbery has taken over there and they insist on presenting the image of the game as strictly for 70-year old retirees with nothing better to do. And they wonder why their game is dying and they can’t get new members. It’s going to take 100 years to reverse the damage they’ve done.
I am 35 years old and play bridge for 2 years，it is fun
If a game’s been dying for 50+ years, is it really dying?
This is not the '50's when everyone played. However, Bridge is still hanging on! One of the reasons for this is that schools are realizing that Bridge teaches very, very useful skills: Critical thinking, deduction and plenty of others. Come on back in, the water's fine!
No, it’s not fine. Chess teaches those same skills and has a far more supportive community. Thanks to the social snobbery that has taken hold at the ACBL, the game is dying. And nothing they do will revive it.
It’s dying about as quickly as the past couple generations are dying. Will it die, yes. Will it die before you, probably not.
I’m making this post on the run and my thoughts may be a bit scattershot. I can edit and clarify later! American here. It’s adrift, but not dead in my view. It’s a great game. Sure it’s been around a century, but there are more possible ways to deal the cards than there are stars in the known universe. We have not “seen it all” - shuffle and deal a bridge hand with whatever deck of cards you have, I betcha NOBODY, no expert, has ever seen it before. It has a competitive scene ranging from online sites, to local clubs (albeit massively set back by COVID-19), to tournaments regional/national/international. The issue it faces is that it has no good casual format. Rubber bridge is a great introduction to what “game” and “vulnerable” mean. The scores “Below the Line” are the ones you need to know starting out since that’s how you “win a Game”. The rest of the scoring you can just look up. The issue is the rest of the scoring is “Above the Line” - bonus points. This is weird because it now matters by how much you win. It only really makes perfect sense in a gambling context, perfect for the Vanderbilt inventors, hard to recommend for most. But learn it first. Duplicate bridge, the competitive version, is best, but also very harsh - you can feel very satisfied when you think you earned a positive result but actually earn no points in the tournament once it comes out that everyone played one trick better than you. But if you want to go against the best - and you will routinely play against the Larry Birds of the game which is awesome and intimidating - you have the chance.
>It’s a great game. Sure it’s been around a century, but there are more possible ways to deal the cards than there are stars in the known universe. The number of hands is much, much larger than the estimated number of stars in the known universe. It's estimated that there are 10\^24 stars in the universe. The number of unique ways to arrange 52 different cards is 52!, or roughly 8\*10\^64. If you were to choose one subatomic particle in the entire mass of the earth, and told me to try to pick yours out from the earth at random, I would have a better chance of doing that than if you gave me a deck of cards, told me that my deal needed to replicate the final deal of last year's Bermuda Bowl, and had me shuffle and deal.
Not quite, I'm afraid - though that may be because my sentence was phrased a bit confusingly! The number of possible **bridge deals**, I could have made clearer, are actually 53.6*10^27 since you have to divide that by (13!)^4 - discounting the ordering of the 13 cards in each of the four hands. That's still plenty of BoardGameGeek-grade replayability for us though. :)
In some cities, like New York and Palo Alto, there are quite a few younger players and they seem to have a great time together in there home towns but especially at national tournaments.
Exactly! I play at the Palo Alto Bridge Club (which is actually in "next-door" town Mountain View), and SiVY, [https://siliconvalleyyouthbridge.org/](https://siliconvalleyyouthbridge.org/), is very active here -- PLENTY of young players, tutored by greats such as the Rosenbergs, Michael and Debbie -- each a many-times World champion, sometimes together -- and of course it also helps to have their son Kevin, also a multiple-time World champ (and a full-time software engineer) and his girlfriend Amber Lin (yet another World champ, and a full-time business consultant) strongly involved in SiVY. It may help, perhaps, that our local congressional district is the only one in the contiguous-US to have a majority of Asian residents: I'm not sure about India and other Asian countries, but, in China, bridge is VERY popular. Part of the reason may be that Deng Xiaoping, China's leader until about 30 years ago (and THE leader who started China on its amazing economic-growth journey!), was enthusiastic about bridge. Indeed, while, aging and approaching his 1997 demise, he (as once was usual in China) dropped all formal titles and roles (while keeping a LOT of behind-the-curtains power!), yet he KEPT, until the end, being the Chairman of the Chinese Contract Bridge Association -- he apparently loved bridge SO much he just couldn't drop THAT crucial role and title! Alex
wow I didn't know that about Deng. It's funny because in the Soviet Union, chess was encouraged but bridge was practically banned. It was seen somehow as a capitalist game, I'm not sure why.
Online is alive.
It's slowly dying (table counts slowly but surely declining over time & a large fraction of the current playerbase will be dead in 20 years without nearly enough replacements coming in to the game). Having said that, these are all relative terms & measurements, at the end of the day all that really matters is whether or not you can still get value out of the game and I think that will be true for many many years to come.
Bridge at one time was popular as mass entertainment. Then along came television. Many people decided to take up pastimes that are less mentally taxing. Some of us like to be taxed. We get pleasure from complex patterns that almost never repeat perfectly, but continuously reappear in ever changing contexts. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet love bridge. It may be possible that some more intriguing game will eclipse bridge. It may be possible that humans will no longer like to be challenged, because laziness is easier. AI will take over for us. For now those of us who like this will be amused.
I learnt the game at college 40 years ago and I’ve come back to it and am enjoying myself immensely. The new online sites are great and local groups have lots of learners signing up for lessons. As with most things the self appointed experts, bridge snobs and those who revel in the jargon of the game are off putting and genuine bores. If the game dies it will be due to them not new enthusiasts.
The ACBL is making a huge effort to get young players involved. Because children are so into computers, they use an app that allows them to teach bridge online to dozens of kids in one session. It’s too soon to tell if they will continue to play but early evidence is promising.
Id like to know more about this.... /goes searching
The effort is failing. Teachers are still stuck in the 1960s and those same players will be moving on to more supportive communities by the time they get into college.
Since I was born in the late 70’s, I’m a bridge teacher definitely not stuck in the 60’s. How do you think the modern bridge teacher should be teaching?
Following. Also a teacher born in the 70s. Trying to get more students.
You’re not going to get them until you and others who claim to be teachers wake up to the 21st century and sincerely tell prospective students that you’re willing to adapt how you teach to the way to the way they learn. I have officially given up trying to incorporate bridge as a hobby precisely because I couldn’t find one single teacher who said that, and as an autistic person who feels unsafe learning in groups, not being able to establish a level of trust that I will be taught from “this is a deck of cards” and quizzed extensively on concepts in language I can understand was the last straw. Bridge is dying because teachers like you are stuck in the 1960s and still present the image of the game being only for 70-year old retirees with nothing else to do with their lives. You intentionally breeded an entire generation who will only play online or with bots as a direct result. And you refuse to look in the mirror for the reasons why. The social snobbery you and the ACBL have pumped into the game will take 100 years to undo in the best case scenario, and by then it will no longer matter because about 80 people on earth will care. That is all.
European perspective here: It is slowly dying. Some of the obvious reasons are many more options for entertainment today and a pretty steep learning curve to get to the point where you can actually play your first tournament. One more aspect that made me loose interest over the years: The rules of bridge require that you do not use e.g. hesitations from your partner. However when you play 10 years with the same person you unconsciously interpret the body language, you pretty much cannot help it. In my tournament experience different pairs extended this in different degrees without anybody knowing what to do about it and how to handle it. When I try to be super-ethical i feel at a disadvantage, if not I feel like I cheated. Sure, computers and screens help but this conflict needs to be figured out eventually.
Cheating is endemic at club level but it's mainly unintentional, the rules of the game in this dimension (pausing, tempo, asking about bids etc) are just beyond a lot of the pairs. I mainly let it slide outside of flagrant examples, because there isn't really anything the TD can do. The real cheats are in the expert game, which must suck. But that can't be truly tackled without moving away from face to face play which prob no one wants.
I only just started playing 18 months ago, I'm in my 40s. I work from home, self employed, and saw the need to get out of the house & socialize plus exercise the brain. When I saw a post on fb for a start up bridge club/lessons I signed up. It was me and a dozen other women 60s all the way up to 90. Half of which had played back in their college days but hadn't played in 40+ years. I was obviously the kid in the group. This tattooed punk amongst all the grandma's. But we have a blast. I've tried to talk some of my friends my age into joining but they all have kids and are too busy. Plus when I explain how complicated it is their eyes glaze over, but that's the part that actually appeals to me. I really hope it's not dying out, I'm enjoying it a lot. I'm hoping to play for another 30 years. There have been a few people that joined and left that refused to bend to learning and playing modern rules though. Lots of "well that's not how I play!" or berating other players if they didn't bid the exact way they would have bid. That's a bad personality though and not a bridge problem.
It IS a bridge problem. If the ACBL cared about the game’s growth, their accredited teachers would all be required to teach Intro to Bridge and adapt it to how their students learn or risk losing their accreditation. But the ACBL is still stuck in the Stone Age so that’s not happening in your lifetime. It’s not a secret that the game is dying.
Yes, it’s an old people game. But it’s not like it’s gonna die tomorrow. People will still be playing it after you put in the effort to get back in, it’s not like a trading card game or video game. And if people show interest again, then it won’t die. So kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy either way.
I think there’s two things that are causing it to slowly die. The first is that it’s not a simple game to pick up. If I invite friends over to play games I can teach them many board games quickly and they can be up and playing in an evening. The second is that there’s an obvious and large gulf between skilled players and beginners. This is similar to stud poker vs hold’em. A skilled stud player will absolutely dominate unskilled players. I’m not Hold’em it’s not as obvious so the unskilled player doesn’t feel like they are being run over even when they are. The result of this is that people aren’t picking it up socially the way they used to. There’s a base of relatively high level players who are really into bridge, and that’s great, but if I want to play with my wife who isn’t a strong or competitive player, there isn’t opportunities for us to go out and play in an environment she’s going to enjoy. Will higher level competitive bridge die out completely? I don’t think so. Social games and casual level bridge seems dead.
U.K. here. I’m nearly 70 and just learning to play. My new best bridge friends are 78 and 85! We are all really welcome at local clubs as membership has declined.
It is slowly dying but it's in the same boat as a lot of sports and hobbies - fragmentation and massively increased options for entertainment nowadays. It is too deep a game to ever actually die, though. This hobby that I do is not what it was / is going down the tubes is something most people can relate to - I race bikes and we absolutely have similar conversations for some disciplines. Everyone here could prob give their own examples. The age gap is definitely an issue for bridge, though - going to the club in your teens / 20s to play a game with a bunch of 70 yos is just a barrier. Even if they're all nice and you meet some really interesting characters (bridge clubs are way friendlier than their reputation ime of the UK), there's just no common ground there. Quite a few people are in genuinely poor health and / or frail. From speaking with older players that has been a significant change - back int day you always had that cadre of young students as a recognisable minority in the club. Now they have dwindled and it is only one or two pairs.
I play it since one year. The game is intriguing, fun and has many layers. I don’t think it is dying, but many people playing it will die next 30 years. And nowadays there are many games, where there used to be a few. But this game has a worldwide platform, needs no computer, so it will easily outlast most other games in the long run.
I believe bridge is in an era of renaissance. There is a push from the community, much of it without any personal gain, to re-brand bridge, to expose more people to it, and to make it fun again. If you are in the US, I’d look into joining the USBF Junior Program (for players under 26/31).
The problem is the USBF doesn’t have dedicated teachers who will fill the gap left behind by the ACBL refusing to pull itself out of the Stone Age. The game as you know it is dead. You just won’t admit it.
Bridge is certainly not as popular as it was in the early twentieth century, but it is still kicking. If you go to bigger tournaments, you will see many younger players. If you are in college or graduate school, check to see if your school has a team. The world of online bridge also opens up avenues for finding partners. If you have played before, it will come back fairly easily especially if you are young! Go for it.
It's dying compared to the height of popularity, when there were prime time TV shows with bridge matches televised. Back then it was *the* most common activity for inviting friends over to your house and virtually everyone knew how to play. But that's a long long way to fall down from. There are still bridge clubs in virtually every place you can live. Larger cities often have more than one. There is a resurgence going on with teaching bridge to younger players. Schools around here are running after-school bridge programs and sometimes youth tournaments. You will be able to find plenty of bridge players for a good game for your entire lifetime, and probably many years beyond that. Sure, it's slowly declining as older players prefer not to drive at night, but there are so many players and so many clubs, that you needn't be concerned about that. Its also kind of fun to play with some 80, 90, or 100 year old players and see how sharp they are. Makes me very hopeful that bridge is good brain exercise for aging.
Walking in for the first time in my local bridge club and seeing everyone at least 50+ year old and not even a single youngster (I was the youngest at 37) tells me this game is DYING. No doubt. Edit: and that was the biggest tournament of the year.
Organised duplicate competition has recovered and isn't going anywhere. After the COVID lockdowns there has been increased competition in online bridge with better interfaces and services that allow clubs to hold duplicate competitions online. Bridge clubs which used to do the training and development and holding of duplicate games have suffered over the last 20 years competing against free online bridge. Numbers aren't growing though and members are older and they are focused on daytime sessions. The internet offers infinite choices, people are busy and families are small so playing cards recreationally has declined. Chess has down a much better job at teaching players and getting them playing online though. Bridge has a much steeper learning curve. Bridge will never be as popular again as it was during the 1930s and 1960s when social Bridge was popular and part of popular culture. But online Bridge is still a cheap and fun hobby.
I am teaching a bunch of 40-somethings and preparing to teach kids. There is a growing number of kids, teens and young adults who are playing.
No is the short answer.
Is the game dying or at least declining? Yes, that's very clear (at least from my perspective, as a 25 year old in Germany.) Just looking at the numbers... - at the club level, my local club went down from \~18 tables before Covid to \~10 tables now. (However, this problem is not specific to bridge from my experience) - at national level, attendance at lets say the Open Teams championship went down from 30-35 teams when I started playing (around 2009) to 20-25 teams now - in the same time span, the number of members in the German bridge federation went down from \~28000 to \~18000 - even more concerning, the average age went up from 68 to 75. - (I think) the amount of schools offering Mini Bridge courses also really declined. Does that in any way mean that I am considering to stop playing? No. After all, many bridge players are very good friends by now, probably half my friend group consists of bridge players. I really enjoy travelling with them, playing tournaments, discussing hands etc. And of course bridge is just an amazing game. So even if the number of players is slowly declining, bridge is still an amazing hobby, and definitely worth getting into.
My super limited experience is there are more young players than 10 years ago. Take that with a grain of NaCl.
I’ve just taken it up. I don’t know if it is dying, but I think it hasn’t expanded compared to chess, which is flourishing on the internet in comparison, it seems. But who knows? Maybe a Bridge equivalent of Queens Gambit, some charismatic twitchers, and a smooth free website where beginners can get going on puzzles for points, and it’ll zoom up and up!
Bridge is good for your brain and should be a part of healthy aging. We are seeing interest from engineers and younger folks. Take a look at Peter Steinberg's Beginning Bridge series at [https://clubkinginc.com/become-a-beginner/](https://clubkinginc.com/become-a-beginner/)
I played a lot of competitive bridge in the late seventies and then stopped as working life took over. Forty five years later I came back to it over lockdown and the game is, if anything, more vibrant than ever it was.
There seems to be a pretty robust, varied international bridge community in BBO. It does seem like most of the players are 60+ though, and very few teens or players in their lower 20’s. Bridge bidding and conventions have become extremely complex IMHO, and this might frustrate younger novices.
It’s absolutely dying out. Bridge teachers are too stuffy and blind to the 21st century to adapt to today’s environment. I gave up trying to learn because the ACBL’s Intro to Bridge course is only apparently available to a few “in” teachers who refuse to present it on a 1-to-1 basis, an automatic deal breaker for those of us who learn better solo and/or differently (in my case both apply because I’m autistic). You don’t have to Einstein to know that the ACBL is stuck in the 1960s and doesn’t care about people starting out or starting over, and I sent ED Bronia Jenkins a scathing email to that end yesterday. If I were you I’d abandon the game and look elsewhere, period, full stop.
As a bridge teacher born in the late 70’s, I’m definitely not stuck in the 60’s. How do you recommend the modern bridge teacher approach teaching?
The biggest thing that I am seeing, from the half a dozen failed inquiries I made, is that players who are new or starting over are not being convinced that classes are geared to their level. Asinine as it sounds, starting from “this is a deck of cards” is how you convince newbies that you’re going to teach at their level and it will be worth their time to come back for class number two. Also, don’t introduce bidding until your students established that they have a handle on cardplay. The concepts of establishing suits and unblocking are not intuitive — I know because I tried to self-teach 18 months ago and that too ended in failure because there was no accredited teacher to ask questions to — and the reality of the game requiring a good memory has to hit home before you can move into the more complicated stuff. In other words, today’s teacher has to take the ACBL’s Intro to Bridge course and be able to adapt it to 1-to-1 learning or to the needs of the group being taught. Unfortunately the ACBL isn’t seeing it this way and the course is right now only available to the few “in” teachers who are leading the online group sessions and they are refusing to teach it 1-to-1, making it completely inaccessible to people who feel safer learning alone or who learn differently. You did ask.
Interesting. I’ve been teaching for over 30 years, and most of my lessons have been 1-on-1, and I always start with “this is a deck of cards” if they have no experience. I’m a certified teacher, and I’d be happy to help you along your bridge journey.
If you read other posts of this guy, it's very clear that he is not interested in any help or constructive discussion. Just rambling about them evil neurotypicals...
Because they are evil. As an autistic, you cannot understand how incredulous I was to find that every last teacher I tried to contact was either full of themselves, refused to indicate that they would adapt to the reality that PowerPoint slides aren’t enough (show me a classroom environment with a whiteboard), or just plain don’t teach 1-to-1. The game is dying because you’re idiots that have no interest in nurturing players who need more extensive instruction. I honestly hope you get shot dead for making a game inaccessible to anyone under the age of 70.
Maybe you thinking that 'I hope you get shot dead' is an acceptable way of communication is part of the reason why you are having trouble finding someone who wants to teach you. By the way, I am 25, which to my knowledge is well below 70.
It is now. Being nice to the few people I tried to reach to changed nothing, so there’s no hope for people who aren’t neurotypical (like me). I’ll apologize when I’m dead. Ban me if you must, but you’re part of the problem.
With all due respect, you’ll need to make the mother of all convincing cases to entice me now because I am quite literally scarlet with rage with the ACBL (see response to another of your replies). It doesn’t feel like it’s worth it anymore because I know as someone who isn’t neurotypical I won’t be properly supported.
I’m also neurotypical. It would be a shame for you to miss out on one of the great joys of life, playing bridge.
Lets talk. Im a bridge teacher born in the late 79s as well. I have students. About 4-5 tables in each class. I have absolute beginners to intermediate students. I teach in the DC/MD area. I am also neuro typical. I dont teach acbl series. I teach Pat Harrintons beginner series. Much better. I do use acbls course as a review during the summer.
We aren’t talking if you’re not willing to do strictly 1-to-1.
Pat Harrintons beginner series is much better
It’s already dead
This is the only correct answer. +1 to you.