May 2011 - OutreachNC Magazine

The ever changing game of bridge...
When you or your mother started to learn bridge,
your teacher explained the basics such as the
rank of the cards and the rank of the suits. Thirteen
cards were dealt to each of the four players at the table
and then during the bidding period
tried to determine what trump would
be, which player would declare and
try and take a ‘contracted’ number
of tricks. The game of bridge as we
know it evolved from its original form
of Whist, to auction bridge and finally
to contract bridge.
Originally teachers would have you
look at your “Quick Tricks” (QTs) to
Bridge Club
Nancy Dressing
help evaluate your hand. An Ace
was one QT, a King was one-half QT,
an Ace-King in the same suit was two
QTs and an Ace-Queen was one and one-half QTs. You
needed 3 QT’s to open the bidding and a four card suit.
Beyond that, you were on your own to determine how
many tricks your side could take and to determine the
best trump suit for your partnership.
In the mid 1920s, Harold Vanderbilt put together a set
of rules and scoring that turned an old-fashioned game of
auction bridge into the game of contract bridge.
In the mid 1930s, a young man named Charles Goren
published a book that proposed a point count system
that would revolutionize and popularize the game. Point
OutreachNC • May 2011 33
counts were given to the four honor cards in a suit: Aces
are four points, Kings are three points, Queens are two
points and Jacks one point. These High Card Points
(HCP) are integral to the game today as most all other
bidding systems use these point counts as a basis of
determining the value of a hand a player holds.
Alfred Sheinwold wrote a very popular book taking
Goren’s concepts called “Five Weeks to Winning Bridge.”
For many years, it was considered the “Bible of Bridge.”
In the 1980s, Max Hardy took the five card major concept
one step further and proposed that a new suit at the two
level in response to partners major opening was now
GAME forcing, and the two over one system was born.
Computers have also had their impact on the scoring of
the game. Computers now tabulate and score the game
in a matter of seconds.
The latest innovation combines wireless networking
to collect names and scores entered on scoring pads at
each individual table. At the end of the game, the director
presses a couple of keys, pulls the results from the
scoring pads and produces final results in seconds.
Who knows what the future will bring in the game -- I bet
that Culbertson, Goren and Vanderbilt would be amazed
at what has happened to the game they love.
Have a bridge question, ask Nancy Dressing of
Nancy’s Game in Southern Pines. She can be reached
by e-mailing nancy@dressing.org.
“Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your
plans will succeed.” Proverbs 16:3
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Try something sweet.
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