Justin Lall

Why Teenagers Should Actually Play Bridge August 28, 2011

If you are a teenager, you have probably laughed at some of the reasons people tell you to learn bridge.

“It will increase your math and logic abilities!” Great, so will Madden…
“It will keep your mind sharp when you’re 70!” Don’t I rate to be dead by then?
“BRIDGE IS COOL, the ACBL said so!” hahahaha, good one.

The fact is, older people seem to have no idea knowing what our priorities were as a teen, and why bridge might be appealing. I’m in the unique position of still being young, and having played bridge since I was 10 (my whole adolescence). I’m going to tell you what I gained by playing bridge as a teenager, and what I think you might gain.

Social-

• People your own age– A common misconception about bridge is that there are not that many teenagers who play bridge. I was friends with a lot of people my own age who played bridge when I was a teenager. The biggest problem was geography, I lived in Texas, they lived in New York or wherever. However, with technology, this was not really a big deal. I got to talk to them online every day, I got to play bridge with them on BBO as often as I wanted. We would often go to the same tournaments, and I’d get to hang out with them there. Playing bridge, I met my best friends who are still friends today and probably life long friends. In school I was always popular and friends with a lot of people my own age, but meeting more people from different places broadened my horizons, and obviously one can never have too many friends. When I was a teenager, every activity I did was really centered around being able to hang out with my friends, and bridge was no exception. No matter how bad or good I was, at the end of the day I had a common interest with people that we could talk about, play, and begin to build a friendship around. The way I saw it, the larger the pool of people I could choose my friends from, the better quality my friends would be (and the more I would have).
• People slightly older- As a teen, you probably rarely get to hang out with people 5 years older than you. How often does an 8th grader hang out with a college kid? A lot of parents or older people might think this is a bad thing, but since the young bridge community is smaller and more close-knit, small age differences don’t matter as much as they do normally. In the bridge world, 20 year olds are often friends with 16 year olds, since they’re much closer in age than a 60 year old would be. It’s all relative. I would say that experience was awesome for me socially, just as having a sister a few years older than me was. I got good advice from people who had been through the normal social problems I would have. I got a broader horizon. This kind of experience gives you more confidence in general in social skills, it gives you more wisdom about stuff like college decisions, problems with the opposite sex, etc. And let’s be real, without the common interest of bridge, I would never have gotten to be friends with those people. I felt like I had much more maturity and wisdom by virtue of all of the bridge friends I had that were in college or a little bit past graduated.
• Girls- (This is intended for guys, I cannot really speak to what it’s like for a girl to have a lot of interactions with guys at this age). Yeah, there are pretty girls that play bridge. A lot of them are from Europe. Interacting with these girls was pretty easy, not because I was naturally smooth, but simply becuase they wanted people to talk to around their age, and we had a common interest. Being able to talk to girls easily is a skill that is learned through experience, and going to bridge tournaments and meeting people gave me a lot of that experience sooner than most people got it. And again, I didn’t have to be at a tournament to speak to them after I had met them, there was the internet. I was friends with all of the caddies, and eventually dated one bridge player, but it wasn’t about that. It was simply about being in a lot of social situations with them and having a leg up over meeting a girl at the mall or at school. This is something every guy wants to become more comfortable and better at no matter what their level is, and bridge is actually great for it. Think about it, you’re at a bridge tournament with 20 young people, not much to do but play a session and hang out and talk. It’s perfect.
• People much older- This actually doesn’t sound that great, but a lot of these older people have great stories. More importantly, learning to interact with older people is a skill that will make you better in other social situations, and help you a lot in whatever business/career you decide to pursue, where you will be the young upstart interacting with older bosses, people, etc. This experience is not just valuable, but it introduces you to a world you would otherwise not have gotten to be a part of.
• People from different cultures- Americans often have the stigma of the ugly american who knows nothing about other cultures and is stuck in their own bubble. This is often largely true. Through bridge I was able to meet people from every continent and every major country. I got to hang out with them, see their views on the world and our country as well as their own, and just generally get a better understanding of the world. That is the great thing about bridge, you will meet people with every background, from every place, with every story. This was really important to me, and I feel much more well rounded because of it. It’s also just a lot of fun.
• Results- For the record, people in my non bridge life always said I had great social skills, was confident, made friends easily, was “mature for my age” etc. This all came from bridge. I ended up living in NYC with 5 of the friends I made from bridge. I am going to be getting a place in Vegas from a friend I made through bridge. These social aspects really helped me a lot, and it wasn’t even really about the game of bridge itself, just the opportunities it presented.

Competitive- I was great at track and good at soccer and baseball in junior high. In high school, the world got much bigger, the people got better, and I was average at soccer, and average plus at track. There was no hope of me playing college level sports, people at that level were just too good. And I was someone who was naturally pretty athletic, which not everyone is. However, I had the desire to compete. It kind of consumed me. Bridge offered me that outlet without being a great athlete, athleticism just didn’t matter. And even in the beginning, when I sucked at bridge, I got great pleasure out of winning a 0-5 game against people of my experience. Bridge offers competition for all levels, and becoming better than my peers faster was an achievement. Breaking average in a flight A game was a huge achievement. I didn’t have to be the greatest player ever to make a team and compete and sometimes win, like I would have in a big high school or college. And the ceiling is unlimited, unlike sports which is limited by your physical capabilities.

The truth is, bridge is hard. You will usually lose no matter how good you are. But there are a ton of goals to meet, and constant progress, and that will really feed your competitive drive. I won a world junior championship with my best friends, but that feeling in that moment was honestly probably equivalent to how I felt the first time I won a 2 session flight C pair game, because that was my biggest goal at the time and it felt amazing to do it. Bridge lets everyone compete on an even playing field. Being able to do this gave me a lot more confidence.

Tournaments- This is like a combination of competitive and social. First of all, going to tournaments as a teenager was really fun socially. I got to meet new people and see people I had already met and talked to and played with online all the time. It was kind of like a party. We slept in hotels (often 6 to a room because we had no money), played games, shot the shit, made fun of each other, and had a great time (you can see why these guys ended up as basically my brothers). We would play the midnight games and make crazy psyches (bluffs) and laugh about it (these games were not that serious). We would explore new places together. I feel like this is the kind of stuff that people get excited about for college; freedom, adventure, fun with new friends, etc. I had some crazy times, and I had some emotional times, but it was always a great ride. And during the day we played bridge. Tournaments were just more intense competitions. Nationals gave me the opportunity to get pounded by the best players in the world, then go play in a flight C regional event and prove how much I had improved by winning that. It had everything in the way of competition, and more of it.

Travel– This one should be obvious, you get to travel around all over the country to play bridge. If you get good enough, you can play in international junior tournaments and have your expenses paid for (free European trip with your friends to play bridge!). I have been to Australia, China, Thailand, the list goes on in on, for free, because of bridge. But even if you don’t reach that level, you can still travel to tournaments and then go home and tell everyone about where you went. They won’t be talking badly about bridge for very long when they realize where it’s taking you, they’ll be flat out jealous. Don’t get me started on junior bridge tournaments either, they are universally considered a blast.

I debated whether to put in “making lots of money!” I am a bridge professional, but I don’t really think that is something most teenagers would want and it is very hard to get there, so I left it off. The point is really that it doesn’t matter how good you become, you will still broaden your horizons so much socially and be better off for it, make great friends, travel around and have fun.

I also left off the obvious, bridge is an awesome game. This is true, but misses the point. If you don’t like bridge you will quit, and before that it helps to know all of the other great things bridge might offer before you even decide if it’s worth your time to learn something that is just a great game.

At the end of the day, bridge can be whatever you make it to be. You can play a little, and not be great, but that’s true of most games. You can decide you have to reach expert level, and enjoy that road too. Either way, it will definitely offer a lot of unique benefits that playing Call of Duty will not.

Promoting Bridge April 29, 2006

It’s no secret that in North America the game of bridge is effectively dying. The average age of ACBL members keeps rising and you see less and less young faces at tournaments. As well as promoting the game to retired people with lots of free time, efforts need to be made to get younger people interested in bridge. In order to understand how to go about this, two key questions need to be asked.

First, what will attract teenagers to the game? As a teenager myself, if someone were to tell me that bridge is great for the mind and a very interesting game, I wouldn’t have any desire to learn the game.

I would be interested in the great rivalry between USA and Italy, the huge money that professionals are making, big prize money tournaments like the Cavendish, and the great party atmosphere at night during tournaments. Though these things have nothing to do with the game itself, they are interesting and would make me want to become a part of the bridge scene. To do this, obviously I’d have to learn the game.

There was a great poker movie made in 1998, Rounders, starring Matt Damon. To watch this movie and enjoy it, you would literally need no knowledge of how to play poker. The movie was a hit, and many college kids started playing as a result. The natural reaction to being captivated by a movie about poker is to actually go out and learn how to play. Of the people who do that, some percentage will keep playing for the rest of their lives. The point is not to market the game, but to market the drama and atmosphere that surrounds the game.

Imagine a movie about a young bridge professional trying to make it in a highly competitive world. He falls into the trap of drugs and drinking during the wee hours of the night during regionals and nationals and hits rock bottom. At some point, he rises above all of this to greatness. At the climax he’s playing his nemesis, the antagonist who has stolen clients from him and bad mouthed him throughout the movie. He pauses when the player leads away from an ace and he must guess the contract to win the match and the tournament. He finally guesses, and wins tens of thousands of dollars as well as the respect of everyone. It may sound silly, but you wouldn’t need to know how to play bridge to watch this movie and many would enjoy it.

Some mainstream media effort could easily be made to create an influx of juniors to the ACBL. A movie, a documentary, articles in widely read magazines about the life of a young bridge player, a TV show with a main character that is a bridge player, even a reality TV show. Trying to put an actual bridge game on TV will never achieve great success, but making the bridge world and the atmosphere a part of some bigger picture could.

The ACBL, with it’s site “Bridge Is Cool,” has failed miserably at understanding what will appeal to a teenage audience.

We also must wonder, what existing markets can we tap into that include young people? There are certainly some people we can advertise the game itself to. It’s obvious that the millions of teenagers that play spades, a trick taking game similar to bridge, are such an easy market to attract to bridge. They devote some time to playing card games, they already understand the basic rules of bridge, and they are willing to spend some time to learn a game. As I write this there are almost 7,000 people playing spades on Yahoo. Most are teenagers. Why are we not actively trying to get these people to play bridge? It makes absolutely no sense.

Other board games, card games, and strategy games have young players who would be quite interested in learning the king of all card games. We need to make a site that we can direct those people to, and somehow make the site available to them. That was probably the goal of Bridge Is Cool, but something more appealing to this type of person is needed. The more times that prize money and huge amounts of strategy are mentioned the better.

The other market is school kids, particularly those in advanced math classes. By junior high it’s too late, there are so many other interests that bridge will not be a priority. I think the ACBL is already doing a great job in teaching bridge at elementary schools so I won’t expound.

In order to save the game of bridge, those in power need to understand the new generation. As a member of said generation, I will tell you with confidence that Bridge Is Cool will not appeal to ANYONE. A new game plan needs to be drawn up before it’s too late.