Audio By Carbonatix
Following suit, trumping. Sound familiar? Those everyday expressions come straight from the card game bridge. You know, that game your parents or your grandparents might play in their spare time. But who in this age of fast-paced everything — 200 cable channels and video games, movies, and magazines designed for the ADD set — has any spare time anymore? Maybe major-league baseball players traveling from ballpark to ballpark on the road. Maybe actor Omar Sharif, an expert bridge player who for years has had his name attached to a syndicated column about the game and now has moved forward with the times, lending his moniker to computerized bridge software.
As quaint as the game may seem, plenty of people still enjoy playing bridge. There’s even national groups full of fiercely competitive devotees. One is the American Bridge Association, a nationwide organization that boasts more than 4000 members. Close to 500 of them will descend upon Miami for a ten-day Summer National Tournament from Thursday, July 24, through Saturday, August 2, at the Hotel Inter-Continental. The primarily African-American organization was founded in 1932 as a result of blacks being excluded from the existing (read: white) group of the time.
Anyone can join, though — all you need to be able to do is count to thirteen, says Linda A. Spencer, a member of the ABA since 1978 and the group’s publicity person. Playing involves counting and logic, she notes, adding that it’s an “easy game to learn, but not so easy to master.” Different from parlor players, tournament participants are a serious lot who earn points each time they play what’s known as “duplicate bridge.” A typical game can last three-and-a-half hours. Spencer, a diamond player, has amassed 1300 points. A grand master can claim 20,000 points, something that might take 30 to 40 years to achieve. The ABA currently counts only about a dozen grand masters in its ranks.
It’s no wonder the organization’s membership is dwindling. (Only twenty ABA members reside in Miami.) How can people who don’t have the patience to wait four minutes for their potato to bake in the microwave have the patience to perfect their bridge game over 40 years? Maybe the answer is money? While bridge doesn’t involve gambling, tournament winners can often earn back their entry fees. At $10 per session, that might be quite a haul.
