LIFESTYLE

A sure way to ‘trump’ Thanksgiving: 5,000 bridge players converging in Providence

Posted 11/27/14

While most Americans are at home trying to get through Thanksgiving dinner without alienating most of their relatives, devotees of bridge will be gathering at the Rhode Island Convention Center for a …

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LIFESTYLE

A sure way to ‘trump’ Thanksgiving: 5,000 bridge players converging in Providence

Posted

While most Americans are at home trying to get through Thanksgiving dinner without alienating most of their relatives, devotees of bridge will be gathering at the Rhode Island Convention Center for a rubber or two, or actually thousands of hands of bridge.

According to a press release, more than 5,000 players from 15 nations are expected to attend the Fall North American Bridge Championships in Providence. The NABCs are hosted by the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) and are held three times a year across the U.S. “NABC Providence” is being held at the Rhode Island Convention Center from Nov. 27 to Dec. 7, with games beginning at 9 a.m. and continuing throughout each day, ending with 11:30 p.m. sessions.

Every year, thousands of bridge players gather together on Thanksgiving Day to celebrate their particular holiday and, more importantly, to kick off the final of three annual tournaments known as the North American Bridge Championships (NABC).

“There is certainly a family-oriented aspect of bridge, and many players form tight-knit groups,” said Robert Hartman, CEO of ACBL. “We’re coming to Providence to host the best players in the game, but also to give thanks for all we have, which for our members includes the ability to play the game they love so much.”

Tournament organizers claim that NABC participants are expected to inject about $8.5 million into economic activity for Providence and are projected to fill up more than 13,000 hotel rooms over the 11-day event.

“We expect this tournament to be a real boon for the local economy,” said John Gibbons, executive director of the Rhode Island Sports Commission. “It’s great to have our hotels full and restaurants and shops busy over the Thanksgiving holiday.”

ACBL is encouraging Providence-area residents to attend “Learn Bridge in a Day?” - a session that teaches the basics of the game to beginners - on Sunday, Nov. 30, from 1 to 6 p.m. at the Rhode Island Convention Center. The $20 class aims to educate novice bridge players and to promote the game to new audiences.

But they won’t be looking to recruit Al Seguin of Cranston. He’s already hooked on the game, for about 20 years.

“My wife Arlene made me start,” said the 66-year-old on Monday. “She lost her usual partner around then and she asked me to try it. I’ve been playing ever since.”

Been playing well, according to some local bridge players we spoke with.

“His partner is Joe Brouillard, the chairman of the Providence Club,” said Bob Garfinkel, who is president of the Warwick Bridge Club in Buttonwoods.

Sequin and Brouillard will be playing on a relatively high level this week, but there are very few people who could be considered professional bridge players.

“It a lot like golf,” said Garfinkel. “Most people play be cause they love the game. One way that people make money with the game is to have people pay them to play with them. That’s whatever the going price is.”

Garfinkel has maintained his own bridge habit and made a living running the Warwick Bridge Club, which he has been doing for about 40 years.

“We don’t have members in the usual sense,” he said. “People just drop by and pay to play a few games with other people.” Garfinkel charges for the use of the room and the tables and a congenial atmosphere. But at least one sign pinned to a bulletin board hints at the passion some people bring to the game. It says, “For the love of the game…Play nice.”

Some people would infer that bridge players are somewhat lonesome folk because they traditionally hold their tournaments over the Thanksgiving week, and they would be correct, at least to a degree.

“There is certainly a family-oriented aspect of bridge, and many players form tight-knit groups,” said Robert Hartman, CEO of ACBL. “We’re coming to Providence to host the best players in the game, but also to give thanks for all we have, which for our members includes the ability to play the game they love so much.”

Al Seguin says the average bridge player’s age is around 71, “and there are not a lot of young people taking it up, at least not in Rhode Island, and I don’t think that’s going to change. They are much more into computer games.”

There are not large purses involved in the tournaments, although the ACBL Charitable Foundation will be presenting a $5,000 check to Edesia Global Nutrition Solutions, a nonprofit based in Providence that aims to reduce childhood malnutrition. Alex and Ani are sponsoring “NABC Providence.”

“Providence has a rich bridge history dating back to Harold Sterling Vanderbilt, great-grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who invented the rules for contract bridge,” said Brouillard. “We’re excited to host this celebration of the game of bridge.”

According to their press releases, the ACBL is the largest bridge organization in the world, serving 167,000 members and 3,200 bridge clubs and sanctioning 1,100 sectional and regional tournaments annually. The ACBL’s three North American Bridge Championships each attract up to 6,500 players representing every state in the United States, Canada and about 20 other foreign countries.

In spite of the demographics, the organization claims bridge “attracts players of all ages and walks of life - from Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to poker star Phil Gordon.”

Bob Garfinkel is not so sure. He says about 100 people regularly come through his storefront club in Buttonwoods each week.

“They are trying to attract younger people, and every once in a while some young people from the local colleges show some interest, but mostly we do have an older crowd.”

According to the website of the English Bridge Union, the game can trace its ancestry at least to the early 16th century in England in early forms of whist played under a variety of names, such as triumph, trump, ruff, slam, whisk and swabbers, whisk, but mostly just “whist.”

The game was popular by the middle of the 17th century, but it was not until 1742 that the first book about whist appeared. That was Edmond Hoyle’s famous Short Treatise on Whist, a best-seller with many pirated editions.

The first game of “duplicate whist” was apparently played in London in 1857. It was intended to demonstrate the advantage of skillful play. Good players were deliberately pitted against poor opposition and the good players won, leading proponents to say this procedure all but eliminated luck from winning but it was largely ignored. The United States was ahead in extending the duplicate method. Duplicate whist was played privately in 1880 and in a club in 1882. The first interclub match was played in Philadelphia in 1883, and private play became public contest. The American Whist League lasted 40 years before bridge supplanted it.

The probability that modern bridge was of Turkish or Russian origin is supported by several sources that said bridge was the principal card game played in Istanbul. Further evidence came from a man who lived in Constantinople in 1879 or 1880 and remembered “a very interesting game called Britch, a game that became very popular in all clubs and dethroned the game of whist.”

A respected authority, Thierry Depaulis of Paris, in his Histoire du Bridge, concluded that bridge came out of the diplomatic community in Istanbul and was spread by wealthy travelers to western Europe. In 1925 Harold S. Vanderbilt, of Newport, perfected a new form of the game and succeeded so well that his game of contract bridge became the staple diet of card players everywhere.

In the 1920s the game was adopted in the major New York clubs. In 1929 the American Auction Bridge League dropped “Auction” from its title and it became clear that contract had won. Committees from the United States, England and France created the first International Code in 1932.

In 1930 Ely Culbertson published his Contract Bridge Blue Book, which became a best-seller and appeared in annual revisions for four years. It was Culbertson who was most responsible for the wide vogue the game attained.

Although Culbertson's was the first widely accepted system of bidding, it became outmoded. Charles Goren’s methods became standard in the United States after 1950 but are based firmly on Culbertson. From 1937 onward, the American Contract Bridge League had the field to itself and, apparently, has managed to keep interest alive.

“It will survive as long as it has some personality to draw people in,” said Garfinkel. “There are always new things happening in bridge.”

For more information about the ACBL, visit www.acbl.org. Reserve a seat for a bridge class by visiting http://bit.ly/1wgNbCa.

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