BBO Discussion Forums: Bridge dying? - BBO Discussion Forums

I'm not as alarmist as some with regards to the high average age of bridge players which is often reported as 69 for the ACBL and I wouldn't expect it to be much lower than that in Australia.

On my anecdotal observations, a lot of people don't take up the game (or don't start playing with any regularity) until they reach retirement age or have got a lot of other significant lifetime milestones of family and career behind them. With life expectancy increasing and retirement age decreasing there is always going to be a substantial population of oldies to take up the game, pay membership dues, pay table fees, buy bridge books and play in tournaments or online.

I'm all in favour of geting younger people into the game, but the bread and butter for the survival of game will continue to be the older demographic who have the time, money and social reasons to play bridge. The apparent fact the the average age of the bridge population is increasing does not mean the game is dying.

mycroft, on Dec 8 2009, 03:41 PM, said:

Yes, but universal goals usually have more appeal than personal goals. How many times have we heard people countdown various colored points to get LM? Hell I did it, and I had all my gold at my first regional.

No reason the ACBL can't take those goals you mentioned, add another 40 or so, and add titles/ranks/stuff like that to them. Instead we have 1 rank which has specific requirements that people work towards, and everything after that is merely "how many total points do you have" which is pretty meh given how TERRIBLE many people over 10,000 are.

Can either parallel existing ranks like:

Silver Master = 1000 points
Silver+ Master = 1000 points, 15 platinum, 100 gold/silver, 3(5?) regional wins of flight B or better
Gold Master = 2500 points
Gold+ Master = 2500 points, 50 platinum, 250 gold, 3 regional wins of flight A/bracket 1

etc

Or just make a bunch of ranks/achievements that exist separate from the existing bronze/silver/gold/etc system. These can be completely separate, so that you have a really KO rank/title but a lower pairs one if you focus mostly on KOs. Or vice versa. I dunno, it seems like a no brainer from a marketing standpoint, that also has the nice effect (imo) of more bridge players. Some of these who would have quit will be bad, but not all of them (imo).

Bridge is dying:
Too much Alert procedure.
Law and rules helps too much to the defensive team.
Standardize the various system notes to establish the non-alert bidding method.
Deviation from non-standard system notes will only require alerts.

One thing about the youth/senior bridge discussion:

How many of today's senior "newcomers" learned bridge (at least coffeetable bridge) in university, couldn't keep it up when they got a job/family, and see a beginners class after retirement and think "you know, I enjoyed that back then, I should see if I still would"? I know there's a lot from personal discussion - in fact, I'm one of them, even though you have to change "retirement" to "go back for grad school", so it was only a 4 year hiatus.

Even if they don't become LM at 30/TD at 25/Tournament rated Director at 33 and play or direct three times a week, even if they never play a duplicate game after their classes, even if we lose them in a year - it is much more likely that when I'm over median age, I'll see them at the table, after *they* come back when their kids are grown if we catch them now.

mycroft, on Dec 11 2009, 05:12 PM, said:

Agree.

I am afraid we won't have any bridge in UK in 30 years except for the big cities which have enough eccentrics to form a single club. Eccentrics who live in towns or villages will play online.

Bridge will survive in Poland and probably a few other countries.

Celebrity Poker Challenge was a big hit in UK, even tho the celebs were people like Sir Clive Sinclair, inventor of the ZX80 and the futuristic Sinclair C5
http://en.wikipedia....iki/Sinclair_C5

We need celebrity support urgently, or the game will die out

Tony

I think 'WE' the collective 'WE' bridge players are to blame for the game dying;

Unless 'WE' actively encourage younger players to join in and 'Nurture' them

For a young player, it's very difficult to find people to play bridge with (live), and it doesn't help when he walks into a local bridge club and find that everyone inside are old enough to be his grandparents... people like to associate with others of their own age; when this and playing bridge just doesn't mix, the normal action is probably stop playing it.

Old York, on Dec 11 2009, 07:53 PM, said:

If a game can't survive on its own merits, it deserves to die...

Bridge is a good game because its a hard game.

Pardon me if I don't want to bother with idiots who play the game because they think it lends them social status or like to ape some celebrity...

I rather have fewer players, but ones who actually appreciate the game for what it is.

hrothgar, on Dec 11 2009, 06:21 PM, said:

I disagree here. Maybe this is naive of me, but I think bridge is such a great game that if you get people playing for any reason then many of them will see that and continue playing bridge for life for the 'right' reasons. That's why, although learning bridge is difficult, people who completely learn how to play invariably love it.

jdonn, on Dec 11 2009, 06:55 PM, said:

So do I. While I guess I like bridge because its hard, I'm not an elitist and I think bridge could use a shot in the arm from some celebrity exposure.

the key phrase is, I think, "making them feel welcome". When I first started playing club bridge I was told they will eat you alive (that's fine, losing is not a problem) and that they are very cliquey- a lot of sour faced old people making you feel uncomfortable, unwelcome, "mind you p's & q's etc.
The sad fact is there are a smattering of these sour-faced grumblers in every club and they need to be told that they are putting potential new players off.
Bridge is in a similar position to croquet: both marvellous games that are seen by outsiders as arcane, outdated, quaint, old, boring, too hard, too easy.
I take every opportunity in conversation to extol the virtue of the 2 greatest games in the world: I don't care if I am mocked, laughed at or ignored: I have introduced lots of people to both games.
Every bridge player should do likewise.

ps try association croquet. don't just settle for playing the second best mind/skill game there is!

Okay, so I'm a little late to the party here. But for what it's worth:

I'm growing a little frustrated with the ACBL's hand-wringing over the scarcity of young players. At the junior reception at each national tournament, the few young people typically in attendance are bombarded by Board members who beg us to share the magical secret of how to popularize bridge among our friends. But as was explained so clearly by so many of the above posters, the first step is hardly a mystery: hire a serious marketing firm.

Sure, there are other ways to reach out immediately to youth. But to me, it seems sadly clear that the reason that we have not successfully reached out to young people is that there is no real desire among either ACBL members or their leaders to do so. "Senior Regionals" are wildly popular, as are senior events in general. And even in forums where young players are theoretically welcome, the environment is hardly welcoming.

Many of my bridge friends are talented players between the age of 14 and 35 or so who have yet to achieve national acclaim. They are enthusiastic about the game and play regularly at local and regional (and some national) tournaments. Despite the inevitable "it's so nice to see young people" the first few times they play at a club, the locals often turn against these players. They psych too much. They claim too early. They play weird conventions, like transfers in competitive auctions. Some of them play... (gasp)... something called relay precision, and who the hell knows what's going on in those auctions. And don't even get me started on the ones who sometimes have to stifle a giggle when they play dummy. In short, they win a lot, and they do things that "aren't bridge." Whatever that means. The local ladies and gentlemen, bless their hearts, do not like playing against these young people. They fear them and find them disrespectful.

Okay, so many of these complaints are unique to really bad (or really cranky) fields. My friends should just play in more tournaments, you say? Sure! Two years ago, a few friends and I were playing the side events at the Reno nationals. Through a concerted effort (not a joke), we had accumulated approximately 280 points a piece. Life masterhood narrowly eluded us, and we were on a quest to achieve it before we died (or graduated). Here were our choices, as presented by the directors: we could play in bracket 13 of a 13-bracket KO ("our bracket"), or we could play in bracket 1. Ask us today, and we would take bracket 1 in a heartbeat. But at the time, we weren't quite ready to face the nation's top experts who happened to be out of national events that day. We begged to be allowed to play bracket 2, or 3, or 4, to no avail. So we entered bracket 13, "our bracket." Three out of four of our opponents withdrew at the half. Several complained to the directors, as one of our pairs was playing an absolutely absurd relay precision system. They were upset not because the system was illegal, but because we were playing it in bracket 13 for pete's sake. We won. Whoop-di-do. No one was happy. We would never get those two days of our lives back again. And the future was hardly brighter: unless we could find teammates with quite a few points, we would languish for years in the lowest brackets, or simply lose right away in bracket 1.

This prospect nearly scared me away from the game. Which is saying something. When I described his problem to various ACBL executives, it was explained to me that my problem really only affected a very small demographic. The bigger problem, it seems, occurs with teams that have accumulated too many points for their skill level and who seek to "play down." As I understand it, the ACBL is currently undertaking a concerted effort to address THAT issue (teams of LOLs who justifiably seek entrance into lower brackets), but there has been little or no movement on the flip side of the question.

This has turned into a rant. If you are still reading, my sincerest apologies. And if you are still reading and happen to have some authority re the bracket problem, please please please get on that thanks.

dbdance10, on 2011-May-21, 02:07, said:

Quote

Well. You obviously discovered your own answer.

If you aspire to playing well, a few hours of competition against players of the same standard and better than you is worth FAR more than a couple of days beating up players worse than you. In fact the latter, if anything, will worsen your game and make you lax.

I appreciate the problem however.

Nick

Bridge has never felt more alive to me than while kibbing the recent U.S. trials. If this is what dying feels like, shoot me.

dbdance10, on 2011-May-21, 02:07, said:

I started duplicate just two short years ago. I'm now 31. As easily one of the youngest players at my club, I hear where you are coming from, but I say so what? When I first started, I had no idea what a psych was, or why my opponents were alerting all the time, or that I could ask what their alerts meant. But I didn't care, it never offended me. All it made me do was want to learn more. I learned what to do in these situations because of being exposed to them, not by being shielded from them. I would never want to play in a game where psychs were illegal, or you could only use SAYC. All that is doing is stifling the learning experience. I for one would be bored to tears playing in a game like this.

I admit, duplicate bridge is scary the first time you play it. You have no idea what a matchpoint is, or that by missing the one overtrick you could have gotten, you end up with a bottom board. If you were introduced via rubber bridge, you rattle off your 9 tricks in 3NT and are happy, but when you find out everyone else made 10 by taking the finesse and you get a 0 on the board, you are crushed. BUT you learn... you learn and you get better.

The first time you play against precision, and RHO opens 1C, and you are holding AQxxxx of clubs, you have no clue what to do... but you learn... you get better.

Now, there are those who never learn. They never get better. There is some sort of innate card sense that you need to play this game, and you either have it or you don't... it's not something you can learn. Those are the people that get scared away from the game because of the "sharks".

Larger clubs have no problem with this. The good young 0-300 players end up playing open games, and the ones who just like to play will play NLM games. Its the smaller clubs that only have open sessions where we end up losing the people who just want to play NLM.

Unfortunately, those are the people who keep the game alive. If all we attract is the young superstars, or people that "get" the game, we will languish. For every one JLall or Joe Grue, there's 1000 who will never make it... or not even want to play at that level. Those are the ones we need to figure out how to get and keep.

dbdance10, on 2011-May-21, 02:07, said:

It's funny how it doesn't feel like a minority to us. I've heard stories along this line so many times and it's happened to, as well. Minority or not, that does not justify taking no action to fix this problem.

Bridge has no allure to big $ like poker or golf so young adults who are 20ish have little interest in investing time and effort into an activity that appears to have no possibility of a career or profession no matter how good they become at it. Uday has the right approach by appealing to the 40-60 age bracket first. They are career and fiancial secure enough to pursue what is deemed a leasurely past time.

Children as early as grade three are capable of learning bridge. I'm sure that one ex-primary teacher and par excellent bridge author will attest to this. Attention span can be an issue and extra motivation is a prerequist. Bridge doesn't have to be complicated at this stage. Get them to enjoy the game with a simplified version. Jude Goodwin's book, Teach Me to Play, is a great resource if it was updated to today's SAYC's weak approach and made available for reproduction to educators.

The ACBL has addressed the school age group but needs to sell the program to school boards. School boards in general shy at enrichment programs that entail cards. They do not however with chess. Chess therefore reaches far more young people than does bridge. It takes an adament bridge player in the educational field to promote bridge and sell it. Toronto and area has such a person with a great program. Attend the Toronto Easter Regional and you'll see just how successful Flo has been.
This is one reason District 2 has appointed her as Education Corrodinator.

Bridge will be "dead" in the US in 25 years tops, there shouldn't be any debate about this.

I would love to see ACBL age demographics from thirty years ago compare to today's. I don't think there is a noticeable difference.