I never “got” bridge. The game was as foreign to me as the language of Mandarin. It always seemed too complicated for a game of cards, for heaven’s sakes.
Give me a hand of Spades or bid whist, and I’m set. I remember playing bid whist many nights at college with my girlfriends in our dorm or in the living room of the boys dorm trying to beat them. Both bid whist and Spades have their own rules – bid whist is a bit more complicated – but it doesn’t take four years of college to learn how to play them (or bluff them, which is a necessary and important part of the game).
Imagine my surprise recently when I learned that bid whist, Spades and bridge are all cousins, derived from the age-old game of whist. That English game dates back to the 18th and 19th century. Wikipedia called it a “trick-taking game,” which was Greek to me until I realized that a trick was what we called a hand (or round of play) in bid whist.
And when I finally actually read how bridge was played – the simple version minus the personal strategy we all come up with in card games – and deciphered the language, I understood it because I know bid whist. And there are lots of black folks who play bid whist at family and friend gatherings, and in tournaments. Like bridge, they play it seriously and some take no prisoners.
Maybe there is hope for me to learn bridge. And I could go play it with professionals (and possibly some amateurs) over the next week or so while the World Bridge Series Championship is in Philadelphia. According to my local newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, 4,000 bridge players from 80 countries are duking it out. The tournament is held every four years, and this one was supposed to have been played in Russia but plans went awry.
Organized by the World Bridge Federation, this is the game’s largest tournament. President Obama sent an email message to the group; his grandparents were bridge players, according to a New York Times story.
But that’s not the only game in town. The American Contract Bridge League, an organization for American bridge players, is holding a regional tournament that I could play in for $12 – if I knew how to play. I could play in the big one, too, since you don’t have to qualify.
Interestingly, a few days before I read about the tournaments in my local newspaper, I picked up a box lot at auction that appeared to be someone’s bridge paraphernalia. It contained the following:
A deck of cards in a lovely orange John Wanamaker Philadelphia box. Wanamaker’s was Philadelphia’s premier department store, one of the first in the city and the country when it opened in the 19th century, and was absorbed by Hecht’s and then Macy’s in 1995. The deck of cards has no jokers, which the owner apparently discarded since they are not used in bridge. No way, though, would you play bid whist without them.
A deck of Congress playing cards in a nice beige paper case with dogs on both decks. Made by the U.S. Playing Card Co., Congress is the company’s standard bridge-card brand. The two decks contain jokers.
A deck of cards – name missing from the front but maker identified on the Ace of Spades as the U.S. Playing Card Co. – with a flower arrangement on the two decks. No jokers.
A black Bakelite Kem Cameo card case
A 1967 Bridge Bidding Guide, brought to you by Cepacol Mouthwash, sold for 50 cents.
A typed sheet with a “Grace Before Meal”
Two scoring sheets
Grand Slam! bridge pamphlet/guide by Charles H. Goren
An advertising card from Modern Laundry in Philadelphia titled “Tricks Bid and Made.”
Point-Count Bidding pamphlet from the Association of American Playing Card Mfrs. Point-count bidding – used to evaluate a bridge hand – was popularized by Goren in 1949.
The owner of these items was apparently serious about the game, likely someone whom we’d consider a traditional older player. The Inquirer story, though, noted that the image no longer existed: More middle-aged Baby Boomers and younger folks are taking to the card game.
As for me, I’ll stick with bid whist, whose history I found rather interesting. It seemed that Africans forced into slavery changed the game of whist into something they liked better: bid whist. By the 1920s, Pullman porters played it to pass the time, and the lingo “going all the way,” “running a Boston,” “going downtown” and “going uptown’ came from them.
They also bequeathed the trash-talking that anyone who has played bid whist has done themselves or has had to sit through. It’s an honored part of the game, a way to rattle your opponents. Is trash-talking allowed in bridge? Probably not.
What are your bridge or bid whist stories?
I remember my mother and her girlfriends playing bid whist on the porch or at each others house starting at 7pm until 5 or 6 am in the morning when I was little. The was the best time because back in the day you would see all of these black women getting together going to different houses cooking, laughing and us children getting to stay up all night watching our mothers’ having a good time. Those days are gone. We would be outside all times of the night. We would pack our pajamas going to a house to watch them play cards. They took no prisoners and they would have the cans of change having a good time. I wish we had those days again. You didn’t have to worry about anybody shooting you over nothing stupid. My mother said there would be guys coming by to watch them play bid whist. My father loved it cause when we were gone he could have the whole house to himself. Those were good times.