In 1938, three bridge books - 'Complete Contract Bridge,' 'Culbertson's Own New Contract Bridge' and 'Five Suit Bridge' - made this newspaper's best-seller list. It's about hunting, chasing, nuance, deception, reward, danger, cooperation and, on a good day, victory.īridge used to be very popular. And as Warren would tell you, playing bridge is like running a business.

The Warren Buffett you know from business is now the same Warren Buffett I know at the bridge table. As we got to know each other, and as our partnership solidified, things changed. Yet, when we first played bridge, we got trampled by our opponents because Warren deferred to me, and I was afraid to make mistakes. I play with Warren Buffett, the investor and founder of Berkshire Hathaway. Once a strong partnership is formed, it provides a platform for individual creativity, allowing players to inject their own personalities into the game. Trust, communication and patience are the essential attributes of winning at bridge. Above all else, a successful bridge player must be a great partner. Why is this? Because computers can understand math, but they can't understand people - at least not yet.īridge is a partnership game.

While computers can now routinely beat all but a handful of chess grandmasters, they can't come close to outplaying the world's finest bridge players. This melding of the former with the latter is what sets bridge apart, not only from other card games, but also from board games like chess. But a huge component of bridge is also very human. It's part science, part math, part logic, part reason. It's an elegant game, full of strategy and tactics. This is a huge decrease from the 1940's when 44 percent of American households had at least one active bridge player.īridge should be popular. Of these 25 million adult bridge players, only 3 million play the game at least once a week. These people are well educated (79 percent have a college degree), affluent (the average income is $62,000 per year), primarily white (71 percent) and older (the average age is 51). But think again.Īccording to the American Contract Bridge League, 25 million Americans over the age of 18 know how to play bridge. You would think that with those kinds of numbers, the card game called bridge would also be getting a lift. And according to, an independent research site, about two million people play poker online every month. By some counts, as many as 80 million people in the United States play poker. Games like Texas hold'em and five-card stud are spreading like wildfire among high school and college students. Online poker games and television poker championships have exploded in popularity.

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