At the moment, I am on Bridge Base Online, watching the final match of the Cambrose Trials in Ireland. I don’t completely understand the bidding (for instance, I play that opening 2S shows 5-11 HCP and 6 spades, while at least one of the four partnerships plays that this shows a weak hand and 5-5 in spades and a minor). However, the hands are fascinating and the play is incredible. Also, I’ve got BBO logging all of these hands. I think I’ll rig them up and have people play them this coming Thursday. What fun!
Why, how and when did you get so into bridge? You should play some wei chi/go with me! Now that’s a real game :P
Um… I learned how to play in the summer after 8th grade. I really got into it after I cofounded the HMC Bridge Club sophomore year. I joined the American Contract Bridge League this past January, and became a Junior Master at the end of August.
I’ve tried playing go, but found it too monotonous. Sorry :-)
As for why I really got into bridge, it’s a very mathematical, logical game. To play it well, you need to count cards, you need to compute probabilities on the fly. There is a surprising amount of teamwork: you can’t do anything without the help of your partner. And there are some absolutely amasing, clever bids (such as Puppet Stayman) and plays (such as Vienna Coups) that you can do, but only if you’re really paying attention and watching for them. It’s a social game, and some of the fun is in chatting with the other players, but its a very strategic game. Competitive bridge is nothing like the bridge your grandmother plays around the kitchen table… y’know, except in the actual rules (the strategies are much more developed).
I’d guess that it takes about 2-3 months to learn the basics well, but you will never, ever run out of new things to learn in bridge. For instance, just yesterday I learned the “Rule of 7” which predicts how long you should hold up a winner in your opponents’ suit when you declare a notrump contract.
Go monotonous? Go/Wei Chi is the mathematical, logical game! Deep Blue has beat the world’s best chess players, but the complexity of Go is s.t. that no program has ever been made that can play at above an intermediate level.
Plus, like many systems of true complexity, the rules of Go can be learned in under 5 minutes.
Let me rephrase: the actual rules of bridge can be learned by playing one game (this typically takes 5 minutes, but your first game you’ll be asking questions and might take 10 or 15 minutes). Learning any basic strategy is what takes so long. Regardless of the bidding system you’re trying to learn (Standard American, 2-Over-1, Strong Club and its variants, Acol, Goren, etc), there is so much to get the hang of that you just can’t learn it quickly. People write entire series of books on basic strategy, both for bidding and offensive/defensive play. I assume that people have written whole books on go as well. In this respect, I believe that bridge and go are quite similar.
Ironically enough, no one has been able to make a bridge-playing computer program that is better than average, either. The best one out there is called Bridge Baron. I consider myself an intermediate player, and I’m already slightly better than the Baron. It seems like bridge and go are quite similar here as well.
The main difference between the two games, in my opinion, is that go has 2 kinds of identical playing pieces (black and white), and a single playing board. Bridge has 4 classes of playing pieces (4 suits), but each one is unique (suit and rank). On top of that, there are two distinct parts of the game: bidding uses a set of bids, only some of which are available at any given time (for instance, you can only double if one of your opponents made the last bid), and this bidding impacts the play (it decides what suit is trump and who has to take how many tricks, as well as who has to play with their hand face-up on the table). Because of this, there is a large variety of ways that games can start out, regardless of the strategy you’re using. In go, on the other hand, assuming neither player completely changes his or her strategy every game (and I feel that this is a valid assumption, since you will presumably use the best strategy you know for every game), each game of go is pretty much like the last. This is what I find monotonous about it.
In go, on the other hand, assuming neither player completely changes his or her strategy every game (and I feel that this is a valid assumption, since you will presumably use the best strategy you know for every game), each game of go is pretty much like the last.
And if you are walking to class one day and and stumble upon a crack one one part of the sidewalk, falling onto a stray butterfly, well then, you’re bound to fall onto a butterfly every day you go to class! Herein lie your misconceptions.