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World Bridge Series Championship comes to Philadelphia

More than 4,000 bridge players from the United States and 79 other countries are heading to Philadelphia for the game's biggest and most complex tournament, the World Bridge Series Championship, which begins Friday.

Roberta Melman goes through her hand deciding what to bid as her partner, Rhoda Schaffer (right), waits to find out.
Roberta Melman goes through her hand deciding what to bid as her partner, Rhoda Schaffer (right), waits to find out.Read more

More than 4,000 bridge players from the United States and 79 other countries are heading to Philadelphia for the game's biggest and most complex tournament, the World Bridge Series Championship, which begins Friday.

They won't be playing for prize money, because there is none. And not for national pride, either; the teams are mostly transnational. Some will be paid to play by sponsors, but in large-scale competitive bridge - a culture as much as a card game - personal satisfaction is reward enough.

The World Bridge Series Championships are held every four years, and this 13th edition was set for St. Petersburg, Russia, but plans fell through. The World Bridge Federation, organizer of world championships, decided to bring the tournament to the United States for the first time in 16 years, and eventually chose Philadelphia, whose players rallied to have it here. The choice came down to Las Vegas and Philadelphia.

"Truthfully, it was the Philadelphians. They were a big reason the series is here," said Joan Gerard, the White Plains, N.Y., player who is overseeing the championships at the Marriott near City Hall, the site of the games. "They really wanted it."

Bridge, which dates to the 1500s, is often thought of as an old person's game - at least in the United States - but interest has exploded with middle-aged baby boomers who are looking for something new or are revisiting the game they once learned when people were calling for "a fourth" at a college dorm card table.

The American Contract Bridge League - contract bridge is just another name for the game - saw a 400 percent increase in membership last year compared with 2008.

"We hadn't seen that level of growth in about 15 years," said the league's Vicki Campbell, who attributes some of it to well-publicized studies that bridge, like crossword puzzles, may keep brains healthy as people age.

Younger players are making their marks. A newly formed team of University of Pennsylvania students captured a national trophy this year, one of four major bridge trophies taken by Philadelphia teams in 2010. (In the middle of the last century, Philadelphia was a bridge hotbed with stars including the late author-columnist Charles Goren - still the game's most recognizable name.)

Young people are learning bridge at inexpensive walk-in lessons in clubs like Raffles on City Avenue, or the Bridge Club of Center City on Walnut Street near 16th. The clubs, where anyone can play for hours at fees often ranging around $15 or less, "are the front lines of bridge, encouraging people to take part in the sport," says the Center City club's David Rose, who lets teens and young adults play for free.

And bridge on the Internet has exploded - with the largest site, bridgebase.com, partially under the tutelage of enthusiastic player Bill Gates.

At the 16-day World Bridge Series, players at the top of the game will compete - and in a city where pay-to-play has long been a form of political arm-twisting, they are paying to play. Literally. At Saturday's game, for instance, pairs and teams (up to three pairs of partners) will pay up to $450 to play in qualifying sessions and finals.

Ratchet up the competition, and Tuesday's teams vying for the Rosenblum Cup will pay up to $1,500 for the privilege, less if they stay in World Bridge Federation-designated hotels (Marriott's Center City Hotel, the neighboring Courtyard, or Hilton's downtown Garden and Hampton Inns) here, "where big-city excitement meets hometown charm," says the federation's internationally disseminated literature.

Down the street from the world series, a different but related competition unfolds at the Convention Center - a special regional tournament of the American Contract Bridge League, the sanctioning body for American bridge whose 166,500 members live in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Bermuda. "Regional" is oddly defined; anyone can play for just $12 a session - generally a half-day of play - with games for all levels. "We do have games dedicated to beginners," said John Marks, of Langhorne, regional tourney chairman.

Beginners also could play in the World Bridge Series, but they'd be befuddled, although the series has competition for established "juniors," "youngsters," and what the federation calls "young ladies." The big series is unlike other types of world championships: Participants do not have to qualify to enter.

Bridge is a game of both card-playing and communication skills. Each game has two parts - the bidding and the play of cards. Each of four players holds 13 cards - a quarter of a deck.

Players facing each other at the card table are partners in the game, but don't see each other's hands. In rotation, players bid on the strength of their cards. They can name a suit that would automatically trump a hand of four cards placed face-up on the table, or can elect to play without a trump suit.

During the bidding, players also estimate how many of the 13 possible tricks each partnership could win. All the time, partners convey information about their hands by what suits they bid to play and how many tricks they say they'll take, a number that rises as bidding continues.

The bidding ends when three players pass in succession - and the play of cards begins.

"Bridge at a very high level often doesn't look anything like bridge at a lower level," said Bruce Keidan, the media representative for the World Bridge Series, a longtime player, and a former Inquirer staffer. At the finals of a high-level event, he said, bidding occurs behind screens so that partners cannot even send visual cues. After the bidding is over, the screens are pulled up and play begins.

A player for more than six decades, Joan Gerard, the U.S. representative who came to town Wednesday to oversee logistics at the Marriott, said the bridge championship is much more than just about the game. Like many who weave bridge into their lives, she has met and befriended players from all over. "This," she said, "is a community worldwide, matched by nothing."

For now, she is seeing that tables are properly arranged, card hands are properly duplicated for each match, and food and rooms are ready for that worldwide community. In that role, bridge is not in her cards in the next two superbusy weeks.

"I will have a pen, I will have a cell phone, I will have flat shoes, and I'll be putting out fires."