CityView Magazine

56 | January/February 2015 Delores and Vance Neal were intro- duced to bridge when their kids were little. "We called it party bridge," Delores Neal said. "It was a reason to get together with people once the kids were in bed and be social." e Neals went on hiatus from bridge as the kids were growing up and they were playing tennis more o en. When they got into boating, they started playing bridge when they traveled and the couple quickly rekin- dled their love of the game. "It makes your mind think," Vance Neal said. "You have to keep up with the whole table. It's all about making the hand work to make the contract work." e contract is the result of the so- phisticated bidding process at the start of each hand. It's a complex system of counting cards and communicating with your partner—and the oppo- nents. Once three boards are stacked on each table, time starts and conversa- tion halts. Players pull cards from bid- ding boxes and place them on the ta- ble. With bids such as "one spade" and "two hearts," it seems simple enough, but each bid describes the point value and suit content of a particular hand. In fact, the bidding and auction systems are so intricate the ACBL re- quires players to fi ll out convention cards that explain their bidding style to everyone else at the table. With proponents like Microso founder Bill Gates and investor War- ren Buff et at the forefront, the move- ment to save bridge is gaining atten- tion—and funds. Gates and Buff et have personally donated over $1 mil- lion to the cause. Playing for Points Keeney runs the ursday game at Highland Country Club. It's an ACBL sanctioned game, which means play- ers score masterpoints for their wins. ey play duplicate bridge, a variation of the game in which the exact same hands are played by more than one ta- ble. Each 52-card deck is shuffl ed and dealt into four hands of thirteen cards each. Individual hands are placed into four slots on a board labeled with car- dinal directions—North, South, East and West. A er each game, the hands go back into the same position as the board moves through the room. is system levels the playing fi eld, forc- ing players to skillfully play the hands they're dealt. "You win by doing better on a board than everyone else," Keeney explained. "Duplicate bridge isn't dependent on good cards. Everyone else in the room gets the same cards, so you can't com- plain about having a bad hand." Bridge is as much about partnership as it is about cards. e North/South partners are considered the hosts of the table: it's South's responsibility to position the board correctly and North's job to score the hands, a task that's gotten easier over the years. " ings have changed so much, but the game itself is the same," Keeney said. When Keeney fi rst started playing, long sheets were used to keep and cal- culate fi nal scores—quite a feat con- sidering each person is playing against everyone else in the room. Later, the process changed to where results from paper scoring sheets were manually entered into a computer. Now, wire- less scoring systems allow the table score to be immediately sent from handheld devices at each table to the main computer. e system tracks each board and gives results as soon as the last hand is played, so everyone leaves knowing how he or she stacked up against the rest of the room. Like a lot of others in the room, "We have certain conventions we play, but everyone at the table with us knows that," Vance Neal said. "You With proponents like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and investor Warren Buffet at the forefront, the movement to save bridge is gaining attention—and funds. Gates and Buffet have personally donated over $1 million to the cause.

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