Bridge club hits golden milestone
Group’s 50th anniversary ideal chance to find out more about intricacies of game
[Bridge is] more addictive than golf.
The Levin Bridge Club is celebrating 50 years this month and at any of its gatherings you will be up against scores of years of involvement with this card game. The group in this photo alone has clocked up at least 200 years of playing pleasure between them.
Thirty or 40, even 50 years, of playing bridge is not uncommon, that’s how addictive this game can be.
It seems once you start, you are hooked, and many players have started young.
The Levin Club has been increasing its numbers slowly for the past few decades and puts on games at least four times a week and that includes an online game on Mondays. There is a monthly Friday game, too.
Current club president Mark Kuijten, he has had that role a few times over the years, said for him the bridge club was his second home.
Though Covid has taken its toll on the club, like elsewhere in the world, membership has been stable for years and currently sits at about 107, but more are always welcome.
If you have wondered what it is like to play bridge, the 50th anniversary of the club is a great moment to find out how it all works.
The club owns a building on Tawa St. A former carpentry site, dance studio and sewing studio, it was acquired in 1980 with the purchase financed by club members.
Its members describe bridge as “more addictive than golf”, “it is very social”, and “a challenge”.
Club member’s description
The Horowhenua club scene has its own challenges as secondary school-aged members tend to move on once they leave school and there are few tertiary students in town to make up for the loss of any youngsters, so many members tend to be a bit older.
Bryan Green said the game of bridge keeps his brain active.
“It is different from other card games. While it is competitive, there is strategy involved but it is also about partnership. It is a team event.”
Denis Mallon admits he started bridge later in life, unlike many of the others. “My dad didn’t get it. He used to say, ‘but you can see the whole pack!’ It did not make sense to him.”
Bridge utilises the entire deck of 52 cards and is played in teams of two playing another pair. It is all about tricks. There is contract bridge, auction bridge, and rubber bridge, or duplicate bridge and it is all believed to be a variant of whist, a game played for centuries. Not until some time in the 19th century did bridge in its current form emerge.
Each player has 13 cards and the highest ranked card they possess wins. The positions around the table are named: north, east, south and west. Then there are bids.
It is an international game and the best tricksters can make a living playing bridge. Famous people who love playing bridge include actor Omar Sharif, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, financier Warren Buffet, and tennis star Martina Navratilova.
The Levin Bridge Club gives lessons once a year and they reckon it takes at least 15 training sessions before you can play a game. Once you get the hang of it you can participate at several sessions a week and in club tournaments, which are played at different levels, from junior to intermediate to open.
“We go to other clubs to play too,”
said Dorothy Mackay.
There is a national tournament and a national team.
Levin tends to run four tournaments each year, which attract players from surrounding towns.
“If you want to you play in Wellington, Feilding, Palmerston North and Whanganui, you can.”
Most playing sessions take up to three hours during which decks of cards and players rotate around the room and in the end your score on a particular set of cards is compared to that of others, to decide who wins.
The scoring is now computerised, making life a lot easier, though for an
outsider the whole thing may remain mysterious.
You can learn to play online via NZbridge: https://www. nzbridge.co.nz/onlinelessons-and-improver-classes. html or https://www. playbridge.co.nz/
If you want to know more, the club is open to the community to come and watch on Tuesday, July 19, at 1pm. You can find the club at 17 Tawa St, Levin.
The club has a website: http:/ /levinbridge.nz/