The robots bridging the gap
As a late convert to bridge, Michael Clayton reveals how he is adapting to his online robotic partners
Michael Clayton takes on both human and robotic players for a hand or two of online bridge
We had a War of the Worlds moment when we discovered robots are not unbeatable
BE careful. There are robots among us!’ Life is now so surreal in our pandemic world that I received this warning without a tremor when playing bridge recently. It was a jokey message from a lady opponent, but she said the truth. Nowadays, we play bridge against, or with, robots as a matter of course. They fill in gaps when we are unable to make up the full complement of four people on one table.
Gone are the cups of tea and gossip in the cosy clubhouse of my local bridge club. The many happy days we enjoyed there are now a cherished memory of the coronavirus-free world to which we all yearn to return. Merely meeting friends in the club was a treat—as long as they did not wipe the floor with us too often. At £2.50 per session, with free coffee and biscuits, it was cheaper than anything else in an 86-year-old pensioner’s life.
The contagion risks of face-to-face bridge were obvious, another recreational blow, but bridge is anything but mentally relaxing: it is one of the world’s most competitive games. ‘There is no such thing as a friendly game of bridge,’ proclaims a spoof notice in our club.
My wife and I now play at home in club duplicate bridge tournaments on a laptop and an ipad, carefully keeping our screens to ourselves and sometimes sitting in separate rooms. It could not be more different from clenching old-fashioned cards in our fists, playing against friends across green baize tables in the superb, purpose-built premises of Stamford Bridge Club, Lincolnshire, one of the largest and most active in the country. The older generation, who make up most of the bridge-playing fraternity, have adapted remarkably by switching to online bridge all over the world. Fortunately, the tools were in place. Many already practised bridge online, but the thought of sitting through a full tournament of at least 16 games, staring intently at a screen, was daunting, made even more alarming by facing up to those robots.
When they appear on the screen against us, they seem boringly normal at first, merely playing a desperately dull game of doing exactly the right thing. However, we had a War of the Worlds moment when we discovered that the robots are not unbeatable. We cheered at home when we overcame two robots in one game, but, sadly, the damn things robotically won the tournament overall.
We owe a lot to the English Bridge Union, which set up an online network across the country, and to our senior club members who act as directors and make it happen. We were encouraged to enrol with Bridge Base Online (www.bridgebase.com), an American-built system with amazing versatility, enabling competitive tournaments, private matches and practice sessions. It deals hands of cards to each player, sets up the game, keeps the score and shows the results.
The pressure of finishing games within time limits seems far more relentless online. At first, I became glazed staring at the cards on the laptop screen, praying I clicked the mouse button on the right ones at the right time. I am a bit slow on the ‘may I undo?’ button, which gets you out of such errors.
Then there is a whole range of domestic hazards: phone calls of great importance or precious deliveries to be met. More bizarre examples I have heard of include coffee flooding the laptop or the family cat jumping onto the keyboard. When technology collides with the real world, it can be game over.
As lockdowns stretch on interminably, we have become happier in our online battlefield of the mind. There is an Australian-made system called Realbridge (www.realbridge. online), which offers the chance to see and hear opponents. Another system, Trickster (www.trickstercards.com), is user-friendly, too. However, we are accustomed to Bridge Base, with its chat box in which we exchange comments with our opponents; too often, it’s ‘well done’, when they beat us. The robots refrain from commenting, which is just as well, because they would be scathing. We are enjoying ourselves, but we shall know Covid-19 is finally gone when we can return to the conviviality of the clubhouse, hoping that forever more the online alternative
is ‘a bridge too far’.