[shubi]

Last Friday afternoon felt like i need some human contact, so end up at Friday afternoon bridge club, good club gets about 16 17 tables. Found a long lost friend and formed partnership. Game start we played few rounds, next round we change table sat down we all pull our cards from bidding box. bidding begains my lho bids 1 h and spoke it I was little puzzled why he was not using bidding box, now my partner bids 2d and spoke out now i am all puzzled my partner realized it and said she is blind you must say it. ok for first time i noticed all hands are Brilled. now she bids i bid all bid she is in 3nt. Before my lead dummy tells her dummys hand and play started we are all calling our card. She makes 3nt with a End play. I am amazed next 2 boards think WHO IS BLIND US OR SHE.

[helene_t]

Yes, this is amazing, I wonder if I would still be able to play bridge if I lost my eyesight. They used to have a blind guy at my father's club, he did fine.

Some years ago some players at the Dutch site StepBridge decided to make a surprise party for a blind fellow at his birthday. They aranged for three well-known senior World Class players to log into the blind guy's table and having one of the kibbers calling him and telling him what he had in his hand and such (there is no screen-reader support for the StepBridge client).

[barmar]

I wonder if being blind might actually help make you a better bridge player. You're forced to remember the cards in your hand and dummy, and the way to do this is to recognize patterns and analyze the hands.

However, if you're not a decent bridge player to begin with, the extra burden could make it too hard, so you're likely to give up. So by natural selection, blind bridge players are probably either very good or just so addicted to the game that they'll play it under any circumstances. I'd hope that if I lost my sight, I'd find myself in the first category rather than the second.