[billw55]

nah, I don't mind. I just didn't know it was funny. My wife tells me that I am not funny when I am trying to be, maybe there is a relation there.

[nigel_k]

I have no idea why more young people don't play, though I suspect the fact that many of them are unaware the game even exists could be relevant.

But it does seem as though these threads tend to take the form of: "The reason more young people don't play is [insert whatever the poster doen't like about the way the game is administered]".

[Bbradley62]

lalldonn, on 2012-October-10, 11:55, said:

Vampyr, on 2012-October-10, 11:28, said:

Is the phone thing really an issue? Can't you grab your phone from the box or desk (or wherever they are being held) on your way out of the playing room?

Yes a huge one to many people.

The US Tennis Assn is having issues with this also. League/tournament matches last anywhere from 1-3 hours, depending on the format, the closeness, etc. The rule is now that if your cellphone rings, you lose the point that was in progress; if it happens a second time during the match, you lose the match. So, it's easy enough to turn off the ringer.

In a match, players switch ends of the court roughly every 10-15 minutes (a "changeover"), and each time they do they get a rest period not to exceed 90 seconds. No one under about 35 years of age appears to be capable of taking that 90-second break without checking their cellphone, sending a text, updating their Facebook status, etc. Of course, they all say "I can do all that in the alloted time; it's everyone else who can't", just like it's everyone else who can't text and drive safely, but no one is using a stopwatch while the player says "just a sec, while I finish this text". As a 50-year-old, I am always ready to return to the court before my 30-year-old opponent. My attitude is: if you're here to play tennis, turn the cellphone off and play tennis.

Tennis and bridge have similar cheating potential with cellphones. Coaching is explicitly disallowed in USTA league/tournament tennis matches and no one is checking your incoming texts which could easily be from a teammate saying "hit more to his forehand". I look forward to the day when USTA bans cellphone use during matches altogether.

[barmar]

lalldonn, on 2012-October-10, 11:23, said:

Are you disputing that new young players would attend more tournaments if they could go on weekends, sleep later, and keep their cell phones?

No, I just don't think tournament attendance is relevant to the question. We're talking about young people not taking up the game in the first place, presumably because they think it's just for old people.

AFAIK, the cell phone ban is only in NABC+ events, so it's irrelevant to 99% of the ACBL membership, and practically all new players. I think few players are likely to run into it until they're already hooked on the game, and I can't imagine them punting just because of it.

In New England, I've never heard of any sectional only being on weekdays. They're all either Sat/Sun or Fri Night/Sat/Sun.. And our regionals all include a weekend. I don't know how the rest of the country compares. Maybe it's because we have a large contingent of students (all the colleges in the Boston area), so we know we'd been shooting ourselves in the foot.

[jeffford76]

Bbradley62, on 2012-October-10, 13:10, said:

I look forward to the day when USTA bans cellphone use during matches altogether.

If this were all that happened at bridge a lot less people would care. It's not that people need to use their phones during the match, but rather the hassle of dealing with them before and after.

[sailoranch]

barmar, on 2012-October-10, 13:11, said:

No, I just don't think tournament attendance is relevant to the question. We're talking about young people not taking up the game in the first place, presumably because they think it's just for old people.

I thought we were talking generally about why there are few young players. Part of the reason is that no one is learning the game, but part of the reason is that juniors drop the game or play less often because of the club and tournament culture.

I agree with everything that Zel said about smugness. My experience is that a lot of this comes from everyone's obsession with masterpoints, both as a reflection of skill and as a reward system. It's hard for a younger player to find an older partner with roughly the same skill and desire to improve, partly because they are already in comfortable partnerships, but also because these players scoff at the masterpoint total. Most of the willing partners are casual players content working their way up to LM in the limited game.

[olegru]

barmar, on 2012-October-10, 11:10, said:

I guess where I'm coming from is that someone has to teach them that designing bidding systems is even an option. When I was learning bridge, someone just taught me "This bid means this, that bid means that" and so on.

I would not start to play in such a boring game... Really, are you telling I had to learn by heart that 50 pages book before I will be able to start to play? Pfui. Lord of warcraft is much more fun. I did enough homework in my school.

I started to play completely different way. At first I did not even know that such thing as a bidding system exist. I was told that my partner and I can bid any way we want, but if we would like to have a good results it is better to discuss meaning of our bids. Also we were told very important rule - if my partner and me do have any agreements about certain bid - we had to disclose our agreements. We start to discuss something, but our methods were not playable at all, we were always getting in situation we did not think about. I realize that creating bidding system is a big task. And only then somebody taught me about “good boys” who already developed several bidding systems. We can just take one of them as a basis to cover majority of situation and modify system by our needs.

You see the difference?
I started to play right away.
I liked the game, but I realize I need to do some job in order to be able to win.
A started to do that job.
I realize that job is much harder than I thought.
And only now I got a bidding system to help.

barmar, on 2012-October-10, 11:10, said:

Furthermore, if restrictions like these are really the problem, why aren't other games affected similarly? Are there kids who give up on chess because the rook can only move horizontally or vertically, or poker because they can't change what beats what?

It is easy question. Chess and Poker rules you quoted are inseparable part of the game. It is what you were giving originally. Rook moves only horizontally or vertically...you could make a castle only if king did not move ... ace beats jack at the same suit ... you can play trump only if you have no cards in the suit leaded and so on.
If you change any of that rules it will be different game.
System restrictions are not part of the game. At least it is not inseparable part of the game. And they don’t look fair too. Why that Stayman guy could agree with his partner that his 2 clubs bid asking to bid 2 diamonds if he has no 4 cards majors, and I can’t agree with my partner that my 1 ♠ bid asking him to bid 2 clubs if does not have Ace of spades?
Let kids do their mistakes, they will learn, but if you will try to put knowledge in their heads they will resist.

[dwar0123]

olegru, on 2012-October-10, 15:11, said:

Why that Stayman guy could agree with his partner that his 2 clubs bid asking to bid 2 diamonds if he has no 4 cards majors, and I can’t agree with my partner that my 1 ♠ bid asking him to bid 2 clubs if does not have Ace of spades?
Let kids do their mistakes, they will learn, but if you will try to put knowledge in their heads they will resist.

I imagine part of the reason is that if we explicitly allow new players to do that, then we have to allow anyone to do that. Which means grandma might have to deal with multi-2 diamonds in her little ole 299'r game. Which might cause grandma to just stay home.

On the other hand, I suspect new players are implicitly allowed to do what ever crazy thing they want, so long as it doesn't work to well

If it starts to work well, then they will probably be required to abide by the restrictions everyone is compelled to abide by.

[SteveMoe]

There's an old truism: the organization (and strategy) we have is optimally designed to deliver the results we see. When the ACBL decides to focus on 15-18's, 19-29's and under 45's we will have a chance at getting social benefits for all age strata we want served.

Imagine if the ACBL offered prepackaged curricula suitable for teaching in a 4 year high school program, offered some incentives (perhaps with Distric level support) to encourage HS teachers to lead clubs - or better - teach bridge as part of math (counting, inference, logic, probability). France (63.6 MM) and Netherlands (16.5 MM) together have more registered players (188,000) than the 167000 ACBL members in USA (315.8MM) and Canada (33.8 MM). Why? Schools introduce bridge early. Families play at home. Friends play at school.

Imagine if the ACBL made games available (on line if necessary) for college students, ecnouraged clubs on campus and allowed for the experimentation and creativity new minds can bring to the game.

Imagine if we could play bridge on our Androids, iPhones, iPads, tablets, and pcs - better still on Xbox or PlayStation. Imagine if we could play for just a few hands or for hours at a time, not against a fixed game format. Imagine if players vied for 3-6 months to gain credits toward a money reward (say, college scholarship)?

Imagine if the ACBL made Under 29's social networking for bridge a priority? What might the ACBL do with social media to enable more interest in tournaments? What other gatherings might make sense?

We need young leaders to create the marketing connections that will last across generations.

Engaging retirees in local club games is too late in the game, and leads to demographics like median age = 68.

[barmar]

olegru, on 2012-October-10, 15:11, said:

I would not start to play in such a boring game... Really, are you telling I had to learn by heart that 50 pages book before I will be able to start to play?

I learned from a 2 or 4 page "cheat sheet" of the common first- and second-round bids -- basically, a simple flow chart.

Quote

I started to play completely different way. At first I did not even know that such thing as a bidding system exist. I was told that my partner and I can bid any way we want, but if we would like to have a good results it is better to discuss meaning of our bids. Also we were told very important rule - if my partner and me do have any agreements about certain bid - we had to disclose our agreements. We start to discuss something, but our methods were not playable at all, we were always getting in situation we did not think about. I realize that creating bidding system is a big task.

Sounds like a really tedious way to learn the game -- you're totally floundering for the first few weeks. Like teaching someone to swim by throwing them into the water, and after they nearly drown a few times you show them how to do a proper stroke. On the other hand, you probably have a good appreciation for the general principles, instead of just learning everything by rote. It's kind of like the "New Math" of bridge teaching.

[antonylee]

From my personal experience (in France), I think that a few things are fairly effective to get kids to play bridge: clubs in schools, junior tournaments, prizes, etc.

I started playing in middle school, where there was a club that would meet one hour per week at lunch time (as a matter of fact, students participating in lunchtime activities had priority at the school cafeteria -- that's why I started :-)), with an oldish professor from the local club (and everything was free of course, who'd have payed to play?). We started by playing minibridge for three years before even hearing about the idea of bidding (though it seems that that approach is receding now), and that was in no way a problem for me (well, I learnt the importance of holding up in NT at that time, for example). There were even a yearly national junior minibridge tournament (including a regional qualifier, etc.) and I remember winning comics there. Also there were some "bridge weeks" during the holidays, with like 2 or 3 hours of bridge per day for a week at the local club, only with juniors. Sure, I was already a bit nerdy at that time but we were easily 15 teenagers from the local area (say South half of Paris suburbs) there.

When I went to high school I stopped playing bridge (actually I started playing go then), but restarted when I got into college. Again, there was a club, run (again for free) by two very good players (probably in the top 100 women in France), and that's where I learnt bidding. We were perhaps a dozen players in a university with 1000 students (science majors only), and we set up junior teams to compete in local competitions at a discounted price (or for free), but still eligible to win bottles of champagne or foie gras (that's France after all) or even (rarely) cash prizes (~200$ or so for first place). And there were still activities for juniors, such as pro-ams (though sometimes we would have to take the "pro" side if there were too many "ams" from local high schools) or the national junior pairs and the national junior teams (yay, get crushed by Lorenzini et al.), known for their incredible amounts of free food... Or, for example, in Lyon (second city of France), there is a well-known club run only by juniors, organizing every year a huge tournament (open to all). We would get together the day before and play 2-min-per-board speedball :-)

Masterpoints? Who cares... Food and money (and other juniors) makes a junior happy :-)

[y66]

This topic got a lot of discussion when Robert Hartman was "in the well" on bridgewinners earlier this year.

I was looking for some data on players by age group and came across this article on the BBO News page.

[the hog]

lalldonn, on 2012-October-09, 12:29, said:

In the ACBL, policy after policy has been designed to cater to the old people who are currently members rather than the young people they want to be members.

- Cell phone ban
- Earlier start times
- In Las Vegas (a city full of young people who love card games??) the sectionals are now Monday to Friday, no weekends! I suspect this has occured in other places as well.

I know there are reasons they do these things, conflicting goals, etc. But in my opinion they are getting exactly what they should expect.

Cell phone ban? is this bad?
Earlier start times? Why would this cater for older people?

My take is that many of today's youth are spoiled by wanting instant gratification. hence they like action computer games where you can instantly kill or maim an opponent. Also the current educaion system is western countries has been dumbed down, so many of today's young people lack the intellectual nous to play bridge.

[dwar0123]

the hog, on 2012-October-10, 21:07, said:

My take is that many of today's youth are spoiled by wanting instant gratification. hence they like action computer games where you can instantly kill or maim an opponent. Also the current educaion system is western countries has been dumbed down, so many of today's young people lack the intellectual nous to play bridge.

With so many of your generation so rich in nous and now experience, it is a wonder that any from your generation loses to anyone from another generation.

The problem isn't a lack of capacity, it is a lack of interest.

[the hog]

dwar0123, on 2012-October-10, 21:40, said:

With so many of your generation so rich in nous and now experience, it is a wonder that any from your generation loses to anyone from another generation.

The problem isn't a lack of capacity, it is a lack of interest.

The best players in the world are still the older players with the exception of the Dutch.
I said the younger generation want instant gratification.They have the intelligence but not the nous to use it.

[mike777]

I guess for starters why do young people play poker or video games?? I dont play either so.....I dont get it....
OTOH I note I do watch much tv with some violence and even with some gambling so......

My guess but only a guess is...lots of violence and lots of gambling.


If bridge can bring back more I mean much more violence and gambling that may bring many into the game.

I dont get if we make the hassle over cellphones better that brings many more young into the game but worth the discussion?
do cellphones have something about violence and gambling?

fwiw I thought most, most do not use cellphones as a phone but as a computer...tiny computer

[Bbradley62]

the hog, on 2012-October-10, 21:07, said:

Earlier start times? Why would this cater for older people?

Seriously? The schedule for sectionals in my old unit is now single-session events at 10am and 2:30pm on Fridays. You don't think this is catering to retirees, rather than working people (of both lalldonn's generation and mine) who would like/need to work on Friday then play an evening session at the tournament?

[MattieShoe]

Some reasons, off the top of my head

1) Perception. It's perceived as an old person's game.
2) Barrier to entry. You can sit down and play poker (albeit badly) right away. With Bridge, it's a slow process from sitting down to playing with any sort of confidence. Point counting, arcane bidding systems, bizrre conventions... Once you get over that hump, it is immensely enjoyable. But getting over that hump is tough.
3) Because a huge amount of it is scheduled around retirees -- during work/school hours. Here, there are occasionally beginner lessons on the weekends and one NLM club game each Saturday. Anything beyond that happens when I'm at work.
4) It's a bit intimidating for a rank novice to sit down with people who know what they're doing.
5) Cumulative ranking system like master points doesn't reflect skill very well. People like more immediate feedback. This is probably why I'm currently addicted to the robot tournaments... :-)

Chess servers would be an obvious place to look for new players. They'll enjoy the challenge. The other one that comes to mind is board game geeks. They already enjoy the social aspect...

[mike777]

barriers to entry...geez Porter needs to win the nobel/econ/marketing prize now ..please...

I note most of these points are barriers to entry but not really

masterpoints are a true barrier to entry.

1) everyone says mp are silly

2) 99.9% are willing to pay for them.

AND THAT IS OK.

[mr1303]

As a player who still gets asked "So when do you graduate from university", I can confirm that the Young Chelsea Bridge Club is one of, if not the, most welcoming bridge clubs to young players.

You can get taken to the cleaners a bit there though if you haven't been playing for very long. It is a high standard of play (for club bridge).