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In addition, most bridge is boring as hell. I’m sorry that’s been your experience. If you find that most of your games are routine and entirely obvious, you m

In addition, most bridge is boring as hell. I’m sorry that’s been your experience. If you find that most of your games are routine and entirely obvious, you might like to make sure you’re shuffling the cards properly before each deal. A classic problem particularly with social bridge is that you have a deck or two and someone just does a casual overhand shuffle or three between deals. That doesn’t mix the cards up anything like enough and tends to result in lots more bland, even deals than there ought to be with truly random shuffling. I don’t know anything about your standard or the level of people you play with, but it’s also possible that your group tend to be very conservative bidders. If few of your auctions are competitive and usually the partnership with the stronger hands gets a free ride to a reasonable but cautious contract, it’s inevitable that you won’t face so many challenging situations in the card play stage because you’ll be under less pressure and the other side will have less information to plan their defence. If this is happening, either side could probably get much better results by being more active during the auction and so creating more challenges for their opponents and opportunities for themselves during the play.

mercutio2 4y ago
I think the problem here is that rubber bridge is just very low intensity compared to most modern games. Of course there’s a frisson when you correctly bid a slam or sacrifice to prevent your opponents from finding theirs. But most bridge players don’t even know how to recognize a borderline slam, and they just bid a game and don’t contest, leaving things pretty low stakes. It’s so unfortunate that it takes 8 to play duplicate, as duplicate is my favorite of all games. But I understand why people don’t get excited about bridge for 4.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  Duplicate is fun, but also rather mentally intense. I've only played it for maybe a dozen sessions, but matchpoint especially is brutal because you get punished for missing some very thin possibilities for extra tricks. I did caddy a lot of tournaments in my youth though, with a high point being the women's national team trials. Any time they set up the partitions, you knew it was going to be serious.
- mongol 4y ago
  So, I have not heard of frisson in my entire life, until 20 minutes ago, when there was a post on HN about it. And now I read it again!
- pmyteh 4y ago
  Ah, yes - Rubber is quite a different game. It's possible to play duplicate with only four players these days by using Bridge Base Online: they have a database of old competitions, their deals and scores, so you can play against a virtual room. Less fun playing online than round a kitchen table, though. I also play a version of Chicago bridge where you play IMPed against a par score calculated from your partnership's number of high card points[0]. That introduces some of the need for aggressive bidding that can be missing from (non-gambling) Rubber and is a fabulous game: nearly as much fun as a decent club duplicate. I've never seen this variant played or taught outside my own social circle, though we didn't invent it. [0]: http://maproom.co.uk/useful/bridge.html http://maproom.co.uk/useful/bridge.html
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    That Chicago variation looks great. If I had a group of 4, I would try it immediately.

mercutio2 4y ago

I think the problem here is that rubber bridge is just very low intensity compared to most modern games. Of course there’s a frisson when you correctly bid a slam or sacrifice to prevent your opponents from finding theirs. But most bridge players don’t even know how to recognize a borderline slam, and they just bid a game and don’t contest, leaving things pretty low stakes. It’s so unfortunate that it takes 8 to play duplicate, as duplicate is my favorite of all games. But I understand why people don’t get excited about bridge for 4.

aidenn0 4y ago
Duplicate is fun, but also rather mentally intense. I've only played it for maybe a dozen sessions, but matchpoint especially is brutal because you get punished for missing some very thin possibilities for extra tricks. I did caddy a lot of tournaments in my youth though, with a high point being the women's national team trials. Any time they set up the partitions, you knew it was going to be serious.
mongol 4y ago
So, I have not heard of frisson in my entire life, until 20 minutes ago, when there was a post on HN about it. And now I read it again!
pmyteh 4y ago
Ah, yes - Rubber is quite a different game. It's possible to play duplicate with only four players these days by using Bridge Base Online: they have a database of old competitions, their deals and scores, so you can play against a virtual room. Less fun playing online than round a kitchen table, though. I also play a version of Chicago bridge where you play IMPed against a par score calculated from your partnership's number of high card points[0]. That introduces some of the need for aggressive bidding that can be missing from (non-gambling) Rubber and is a fabulous game: nearly as much fun as a decent club duplicate. I've never seen this variant played or taught outside my own social circle, though we didn't invent it. [0]: http://maproom.co.uk/useful/bridge.html http://maproom.co.uk/useful/bridge.html
- aidenn0 4y ago
  That Chicago variation looks great. If I had a group of 4, I would try it immediately.