Kansas City & Unit 131 Bridge History
How Duplicate Bridge has changed
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Kansas City & Unit 131 Bridge History How Duplicate Bridge has changed >Back to Home Page >Back to Bridge History Home Page |
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There have been many changes in duplicate bridge over the years and they have all been for the better. Smoking: 50 years ago there was no ban on smoking at a duplicate game. The room was full of smoke. every table had an ashtray at each corner and all were filled with smoldering butts. UGH ! Thankfully this eventually changed and evolved into no smoking at the tables with hospitality breaks. Bidding Boxes: A great innovation which basically eliminated bidding reviews and any information that may have been able to be passed with voice inflections. Computer Scoring: Remember when the wait for scores might take a half hour or more after the game was over. Scores were entered by hand onto a grid on paper or a blackboard. Then someone with a computer mind would matchpoint the hands add the columns and rows and balance the whole grid. Now, once the data is in the computer, the results are out in seconds. Duplimate: What an invention !! Computer generated hands. No more insufficiently shuffled hands. Hand records of all the hands played during the session. Indisputable evidence of what we actually held. Bridgemate: No more paper travelers. Sends table results to the computer instantly so that scores are out as soon as the last hand is played. Rudeness: Over the years I believe that the level of rudeness at the table has gone from "very high" to almost "non-existant". What are the reasons for this ? The aging of the bridge population has something to do with it. We are "mellowing out". Almost all the people that I thought were rude when I started playing have gone to the ":big game in the sky". Of course the ACBL has made a concerted effort to eliminate bad behavior through such programs as "zero tolerance" and the "good will committee" and the results have been largely successful. Online/internet bridge:This has exploded as an outlet to play bridge, especially since the coronavirus pandemic. Bridgebase, OKbridge, Swan are some of the sites on the internet where all aspects of bridge can be played and explored. Do we ever want to replace the face to face experience of playing bridge ? I hope not but online bridge has a lot going for it. 
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