The game of bridge has made unlikely headlines. Ten days ago policemen and soldiers as well as local government officials in Pattaya raided a Jomtien & Pattaya Bridge Club get-together, arresting 32 foreign bridge players on gambling charges. Police reported finding a computer and score sheets at the scene, but no money, leading them to suspect that the players were transferring money online.
The foreigners were held for over 12 hours, and were only released on 5,000 Baht bail each when the president of the Contract Bridge League of Thailand, Chodchoy Sophonpanich, personally visited Pattaya police to verify that bridge is, in fact, an internationally-recognised sport, and is even protected under Thai law. Despite the interventions, the local authorities still insisted on laying charges on the foreigners for violating the 1943 Playing Cards Act which prohibits the possession of over 120 playing cards not produced by the Excise Department.
Perhaps unknown to the officer, bridge is considered a complex tactical game, and not a simple gambling device, played ardently by people around the world as a recreational activity, as well as more seriously. In Thailand, there are regular bridge tournaments joined by hundreds of players.
"Bridge was actually first introduced to Thailand by King Rama VI," said Jaturong Sasibuth, an instructor from the Contract Bridge Club of Thailand.
According to Jaturong, the then-crown prince, Mongkut had learned the game during his days studying abroad in Britain. Impressed by the depth of strategy and logic involved, he introduced the game to his friends as well as the aristocrats of 1900s Thailand. Later, the game's popularity spread to the nation's newly established universities.
"In truth, bridge's existence in Thailand predates many popular spectator sports like football or basketball. Universities were offering scholarships for skilled bridge players even before Thai people knew about football," said Jaturong.
The Contract Bridge Club of Thailand is an official organisation in charge of holding up to 10 official bridge competitions a year, and has been in existence since the 1940s. Today, the club is also responsible for supervising independently-organised competitions from various partnered organisations, with nearly 40 competitions held each year in Thailand (including the club's own events).
"Legally speaking, public bridge competitions need to be sanctioned by the club first, like the one in Pattaya, which has been a member of the club for over a decade. It's not illegal to play bridge in the confines of your own home, however," he said.
Bridge is generally played with two or four players, with players sitting opposite from each other belonging to the same team. The game is divided into two different phases: the bidding and play phases, and is completed in 13 rounds. The bidding phase -- to be overtly simplistic -- involves each player taking turns bidding on a "contract", which determines how many rounds of the play phase a player must win out of 13 in order to win points.
Once a contract is established, the game proceeds to the play stage, which involves each player playing one card from their hand that corresponds to the suit played by the first player. The ultimate winner of each match is decided when the 13 rounds are over.
Unlike popular household card games like slave or poker, bridge is classified more as a board game than a card game, as there are many other peripheral items required to play the game, such as bidding cards and score calculators. The bidding cards in particular are an essential part of the game, as they don't only function as indicators of the victory conditions, but also as tools of communication, bluffing and strategy.
"All advanced bridge players adhere to a certain system of bidding or 'language', in order to communicate information with their teammates on the table, with different bidding cards meaning different things," said Jaturong. "This is where the elements of logic and strategy come in. Players can use these cards as a question, request or -- if they happen to know their opponents' 'language' -- even as tools for bluffing their opponents into making the wrong move. In serious competitive games, the players will even be separated from their teammates by a shutter, thus leaving the bidding cards as the only means of devising plans or strategies."
A typical table at a bridge competition.
If all this sounds impossibly complicated to you, you're not alone. According to Jaturong, teaching someone the intricacies of bridge usually takes months at least, and even then, it can take years for someone to truly grasp all the different bidding languages, most of which are still being continually refined today. In fact, the depth of strategy and logical thinking required to become a decent bridge player has qualified the game to even be taught as a full-time course in many universities.
"Chulalongkorn University offers an elective bridge class for our students," said Asst Prof Dr Patarasinee Patarakosol, a mathematics professor from Chulalongkorn University's faculty of science. The university most recently won two gold medals.
"Even after five months of full-length courses, however, very few students can actually be considered good bridge players. Bridge requires a depth of strategic and logical thinking that is quite advanced, and only the best and brightest students are ever chosen to be bridge players. If you look at the most prominent bridge players in the world, almost all of them have professional backgrounds in engineering, medicine or science," she said.
According to Dr Patarasinee, who also acts as the adviser for the university's bridge and board games club, high-level bridge players tend to start learning the game at a very young age -- as young as seven or eight. The difficulty of the game, however, means that even the youth level competitions of the sport rarely ever feature players under 25 years of age.
"At its core, bridge is a game about probability and communication. Players use the rules of statistics to try to guess which cards their opponents hold, all the while using the bidding cards to communicate and devise plans and bluffs with their teammate," she said. "It is a game that requires a depth of understanding rarely seen in other games, and is an excellent exercise in logical thinking."
What is Bridge?
Bridge is typically played with four players, each seated in a specific direction (North, South, East, West). The players on the opposite ends of the table are considered to be on the same team (North and South, East and West). Each player is given 13 cards, and will play one card each for 13 rounds.
In standardised competitions, every competing table will have the same 13 cards for each position, with the hand randomised by a computer programme. This means that players seated on the South side of a table within a given competition will always have the same starting hand.
Bridge is played in two main phases: The bidding and the play.
The bidding phase is when each player takes turns "bidding" on the number of rounds they must win (out of 13) in order to win that match. The higher the bid, the more points they will receive should they actually succeed in winning the amount of rounds they bid on, with points added or deducted for each excess win or missed win, respectively.
In the first play phase of each match, the person to the left of the dealer will always be the first player, putting any card in their hand on the table. Once the first person plays a card, the next player going clockwise must "follow suit" and play a card of the same suit. This goes on until all the players have played a card, and the victor of each round will be the player who plays the card with the highest value (ace cards being the highest, with twos being the lowest). Players who do not have cards of the same suit as the lead can play any card in their hand, but the victor will always be the player with the highest valued card of the correct suit.
Once every player has exhausted their hand (which should always take 13 rounds), the match is over and the points are distributed based on the contract. The playing team that has the most points wins (with the possibility of negative points).
