Read The Bridge Ladies for Free Online

components to the game: bidding and playing the hand. Bridge bidding is referred to as an “auction,” and there are elaborate rules that govern the bidding. Barbara starts out slowly enough for small children. The first order of business, she tells us, is to organize our cards by suit and then count how many points we have. Face cards, also known as honors, are assigned numerical worth: ace = four points, king = three, queen = two, and jack = one. Easy-peasy . Only then, she explains, there is a hierarchy in the suits themselves, ranking from the bottom: Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, and Spades. Hearts and Spades are the “major” suits. Clubs and Diamonds are considered the “minor” suits. Sorry, Clubs and Diamonds.
    Barbara moves to the board and writes the number 26 on it, tapping it with her chalk for emphasis. We are looking for a “fit.” Bridge is played with partners, you and your partner try to determine, through the bidding system, if your combined hands have twenty-six points and at least eight cards in the same suit, which will become the trump suit. If that isn’t complicated enough, you can also play in “no trump.” Bridge just isn’t happy unless it messes with your head.
    Barbara suddenly looks like a hawk bearing down on us. She is very clear in her message: twenty-six is the number of strength-points needed between you and your partner to hopefully take ten out of the thirteen possible tricks and thus win a bonus score. Bonus score? Now she’s furiously writing more numbers on the chalkboard to show how many tricks are necessary to get a partial score. Partial score? Then the numbers start coming faster; it’s like a conveyor belt that speeds up without warning. I copy them all in my notebook, but they might as well be computer code. Worse, I am too intimidated to ask questions and betray my lack of math skills. The Brit seems to be keeping up. The other man is truly clueless and keeps smiling like one of the Keebler Elves while stuffing cookies in his mouth. I am somewhere in the middle, leaning toward Elf.
    Now Barbara places a rectangular metal tray in the center of the table with four slots, each containing thirteen cards. It also shows the four directions of the table: north and south (who are partners), and east and west (who are partners). The tray also designates the dealer with an arrow. I’ve never seen this contraption but come to learn that it’s a duplicate board and is used in duplicate Bridge, where each table competitively measures itself against other tables. But for the purposes of teaching, these duplicate boards are set up so that the hands are simple, and if all goes well we should be able to grasp and execute the most rudimentary bidding.
    All does not go well.
    As dealer, Elf must bid first. (I am greatly relieved to be off the hook.) He stares at his cards. Then he looks around the room as if following a fly doing loops. The British woman fans her cards, then herself. The lack of air is oppressive, but there is something vaguely hostile in her gesture. I will discover that there can be a lot of waiting around at Bridge tables, especially among beginners, and it seems exceedingly rude to hurry anyone along. Only now the Elf is chewing the inside of his mouth, a glaze of perspiration visible on his forehead.
    Finally, Barbara intercedes. “How many points do you have?” she asks the frightened man.
    He counts his high point cards again, pointing to each one with his index finger in an audible whisper.
    Now the British woman exhales loudly.
    â€œHow many?” Barbara repeats, urging him on.
    â€œThirteen?” More question than an answer.
    â€œAnd do you have five of a major suit?”
    The Elf nods yes, trembling with uncertainty.
    â€œAnd what suit is it?”
    He looks as if he might be peeing his pants.
    â€œAre they Spades?” Her tone becomes gentler and paradoxically scarier.
    â€œYes.”