Bridge club bids for players to join up for lessons

Those interested in the game of bridge but haven’t known how or where to start have a good opportunity this month. Lessons for beginners start at the Bridge and Amenity Centre in Mullingar on Thursday of next week, October 9, at 8pm (there are 10 lessons).

The experienced players there, including Sean Galligan are ready, able and willing to take on newcomers and share their enthusiasm for the game.

Sean has written this background to the game for those interested in finding out more.

The modern game of Bridge originated in the USA in the early decades of the 20th century and belongs to the same family of card games as whist and solo. Those games involve four players using a full standard deck of cards, the players sitting opposite each other acting as partners and trying to take more tricks than the opposition.

Bridge differs from its relatives in that there is a bidding phase of the game before the side that wins the ‘auction’ tries to win the number of tricks it has contracted to make.

Duplicate bridge is played in bridge clubs and is so called because the cards are not re-dealt after the first round but are instead passed round from table to table and replayed until all the players have played the same cards. To facilitate that, the cards are not played in the centre of the table but are retained by their owners and replaced in a wallet called a board at the end of the hand. Players, north, south, east and west replace their hands in the board in the pocket from which they removed them.

House bridge is different in that the cards are re-dealt after each hand and players compete to be the first to win two games (called a rubber). There is a much bigger element of luck in rubber bridge and players usually play for money, often a small token, but sometimes a serious amount. One of the most famous, and probably one of the most expensive, house games involved Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

Today, bridge is played by thousands of players in hundreds of clubs across Ireland, Most of them are affiliated to the national organisation, the CBAI, whose HQ is at Templeogue, Dublin. The country is divided into 13 regions and qualifying events are held to decide who will represent regions in the national finals.

Four clubs are located in Mullingar, three based at the Bridge Centre in Bellview, and the other at the golf club. There are games every night, Monday to Friday at the centre (indoor bowling is on Saturdays and Sundays). All the Mullingar clubs are members of the CBAI and are part of the North Midland region, which stretches from Longford to Birr.

Details about Bridge at the Centre are available online at Bridgewebs/Ireland/Westmeath/Mullingar.

Contact Sean Galligan on 087 4160 724 to find out more about the bridge lessons.