Snipers and sharpshooters don’t just have to look where they shoot – it also matters how fast they can pull the trigger. The same way, I’m convinced that card players should work on their reflexes just as much as their technique.

Whether you’re playing cards or you’re faced with a fight-or-flight and life-or-death situation, quick-thinking matters.

Here’s how you can improve your speed at the bridge table, and what impact it could have on your decision-making abilities in any other scary situation.

Conventions Are Scales

Conventions – and openers – are like the scales of playing bridge. Practice them until they’re stuck and more about muscle memory than the need to think, feel or find it first.

As an old guitar player, I can’t help but compare the two. It’s the groundwork that you can’t afford to skip if you want to be any good. While it might feel a little tedious at first, eventually, it’s second nature. (It’s been more than five years since I’ve held a guitar and I can still remember every chord.)

“Should I Think About It?”

When playing games like Backgammon where I don’t feel nearly as confident, I find myself often thinking – and often too long – about what the next move should be. (By this point, half the players on the board have already been tempted to make the next move on my behalf just to get the game to move along.)

When reaching the next move, I often think, “Should I think about it?”

No. You should practice until you don’t have to.

Practice until it feels completely natural. Until the right move for that situation is your brain’s first and most natural instinct, just like breathing out before pulling the trigger on a target.

Sensory Overload Training

How do you play with music turned all the way up and everything set up to be a complete distraction? Terribly, at first, but once you learn how to shut out the noise, you’ll learn how to cope in almost every environment (and it applies to anything that requires focus in the face of chaos, not just bridge).

Sure, this is a bizarre concept – but it can, might and may aid your ability to focus. Switch on high-volume music, wear a scratchy shirt, do something that you find generally distracting and simultaneously try to focus on your bridge game.

Quick Decisionmaking

There are plenty of other situations where making complicated split second decisions matter. Sometimes they’re even as serious as life and death. There’s no doubt in my mind that quick decisions learned in bridge can be useful everywhere else – and can improve your general reflexes, too.

Imagine if you could think fast enough to evade a serious vehicle collision that could have been fatal, and all because of quick-thinking reflexes that you developed through your bridge game.

States of Mind

Run yourself through your bridge game in different states of mind. Simply, your brain thinks differently (and at different speeds) in various situations.

Want to see this in practice? Wake up in the middle of the night – and without thinking about it at all – play your way through a few rounds of Just Declare. Take a screenshot of your score and do the same thing again at different points during the day.

See the difference?

Go Up Against AI

Artificial Intelligence is a great tool for learning how to get better at any game, whether it’s bridge, chess or checkers.

An AI player doesn’t get impatient when you don’t move, doesn’t care if the next move you’ve made is a terrible one and won’t judge you if you play a hundred terrible games in a row. You can immediately see the results of your play – which can make analyzing it a lot easier before you move to the next game.

Human plays look a lot less surprising when you can say that you’ve seen an AI do it a thousand deals before. 

Stopping Stage Fright

Stage fright isn’t just for people who get on stage: Many bridge players might find themselves nervous too, especially when playing a huge tournament. Don’t.

Beta-blockers are a common way for businesspeople and musicians to get rid of the jitters (as well as rattles and shakes that might accompany it), although shouldn’t be the first option if you don’t have a heart condition to treat.

Other ways to stop stage fright includes a technique called “grounding”, where one attempts to shift the focus to anything else in the room, usually something tactile. (See how many comedians appear to cling to their microphone or water bottle? Yeah, that’s it.)

Nervous bridge players in need of a quick stop to stage fright can focus on anything around the table – preferable, of course, their cards.