I’m very lucky to be able to say that bridge has been part of my day-to-day for several years, whether I’m writing about it, kibitzing a game or jumping up and down whenever I spot a reference to bridge in a mainstream TV show (including Shameless and F is for Family to name a few!).

In retrospect, there are a few things I wish someone might have shown me earlier on – and if you’re currently introducing someone to bridge, here are some of the things that might be helpful to lead with.

Hey, Teacher!

At the tender age of seventeen, I was convinced that I would hit the road as a travelling blues musician – and playing poker seemed to be one of the Essential Skills that I would need on The Road to Adulthood. Life had different plans: Instead, I traded the guitar for a Qwerty-keyboard and started playing more serious bridge several years later.

I have to admit that I wish someone had been able to teach – not just show, but actually teach – me how bridge works earlier on. Why wasn’t it, for example, part of the school curriculum in the first place? (I was notoriously bad at subjects like math, and I can only look back and wonder how much bridge would have helped!)

Playing bridge is a great way to build the mind, and I’ve always seen cards and card games as one way to cope with depression and angst – and as a teenager and child, I had a lot of it to deal with.

Bidding is One-to-Seven (plus Six)

I had to read Introduction to Bridge (Sheinwold) several times before just the basic concepts of bridge bidding started to sink in. A YouTube video is finally what helped it to click. Choosing a bid is one-to-seven, plus six. (Today, I don’t know why it took my brain this long to absorb this simple part of bridge play…)

The Relationship of the Dummy Player

In the very beginnings of playing bridge – as a child playing my way through DOS already – the concept of the dummy player really, really confused me. You don’t see it in poker (and it would be a useless role in Go Fish), and it took my brain a while to accept that the dummy player has a vital role.

The Similarities Between Bridge and Backgammon

I’ve always loved a casual game of backgammon – and one of the first things I was taught by my partner was to look for the so-called “standard moves.” When you have this, do this (and when your opponent counters with this, do this).

It’s a piece of information that translates extremely well to bridge. When you feel like you’ve seen an opener before, it’s likely that you have, and successful bridge play is also about learning how to recognize these play patterns until they feel completely natural, as good as muscle memory for the brain.

Bridge Fiction is a Thing

Bridge fiction is an entire genre, and I would have been a much better bridge player much sooner in life if someone had tipped me off about bridge fiction. If you know someone who loves games and cards but doesn’t know bridge, introduce them with bridge fiction for a more natural transition – and they might be hooked far sooner than if you had simply given them a book of lessons.

Gandhi, Churchill and Many Others Played Bridge

School history would have been a hell of a lot more interesting if they told us more about the weird habits, embarrassing stories and favourite pastimes of the famous instead. (At the very least, we know that information is more likely to stick around if the brain is already naturally interested in the subject.)

In addition to having preferred if bridge were part of the school curriculum, I probably would have paid more attention if they had told me that many great minds played cards as a secret to to their strategy.