[joker_gib]

Well, I think that bridge is part of the school program in Netherlands and despite being a small country, they are the 2nd most important federation in the world with a lot of young talented players !

[Chamaco]

42, on Jan 5 2006, 08:35 AM, said:

But I have no idea how to make bridge "chic".... Perhaps some videos showing a bridgeclub where Robbie Williams, Kylie Minogue, Angelina Jolie and Bratt Pitt, Paris Hilton (.....!??....), Prince William, Madonna and so on play together in harmonie (...) will help. And the background bridgesong should become a no. 1 hit, then I see chances

hehe, I'd much prefer to see Homer Simpson play bridge (he indeed is closer to the image of a lot of fellow bridge players I met in real bridge life).

Oh yeah, also the Muppets, featuring pairs:
Kermit + Piggy
Waldorf+ Statler
Animal +...... (changing partner each event, noone can stand more than that....)

[helene_t]

joker_gib, on Jan 5 2006, 10:43 AM, said:

Well, I think that bridge is part of the school program in Netherlands and despite being a small country, they are the 2nd most important federation in the world with a lot of young talented players !

It's not part of the school program but it's true that some schools offer bridge lessons. Due to the low retirement age in the Netherlands it's easy to find retired teachers that can teach bridge as volunteers.

[42]

Chamaco, on Jan 5 2006, 09:51 AM, said:

hehe, I'd much prefer to see Homer Simpson play bridge (he indeed is closer to the image of a lot of fellow bridge players I met in real bridge life).

Oh yeah, also the Muppets, featuring pairs:
Kermit + Piggy
Waldorf+ Statler
Animal +...... (changing partner each event, noone can stand more than that....)

Indeed Homer was the the first who came in my mind, too
March plays bridge, but for attracting Bart and Maggie and Milford it needs perhaps Crusty as idol

Another idea for "educational software" --> bridge raps with common themes, for example:
"hey man, if y'r missin' the f...g Q, finesse when 8 trumps in both hands are seen" (a cool rapper can of course do better than me...)
What about SMS services with not too hard problems and a chance to win something fancy like tickets for a pop concert?

[mike777]

Jlall, on Jan 5 2006, 10:27 AM, said:

We started out with like 12 kids, and it basically died.

Like I C which class you spent most of your energies on dude!

[Double !]

Al_U_Card, on Jan 4 2006, 03:31 PM, said:

Indeed if Bill and Warren were truly interested, they might give a million to Fred & Co. to develop a co-site with learning software to teach beginners (a la Jude Goodwin) the fundamentals and get them started. Every school and kid has access to a computer and the internet so wtp......

ya know, this ain't such a bad idea at all.

run it as an after-school (or before school) program, and all you need is a certified teacher who knows how to operate the computers in the room and the software program even if the teacher doesn't know how to play bridge. Market it as an instructional program by a highly qualified teacher with international credibility.

DHL

[ArcLight]

>We started out with like 12 kids, and it basically died. There was no interest because the learning curve was so steep.

My wife likes to play games, including card games. But she looks at the number of Bridge books I have and says "I play games for fun, I wouldn't want to invest a lot of time studying to improve at a single game".

For new comers to Bridge, I would think the idea would be to teach a simplistic bidding system (maybe 2 conventions Stayman and Blackwood), and a little bit of technique (finesse, hold up play, loser on loser). Forget about Trump Coups, Squeezes, and maybe even End Plays and Avoidance plays for the moment.

If the learning curve is too steep at the start many wont continue. But if its a "fun " game, then those who enjoy it after 6-12 months may want to move up. There will certainly be more of them.

[pigpenz]

Jlall, on Jan 6 2006, 12:53 AM, said:

I'm sure Fred wouldn't mind a million bux

I bet Jlall would rather have a girlfriend like Gavin Wolperts
Add both of their ages together and they were still 10 yrs younger than anyone else in the last acbl bulletin pictures except for jrs

[pbleighton]

"I bet Jlall would rather have a girlfriend like Gavin Wolperts"

Justin thinks Gavin is cute?

Peter

[awm]

One thing that's often been overlooked about teaching bridge in schools is the benefit of having young bridge teachers.

The game of bridge has an image problem -- most kids (well those who know the game exists) view it as a game their grandparents would play. This makes it a lot harder to get kids involved in bridge than in other games such as chess, go, or poker.

One way to help with this might be to recruit younger bridge players (say in their 20s or 30s) to teach bridge at schools. Having someone younger than your parents show up to teach bridge might help break the impression that it's "just a game for old people." High school students also seem to get excited when they have a young teacher (say just out of college).

I'd like to suggest Los Angeles as an area for teaching bridge in schools. This is obviously one of the biggest metropolitan areas in the U.S., and there's some advantage to having many school districts in close proximity to each other. It might be easier to start with a smaller school district (like Burbank or Pasadena) and then branch out. There's definitely enough of a population to have a meaningful "high school bridge championship" within the Los Angeles area. We also have a fairly large number of young bridge players living in Los Angeles; these are not necessarily "juniors" (the only member of the US junior teams to live full-time in the Los Angeles area is Josh Donn) but we have a lot of people in their 20s and 30s who could be interested in teaching bridge.

[Elianna]

Not to mention Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Culver City, and (I believe) Torrance, which all have their own school district, and are within a twenty/thirty minute drive of each other.

If we wanted to do something in LA, we'd have to get people willing to teach, not just lists of people who could possibly teach. Frankly, I don't see that happening soon. I'm willing to teach, but I'm not willing to do any of the organization (contacting schools, etc.), and while teaching bridge in schools has been discussed frequently, I have yet to see anyone volunteering to run this and contact schools. A local person would be much more likely to be successful talking to schools than out-of-town billionaires.

The other problem with getting younger people to teach bridge is that most of us work during the school day. I can only think of one youngish person who is free anytime during the school day, one who is free in the afternoons, and several who are not very adept bridge players who may be free once or twice a week.

But all of the strong young bridge players (including Donn and yourself, I might add) work during the school day.

[Sigi_BC84]

Jlall, on Jan 5 2006, 10:27 AM, said:

started out with like 12 kids, and it basically died. There was no interest because the learning curve was so steep. I think that somehow that needs to be dealt with before people will be interested in learning bridge.

In Germany we have a teaching system that greatly simplifies Bridge in the beginning, by replacing the bidding phase with something much simpler (which basically boils down to counting HCPs, distributional values and comparings lengths, looking for a fit).

This has been imported from France where it has been used to great success. It's called "Minibridge".

For very young players there are also competitions offered in this kind of game.

IMHO this practically solves the problem Justin has mentioned. It doesn't solve the LoL image problem our game has, however...

--Sigi

[pigpenz]

I have tried for several years to get my wife interested in having competition between schools, but it will take someone from outside the schools and other facilities than the school to get this done.......Now an interesting idea would be using BBO as the venue to get this done, i think some kids would like the idea of using the computer at first as opposed to f2f to start with.

[pdmunro]

Judit Polgar (the chess grandmaster) has been actively involved in promoting chess to children in the US. She and her manager, Paul Trong, have some interesting ideas about marketing games to children.

In an article on "Marketing Chess" by Paul Trong http://chessville.co...gChessInC21.htm, two ideas stand out:

1) Girls play games to meet friends; boys play to win. Games have to be marketed differently to the two groups. Girls want a social experience; boys want a sense of achievement, of getting better. Males have dominated the organization and aims of games to an extent that many females find off-putting.

2) "Another must-do activity is to create a comprehensive and easy to understand universal/standard chess teaching system to introduce people of all ages to chess. It should be readily available, for free, to download or view on the web."

Judit Polgar writes, http://www.chesscafe...lgar/polgar.htm

"The chess format on TV has to be shortened. It can be done with faster time control or via excellent editing, exciting commentaries, thorough explanations and simple to understand tips. However, there has to be a good plot."

"The relationship between the fans and the professional players is an incredibly important part of promoting chess. That is why I have traveled across the country to meet countless chess fans of all ages."

Here in Australia, chess is having a resurgence in schools. Bridge has never really got a foot in the door. Perhaps chess has something to teach us.

[Free]

Chess is imo a lot easier than bridge! You just study the movements of every piece, add the special moves, and you can play. For bridge you need to know what to do after every bid, and the standard systems these days are pretty complex for complete newbies to enjoy the game immediatly. To get to a decent level in both games, you'll need to study and practice ofcourse, but to start playing chess is plain easy. That's probably also one of the reasons why bridge doesn't get popular...

[Gerardo]

OT: Not Judit, Zsusza (Susan now that she lives in the US)