Talk:Contract bridge

Positions Reference
The page includes the statement: The 52-card deck can be distributed to the four players some $53.6$ ways., However this reference - Manley et al (2011) is not actually a reference. The sentence should be removed or the reference completed.


 * "Manley et al (2011), p. 579" is IMHO a proper reference and points to the listing of Manley's Official Encyclopedia of Bridge (Edition 7) in the "Bibliography" subsection just below the "Notes". It is true that the statement "This number is expressed as 53.6 octillion." is not in the reference per se. Page 579 of the reference states the number as "53,644,737,765,488,792,839,237,440,000" and editorial license is used to restate it as 53.6 octillion. See Octillion defined as 1027 at this link in the second column, ninth row of the table referring to "US, Canada and modern British". It is a number followed by 27 zeros (1027).  If you wish to amend the main text by replacing "53.6 x 1027" with "53,644,737,765,488,792,839,237,440,000" and remove the second half of the reference, feel free to do so but that would be poor presentation IMHO. Newwhist (talk) 17:41, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Please sign your posts. Newwhist (talk) 17:53, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Overview section
At this writing, the Overview section is, IMHO, too lengthy and contains information and details repeated in subsequent sections. I believe it should be pruned heavily with details moved to following sections where appropriate. Comments? Newwhist (talk) 12:32, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I think most of the second paragraph should probably be omitted. Also in the first paragraph I would replace "Contract bridge, or simply bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard 52-card deck. In its basic format, it is played by four players in two competing partnerships" by "Contract bridge, or simply bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard 52-card deck for four players in two competing partnerships." JH (talk page) 18:56, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
 * It is still too long. There is a paragraph that describes another game, Spades, and what's more it is inaccurate. (It says that if you don't make your contract, you receive penalties.) Other than that, this section contains more information than is needed in an overview without telling you how to play the game.OrewaTel (talk) 09:13, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

History article merge
The history of contract bridge is no more detailed than what we already have here, is less well sourced than this article, and has not been meaningfully developed in 13 years. I suggest for now we merge it in here to prevent confusion for readers. Onceinawhile (talk) 11:30, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Both articles are sadly lacking concerning the history of the game after Vanderbilt developed auction bridge into contract bridge. Ideally I'd like to see the history of contract bridge article greatly expanded, when it would probably become too long to incorporate in this one. In particular, the Culbertson era, when the game became very popular and featured heavily in the press, ought to have proper coverage. But realistically that seems unlikely to happen any time soon, so I won't oppose your suggestion. JH (talk page) 18:06, 14 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Agree - and thanks for your recent improvements. Newwhist (talk) 12:37, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Support without prejudice of a future spin-out when the history article gets properly developed per JH. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 00:46, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Support with the same caveat as John Wolfson. Bermicourt (talk) 21:21, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Against. I'm against because a thorough account would be long, and we need this page to stay manageable. The issues this page faces don't need more than a superficial knowledge of whist and its successors. But a proper history does. Keep in mind how much more difficult it is to manage a long complicated article compared with two articles which can be edited without interfering with each other. I know I'm remiss in not having contributed to the history of contract bridge, since I do have a lot of sources. Anyway (ramble, ramble) I will look first at our work on whist to see where that's got to. Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:06, 19 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I'm going to continue this line of thought. Between modern card-play and that of the late 1920s/early 1930s there is almost no difference, except that modern bidding has improved card defence. An example: Culbertson's Red Book on cardplay has little that was not in Lenz's cardplay book: that's how Culbertson was able to write it so quickly! A few discoveries were made after WWII by Reese, but they were minor in comparison.
 * Turn to bidding, and the opposite is true. Almost all of bridge bidding had to be revised after the transition to contract bridge, and the process has included a thorough examination of artificial systems as well as the great elaboration of natural systems, and the elaboration of methods of interference in bidding. We see the end result now in Meckwell. We are going to find it hard to tell this story. I find as a chessplayer that chess has been more sensitive to the ins and outs of ideas at the top (e.g. the Mark Dvoretsky series, and John Watson's two books). Now that I've said that, another thing occurs to me. Computers have made much more difference to chess than to bridge. Having comprehensive databases on openings and strong playing software has greatly changed professional chess.
 * At this stage I'm not sure how many of you I'm taking along on this ride! So I'd better pause for a while! Macdonald-ross (talk) 13:53, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your interesting thoughts. I hadn't envisaged that a "history of bridge" article would go into any great detail concerning the development of bidding systems, but perhaps there would be scope for a separate article on that topic called something like "development of bidding systems in contract bridge"? JH (talk page) 18:31, 20 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment. Long articles can dissuade readers and shorter ones lack the detail they may be seeking. The long term general approach I prefer is to have an article present details in logical subsections to assist in both writing and in readers finding what they are looking for. When a subsection becomes long and is essentially a complete article onto itself, spin it off and leave a very short precis and link in the new article. After more work is done on all the topics, the ultimate hierarchy I see is 'Contract bridge' as the main article with a short 'History' subsection and a link to a main 'History' article which in turn includes short subsections on 'Card play' and 'Development of bidding systems' with links to main articles on those subtopics. The key principle is that articles should not become books but I believe that we start at the top parent article and when a subsection or child grows up, we set it out into the world. Newwhist (talk) 12:53, 23 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Well, I agree, though I think the difficulties we face are many. For much of early bridge bidding theory we lack records of their reasoning, because the rationales were never published. It is difficult enough at this stage to explain the decisions behind the Vienna system, and that was once known to many players. The first completely artificial system was Marmic, an Italian post-war system deliberately designed to be difficult for opponents to understand (there were no rules requiring explicit understandings to be foreclosed in writing). Culbertson and Acol were a bit unusual, in that publication was a main intention of their inventors.
 * Another angle to bear in mind is that, once upon a time, almost all bridge was played for money. Rubber bridge was the standard form. This kept most bidding simple. You would sit down at a table, draw for partners, and the person opposite would say something like "Kitchen?" This meant she wanted to play "strong 2C, Aces and Blackwood". So to many players even Acol was amazingly complicated and fussy. When GB won the Bermuda Bowl in 1955 both teams played systems which would be thought very skimpy today. Now, however, there is a real difference between the detailed agreements between partners at international level and the simple cards used by most of us amateurs.
 * Well, what comes out of all this? We need to explain how modern systems used by internationals are much more complex, that is they include understandings about things the average player doesn't even know exists... Given that, the systems at the top are mostly developments of natural systems, even though they are very complicated. Also, though mainly natural, we still have the divide between strong 1C systems and other natural systems. So I suppose, like many authors before us, we organise an account of approximately natural bidding systems into those which use 1C as a strong bid and those that use 2C as the strong (initial) bid.
 * Bidding theory for the last 30 or so years has been driven by two objectives: 1. Better slam bidding, and 2. Coping with interference in bidding (competitive bidding). Oh, one more thing. The club player plays mostly match-point bridge, where the scoring system has a great effect on competitive bidding. That's obviously true, but explaining it may not be easy... Macdonald-ross (talk) 18:02, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Lack of mention of the ABA
This article's statement that "By 1937, however, the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) had come to power (a union of the ABL and the USBA), and it remains the sanctioning body for bridge tournaments in North America." seems a bit white-person-centric to me. The American Bridge Association has been in existence and running bridge tournaments since 1932.It's true that the ACBL was the sanctioning body for bridge tournaments restricted to white people. If this section of the article is to be a history of bridge, rather than a history of "bridge as played by white people who refused to play with black people", it should mention the ABA as well as the ACBL. Andylatto (talk) 21:27, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
 * This is actually USA-centric. ACBL is a national sanctioning body and is no more noteworthy than EBU (English Bridge Union) or even NZBridge. It is inappropriate to advertise it in the Tournament section. It might be useful to mention it in the history section but I doubt it. That the ACBL operated a color bar until 1967 is both noteworthy and reprehensible but it doesn't belong in this article. It might belong in a full article on History of Contract Bridge and it certainly belongs in the article on ACBL. OrewaTel (talk) 22:32, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree. I have added a brief "history" section to the ACBL page, and moved the sentence we are discussing there, along with a mention of the ABA. Andylatto (talk) 12:09, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Two Rules?
Why are there two Rules sections? Jhurley85 (talk) 12:14, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
 * A very good question. I've renamed the first "How the game is played". JH (talk page) 14:00, 5 June 2022 (UTC)