One of the recommendations I received on retirement was to start a new hobby and create new friends. For over forty years, I had not played a single hand of bridge before being encouraged by Walter Horban to again begin learning the game just before Covid struck. I just didn’t seem to have an interest in the game, but I followed up the next week and joined other first timers at the Senior Centre to learn to play bridge.
My parents Bob and Del Cumming loved to play the game of bridge. My grandparents Jake and Annie Cumming greatly enjoyed the card game. For them, it was very much a social evening of cards with friends mostly on Saturdays. My father learned the game from his parents and attending university in Winnipeg I suspect that he perfected his skills while studying for his actuarial degree.
It was his enjoyment of the game that prompted my mother to learn the game and the two were quite a fearsome duo. Between my mother and father, they probably played three or four times per week and continued to enjoy the social aspects of the game all their married life. Mom continued to play until she developed severe macular degeneration.
Growing up my parents subscribed to the Winnipeg Tribune and every day, Charles Goren published a column in the paper showing the bridge card layout along with the bidding and then challenged readers to solve the contract. The solution would appear in the following day’s edition. The bridge column was among the first articles read by my parents. Charles Goren was a great player and many of the bids that he incorporated through the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s have become common practice in today’s game.
Across the region there are many “Bridge” players of varying levels of skill. After I graduated from university, my father encouraged me to join him in playing duplicate bridge at the legion. For two years I tried. He must have had a lot of patience with me because through those two years we never won an evening. All of those duplicate players from the 1970’s have now passed on. They intimidated me.
It wasn’t until just over a year ago, that bridge returned to the Senior’s Centre in Fort Frances following the Covid restrictions. I showed up on a Wednesday in November and Eugene Andrusco told me to sit down as his partner and be mentored by him. After three hours I left in a daze, trying to remember everything that happened that day. The following week Eugene brought me a booklet that he had written and published on bridge.
I went home and began researching bids that he had made and the responses I should have made. Many of the bidding methods used back in the 1970’s had changed, and it seemed like a whole new card game.
The more I read on the internet and the books I bought on Amazon by Audrey Grant, a highly respected Canadian Bridge player, the more I didn’t understand. I have gone from playing in the Wednesday learning group on to playing with the Saturday group, a Sunday group and a Tuesday evening group.
The more senior players tell me the game is a life long learning process. I have come to believe them. Every hand is different and the bidding although one might think it would be common, it can be varied. Cue bids can mislead an opponent and newcomers alike. “I’ve been had.” Even the best player makes mistakes. You often hear “I hate this game, but I love it”.
Former Publisher
Fort Frances Times
