Addressing the "Technological Illiteracy" bit from the viewpoint of someone who was running a Chess Club up to 2020.<p>Depending on where you live what people do online can vary a lot, especially if you have a mix of young and old people. My Club had lots of players/parants that used WeChat and lots that used Facebook messenger. Some people barely used the Internet. Different clubs will have different mixes.<p>I ended up having a website with updates and a Facebook group. 1-to-1 Communication was done via SMS since everybody had that. I used to also do announcements on Club night, posters on the wall and a mass SMS at the start of each year to remind people we were starting up again.<p>A website for registering is not a trivial thing to setup and maintain. Even if you are just using a SaaS vendor it will still cost significant fees. Our Club charges $100/year to cover everything. If you want something non-standard then who knows what that will cost.<p>I know that since I left some stuff does take place on discord and some registration is done automatically online (under the grace of a club member with time). But you have to pick your technology to match your members. If most of them a 50+ then a discord that only 10% use is only for discussion, not somewhere for official communication/business.
Interesting. It sounds like club bridge has changed a lot in the last 20 years (since I stopped playing).<p>The technology bit seems a little ridiculous, young people can and do respond to email just fine, I don’t think trying to move to Discord is a good use of anyone’s time.<p>But when I was a player (and struggling to get anyone to use email), everyone was unfailingly nice.
I played a lot of tournament bridge from childhood through college and then stopped (I’m now 32).<p>For me, the two big reasons I quit were (1) the rating system, and (2) finding a partner.<p>For the rating system, it’s just not competitive. Master points don’t necessarily mean anything. If you have a lot, it means you’ve played a lot - maybe they at least mean that. You could play for 50 years and easily become a life master but be complete garbage compared to the kid who did it in a month or two. There’s no information to understand how successful you actually are minus what you alone know about yourself and your game. It’s just not as fun, especially once I started to play games that make success extremely evident via stats / ranking.<p>Bridge is very unique in needing a partner to play with and one that you understand quite well. I once played with one of the best players in the world as a 16 year old (literally, one of the “best” at least master point wise). We did terrible lol. I didn’t know what he was doing and he couldn’t stoop down to my level all too well. How do you find the right partner? Not really sure. Again, I think it’s actually a cool part of the game, adds a unique social element and togetherness to it but it does make getting plugged into it harder.
I'm 30, so roughly the same age as the poster of this article. But for a person who (rightfully so) derides the ageism and racism they encounter, their whole section on technical literacy is just a modern-spin take on ageism.<p>Just because people my age and younger use discord etc, doesn't mean this is either a "good" way for people to communicate, or something we should force people whose technical literacy could vary wildly between extremes to try and figure out.<p>Personally, I hate discord and messaging in general and much prefer to make phone calls. I guess that makes me an anomaly compared to my generation, but I generally find that whole section rude and trying to solve their own personal problem, not the problems of the community as a whole.
> Online bridge needs <i>visible</i> rewards for success. BBO is out of the 90s, but presuming we get something modern eventually, give me custom board skins! Let me have a penguin for an avatar. Give me a special hat for winning a certain tournament. Young folks engage with cosmetic rewards, and they don't have to be predatory!<p>Fortunately that's not always the case with young people, I mean, this avatar-mania thing. Bridge is not anime- or otaku-adjacent.<p>Back to the subject at hand, and taking into consideration that I've never ever played bridge (but some of the people from my uni used to play back in the day, including one dorm roommate), I feel like the OP wants to change the entire culture of the game being played around his/her/their parts of the world (I think it's the Valley) only on account of him/her/they being younger. That's not how it works, there are moments in life when you have to adapt to the existing culture, not the other way round.
It sounds like OP just had bad luck with the club he chose to play for. I used to play a lot when I was young (23); tournaments, club competition etc.
I never got bad comments about my age, quite the opposite: people were happy to get some young blood in their club. I'm white so can't comment about any racism, but in general the atmosphere has always been very friendly and polite.
Do most 20-30 people use Discord? And if they do - so what? That excludes people 30+.<p>I would have thought WhatsApp would be a more universal tool for communicating updates. Or email, because people <i>do</i> use email. We just use it less as a proportion of all our communication than we used to.
One of the comments in the OP:<p><pre><code> I believe the problem is that bridge in the US (not true in some other countries) lacks a "critical mass" of 20 and 30 somethings.
</code></pre>
I like to play bridge, but all the people I have asked in my age group (the 20 and 30 somethings) say bridge is a game their (grand)parents (used to) play. I am not sure how bridge can be introduced as a fun hobby without the face-to-face aspect, because compared to other online games it does seem a bit monotone.
I've always wanted to try bridge but have yet to do so. I've played the variations with friends & family - 500, Whist, and Euchre. So much fun!
So I played club bridge and the odd ACBL tournament for several years so can speak to this.<p>Let me start by saying Bridge is a great game. I always liked the biding side of the game more than the card play. The former informs the latter.<p>The poster said something strange where players and directors objected to systems they wanted to play and mentioned specifically "2/1 GF". I don't know where they were playing but that's a pretty standard system. In North America, people generally play what are called "5 card majors", meaning you don't open 1 heart or 1 spade unless you have 5+ in that suit (with opening hand strength). 2/1 GF simply means if your partner responds with a 2 bid of a lower suit (eg 1S-2C) you now can't stop bidding until you reach a game level contract (3N, 4H/S, 5C/D). That has some consequences but it isn't <i>that</i> different to the NA 5 card majors and everywhere I played that was standard.<p>There are systems you can't play in certain events. In any ACBL sanctioned event you can play what are called "general card" systems so no one can object to a system that is permitted in an event.<p>A club game will typically be 21-27 boards, last about 3 hours and involve anywhere from 3 to 30+ tables.<p>The ACBL is in the business of selling masterpoints. This is as close as you get to a ratings system but it doesn't reflect skill, just how much you've been to ACBL events. Some events bracket you on masterpoints. There are different colours (eg silver for local tournaments, gold/red for regional and I think platinum for certain national events). The ACBL makes money by you going to those events where, at least prepandemic, you typically paid $20-30 per half-day session.<p>Clubs in NA are very much set up to cater to a very old crowd. Like the poster says, most events are during the workday. Only the largest clubs had evening or weekend games and they tended to have smaller attendance.<p>I agree finding a reliable Bridge partner is the biggest hurdle. Playing with pick up partners is way less common and less satisfying. All competitive Bridge is with fixed partnerships or teams.<p>What's interesting about Bridge is that it's been fairly resistant to AI. Of course any computer can remember all the cards they've seen but even I as a fairly mediocre player saw the flaws in both biding and play of pretty much every computer Bridge game I tried.<p>The ACBL has, at every opportunity, chosen to cater to their existing base rather than expanding it and it's been a running joke for years that every year the average age of an ACBL member goes up by 1 year. It's not too far from the truth.<p>I can't speak to discrimination. This probably depends on area to some degree. But club Bridge players are (IME), at best, a cantankerous and disagreeable lot.
Reasonably serious (although not major tournament playing bridge player here if anyone has questions. (Not, like, true expert, but probably 99th percentile of active US players)