From Australian Bridge April 2003 – Subscribe here

Bridge in the cyber century

By SUZANNE EGGINS, SYDNEY

At 5.30pm six days a week, Giovanni Trione locks up his five-table cafe at the top of Heartbreak Hill in Sydney's eastern suburbs and drives round the corner to his flat. Turning his back on the Pacific Ocean crashing on the cliffs at Diamond Bay, he unlocks his front door, kicks off his work shoes, pours himself a generous glass of cabernet sauvignon, sits himself down in front of his PC and logs on to OK Bridge. Six, eight or even 12 hours later, he's still there. Perhaps he's eaten dinner; perhaps he's forgotten. Perhaps he'll have time to sleep for a few hours before work; perhaps he won't.
"Hey, I'm addicted," he sighs ruefully, with an Italian shrug of the shoulders. "It's a disaster!"

As most bridge beginners quickly realise, bridge is an absorbing game – absorbing to the point of addiction. Colin Masters, in an article on 'The Psychology of Bridge' for the Queensland Bridge Association, suggests that it's exactly this power to absorb our attention and distract us from our everyday worries that is one of the main attractions of the game:
"The bridge addict becomes so absorbed, that for a few minutes, the realities and urgencies of the day become non-existent. The leaving behind of the day's problems and hassles even for a few minutes is relatively euphoric... The bridge addict, therefore, must return to be able to get their fix."

Traditionally, though, the addictive, compulsive risks of bridge have been balanced by the game's social nature. In explaining the exponential growth in bridge playing in post-WWII America, sociologist David Putnam suggests that:
"The primary attraction of bridge and other card games was that they were highly social pastimes. While 'serious' players may have played in silence, most players enjoyed their weekly or monthly evening of bridge exactly because it provided a valued opportunity to chat with friends and neighbours."

But the development of sophisticated, synchronised online bridge games in the late 1990s has removed the face-to-face dimension from bridge. You can now play the game in your own home, with partners you will never meet in person, against opponents who are no more than icons on your screen. Your only 'conversation' may be telegraphic messages like "wdp", "brb", "glp" or "typ".

The increasing popularity of the online mode raises some tricky questions for bridge players and administrators in Australia: does online bridge spell the end of the 'social' game? Should we resist it as antisocial and potentially addictive? Should we view it as just an opportunity to attract players across to the 'real' face-to-face game? Or could it be that the survival of the game itself lies in its adaptability to the online mode, as western cultures re-define the 'social' in the cyber century?

Is bridge in decline?
History is littered with games no longer played, past-times left behind by social and technological change. Evidence suggests that bridge too is on the way out - unless it can redefine itself for the 21st century.

While the origins of bridge may be in populist pre-20th century European card games, modern 'contract' bridge was invented by millionaire Harold S. Vanderbilt in 1925. Following a slump during the Great Depression, bridge - like other card games - experienced explosive growth in the years after WWII.

A 1940s survey of 24 American cities found a deck of playing cards in 87% of American homes. By the mid-1970s nearly 40% of all American adults played cards at least once a month.

Bridge benefited most from this card-playing boom. Initially popular among the upper and upper middle classes, through the 1940s and 1950s bridge spread into the general middle class. By 1958, 35 million Americans - nearly one third of all adults - were bridge players. Millions of Americans belonged to regular card clubs. One study showed nearly one in every five adults was a member of a regular rubber bridge foursome.

Secrets to the success of bridge
The success of bridge can be explained by its congruence with the social conditions of the time. Post-WWII America sought to represent itself as a democratic, competitive, achievement-oriented, resourceful and socially homogeneous society. Bridge cost very little to play, was open to all, encouraged competitive intellectual activity, and promoted social cohesion by bringing people together and compelling them to interact civilly with each other.

Through the latter decades of the 20th century bridge continued to be popular. According to the American Contract Bridge League, about 11 million people played bridge in the United States and Canada in 1986.

But the ACBL's figures hide some more negative trends. The first is that card playing is dying out. Between 1981 and 1999 the average frequency of card playing plunged from 16 times per year to 8 times per year. According to sociologist David Putnam, if this rate of annual decline continues, it will take less than two decades for card playing to disappear entirely.

The second negative trend is bridge's return to its restricted social base. As home-based rubber bridge lost out to club-based duplicate, bridge began to lose its spread across the age range of the general middle class. Most contract bridge players are now older: in 1999 the average age of members of the ACBL was 64 and rising steadily; a similar pattern has been observed in Australia. Bridge players are also better educated, and from higher income brackets than the general population.

Paradoxically, the social character of the game contains the seed for its possible extinction. As Putnam suggests:
"because card playing is necessarily a social activity … its demise will probably accelerate toward the end. If no one else in your social circle plays cards, there is no reason for you to bother learning the game. The number of card players is rapidly falling below a self-sustaining level".

The Australian story: last stand of the endangered species?
These findings might give pause to the Australian Bridge Federation. When asked whether bridge is in terminal decline, President Keith MacDonald laughs and replies, "Not true! Nowhere near it." He points to membership figures which show an increase from 28,000 to 32,000 between 1996 and 2002, a rise of 14%. But expressed as a proportion of the Australian population, these increases represent only a rise from 0.14% to 0.17% - very modest growth, given the baby boomer bulge. And exactly the same trends of declining card playing observed in America can be noted here. How many of your workmates play cards at all, let alone bridge?

Yet MacDonald cheerfully states that the ageing population of Australia gives bridge excellent potential.
"When people are retiring, they need to do something with their time. And what's more enjoyable than sitting in pleasant surroundings and playing an intellectually stimulating game?"

Perhaps. But Putnam again sounds a warning note, reminding us that retirement communities are "the sociological equivalent of isolated ecological niches where endangered species often make a last stand."
"I wouldn't want to sit in a club with a whole lot of old people," says one ex-bridge player, signalling the problems the game faces if it is to market itself as a challenging and exhilarating past-time for those outside the retiree community.

One further factor that might dampen MacDonald's optimism is that women represent more than 70% of club members. But it is exactly middle and upper-middle class women who have been most affected by social changes over the last 40 years. Where once intelligent, affluent women had plenty of time but few opportunities for intellectually stimulating activities, they now face a wide range of exciting choices, including higher education and professional careers. In the decades to come, club owners may see their traditional base shrink.

Club bridge already shows signs of declining numbers. The NSWBA has seen attendance drop at all its evening duplicates and has been forced to consider sub-letting part of its premises to reduce its overheads.

Club owners and bridge administrators acknowledge the narrow band of the recreational market that bridge now occupies, but are hesitant to admit that the familiar social bridge of the 20th century may be headed towards a slow and genteel extinction.

To reverse this trend, bridge would need to re-invent itself in the global technological context of the 21st century, by striving for what it once had: a diversified membership base, with players drawn more evenly from across the demographic spectrum.

Impact of the internet
Evidence suggests that bridge is re-inventing itself - online.

The first online bridge club OK-Bridge appeared on the 'net in 1990. Now there are at least a dozen online bridge forums, although the field is dominated by the American giant OK-Bridge and the British-based International Online Bridge Club's Bridge Club LIVE!, in continuous operation now for 7 years.

The popularity of online bridge is not easy to demonstrate, as not all online games provide statistics of membership and playing numbers. OK-Bridge claims to have more than 19,000 members internationally, with often 200 tables playing at any one time, and dozens of kibitzer 'watching' or waiting in the 'lobby' till a game comes up. Visits to their site suggests these claims are justified.

More interesting than the numbers of online players are their demographic diversity. Evidence here suggests that online players do not come from the retiree pool, but from a younger, and more varied group.

In the Australian context, for example, the online game seems to attract advanced players who also hold down professional careers. Players of the calibre of Kim Morrison, Sartaj Hans, Joe Haffer, Bill Jacobs, David Beauchamp, Peter Reynolds and George Kozakos appear quite often at the tables of OK-Bridge in the evenings and on weekends, along with players at the upper end of the congress scene. Bridge Club LIVE! appears to attract duplicate players of a more intermediate standard.

The age, gender and social class of online players are difficult to monitor, but evidence from player profiles and photo-icons suggests that more online players are in the 30-50 age group than above or below that, and that more men than women play online. The financial outlay and educational level implied in having access to a home PC, internet connection, and computer literacy suggests online players are generally middle class.

Some who play online also play face-to-face, although many online players now seem to find the club scene unappealing. Long sessions that make for late nights, the hassle of finding parking in inconvenient locations, and perhaps the predominance of elderly, 'social' players, may be keeping the mid-flight and younger working players home.

There is growing anecdotal evidence that many online players never enter the doors of a suburban club. For an increasing number of bridge players, their only experience of the game is online: they learn online and play online, apparently with enjoyment.

Why?

The advantages of the online game
Peter Oakley, President and co-founder of Bridge Club LIVE!, lists five major advantages of the online game:
1. 24-hour access to a game, which can range from a couple of hands to a full 4-hour (or longer) session, and live tournaments with an automatic movement of the EW pairs
2. Bridge without the hassle of travelling to a venue.
3. Virtually free play.
4. No limit on eating, smoking or even drinking at the table.
5. Geographically separated partnerships can play/practise together.

Local online players usually stress the convenience, easy availability of partners, and relatively low cost of the online game.

Membership of OK-Bridge costs US$99 annually for standard playing rights, and US$198 for tournament play. Bridge Club LIVE! is being offered free to ABF members for a trial period. These costs compare well with sit-down table money at many clubs now topping $10, not including parking (if you can find some) and the obligatory café laté ($3+).

Who doesn't play and why
While uptake of the online game is growing by the month, whole groups of players are not participating. The retirees - the largest group of club players - are not heavily represented online. In part this can be explained by their lower familiarity with online technologies, but it also suggests that this group continues to define the game as a face-to-face activity.

Another group conspicuously absent from the online scene are Australian bridge administrators and club owners.

ABF President Keith MacDonald admits that he is not an online player himself. "Bridge on the net doesn't excite me at all," he says, mentioning his need for the social and psychological dimensions of the game. "For me, I need to smile at my partner across the table, or exchange a little comment like 'bad luck'".

MacDonald feels that his own need for 'the social' in bridge echoes that of most ABF members. MacDonald claims that "most of our members are social players and they are not striving to represent the state or the nation. They're playing because they want to enjoy the game and their fellow players."

Is online bridge 'anti-social'?

MacDonald's remarks point to the criticism most frequently levelled at online bridge - invariably by non online players - that it's antisocial.

Non-players perceive verbal abuse, cheating and dropping out as common problems in the online game. While the anonymity and the absence of social cues on the internet have been shown to inhibit social control by some people, no matching studies are available that report on the frequent rudeness of players in the face-to-face game.

Peter Oakley from Bridge Club LIVE! does agree that the anonymity or facelessness of the 'net can encourage outright offensiveness you mightn't meet in face-to-face games. Like other online clubs, Bridge Club LIVE! tries to control this by enforcing rigid behaviour discipline, and by expelling members for gross rudeness.

One expression of this rudeness is that a player can bring an online game to an abrupt end. Oakley admits that drop-outs by dissatisfied players can be a nuisance. While Giovanni Trione agrees, he points out that often there's a legitimate reason for the connection falling out.
"I had someone from Lebanon say, 'Gianni, I'm sorry but a bomb has hit'." Giovanni also relates a cautionary tale of a friend who had a heart attack mid-hand.

The perception that cheating is more common in online play than at the club also keeps some players away. But Peter Oakley claims that software capabilities and the archiving of all hands, along with bidding, play and result logs, mean that cheating is pretty easily spotted. Members are warned they will be "named and shamed" if they're caught. "If a pair decide to cheat together, their bidding and play is subject to scrutiny, and when they cannot explain to management's satisfaction they are expelled," he writes. He could recall only one case in the past seven years.

Re-defining 'social interaction'
Underlying the criticism that online bridge is antisocial lies an assumption by many players and administrators that to be social, an activity must involve face-to-face contact. But online players as well as sociologists of the web are increasingly challenging this assumption, forcing us to re-think just what 'social interaction' might mean in the 21st century.

Regular (if not addicted!) online player Giovanni Trione enjoys the online game exactly because it brings him into contact with a very wide group of people, most of whom he would never have 'met' but for the internet.
"I think it's quite social," he says. "I meet people all over the world. If you have a good nature you make good friends. You chat, you share a joke."

Many of Giovanni's partners come from a growing global community. He plays with people in Italy, Norway, Canada, the United States and even - occasionally - Australia. "You get to know who's there at different times," he say. "In Italy at 5 o'clock here, it's 8 o'clock in the morning there so there's a lot of people playing before they go to work. Then at 9 o'clock they leave for work. So at this point you connect to Norway. Norway is 2 hours behind. And then when Norway goes to work, you get Iceland, and then Canada and the United States."

Peter Oakley also disputes the claim that the online game is antisocial. "It's not missing the "people factor" - although we sometimes wish it was!" Peter writes. "There's a surprising friendliness amongst members, hundreds of whom have searched each other out and in a couple of cases formed business partnerships!"

American sociologist Mary Chayko suggests we may hold too narrow a definition of 'social'. She finds that social connectedness, the forming of meaningful social bonds, can occur very successfully in the absence of face-to-face contact. She traces a link between the social connectedness people can feel with a celebrity they will never meet (eg Princess Diana, President Nelson Mandela), a character in a book or a TV show, and the people we 'meet' in online forums, chat groups or online games.
"The assumption that social connections must satisfy certain narrowly determined criteria (such as "containing" a face-to-face component) in order to be truly authentic greatly oversimplifies the phenomenon of social bonding," Chayko writes.

Instead, she suggests that socio-mental connections - connections with people with whom we are not physically in face-to-face contact - can be as deep, multilayered and fulfilling as face-to-face connections. Chayko argues that we must not deny and devalue socio-mental connections, not least because "in an age in which technology continuously "brings" absent others into our social spheres, our tendency to connect in this way will only increase".

The net as social equalizer
The growing number of online players suggests that they are deriving some social, as well as intellectual, rewards from this mode of play. And studies of internet communities indicate that the internet actually promotes connectedness between people of diverse demographic backgrounds, some of whom were previously disadvantaged by face-to-face contact.

For example, Peter Oakley from Bridge Club LIVE! identifies the advantages of the online game for disabled players. Similarly, Oakley points out that the net means that a player cannot be overawed or subjected to bullying by expert and aggressive players.

Sociologist David Putnam expresses this more theoretically, noting that "virtual communities may be more egalitarian than the real communities in which we live; they can prevent people from forming prejudices prior to their encounters."

Online bridge player Sharon Foster attests to these advantages. Sharon suffers from spinal meningitis which caused her to go deaf at the age of eleven. In an interview with an American news service in 2000, Sharon says, "Online, I'm treated like a normal person. I can think, play, and chat as fast as anyone, and my lack of hearing isn't an issue - for me or the people I encounter there."

Demographic diversity through shared interest

What emerges from the sociological evidence is that the internet is changing the kinds of communities we form. When face-to-face contact is the principal means of connecting with people, we are forced to come into contact with many people who do not share our interests or outlooks, but who are often very similar to us in demographic terms (we tend to live and work with people of the same race, class, and value systems). What the internet allows us to do is to establish 'communities of shared interest', where there may be extensive demographic diversity among community members.

Applied to bridge, these changes suggest a move from the suburban bridge club, where most members share racial, socio-economic, linguistic and cultural similarities, to a demographically diverse global online community - perhaps offering bridge just the re-vitalisation it needs to survive.

Embracing the online game - but how?
While Australian bridge club owners and administrators are far from techno-phobes, their approach to the online game so far has been cautious. The dominant attitude is to see the online game as complementary to the face-to-face game. Most hope to wean online players across to the 'real' face-to-face game.

This attitude lies behind the ABF's decision to sponsor free membership for ABF members to the International Online Bridge Club's Bridge Club LIVE! Although in the short-term the trial is costing the ABF money, in the long-term MacDonald hopes the venture will become financially beneficial for the ABF.

MacDonald takes the view that "those who play online will play online". Internet bridge is here to stay, he says, and either the ABF gets in on the act, or it gets swamped with yet unknown consequences. MacDonald's hope is that those who play in cyberspace will be attracted across to the clubs and to face-to-face bridge.

But the trial of Bridge Club LIVE! is going "slowly", MacDonald admits. This is partly because of technical issues, but also because the online venture is not high in the ABF's priorities. It comes well after the ABF's emphasis on bridge teaching, marketing, and accountability. "Although I want it to be in the forefront, it isn't a priority for us," MacDonald says.

MacDonald feels that internet bridge is no threat at all to the club game - at the moment. "It may well become a threat in the very long-term," he says, but he is confident that the clubs are well on the way to addressing problems that many admit are keeping numbers down: distance, travel, parking, the unpopularity of evening sessions, the need for some socializing time.

But what if the threat is real?

But there are those who argue that administrators are showing a misplaced complacency in the face of the online game, and may be missing a major opportunity. Richard Willey, a graduate student at MIT, who has been following the growth in the online game, predicts that, "Internet bridge continues to grow at an extremely rapid rate and easily has the potential to surpass the "face-to-face" game as the predominant way in which people play bridge."

Willey suggests that unless the ACBL pro-actively embrace the online game, there is "the real potential that the ACBL will become near irrelevant to the future of the game."

Rather than cede control of the online game to the various (and multiplying) individual online clubs, Willey believes the ACBL should be pro-active and take a leadership role: "The key to the ACBL's continued success hinges on the organization's ability to promote standards for Internet bridge."

Willey sees enormous cost benefits to the ACBL if it can meet the challenges of internet bridge. For example, an individual's tournament results could be analysed and feedback provided on ways to improve their game; hand records by top pairs could be used as the basis for educational materials; and major tournaments could be played online to eliminate problems with alerts, hesitations, and bidding errors.

Other possibilities are for clubs to look at shifting some of their events and teaching activities to online mode. Bridge clubs might also study the techniques of the successful computer games industry, and perhaps introduce cyber-café corners, where players can simultaneously experience the benefits of the club atmosphere and international competition.

But what is necessary first of all, as Willey says, is that bridge administrators "actively welcome the transition to the online game, and promote it as a natural evolution to the game," a position that still seems quite a long way off, in Australia at least.

Conclusion: facing change
New technologies have always occasioned fear in those who value the status quo. Socrates objected to the invention of writing because he thought it would lessen people's ability to keep concepts in their mind.

In one sense, fear of technological change is justified, because it always does revolutionize a culture. As social commentator Neil Postman points out: "A new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything. In the year 1500, fifty years after the printing press was developed, we did not have old Europe plus the printing press. We had a different Europe. … New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the arena in which thoughts develop. "

The introduction of new technologies in the past also points us toward caution in making predictions about their impact. As Putnam reminds us, for the first century after the invention of the telephone in 1876, analysts completely misjudged its social implications.

Despite predictions to the contrary, the telephone did not lead to the disintegration of the social fabric. Instead, the telephone allowed people to reinforce their existing social networks and social values, with most phone calls made to friends and family.

Similarly, dire predictions that the internet means the end of social interaction, or the creation of a generation of cyber-brats, seem foolhardy. What seems more likely is that the internet will allow the maintenance and expansion of communities of special interests. Not only does the internet offer the potential to overcome the tyranny of distance but also the tyranny of demographic sameness.

Perhaps, as Chayko suggests, all we can predict is that there will be massive changes:
" It is a safe bet that technologies that are being developed, refined, and disseminated as this is written will lead to currently unimaginable changes in our society, in the nature of connectedness and in thinking itself."

Change has come to the game of bridge, whether it wanted it or not. How we react to that change may determine whether the game subsides into a quaint old-world past-time of the elderly and the technophobe, or whether it is re-invigorated as the cyber-friendly, global social game of the 21st century.

Sources
Chayko, M 2002 Connecting - how we form social bonds and communities in the internet age State University of New York Press, NY
Price, Ian 1999 'The Psychology of Bridge' in Masters, C (ed) Mind Games: a biographical history of bridge in Queensland QBA
Postman, N 1993 Technopoly Vintage Books, NY
Putnam, R.D. 2000 Bowling Alone -- the collapse and revival of American community Simon & Schuster, NY
Willey, Richard 2003 Draft Proposal to the ACBL (used with the author's permission)