The bridge players who wrote a little “We did not vote for Bush” sign on the back of a menu and held it up at an awards banquet caused quite a storm. I think this comment best expresses the sense (of those who still have sense) of the brouhaha.

The link is from a comment by The Son, but I wanted to give it more play because the comment is so good.

Just installed the current bridge computer program world champion, Jack 4.0. And I have printed from the Internet the ACBL Standard American Yellow Card bidding conventions—an important development with bridge play on the Web, since you and your partner probably have never played together and you need to be using the same bidding conventions.

And man, have those conventions changed. In my day an opening bid of, say 2 Spades was forcing to game. Now it’s a weak bid. <sigh> Change is difficult.

I was graduated from college in June 1961 and worked that summer at the IBM General Product Development Laboratory in Endicott NY. I was working on the IBM 1410, the newest model of the 1400 line of computers, succeeded by the 360 line with a totally different architecture. (In fact, the president of IBM had to go personally to the 1400 development group and assign its members to various different projects and locales because they wouldn’t stop working on it after the 36o was announced: they were determined that the 1400 would live.)

I recall intensive bridge games among the programmers. This was, in general, before computer science degrees, and the programmers had degrees in a variety of subjects: biology, music, philosophy, English, and the like. But they were all inclined to enjoy puzzles and algorithms, and bridge was a natural.

The games were played at lunchtime, and programmers were on the clock, so the dummy shuffled and dealt for the dealer: as soon as one hand ended, we could pick up the next hand’s cards and immediately start bidding. Occasionally, if the struggle was close, one would volunteer to take everyone’s time cards and clock them in while we finished the rubber. (I believe the statute of limitations has expired on this misdemeanor.)

Those were good games. And I continued to play the following year in graduate school in math, until I discovered Go.

As I dip my toe in the world of bridge today, I keep running across references to “Acol Bidding.” No explanation of the name, which drives me nuts. Finally, I discover (in reading The Backwash Squeeze) that the Acol Bidding System, in common use in England, is named for the street on which it was developed.

The Acol System was the brain-child of bridge players, among whom were Mr. Maurice Harrison-Gray, Mr. Iain Macleod, Mr. J.C.H. Marx, Mr. Terence Reese and Mr. S.J. Simon. The history of the Acol System is rather unique in that it was first employed in 1934 in a relatively small North London Bridge Club located on Acol Street, from whence the name.

That little note greatly relieved my anxiety about the name (I kept trying to figure it out as an acroynm) and, IMHO, should be included whenever the system is described.

I’m about half through The Backwash Squeeze and Other Improbable Feats and finding it quite enjoyable. Bill Gates is avid bridge player and plays on-line fairly frequently (not at MSN games, but at one of the bridge servers where the play is better), as does Warren Buffett.

I found a list of bridge blogs, for those who are interested. The American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) has a site Bridge Is Cool to try to interest young people in learning bridge. ACBL’s main site is also of interest.

Great Bridge Links is a good and current compilation of links of all sorts—to software, clubs, tournaments, on-line play, and so on. Currently the best bridge-playing program is Jack ver. 4.0, written by a guy in the Netherlands. That’s a general purpose program, but there are also many specialized programs to work on a single aspect of the game, such as presenting exercises of one sort or another, or to assist you in documenting the conventions you use.

The site Bridge Doctor offers instruction, play and competition—it’s $7/month. Acol.info offers free lessons, using the Acol bidding system which apparently is the new popular set of conventions for bidding. (It’s name after the road on which it was developed.) Another site with free lessons for beginners is No Fear Bridge.

I’m going to the library today to pick up some bridge books, and I dug out Jack ver. 3.0 and ordered the upgrade to 4.0.