Think About It. The Bridge. Please, all stand and offer a proper bow to Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, featured here at the helm of his yacht Enterprise on the cover of TIME magazine issue for September 15, 1930. It celebrated his team’s recent successful defense of the World Cup of racing. He played a minor role in monitoring the finances of the massive New York Central Railroad in the days before taxes and severe rate regulations precipitated their demise. In 1968 the struggling NYC was encouraged to merge with its longtime foe, the Pennsylvania Railroad. Only adding weight to the burdens of operating in that environment, bankruptcy was forced by 1970. As a frame of reference, you might note that Ayn Rand wrote the seemingly prescient but sadly logical Atlas Shrugged in 1957.
Harold was also a licensed pilot who owned and operated his own Sikorsky A-43 “Flying Boat”, an object of great wonder in 1938. However today’s celebration of this active heir of Vanderbilt wealth is for his greatest contribution to mankind, the critical element of the “contract” for the already enormously popular game called Bridge. It was 1925 when some say he and travelling friends on a slow boat to Europe came up with the thought that there was inadequate reward for accuracy and insufficient punishment for failure in the “auction” method of establishing the commanding suit (trump). For centuries, the dominant game using 52 cards shared evenly between four players composing two opposing partnerships, had been Whist. Most conditions were established by your position at the table until 1904 when the auction began. Finally, with the auction and a contract, we had a game that combined the luck (the deal) with trust (the partnership), honor, skill and remembering the “name of the game”.
Trust between partners is necessary to assure that bidding responses between the two are predictable and dependable, given that only “conventional” bids that your opponents recognize are permitted. For most players, winning by using information even accidentally acquired by seeing an opponent’s cards would be unthinkable. P.S. It’s also illegal. Incidentally, the American Contract Bridge League provides the laws, rules and mechanics of shuffling, dealing, timing of bids and play. When followed, the game is a model for the “game of life” and as good as a game can get without gloves for boxing or head butting on the football field .
We briefly alluded to memory. It does help. Remembering conventions, bids and cards played considerably increases your chances of succeeding even with an astronomical number of potentially different sets of cards for your “hand”. In life, some of us try to maintain valuable relationships. These are the people who bring us pleasure and comfort excepting when they help to keep us honest. It’s accomplished by keeping the lines of communication and access open. That’s the whole point. For happiness in the game of life and success in the greatest card game, you must remember the name of the game, and maintain The Bridge. Think About It.