-DVBS Archive Team-

Written by: Bo Han Zhu (Class of 2020), Nathan Loafman (Class of 2020), and Marco He (Class of 2020)

Photos by: Mr. JH

Bridge is a card game dated back from the 1800s, gaining widespread popularity throughout the world. It is acknowledged as the hardest card game on this planet, played by the likes of great minds such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. This is the second year of the DVBS Bridge Club, led by Bo Han Zhu (11).

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It was raining when a few members of the DVBS Bridge Club, consisting of Marco He (11), Bo Han Zhu (11), and Nathan Loafman (11), arrived at the Odd Fellows Hall, the location of the sectional bridge tournament in Santa Rosa, CA on Saturday September 29. Arriving an hour before the official start of the tournament (10 am), we were able to go over tactics and finalize our bidding and defensive agreements. Marco and Nathan signed up for the 299ers game, while Bo Han had already pre-arranged for a local partner to play in the Open field.

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Nathan:

Marco and I started off strong solidly. However, because of the early start time and the gloominess outside, I realized we reached our peak about an hour and a half into the tournament. After that the fatigue slowly kicked in, because our previous experience in playing 24 hands in a row resulted in, ahem, a tragedy to say the least. We just didn’t have the experience to sit and play three and a half hours of bridge, especially if it meant eating lunch at 2 pm. After the tournament ended I was famished and anxious of our scores.

Marco:

Largely due to our inexperience, Nathan and I had some issues with mental stamina in the three hour long tournament. Nonetheless, we did considerably good judging by the standard of a pair who had never played duplicates before. In fact, I was quite amazed by how well we did, especially after a rather discouraging practice session the day before in which my partner supported my spade suit with only two cards in the suit, and we ended up going down three doubled in a contract of three-spades and vulnerable. Anyhow, this tournament was an astounding experience which led to breakthroughs in both my bridge skills and attitude.

Bo Han:

I have already been to numerous bridge tournaments up to international events before, so this tournament, my main focus was bringing in members of the DVBS Bridge Team to their first-ever tournament. Before the tournament, I had about a week of intensive training with both Marco and Nathan so that they would be able to face the challenges they were about to meet in an actual bridge tournament. Our practices usually lasted about an hour long each because of our academic burden and other extracurricular activities. Thankfully, on the previous Friday, there was a half-day and so I gave them an intense continuous three-hour long bridge training. Truthfully, based on their results from the last practice, I didn’t expect them to muster any results in the 40%’s. However, their result and the process they got to that result gave me a welcomed surprise. If you didn’t know before, bridge is the hardest card game yet, and I am extremely proud of the hard-work and effort put into such a game by these two members of the DVBS Bridge Team. (P.S. Their result is higher than my result from my first tournament)

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In the end, Marco and Nathan ended up with 44.51% and Bo Han 51.31%. Gauss once said (Thanks Dr. Koay for this): “It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.” Although the results were far from perfect, the grins and tales from the players were enough to show that this tournament was a success and hopefully the seed that plants the trees of more successful tournaments to come.

(From left to right: Marco He, Bo Han Zhu, Nathan Loafman)

-DVBS Archive Team-

October 2, 2018