Cole Spencer often plays cards with experts decades older than he is.
Cole, 15, started playing bridge when he was a 12, after he'd read "The Cardturner" by Louis Sachar. The fictional account of a kid with a bridge-playing great-uncle piqued Cole's interest, although he had no idea what the game was. He researched books and online to learn how to play bridge, which is a four-person partnership game similar to spades, he says. Now, three years later, he is part of the USA1 team that took the silver medal in the National Youngsters Teams category at the World Bridge Federation's World Youth Teams Championships in August in Istanbul, Turkey.
At A Glance
How to Play Bridge
Bridge is played with a deck of 52 cards (take out the jokers) and four people sitting at a square table with the players who are sitting across from each other forming a partnership. There are four suits: clubs, hearts, spades and diamonds. Each suit has 13 cards. In bridge, the deuce is the lowest card in the suit and the ace is the highest.
Draw cards to select the person to deal the cards (the dealer). This person distributes the cards face down, in clockwise rotation one at a time, until each player at the table has a hand consisting of 13 cards. After the play of each deal is completed, the opportunity to deal moves around the table clockwise so that each person has a turn to deal out the cards.
The aim of the game is for each partnership to try to win or take as many tricks as possible. A trick contains four cards, one contributed by each player. One player starts by leading a card, placing it face up on the table. In clockwise rotation, each player has to follow suit, by playing a card of the same suit as the one led. If a heart is led, for example, each player must play a heart if possible. Only if a player doesn’t have a heart can that person discard (i.e., play a card of another suit). The highest card in the suit led wins the trick for the player who played it. This is called playing in notrump.
The players, through bidding, decide whether the deal is to be played in notrump or in a particular trump suit. The dealer has the first chance to bid. If the dealer has some high cards in the hand and a preference for one suit over another (usually decided by the length of the suit), dealer makes a bid to let his partner know which suit he prefers. If the dealer doesn’t have many high cards and doesn’t want to make a bid, he says “pass.”
The declarer is the player who first mentions the suit that ends up being trumps or who first mentions notrump. The opening leader is the player to the left of the declarer who starts the play by making the opening lead, playing a card face-up on the table. The dummy is declarer’s partner. After the opening lead, the dummy places his hand face-up on the table, and declarer calls the cards during the play for both hands.
Source: American Contract Bridge League website, acbl.org
Duplicate Bridge
Duplicate Bridge is the only form of bridge played in tournaments and is considered the supreme test of skill among card games for the “luck of the deal” is eliminated to the extent that all the competitors get to play with the same cards. A duplicate board with one standard 52-card pack is needed for each table of four players. Each board is a device for holding intact the four hands of a deal so that once the hand is played, the cards can be used again in the next round with four other players playing the same duplicate hands.
Each player takes the hand from the pocket nearest him, and counts the cards to make sure there are thirteen. The player designated dealer on the duplicate tray calls first, and the auction proceeds as in standard contract bridge until the contract is determined. The only exception is that there is no re-deal when a hand is passed out.
The opening lead, exposure of dummy, and subsequent play are the same as standard contract bridge except that after a trick is completed, it is not gathered in. Instead, each player retains possession of his card and places it face down on the table directly in front of him, pointed lengthwise toward the partners who won the trick. The declarer plays dummy’s cards by naming them, and the dummy player takes the card to show that it has been played and then turns it face down in front of him, also pointed lengthwise toward the side winning the trick. At the end of play, once the score is agreed on, each hand is carefully returned to its pocket in the tray, so the hand can be played again by other partners.
Source: bicyclecards.com
Bridge beginnings
Cole played bridge for a short time online, but he wanted to find someone nearby who was part of a bridge club like the one described in the book. Through his aunt, he met Shirley Johanson, 85, who has been playing bridge for about 65 years. A tournament bridge player, she had never played with anyone as young as Cole, she notes, but she got a foursome together to play bridge just to see what he knew.
"I mean, he wasn't but 12 years old," she recalls. "He had taught himself. He had done a beautiful job."
She and the other two women were amazed at how much Cole already understood about the play of hands and the rules.
"He's very dependable, and you can rely on what he says he means," Johanson says. "He's very sharp in analysis, and those are all things you have to have to play tournament bridge."
Johanson says all the players are serious, but Cole "is not emotional, never gets upset."
"I used to teach bridge, and I always told people, 'It's only a game, so forget anything ugly at all,'" Johanson says.
Margaret Rodman, 78, has partnered with Cole once, but she says she's not steady enough to play with him.
"He needs somebody who is disciplined. I'm not a disciplined bridge player. I just kind of go by the seat of my pants, and that's not what he needs," Rodman says.
Although they aren't bridge partners, Rodman and Cole ride together to play bridge on Sundays. Rodman drives to his house and then they have "visiting time" while he drives them to bridge club. At first she drove him, but since he got his permit, she lets him drive her car.
"He has never scared me. Not one time. I think I scared him quite often," she jokes.
Rodman describes Cole as a very fine boy she believes will grow up into a wonderful man.
"He is extremely respectful of us old people," she says. "He has never shown anything but respect to any of our crowd."
Cole says playing at the John Powell Senior Center with Springdale Duplicate Bridge Club card players several decades older was "eye opening." He was addicted to bridge when he began playing with the club, he says, but the other players taught him about respect, honoring one another and having a sense of humor.
Karen Spencer, Cole's mom, says no one in his family plays bridge.
"He is a self-motivator, no doubt," she says.
Cole has tried to teach her a few times, but she says she is not very good. She is happy that he found bridge friends who treat him like family.
"I just feel so grateful because they're really awesome people that seem so interested in him," she says. "It's like he has this little secret life."
Cole says bridge is "completely different than anything I had ever done." Some of the skills needed for bridge are a good memory, good communication with your partner, good deduction and the ability to solve problems, he says.
"I guess it's sort of like a puzzle that kind of shifts as you work on it," he says.
Cole joined the American Contract Bridge League in 2011. He then decided to take on tournament play, starting with a sectional tournament in Bella Vista. In spring 2013, he played in a national tournament in St. Louis. He says he did pretty poorly the first day, but in a two session event the next day, he and his partner won.
"That was a pretty big motivator," Cole says.
World Youth Teams
Cole then took on qualifying for the World Bridge Federation's World Youth Teams Championships. He formed a team and played online against other teams. Johanson says participants had to be monitored, so he played bridge all day one Saturday on the computer at her apartment at Butterfield Trail Village to show what he knew.
"He was here from noon until 9 o'clock that night," she says.
Teams that qualified in this round went on to play in Atlanta, Cole says. Teams were then selected from this pool to go to the World Youth Teams Championships. Cole was part of a different team than one that qualified, but they needed to have a six-person team to go to Turkey. Cole and another team member were added.
Cole notes that bridge is a partnership game, but for the format played in team games, players participate as a team against other pairs. The team Cole played on was USA1 in the National Youngsters Teams category, which is for players younger than 21. His team members included Oren Kriegel, Chris Huber, Ben Kristensen, Kevin Rosenberg and Nolan Chang, who was Cole's partner on the team. Cole was the only member from Arkansas.
The United States also had another team among the 16 teams from 15 countries in this category. Cole spent two weeks in Turkey for the world championships, and his family traveled there as well to sightsee.
"We never saw him the whole time we were there. Not once," Karen Spencer says with a laugh.
The teams played a round robin, playing 14 boards against every team, and eight teams, including USA1, qualified for the knockout round, Cole says. He adds that he didn't expect he and his partner would play a lot during the tournament since they were an added pair. They played most of the round robin but did not participate in the knockout rounds. The team defeated China in the first knockout match, played France in the semi-finals and moved on to play Sweden in the finals. USA1 lost to Sweden and received the silver medal.
"It was just good to be there. It was a great experience," Cole says. "My team played pretty well."
Upon finding out the team Cole was part of won the silver medal in its category, Johanson says the local club members "were absolutely just beside ourselves with pride and joy."
"He has the nicest demeanor for young man. I just can't say enough fine things about him because he is just unusual."
The next World Youth Teams Championships are in two years in Italy, and Cole says he plans to put a team together for it.
Cole says he does not want to become a professional bridge player. He just wants to continue to play bridge as a hobby, and he would like to teach some of the kids at his school. The game is not as popular as it once was, so "it'd be really cool for a lot of people to learn to play bridge."
NAN Our Town on 09/18/2014