Riderwood Bridge Community
There is a very active bridge community at Riderwood. There are groups who meet weekly playing party bridge, Chicago and duplicate. Some are ‘drop-in’ sessions; others are by invitation only. Almost all maintain a list of substitutes, so if you’re interested in one of the invitation only groups, contact the organizer for the event and see if you can get on the substitute list.
Many sessions charge a small entry fee. This is used for supplies for the group and to award small prizes to the top finishers. (Don’t count on it to help reduce your monthly maintenance fee.)
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Bridge during Covid
Covid shut down all the face-to-face bridge sessions at Riderwood for a number of months. The groups have re-formed as restrictions have been lifted.
During the Covid lockdown, many Riderwood Residents got accounts on BridgeBase. Four people would form a table and connect with each other on a conference call so they could chat as they played. Not the same as face-to-face, but it helped maintain some social connection. A few of these gatherings are continuing to meet. A basic account on BridgeBase does not cost anything and gives you access to many forms of playing bridge, including serious tournament play.
Current bridge opportunities
Click here for a list of some of the ones that are playing now. Joining a couple of these sessions will get you into the RW bridge community and you will be asked to play in other groups or in pick-up sessions that don’t appear in this list.
Learning Bridge
We are always looking for new bridge players, either people who have never played or those who played some time ago and want to come back to the game. Currently there are no formal bridge classes being given at Riderwood. But there are books and online courses that can get you to a level where you can play in some of the social games and improve your skills from there. We do have a number of bridge mentors here who will host some sessions with newcomers to help with the basics of bidding and play.
Duplicate Bridge
If you want to play in one of the duplicate games, you should bring a partner. If you need help finding a partner, contact Almeda Girod for assistance.
If you’re interested in playing duplicate bridge but have never done that before, we can set up a low intensity ‘Introduction to Duplicate’ session where you can play with experienced duplicate players to get used to the mechanics of how that is played before going to one of the regular sessions.
Other Resources
If you want a sample of what bridge is like, you can go to www.acbl.org and click on the ‘Learn’ tab. There are introductory videos to show you the basics of the game. If you find you’re interested, contact one of the mentors to get some ‘hands on’ experience before trying to learn the whole game on the web. It will help clarify some of the mechanics (like who makes the first lead), and then the web videos will make more sense.
Another fun solitaire form of bridge is available at bridgebase.com. Go to that site and click on the ‘declare only’ icon. You will get to practice playing hands to try to make a contract that has already been bid. No account is needed to do this.
Another basic learning website is http://www.60secondbridge.com/. Again, you will progress much faster in learning bridge if you mix the online classes with mentored play here at Riderwood.
Contact Joe Finan for more information. Contact Joe at bridge@riderwoodlife.com.