A bridge devotee, Warren Buffett has famously declared, "I wouldn't mind going to jail if I had three cellmates who played bridge."

Why Great Men like Bridge

Source: businessinsider.com

Bridge is a workout for your brain

Warren Buffett once said that bridge has "got to be the best intellectual exercise out there."

Opportunities for networking are everywhere

…  "What other place are you going to get to play with the chairman of a Fortune 500 company, the counsel general of a major European power,

or even a businessman from Shanghai on his way through?" – sounds just like a normal day at the bridge clubs in Essex 😊

Computers won't be beating humans any time soon

While computers can now routinely beat all but a handful of chess grandmasters, they can't come close to outplaying the world's finest bridge players.

Why is this? Because computers can understand math, but they can't understand people - at least not yet.

Bridge is much like politics, but the stakes are much lower

Eisenhower loved the game which was his "only effective form of relaxation..." The most relaxing thing is to play a game in which the problems are tough, the solutions difficult, but the consequences of error are just a few hundred harmless points written down on a scorepad."

Frequent play reduces your risk of Alzheimer's

A study released by the College of Medicine of Yeshiva University found that "Playing chess, bridge or a musical instrument significantly lowers the risk

of developing Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia”.

They have the discipline you need to excel at bridge

Emphasizing the importance of proper play, Ben Graham, the mentor of Warren Buffett, once quipped:

“I recall to those of you who are bridge players the emphasis that bridge experts place on playing a hand right rather than on playing it successfully.

Because, as you know, if you play it right you are going to make money and if you play it wrong you lose money – in the long run.

There is a beautiful little story about the man who was the weaker bridge player of the husband-and-wife team. It seems he bid a grand slam, and at the end he said very triumphantly to his wife ‘I saw you making faces at me all the time, but you notice I not only bid this grand slam but I made it. What can you say about that?'

And his wife replied very dourly, ‘If you had played it right you would have lost it.'”

Bridge players have a higher number of immune cells

A study by the  University of California found that "playing contract bridge leaves people with higher numbers of immune cells...

Bridge players plan ahead, they use working memory, they deal with sequencing, initiation and numerous other higher order functions with which the dorsolateral cortex is involved."

The webmaster wishes a Merry Christmas and a very happy Nuew Year to all the magnificient men who play bridge.