International bridge champions converge on Detroit for big tournament

Susan Whitall / The Detroit News

Oh, sure, Detroit hosted the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals and the World Series, with all the attendant noise, hoopla, and world media attention.

But maybe it was all just a warm-up for the quietest, longest and certainly brainiest downtown event in recent years: The 2008 Spring North American Bridge Championships, starting tomorrow and running through March 16.

From 9 a.m. each morning until at least 2 a.m., a hush will descend over three levels of the Detroit Marriott as thousands of players, many of them world champions, sit at some 10,000 tables, peering at their cards and silently making bids.

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That's right, silent bids. No talking is allowed, no cell phones, hissing at partners or unseemly displays of shock from bystanders when the South player bids two clubs with only a jacked-up hand to back it up.

The Spring NABC, sponsored by Compuware, is one of the American Contract Bridge League's three yearly events, held in spring, summer and fall, and will bring in an estimated $10 million to the downtown economy. It's been 27 years since the last bridge championships were held in Detroit. If all goes well and the tournament draws a lot of players, Detroit might find itself back on the American Contract Bridge League's regular rotation.

Compuware CEO Peter Karmanos Jr., a keen bridge player, helped lure the spring championships to the city.

Karmanos will play in regular competition, but first he'll take part in a special exhibition bridge game at 4 p.m. Thursday in the Compuware Atrium, open to all and moderated, so even non-bridge players -- including many of his Compuware employees -- will be able to follow the action.

Until the 1960s, bridge was a required social skill, forcibly taught to pre-teens along with ballroom dancing and the proper use of handkerchiefs. But its popularity slipped as computers and video games captured the hearts of the young.

Power players

Recently, celebrity partners like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his frequent partner, businessman Warren Buffett, have again piqued interest in the ancient game. If the richest and second-richest men in the world play bridge, are there important life skills to be learned here?

Before anyone gets too excited, Gates and Buffett are not among the game's best players.

"Neither player professes to be an expert but both serve as perfect ambassadors to the world of bridge," says Bobby Wolff, an international champion who writes the "Aces on Bridge" syndicated bridge column that runs daily on The Detroit News' puzzle page.

"Both are avid social bridge players who do play tournament bridge," Wolff says. "Bill always gives the most wonderful press conferences promoting bridge every time he shows up to play, and Warren uses his magnetism and financial genius to always take center stage wherein he sings the praises of the lure of bridge."

Although the ACBL holds three yearly championships, some events only happen at the spring championship that Detroit is hosting.

The biggest is the Vanderbilt Knockout Team Championship, one of the most prized trophies in competitive bridge, dating back to 1928.

The Vanderbilt is so important that massive "Vu-Graph" displays will show the players' hands during the finals of those bouts, at 1 and 7:30 p.m. March 14 and at the same times on March 15, along with a hushed commentator's voice explaining the action. The Vu-Graphs are only used for the Vanderbilt finals.

Simple math

Most agree that bridge can sharpen some mental skills. Columnist Wolff explains that good bridge players need to be facile with numbers, but don't have to be the Sage of Omaha or a computer genius. It's simple arithmetic, he says.

"One needs to be able to add to 13 accurately, and often," Wolff says. "People who do not shy away from or fear arithmetic do better than those who don't."

Apparently the skills that bridge calls for -- simple arithmetic, the ability to keep track of cards and "read" body language -- are distributed pretty evenly across the population.

"One of the ironies of duplicate bridge players is that they range all the way from doctors, lawyers, accountants and professional people who schedule their vacation time around the tournaments, to retired people, to factory workers," says Ron Horwitz, co-chairman of the Detroit championships. "One of our best bridge players locally is a postal worker."

For younger people, there is a glamour to poker and other card games connected to gambling that bridge, with its more sedate charms, hasn't managed to supplant.

Vickie Vallone teaches bridge at the International Academy in Bloomfield Hills to teenagers. She'll bring her students downtown next week to play in the championships.

"Young people have been exposed to and inundated with this crazy Texas Hold 'Em (poker) game that you see on TV and everywhere," says Vallone. "Now, thank goodness for Bill Gates and Warren Buffett being on TV and in the papers mentioning bridge. I came into the school and I told them, 'Texas Hold 'Em is for losers who want to go and throw their money away. If you want to make money like Bill Gates, you play the brain game, which is bridge.' "

For some, bridge can be as addictive as a controlled substance.

Horwitz, the co-chairman, who is also a retired professor of finance at Oakland University, started playing in college, where he observed many friends become a little too attached to the game. "I managed to keep it under control," Horwitz says. "Then for 16 years I ran a six-day tournament at Cobo Hall, but the demands of my job got to be so great that I had to pull away for

8 to 10 years."

Competitive bridge, unlike poker, is not played for money, but for "master points." If you win a big championship downtown this week, you might earn 250 points. If you win at a local club, maybe you'd get one master point.

"But it's just as competitive," Horwitz says. "Everybody likes to win. And unfortunately, every once in a while, people's emotions get the better of them. Happily, not very often."

Bruised egos

Competitive bridge does have a dark side; in his new memoir "The Lone Wolff: Autobiography of a Bridge Maverick" (Master Point Press, $24.95), Bobby Wolff writes about the cheating that used to be rampant in the game, and about having seen tempers flare.

"There is really not a need to fear any violent physical confrontations at a bridge tournament, although during the intense competitions there are sometimes ugly mindless epithets hurled at each other," Wolff says.

The ACBL had to pass a zero-tolerance rule about verbal or, perish the thought, physical challenges, Wolff says. "But the only real bruises sustained are to one's ego, resulting from being outsmarted."

Casual visitors may walk in and watch the NABC for free; it's playing that costs a minimal fee (see box). Even walk-ups can play; there are tables for those with zero to five master points.

Of course, you have to ask a director if you can kibbitz, and a player has the right to say they don't want to be watched.

"But the big players have such egos that they like to be watched," Horwitz says. "It's not unusual to see 15 or 20 people sitting around the top players."

You can reach Susan Whitall at (313) 222-2156 or swhitall@detnews.com.