The players on Sunday included a 21-year-old soldier in the Norwegian army, the chairman of Bear Stearns Co. and a Pakistan-born executive who learned the game to meet girls.
They were among the 5,000 people who came to Chicago for 11 days to play contract bridge, a card game that has attracted fanatics from Omar Sharif to Warren Buffett (the last name as published has been corrected in this text).
For many gathered at the Summer North American Bridge Championships, which runs through Sunday, bridge is not the high-brow game of country clubs and afternoon teas.
“It’s never boring, and no matter how bad the cards you have are, it’s very exciting,” said Rosede Olson, 45, of Chicago. “I got hooked on it again. It was like being bit by the bug all over again.”
Olson relearned the game in May through lessons offered at her fitness center. On Sunday she played in the novice level during one of 1,000 sessions held daily during 11 days of competition.
About 150 events are scheduled this week, including matches for seniors, youths and women as well as midnight skirmishes.
The Spingold Knockout, one of the premier bridge events in the United States, begins Monday and concludes Saturday after six days of punishing play. The winner of the competition advances to play other tournament champions for the right to represent North America in international competition.
“It’s a tough, analytical game,” said Bob Hamman, 60, a favorite to win the Spingold Knockout and considered the world’s leading player.
“It’s a game of skill,” he said. “It’s highly competitive. But there’s enough luck involved in the game that upsets can happen.”
The American Contract Bridge League, with 170,000 members, sponsors the event, which this year is at the Chicago Hilton and Towers. The league holds three championships each year.
The league’s first championship games were in Chicago at the Hotel Sherman in 1927. Since then, the game has evolved and attracted a more diverse lot, organizers said.
The average age of players is 57. About 60 percent are women and 89 percent are college-educated, according to 1994 statistics.
“It used to be a much more upper- or middle-class group, but now it’s much broader, people who have taken it up a different level,” said Barbara Nudelman, the event chairwoman.
The league is trying to attract younger players by working to incorporate bridge in math curriculums in some public schools, said Nudelman.
“It’s a much, much better game,” said Mike Passell, 50, a professional bridge player from Dallas. “It’s evolved. It’s a much tougher game than 20 years ago. Players are more competitive, more knowledgeable and they have more spare time.”
The game has grown to include on-line bridge clubs that allow players in Skokie to compete with players in Stockholm. One of the events Sunday pitted computers against computers.
The banquet rooms of the hotel Sunday were transformed into an expansive card parlor where 60,000 hands of bridge are played each tournament day. Organizers had with them 40,000 pencils, 7,632 decks of cards and 942 card tables.
Vendors hawked computer software and how-to-play books. Workshops offered tips for novice players and classes for players who wanted to teach bridge on cruises. Bridge-cruise vacations are available to Aruba or Antarctica. On road trips to the Rockies, players stop along the way to challenge local bridge clubs.
Competition during games can be so intense that it has been known to separate married couples.
And sometimes it brings partners together, Rick Covalciuc, 53, of Omaha, Neb., said.
Covalciuc met his wife, Val, at a bridge tournament in Omaha after she ditched her former husband because of extreme disagreements over bridge.
“We’ve gotten along really well because we respect each other’s game,” he said.
