PURSUITS OF HAPPINESS Duplicate Bridge
Jennifer Emens-Butler : I am here in the office of Montroll , Backus & Oettinger in a beautiful lake view conference room and I am here to interview Mark Oettinger for our Pursuits of Happiness column which you have been following since its inception , right ?
Mark Oettinger : Yes , I have been following the Pursuits of Happiness and I have been reading the Bar Journal since 1980 and have written many articles .
JEB : Yes , yes you have , and thank you ! MO : Thank you for publishing them .
JEB : So this column doesn ’ t talk about your legal pursuits - we try to find people who have interests and passions that are outside of the practice of law that keep them sane , busy , at peace or entertained . I was not aware that you have a very strong passion for a certain card game . MO : Yes .
JEB : Well it ’ s called a card game , but it ’ s so much more than that , right ?
MO : Well , it ’ s probably THE greatest card game ! Bridge has been around , in its current form , since the 1920s . And I play a form that is typically played at the competitive level that is called “ Duplicate Bridge .”
JEB : So basic bridge , generally , is also called contract bridge , right ? Because you are making a contract ?
MO : Correct , in bidding you are making a contract , which you either successfully perform , or you breach , by making , or failing to make , the contracted number of tricks . If you make your contract , you are awarded points , and if you breach it , then “ damages ” ( points against you ) are awarded to the other pair .
JEB : Ah ha ! It ’ s legal in nature , that ’ s why you like it ! Do you find there are a number of lawyers who play ?
MO : Yes , there are many , like Justice Ernest Gibson , Justice John Dooley ( a reluctant bridge player , but a very accomplished Oh , Hell ! player ), Mike Furlong , Emily Bergquist , Rob Backus , Gene Kazlow , Jane Friedenson , Dena Monahan , Mary Cox , the late David Pendleton , and the late Alan Coulman .
JEB : Wow , do they all play in your club or you just know they play ?
MO : I ’ ve played socially with some of them , and duplicate bridge with others . It ’ s a small group that play duplicate bridge as opposed to just straight contract bridge . In the 1950s , there were bridge programs on TV , and it was very popular , so bridge generally is still very popular among baby boomers .
JEB : So what makes duplicate bridge so different than regular bridge ?
MO : You play with a partner , against another pair , at a given table , while there are many other tables in play at the same time . There are 24-28 computer-dealt hands , which everyone plays during the course of the roughly 3.5 hour session . The hands are generated by the American Contract Bridge League ( ACBL ), an organization of about 160,000 members , who play duplicate bridge . The downloaded hands are fed into a card dealing machine which takes about 8 seconds to deal each hand . The dealing machine inserts the four hands into a “ board .” The players play the “ board ” without mixing up the cards , and at the end of the hand , reinsert their hands into the appropriate pockets of the board . Depending upon the configuration of the particular tournament , you play 2 , 3 or 4 hands against the same opponents , and then the opponents , and the boards , move to the next table ( in different directions ). At the end of the session , every player has played every hand .
JEB : There are preset hands the whole evening .
MO : Yes , so this way you are compared not in terms of how lucky you are in terms of being dealt good cards , but instead , how you did compared to other people who were dealt the exact same hands . You get a point for every pair you beat , and you get half a point for every pair you tie . At the end of the night , you get a hand record that reflects all of the hands that you played . All of the results are uploaded to the ACBL website , where you can study every detail of the tournament within 10 minutes of finishing .
JEB : Sounds very technical .
MO : Yes , bridge is becoming more online driven . As the live games get smaller live , bridge is becoming much bigger online .
JEB : So , the word “ duplicate ” just means you are competing with someone with the exact duplicate hand and you take all the chance and luck out of it ? You see how everyone deals with the same bad hands as well as good hands .
MO : Most of it , yes . If I only have 5 high card points , but take one trick , I have done better than others who took no tricks with the same bad hand . Since each hand , no matter what it contains , is worth roughly 4 % of the score . If I do better than 50 % over
8 THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • FALL 2018 www . vtbar . org