Contract bridge is one of the so-called mind sports at the Asian Games, alongside chess, go, xiangqi and e-sports.
The card game debuted at the Asiad level at the last Games in 2018, with China picking up three of the six golds on offer in Jakarta. Chinese Taipei, India and Singapore also took home gold.
Indonesian billionaire Michael Bambang Hartono had lobbied for contract bridge to be included in the 2018 Asian Games line-up. He was one of the oldest competitors in the field, aged 78 then, and won a bronze.
At the Hangzhou Games, at least nine players are over the age of 70. The oldest is 78-year-old Masood Mazhar of Pakistan, according to the Associated Press.
Bridge is a game that calls for mental toughness, with Singapore's Poon Hua, a member of the men’s team that triumphed in the Indonesian capital describing it as being "like a long marathon".
"For the whole seven days, we had to mentally calculate all the probabilities, all the deductions, trying to decipher what our opponents were trying to do and try to outsmart and outwit them," he said in 2018.
Bridge is played by four players who sit at card tables which – at the Asian Games – have screens running diagonally across them. This prevents players from passing signals to teammates.
The game presents no language barriers, using universal terms from English like "no trump", "slam", "pass" and so on.
Observers in Hangzhou can watch the hands that are dealt – and how they are played – on large television screens filled with red and black symbols for spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs.
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The card game debuted at the Asiad level at the last Games in 2018, with China picking up three of the six golds on offer in Jakarta. Chinese Taipei, India and Singapore also took home gold.
Indonesian billionaire Michael Bambang Hartono had lobbied for contract bridge to be included in the 2018 Asian Games line-up. He was one of the oldest competitors in the field, aged 78 then, and won a bronze.
At the Hangzhou Games, at least nine players are over the age of 70. The oldest is 78-year-old Masood Mazhar of Pakistan, according to the Associated Press.
Bridge is a game that calls for mental toughness, with Singapore's Poon Hua, a member of the men’s team that triumphed in the Indonesian capital describing it as being "like a long marathon".
"For the whole seven days, we had to mentally calculate all the probabilities, all the deductions, trying to decipher what our opponents were trying to do and try to outsmart and outwit them," he said in 2018.
Bridge is played by four players who sit at card tables which – at the Asian Games – have screens running diagonally across them. This prevents players from passing signals to teammates.
The game presents no language barriers, using universal terms from English like "no trump", "slam", "pass" and so on.
Observers in Hangzhou can watch the hands that are dealt – and how they are played – on large television screens filled with red and black symbols for spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs.
Continue reading...