A bridge of opportunities

The game of bridge has become pop­u­lar with seniors as it tests their mem­ory and they get to meet like-​minded seniors.

BY: Eleanor Yap

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Sixty-​four-​year-​old Zain Mole­d­ina started play­ing the game of bridge (also called con­tract bridge) when he was 10. He was liv­ing in Hong Kong at the time with his par­ents and one day, his father’s friends were play­ing bridge. They needed a fourth player and one of them asked him to play. Said Mole­d­ina: “I told him I didn’t know the game but he was insis­tent and told me I had watched the game numer­ous times and I should know that the high­est card wins.” It was more than just that though, he laughed.

He ended up play­ing and admit­ted he made numer­ous errors. But that whole expe­ri­ence made him deter­mined to under­stand and mas­ter the game. He went on to play bridge at the Indian Recre­ation Club com­pe­ti­tion where he came in sec­ond place. How­ever, when he came back to Sin­ga­pore at the age of 16, bridge had to take a back­seat as Mole­d­ina focused on his studies.

In 1975, he would hang out with an army friend who ran a ware­house and dur­ing lunchtime, he would teach his friend and some oth­ers how to play bridge. How­ever, it didn’t go any fur­ther till 1999 when one of his friends that he played bridge with, asked him to organ­ise a game for his boss, who also enjoyed play­ing the game and was com­ing in from the US. And in 2000, together with his ex-wife, started a bridge sec­tion at the Sin­ga­pore Recre­ational Club, which today boasts over 50 members.

These days, you can find the father of two play­ing in at least two major tour­na­ments and sev­eral smaller ones a year, and has won numer­ous medals. He is also a qual­i­fied bridge direc­tor – “this just means I know the rules of the game”. The retiree is pas­sion­ate about the game that he runs two blogs on bridge, includ­ing the largest col­lec­tion of bridge jokes in the world!

An Olympic sport

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Bridge is played with a stan­dard deck of 52 cards and involves four play­ers in two com­pet­ing part­ner­ships, with part­ners sit­ting oppo­site each other around the table. It is about remem­ber­ing and count­ing the cards, com­mu­ni­ca­tion as well as strat­egy. Bill Gates and War­ren Buf­fet are well known in bridge circles. 

Mole­d­ina explained that bridge is an Olympic sport which many may be unaware. “This doesn’t mean it is played at the Olympics, just like golf and chess. How­ever, bridge is a sport that was actu­ally played at the SEA Games in Indone­sia recently where Sin­ga­pore won sev­eral golds.

He added: “It is also a mis­con­cep­tion that because you play with cards, it is like poker or black­jack. Bridge has noth­ing to do with that and it is tech­ni­cally not a gam­bling game. All the uni­ver­si­ties and many junior col­leges have bridge clubs and hope­fully, one day sec­ondary schools will do so too. The schools and par­ents are prob­a­bly ner­vous about the exist­ing perception.” He added that even though the Sin­ga­pore Bridge Youth team came in third in the world behind US and Italy, and all of its play­ers are home­grown, the sport doesn’t receive much pub­lic­ity and is looked upon as an “orphan sport”.

Gain­ing in popularity

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Mole­d­ina was play­ing at the Active Age­ing Con­tract Bridge Open Pairs Tour­na­ment 2014 in Sep­tem­ber jointly organ­ised by the People’s Asso­ci­a­tion Active Age­ing Coun­cil and Gey­lang West CC Bridge Club, and is part of the Active Mind Games Fes­ti­val. The annual event is open to any­one age 50 and above, and par­tic­i­pants do not have to be mem­bers from the Gey­lang West CC Bridge Club or other CC bridge clubs. Inci­den­tally, Mole­d­ina came in first.

Attest­ing to the pop­u­lar­ity of the game, 84 play­ers reg­is­tered this year, an increase of 24 from last year, includ­ing the old­est, 94-​year-​old Cap­tain Ho Weng Toh, a for­mer World War II bomber pilot. Shared the con­vener for the Gey­lang West CC Bridge Club (one of the biggest CC bridge clubs with the most seniors), Lau Lee Chin, 66, “The game of bridge is very pop­u­lar to seniors as they bond through the game. Some even go trav­el­ling together.” She shared that last year, there were 110 mem­bers and that has since grown to 150 members.

How­ever, the “director” of the tour­na­ment, Carl­ton Parker, 74, shared that it could be even more pop­u­lar but it isn’t. “That is partly a lan­guage issue I sup­pose. The game is invari­ably played in Eng­lish, although you can do so with a very lim­ited vocab­u­lary.” He shared bridge is very pop­u­lar in North Amer­ica, Europe, Aus­tralia and New Zealand.

“Seniors and retired peo­ple have the time, for one thing. Also, it’s not a stren­u­ous activ­ity. Basi­cally you sit at a table and then get up and walk around every 15 to 20 min­utes. The attrac­tion is the chal­lenge, and it’s a con­tin­u­ing one; no mat­ter how good you get, you can still get better,” said Parker.

He added another perk to the game is the social inter­ac­tion between your part­ner at the table and also hav­ing friends play­ing in the games. “You won­der how they are doing in the room and you get to catch up with peo­ple you haven’t seen for a while dur­ing the tea break,” said Parker. “There are almost no bar­ri­ers to tak­ing part in this activ­ity. If you can sit in a chair and hold and see your cards, you can play bridge.”

Pas­sion­ate about the game

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Another senior who just can’t get enough of bridge is 75-​year-​old ex-​librarian Jenny Soh. She attended a bridge course when she was in her 50s but didn’t have time to play. Once she retired and this gave her more time, she decided to learn about it and slowly, she became good at it.

Today, she teaches bridge on a voluntary-​basis to seniors at her home and at var­i­ous places for six hours a week. “I have stu­dents who don’t know the cards and so I have to start from the begin­ning. After two years, they become quite good.” Out of the 30 she has taught so far, the old­est was a 77-​year-​old woman. How­ever, she noticed men weren’t inter­ested in the game. “Bridge is good for seniors as it is a men­tal exer­cise and it requires a lot of mem­ory work.”

Unlike Mole­d­ina, Soh sticks to social bridge and tour­na­ments like the Active Age­ing Con­tract Bridge Open Pairs Tour­na­ment 2014. And the mother of two and grand­mother of two also plays bridge online, three to four hours in the morn­ings, and once a week with the NUSS SCon­nect group.