Lebanese Bridge Festival 2010

My grandmother used to call them the devil’s pasteboard. You’re right, good guess, she was referring to playing cards. She played a pretty mean hand of Napoleon (Nap for short) in spite of her apparent denigration of the cards.

For those who haven’t come across the game of Nap, it has two phases, bidding, where you announce the number of tricks that you are going to take in the play and then the play of the cards. A rather more complicated game, but with the same two phases, is Bridge.

Although the country sits firmly in Asia, according to my map, Lebanon’s Bridge Federation (LBF) was a founding member (one of eight countries I believe) of the European Bridge League. The LBF is holding its twenty eighth “annual” international festival; actually it’s been more sporadic than annual, the last one was in 2005. As the President euphemistically phrased it in his opening address, the festival has been suspended “due to the recent events in the country and the region”. He meant mayhem and war. So, the fact that the festival is being held again is a small measure of the increasing belief in stability here. Players from Italy, France, Poland, the UK, Greece, Syria and Egypt have come to participate with the local Lebanese players, lured by the hope of getting amongst the considerable prize moneys. Over three hundred turned up for the first session yesterday evening.

My wife and I decided to have a go too. This involves considerable personal risk for both of us, as down the years, we’ve had more spats over bridge hands than pretty well everything else put together. At the height of American fever over bridge in the thirties, one woman shot her husband in the middle of a game, claiming as her defence that he had misplayed a hand – amazingly she was acquitted. I checked my wife’s handbag for guns before we left home. We didn’t star, but it’s a three day event, so, ever the optimists, we are hoping for a better session today.

With all the games available on WIIs, Xboxes, Playstations and the internet, I’m pleased to see that a game based on thousand year old technology still has the power to attract a sufficient following to stage such an event.

More, I feel grandmother’s ghost at my shoulder exhorting me, as always, to “draw trumps”.