Story by Amit Vijay (BBO: av1967)

The story starts in the late 70s, 1978 in fact. My father was posted in Aden, South Yemen. To pass the time, he taught my mother, myself (10 years old), and my younger sister bridge. So every night we started playing the game. He taught us the Phoney Club system, the Stayman convention, and plain Blackwood. As time progressed, we became friends with the Indian diaspora, and slowly bridge tournaments started to be held in my house and other houses. Subsequently, we left the heaven that was Aden and settled in Jabalpur, India.

After completing my engineering degree, I joined BARC (Bhabha Atomic Research Centre) and had forgotten about bridge. When smartphones came to India in about 2013, I downloaded a bridge game and started playing it in a casual manner.

My second innings started by accident at a hospital casualty ward. I was not well and was sitting outside the casualty ward waiting to be seen by a doctor. To pass the time, I was playing bridge on my mobile. A person sitting next to me asked if I played bridge. I answered affirmatively. He asked me which system I played. To make matters easier for me, he asked, "Precision or Standard (SAYC)?"

I did not know what he was talking about because I had only ever played Phoney Club. Not wanting to appear ignorant, I answered, "Precision."

It turned out that BARC had a very strong bridge culture, and one player was looking for a partner who played Precision. My newly made friend, Mr. Das Mahapatra, introduced me to him. I became his partner. Then I told him about the Phoney Club system I played. He laughed, gave me some books to learn Precision, and I went straight to a tournament with him. We did very badly.

Fortunately, he understood that I had what is called card sense, and we became regular partners. Very soon, I started playing Precision quite well. I read many books, which helped us do well in tournaments.

Nowadays, bridge has kept me involved socially as well as within my family. We still play Phoney Club in the family because how can we forget that?