Local Now Offering Bridge Classes for All Levels!

09 Jun Local Now Offering Bridge Classes for All Levels!

Learn to play bridge with local Martin Reinfried. Classes being offered to all levels, from rank newbie to advanced.

Ten-session beginner sessions are $400 per person for ten 90 minute classes which include two beginner bridge books. Private and semi-private lessons are also available for $150 total per 90-minute class for up to 3 people, or $40 per person for 4 or more. Likely start end-June.

Contact Martin at mrswiss2@gmail.com about group lessons, private and semi-private lessons.

A lot has been written about the enduring friendship that developed over the last several decades between two of the richest men in the world, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Their mutual admiration and dedication to philanthropy are well documented. But not many know that bridge was the game over which these two titans of industry bonded. And, to this day, a bridge table remains one of their favorite places to meet.

“It really is a game that you are never going to see the same hand twice,” Buffett was quoted as saying in an interview with New Zealand Bridge. “You can play a hand every six or seven minutes every day for the rest of your life, and you will never see the same hand. It’s a game you can enjoy when you are in your 90s, and you are seeing a different intellectual challenge every seven minutes. It’s the best exercise there is for the brain.”

Bridge came up for Buffet and Gates during a discussion about artificial intelligence at their very first meeting in the mid-1990s.

“This was a hot subject at the time, with all those things on chess, IBM, Deep Blue,” Buffett added. “When I met Bill on July 5, 1991, I said to him, ‘Will a computer be built that can beat the best bridge players?’ Bill said a computer will win at chess eventually. But it won’t win at bridge.”

Why bridge?

Bridge is the ultimate trick-taking card game, and one of the greatest source of fun and games four people can have – with a pack of cards.
The intricacies of the game makes it particularly appealing to those who want to sharpen their squash with mental gymnastics and crave social interaction. A study in 2000 at the University of California, Berkeley, also found strong evidence that the area in the brain used in playing bridge can stimulate the immune system. Researchers suggest that happens because to execute a trick, to strategize, players have to use a combination of memory, visualization and sequencing.

Today bridge is enjoyed by tens of millions of people throughout the world – more than any other card game. In social circles it is considered the card game. Whether you play casually with friends or seriously in clubs and tournaments, guaranteed you will find bridge challenging and fun.

Need more convincing?

Local Martin Reinfried a software engineer by trade, has been playing the grande dame of card games for over 25 years. He is now offering regular classes to all levels of players starting end-June.

“I grew up playing cards, first in Switzerland with my parents, playing the national card game, Jass, and later in high school and college, playing hearts, spades, Oh Hell!, euchre, cribbage, etc. I had always heard about bridge as the pinnacle of card games, so I decided to learn after college with my friend Dave. Once we found a duplicate bridge club in San Francisco, we were hooked and played at the club as often as we could. The fact that bridge is a game of lifelong learning really appeals to me, and given my love of puzzles, I love that every hand is itself a kind of puzzle to figure out. I have played for over 25 years now and continue to play as much as I can, online, at the Telluride duplicate club, and at tournaments. I really want more young people to learn the game, so I started teaching the high school students through Pinhead. Bridge is also a great game for all adults to keep their minds sharp, so I have started teaching adult classes as well.”

“There are so many parts to the game of Bridge, including bidding, conventions, partner play, strategy. I’ve appreciated Martin’s ability to teach the game in bite size, manageable concepts along with his gentle nature, quiet sense of humor and inordinate amount of patience. He really wants people to learn to love to play and that is felt by all his students,” said Patty Arndt.

Which segues to: Martin’s plan is to begin summer classes on Thursday, June 27 and do 10 sessions on Monday and Thursday afternoons, skipping July 4 and ending Thursday, Aug 1. Advanced classes will likely be more one-offs, probably on Wednesdays. Privates for individuals, couples and families are also available.

Bottom line: Bridge appears to be, well, a bridge to brainpower, offering a large dose of intellectual and social stimulation. In other words play and you win in spades.

If you still need more convincing, the last word goes to Buffet: “You know, if I’m playing bridge and a naked woman walks by, I don’t even see her,” he joked to CBS News back in 2008.

Martin Reinfried, more:

Professionally, Martin is a software engineer and entrepreneur who co-founded several companies in Silicon Valley during the internet boom of the 1990’s and early 2000s. Those companies included the early search engine Excite, and Shinteki, a company that runs puzzle-based events for companies and conferences.

After taking a career break in 2014 to be a more involved parent, become a good bridge player, and move from San Francisco to Telluride full-time, Martin has reentered the engineering world, mostly doing independent contracting work.

He also teaches bridge to kids and adults