Teaching Your Spouse & Your Friends To Play Bridge
For those of you who don't know me - or us - Fabi and I have been an item for almost 11 years and married for almost 8.
After being surrounded by native speakers for a long time, a few years ago Fabi decided to embark in the wonderful but challenging journey of learning Italian. He has been an extremely diligent and talented student of the language, now able to hold almost any conversation quite fluently - but not if you use some slang... I still have a small safe space if I don't want him to know what I am saying!!!
During the years, any time people asked "when are you going to learn how to play bridge?!", his answer was always "I am focusing on Italian first, I'll do bridge when I have more time."
Boy have I heard the "when I have more time" line before in this world, but nobody ever has "more time" nowadays and eventually it will be too late and you will 1000% regret not starting sooner!
Fortunately, one of our close friends decided her 2025 NY resolution was to finally learn how to play! That started a great Sunday tradition in our living room where 8 of our friends (and Fabi!) finally learnt how to play.
We were very diligent with weekly social games at home or bars until summer of 2025 and then everyone was too busy traveling to keep our meetings going.
Fortunately by then Fabi was hooked - as I always knew he would be, as an incredibly smart software engineer and lover of games, cards and strategy.
He started taking Bridge and Beyond lessons on his own, playing on Bridge Base Online and practicing his bidding on Cuebids.
This was definitely an easier transition for him than it was for everyone else, being constantly surrounded by bridge players and bridge stories.
Where is he now?
As of today Fabi has played a few duplicate games, took part in the most recent Pro-Am Team tournament at Honors bridge club - teaming up with Giorgia and two of her students - and he keeps learning through the Bridge and Beyond website and all the other platforms available to him.
I am sure we will soon see him at the tables of National tournaments, maybe wondering "why did I not start sooner?".
I am not sure this experience would have been such a success story if I were to teach Fabi how to play on our own. The pressure and competitiveness might have had the better of us, but doing this as a group of close friends was absolutely wonderful!
If your significant other wants to learn how to play, make sure to get a bunch of his/her friends on board and the sky will be the limit!
