Perhaps the ultimate gauntlet thrown at the bridge table, usually as a result of friction between two players, is “get a partner”. Often these challenges are further colored with remarks such as “Get a partner, and I will rent a slow boat to China…”, or, even more serious, “Get a partner, and we will play for my business against your house”. Most often these people are just making noise, but over the years I have been the “partner that was gotten” three different times, always on very favorable terms (such as loss reimbursement).At poker, it is much easier to resolve such matters, and we have all seen a few head-to-head grudge matches take place or perhaps some “proposition” played out a number of times.

Recently, I was solicited to participate in a team of four “challenge match”, which had resulted from the same old argument-between-two-players scenario. In this case however the combatants were determined to play the “most skillful” form of bridge, which is team-of-four, where the same hands are played twice, by the North-South pair at one table and the East-West pair at the other table (thus each team plays the same good or bad cards).

Our team won substantially, and the winning protagonist felt vindicated (and magnanimously offered to play again). My main reaction when I saw the multitudes of kibitzers was that we should have sold tickets and television rights.

In the June 29, 1990, Card Player, I wrote an article entitled “The Most Skillful Form of Poker“, in which I suggested that no-limit or pot-limit Omaha and hold’em would be more skillful if played with a limit before the flop (perhaps limited to three times the blinds). CAVERN, as it is called, is probably the most skillful form of poker for individuals, but there undoubtably are more skillful forms of poker for teams, based on the duplication of hands.

An obvious example of this would be a “challenge match” where two poker experts (say A and B) challenge two other poker experts (C and D) to play a one- hundred hand challenge match. A trustworthy referee would shuffle the cards and then copy the top 15 relevant cards onto a second deck, so that the same 100 hands would be played at both tables.

The tables would be separated so that the players could not see or hear the other table. Thus, player A (from the first team) would play the same hand against player C (from the second team), as player D would play against player B. In this manner each “team” would hold the same good cards and bad cards. Only the way the cards were played would make the difference (eliminating the annoyance where some player gets unbeatable luck at a key moment).

After all the hands were played, the team with the most (combined) chips would be the winner. An interesting option might be to switch opponents after half the hands were played (ie. A vs D, and B vs C).

Such a challenge match involving top name players might easily grab the attention of the media. It would be interesting to watch and easy to televise. By far the most famous event in the history of cards came in the Winter of 1931-32, when Ely Culbertson and his wife played a long Contract Bridge challenge match against Sidney Lenz and Oswald Jacoby. Newspapers all over the world had daily front page (AP) coverage of this extravaganza at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Perhaps the world is ready for another such match. With or without a few cocktails, you should have no trouble seeing similarities between 1932 and today.

I understand that poker has surpassed bridge in overall world-wide popularity. Note also that the above “duplicate poker” concept could be extended to teams with any even number of players.