Following up on my shoot at the Twin Cities Bridge Center last month, last week I had the chance to hang out with the Minneapolis Grand Slam Club in the friendly confines of the Richfield Community Center. While at the Twin Cities Bridge Center I had been told that if I wanted to understand the Minnesota bridge culture I should really talk to Peggy Kaplan – a long-time competitor and winner on the national bridge stage, and in the words of her husband, an ambassador for the game of bridge. Peggy was nice enough to invite me to photograph the Grand Slam club, which draws some of the more advanced players in town to their Friday night games.

There’s clearly a high degree of focus, concentration, and seriousness to these games. But across the board, the people I talked to wanted me to understand that bridge isn’t just cold calculation and steely glares. In fact, the club has a zero tolerance policy against meanness. How many clubs can say that?

And bridge players consider themselves a family: a couple years ago, one of the Grand Slam organizers had a stroke. He didn’t have health insurance, and the club came together and raised over $6,000 for his treatment. Another member told me how great it is that wherever you go as a bridge player, you can call up the local club and have a social group to connect with. He listed off the places where he still has contact with the local clubs: Des Moines, Omaha, Fort Lauderdale. . .

Thanks to Peggy and the Grand Slam club for allowing me in to your game. And thanks to all of you for stopping by and keeping up with my photo adventures! May we all take a cue from the Grand Slammers this holiday season and adopt a zero tolerance for meanness policy, balance science and art, and look out for our fellow competitors.

All the best to you this Holiday Season!

National champ Peggy Kaplan

A little healthy competition. What’s your game of choice? My wife Johanna and I are on a little bit of a dominoes kick right now. I’ve gone through golf phases, and darts, and cribbage, and I used to play a lot of Skip Bo with my grandparents when I was a kid. Don’t try to play Scrabble with me, though, because I’ll refuse.

My wonderful in-laws have been bridge players since they were in college. I only ever had the vaguest of notions of what bridge even was until a couple years ago when I asked them what the game is all about. For some reason I got intrigued, to the point where I actually read books about bridge. This was completely perplexing to Johanna, and to me, but it was a fun thing to do exactly because it was so outside the normal ways I use my brain; it was fun to try to work through the deep logic exercises in bridge strategy. Unfortunately, Johanna has yet to catch the bridge bug. And since bridge is generally a game that ideally involves a partner and another couple, I haven’t made it too far down the bridge road.

But we did take a beginning bridge class. The in-laws gave me a gift certificate for classes at the Twin Cities Bridge Center, which we took with friends a year ago. At the end of each class, my head swimming with points and suits and bids, I would peek in to the main room on our way out to the car. Every night the room was packed, and I was always struck by the size of this community that I was just starting to get a small glimpse of.

Last week I finally went back to learn some more. Here are some images from my first trip, with more to come.

Bridge Humor

A sampling of the finer points of bridge strategy. You follow?