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Bridge in Cheboksary

About 20 years ago, the organizer of one of the first Russian bridge clubs, Vitold Yanovich Brushtunov from St. Petersburg, briefly described the stages he saw in the development of competitive bridge in the USSR and Russia.

Although much time has passed since then, in my opinion, no significant changes have occurred in the development of the sport as a popular sport. So, despite some winning results by Russian teams, Russian bridge has still not emerged from its infancy.

Russia has some very strong bridge players (especially in women’s and mixed competitions). The Russian national team won the 2004 World Bridge Olympiad in Istanbul in the women’s team category, and two of its participants even achieved the grandmaster standard: Moscow’s Victoria Gromova and Tatyana Ponomareva.

The Russian men’s team won bronze in the Open category at this Olympiad.

Fifteen years later, another Russian team won the World Mixed Team Championship in Wuhan, China, but its participants failed to achieve the grandmaster standard and instead received the lower-ranked title of “International Life Master.” Among Russian male bridge players, no one has yet achieved the title of International Grandmaster in the World Bridge Federation rankings.

After all, in Russia, there are only about 5,000 bridge players out of a population of 140 million, and the number of those participating in tournaments is only about 2,000, or slightly more than one bridge player per 100,000 people.

For comparison, in the Netherlands, the number of active competitive bridge players is over 85,000 out of a population of 17 million, meaning there is one bridge player for every 200 Dutch people. And this widespread development of bridge is producing excellent results.

The Netherlands team has won numerous gold and silver medals at the World and European Championships. In 2022, they won silver at the World Championship and were European champions. The results of the Russian teams, despite some outstanding achievements, are much more modest.

I myself once participated in the development of Russian bridge. It happened like this.

Around 1966, I learned to play Preference, and I had only heard of bridge, which had rules somewhat similar to Preference.

I learned to play bridge in the early 1980s. Soon after, Gorbachev’s perestroika began, and with it, the opportunity to officially register a bridge club.

After reading in a magazine that such a club was legally operating in Moscow, I contacted its organizer, Alexander Sukhorukov, who helped me prepare the registration documents, and in the spring of 1988, our club began operating under the trade union committee of the Cheboksary Instrument-Making Plant “Elara.” We conducted a media campaign, and soon our bridge club’s membership began to grow rapidly.

Our club teams began participating in tournaments held in the Baltic republics of the USSR, and in 1990, our club began hosting its own spring tournament, “Cheboksary Snowdrop,” which attracted bridge players from various cities in Russia and Ukraine.

Cheboksary bridge club teams participated in tournaments in Vilnius, Lithuania; Jurmala and Cesis, Latvia; and Tartu, Viljandi, and Pärnu, Estonia.

But as Vitold Brushtunov rightly noted, before the collapse of the USSR, a decline in morals became evident, including in the bridge community.

He recounted how, in the 1970s, if anyone brought a bottle of wine into the premises where Leningrad tournaments were held, such players would be suspended and banned from tournaments for several months. We at the Cheboksary bridge club did the same until 1991.

But signs of moral decline were even noticeable in Estonia. For example, in January 1991, during a tournament in Pärnu, Estonia, the tournament organizer and referee, Jaak Känd, asked me to replace one of the Leningrad team’s players. The tournament was held at the Rannahoone beach restaurant, for which winter is, of course, not its most profitable season. And although the restaurant’s kitchen was closed during the tournament, the buffet, which sold alcoholic beverages, remained open.

It turned out that one of the Leningrad bridge players had overindulged during the break, and after the start of the next round, he laid his cards on the table, demonstrated how to play the hand, and then fell under the table and passed out.

Incidents of alcohol abuse couldn’t be avoided in our Cheboksary club either.

Our first major tournament in 1990 was held in the foyer of the ChPZ Cultural Center without such incidents, although only about 60 bridge players participated. When we held our second tournament in 1991, we received applications for participation from almost 200 people.

The club’s foyer could no longer accommodate such a large number of bridge players. Therefore, the tournament was held at the Volzhanka tourist hotel in the suburbs, where one of the Cheboksary teams, who had finished first after the first day of competition, decided to celebrate their success. After a night of drinking, they were no longer able to play well, and several other teams overtook them in the overall tournament results.

After the collapse of the USSR and the rise of wild Russian capitalism, our bridge club faced financial problems, and I entered government service and could no longer seriously address the club’s affairs. But thanks to the efforts of the new president of the Cheboksary Bridge Club, Mikhail Okopnik, the club’s activities continued, although the influx of new members significantly declined. After 2000, when some active members moved to other cities and some died, the Cheboksary Bridge Club began to decline.

By 2010, Mikhail Okopnik’s health had significantly deteriorated, and he died in 2018. The Cheboksary Bridge Club ceased to exist.

How can we help you in this matter , so important to succeed

Thank you. I just need help finding people willing to play at a bridge club in Cheboksary. The Russian Federation of Sport Bridge promised to help me register a club, but so far I haven’t been able to find enough people willing to play at the club, rather than online.