The World Bridge Championships: What You Should Know
By Alex J. Coyne © Great Bridge Links
The 43rd World Bridge Championships are taking place between the 12th to 26th of August 2017 in Lyon, France. Excited yet? We took a closer look at the World Bridge Championships and what you should know.
A Rundown of the World Bridge Championships
The World Bridge Championships is a combination of several bridge events, including the Bermuda Bowl, the Venice Cup, the d’Orsi Seniors Trophy and the World Transnational Open Teams, founded in 1950, 1974, 2001 and 1997 respectively. (For interest’s sake, the World Bridge Championships take place only in odd-numbered years, while the World Bridge Series takes place in even-numbered years.)
Want to know who took home a past trophy or how they played their game?
The World Bridge Federation also offers this list of Past Championship Results worth checking out – it goes back all the way to 1996. In addition, the World Bridge Federation publishes a World Championship book after each championship. Here on the Bridge World Magazine website, you can find back issues from the 2013 World Championships in Bali to the 2016 championship series in Wroclaw, Poland. These Championship books are very entertaining reads and well worth the purchase. Most bridge book sellers will have at least a few versions of the book. You can find even older versions on Amazon here.
What about the Vugraph
For 2017, noted bridge website Funbridge has signed up to be broadcasting the games through their Funbridge app so you know exactly what’s going on in the game without having to be in Lyon.
It’s possible too that there will be vugraphs on Bridge Base Online – keep an eye on their vugraph schedule here.
Organized by the best
The tournament is being organized by the World Bridge Federation founded in August 1958 in Oslo, Norway. Click here to find the registration pages. It’s worth noting that the World Bridge Championships are supported by the International Mind Sports Association, where bridge has only recently joined the ranks of games like chess, checkers and go on a worldwide competitive level.
What to look for
The World Bridge Federation is a rich resource for watching the game. There will be videos and photo albums and Daily Bulletins throughout the tournament on their Official Championship Website. If you dig around their websites long enough to find the accompanying videos to each past tournament – for example, click here to see play-videos and interviews of participants to the games in Bali.
While you’re at it, thanks to Bridge Daily Bulletins, you can download bulletins to previous World Bridge Championship games, including 1978 New Orleans.
And here, thanks to USBF and the World Bridge Federation, is a downloadable list of hotels with special rates arranged for the tournament’s players just in case you’re one of the lucky players who will be sitting around the tournament tables.
GREAT BRIDGE LINKS JUMP PAGE
Every year, Great Bridge Links hosts what we affectionately refer to as our Jump Page. From this page you will be able to jump to many championship websites throughout the web. You’ll find blogs, and videos, and chats, and news. Click here to navigate yourselves over to the Great Bridge Links Champioship Jump Page
Are you ready to get your tournament on? Get in touch with us through the comments and let us know your best tournament playing tips, stories, links and more.