BRAINS AND BRIDGE.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2040, 21 August 1906, Page 7

BRAINS AND BRIDGE.

The question whether aptitude for cardplaying denotes general intelligence onco asked at an English country house roused such a fierce controversy that Mt Basil Tozer wrote to a number of eminent men and women to get their views, which he pubfished in the Monthly Review. Miss Eleanor A. Tennant, the only woman who h-s ever written a book on tho game (her "A.B.C. of Bridge" is studied by almost every novice), considers that to be a really fine bridge player requires a high degree of intelligence, quite apart from that mysterious possession, "a oard mind." What is called "a card mind," she eays, has really nothing to do with the mind, but is entirely a physical quality. The connection between the eye and the brain is much quicker in some people than in others, and it is the rapidity with which the uyo communicates its impression to the brain which gives facility in card-play-ing, and makes people quick, at any rate, even if they have not the intelligence to work out an elaborate plan 'of action. As regards the comparative skill of men and women, Miss Tennant does not think there is much difference amongst moderate players; but in the first rank, she adds, men or three ladies in the bridge world who certainly hold pride of place, and the two are equal to them aTe the more distinguished, as there aTe so few of them. One of these few is Miss Mary Dease, who has made more than one front-rank player of domestic bridge wish that he had never met her. according to Mr Tozer. There is no doubt that the chief quality is the power of concentration. This quality Miss Dease possesses. No sooner has 6he taken up her cards than 6he becomes so completely absorbed in the game as to be only subconsciously aware that anything at aILJs going on around her, or that. anvone is in the room with hor. Her mind becomes then and there incapable of recording any idea of any kind that does not bear directly, not merely upon bridge, but upon the particular game of bridge she is playing at the time. A member of Parliament declared that intelligence for playing at cards is a branch of intelligence peculiarly its own. His experience was that cleverness at cards, at chess, and at figures go generally hand in hand. "I personally am acquainted with quite a number of men," he concludes, "who, though goad at those three tilings are of very ordinary intelligence at all else, and singularly deficient in any sort of aptitude for music, literature, ot painting." Mr Yoxall, M.P., thinks that card-playing develops a certain form of the faculty of imagination, and that the aptitude for card games docs indicate the possession of general intelligence and an amount of intellectuality above the average. Five bridge enthusiasts wrote what ilr Tozer calls "violent'' answers. All the writers indeed seem convinced of the truth of their own views, to an extent more than is usual m a controversy of the sort. They remind one of Matthew Arnold, who, when a friend complained to him that he was getting as dogmatic as Garlyle', replied, "Ah, but you overlook an important point. I am dogmatic and right. Carlyle is dogmatic and wrong." Accurate and close thinking and reasoning of any kind must exercise the mind in the same way that calisthenics develop the muscles of the body. Mr Tozer's conclusion is that though a natural aptitude for card-playing may not necessarily denote the possession of natural general intelligence in any h'gh degree, yet a careful methodical and judicious course of training in the art of playing games of cards, such as whist and bridge, that require brain power and thought concentration, is bound to strengthen the intellectual powers of any man or woman of average ability, and thus presently lead to a direct increase in his or her share of general or ordinary intelligence.