The two richest men in the world, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and investor Warren Buffet, are also big time card players. So why aren't they challenging Phil Hellmuth and Doyle Brunson to heads-up matches, you ask? Well, actually, their passion isn't poker, but rather bridge. For years now, the two multi-billionaires have enjoyed the four-player card game, whose heyday was back in the 1950s.
Whereas a poker frenzy is sweeping across the United States, Gates and Buffet have not fallen in love with the game just yet, and prefer to spend their time bidding away and piling up tricks instead. Buffet and Gates have let it be known that their mutual love for the game stems from the intellectual stimulation it provides, the potential for constant improvement, and the camaraderie among its players.
Putting their money where their mouths are, Gates and Buffet have alloted a $1 million grant to fund a junior high school program dedicated to teaching the game to teenagers. So far, however, it seems that their money isn't good enough, as they have no takers among U.S. schools. Sharon Osberg, Buffet's longtime playing partner and two-time world-champion bridge player, believes that it will be very difficult to get kids to stop playing poker and take up bridge, as its players are usually on the older side. As the average age of American Contract Bridge League members is 67, Osberg definitely has a point.
For now, poker's popularity doesn't seem to be waning at all, especially among American teens and twenty-somethings. With all the enjoyment and intellectual cunning that bridge might have to offer, this writer can't see it overtaking poker as a national pastime, at least until it gets the same type of television and media exposure. Gates and Buffet will have to dig a lot deeper into their tremendous pockets if they really want bridge to give poker a run for its money. On the other hand, if they'd offer me a million bucks, hey, I'll teach bridge to anyone.
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