Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 76, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1909 — Game of Bridge. [ARTICLE]

Game of Bridge.

When bridge was established a committee of three members of the Portland was appointed in December, 1895, to draft the required code of rules for the new game. The task was a difficult one, as their knowledge of the game was at that early stage a very elementary one, but the work was so skilfully and successfully done that the code of laws then drawn up lasted practically unaltered for a period of ten years, and stood the test of covering all the debatable points of the game. There laws were issued early in 1895, and in July of the same year they were submitted to a joint committee of the Portland apd Turf clubs, and, be:n't passed with a few unimportant alterations, they became the standard laws of English bridge, and remained so until another joint committee of the same clubs Issued the “Revised Laws of Bridge,” at the end of 1904.

There never was any game about which so many people have aired their different opinions. Between 1904 and 1906 something like one hundred books were published dealing entirely with the practice of bridge, and the list is not yet completed. They still come. Hardly a week passes without some fresh aspirant to literary fame setting forth his views under an alluring title.