The Swiss Bridgebond is 75 years old and celebrates this anniversary on 19 March

24 February 2025

The card game Jass originates from another Republic: the Republic of the Seven United Provinces. Mercenaries from the Eidgenossenschaft who served the Republic introduced the game to Switzerland in the late 17th century. In the Netherlands, the game is called ‘klaverjassen’.

Bridge did not develop until centuries later, in the 1920s. It is called bridge worldwide and lives up to its name socially, game-wise, and multiculturally.

Many celebrities meet and have met at the bridge table: Winston Churchill, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mae West, Martina Navratilova, Bill Gates, Omar Sharif, James Bond, Hercule Poirot, Snoopy, Gandhi, Nehru or W. Somerset Maugham, to name but a few personalities.

However, the world-famous and popular card game is played mainly by ordinary people, in clubs and privately. The Fédération Suisse de Bridge (FSB) was founded in Geneva on 18 March 1950, hence its French name.

The first member clubs came from Baden, Zurich, Biel, Freiburg, Winterthur, Geneva, Bern, Neuchâtel, and Lausanne. The FSB office was initially located in Lausanne but has been in Zurich since 1996.

Image: Archive FSB

The FSB publishes the magazine ‘Bulletin’ four times a year, organises and coordinates the national and regional competitions of the FSB, keeps track of the scores and FSB points of clubs’ tournaments, initiates or assists with courses, e.g. mini-bridge for youngsters and petit-bridge for children, various tournaments ( four “cups” for multiple groups and national championships) and brings bridge to the attention of the public as an interesting, social and publicly accessible card game for (very) young and (very) old. In this fun, thinking and sociability go hand in hand.

Learning young is done old, and a few regret starting later in life. Many even found solace in the bridge. W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) considered bridge ‘the most entertaining and intelligent card game, the wit of man has so far devised. When all else fails – sport, love, ambition- bridge remains a solace and entertainment.

To celebrate the 75th anniversary with its thousands of members, the FSB is organising a tournament on 19 March for its members in the country’s 26 cantons to play under the common name of ‘Bridge’. In this respect, too, Bridge unites not only multicultural and quadrilingual Switzerland but also Europe and the rest of the world!

(Source: P. van Zinnicq Bergmann, Het Bridge Epos, Amsterdam, 2010)

Suvretta House, International Bridge Tournament 2023