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Ryan holds all the right cards
Michael Ryan says meeting people from every walk of life is one of the things he enjoys most about playing competitive bridge. Photo: Nancy J. Parisi
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“There’s a great deal of subtlety and complexity about the game, both in terms of the bidding, as well as the playing.”
Michael Ryan is a pretty busy guy, serving as vice provost and dean of undergraduate education, as well as a professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. But when the time comes to unwind, you just might find him up to something you didn’t expect—playing bridge.
In fact, Ryan, a regular at Buffalo’s biggest bridge clubs, is such an accomplished player that he was invited to compete in the American Contract Bridge League’s Grand National Teams (GNT) championship, held in Las Vegas this past summer.
“I’ve been playing bridge for about 20 years,” he says. “For me, it’s relaxing, although, if you look at a bridge competition, it might not seem as though anyone’s very relaxed.”
Ryan, who learned to play bridge from his parents growing up in Montreal and continued playing while in college, made the leap from social to competitive bridge shortly after joining the UB faculty in the 1970s. He and several other colleagues, also enthusiasts of the game, started running into trouble coaxing spare players from among the department’s faculty and graduate students.
Competitive bridge, which is played in a four-person format, involves a special, high-intensity version of the game called “duplicate bridge” in which cards are arranged so that everyone participating in a tournament is dealt the same series of hands.
“The format eliminates luck from the game,” Ryan explains. “There’s a great deal of subtlety and complexity about the game, both in terms of the bidding, as well as the playing. To me, that’s the most exciting or rewarding aspect: It’s an intellectual challenge.”
Bridge players advance to compete in some national-level events by qualifying in regional competitions, including the one in which Ryan’s team took first place earlier this year in Meadville, Pa. Ryan frequents two local clubs: the Bridge Center of Buffalo and the Whist Club.
In Las Vegas, Ryan’s team competed in what’s known as the “B flight,” just one step below the top amateurs (flight A) and professional players, who compete in the “championship flight.” A player’s “flight” is based on the total number of master points the player has earned over the course of his or her entire bridge-playing career. After five consecutive days of punishing elimination rounds, Ryan’s team finished just short of the top spot in their flight, earning a hard-fought, second-place win.
“It was pretty grueling and intense, particularly that format, so we were pleased with our result,” he says. “Naturally, we would have liked to have won, but it was very exciting—and very tough—to come in second.”
Ryan’s teammates included his game partner, a local computer programmer, as well as a retired math teacher and a former engineer, all from Buffalo. He says meeting new people from every walk of life is one of his favorite things about playing bridge, noting that his teammates at a previous national competition in Albuquerque, N.M., were a housewife, a long-distance truck driver and a college student.
Individuals with highly analytical jobs, including those in his own field of chemical engineering, as well as doctors, accountants and mathematicians, also tend to be avid bridge players, adds Ryan, who once sat next to Bill Gates, founder and chairman of Microsoft, while attending a national bridge competition in Montreal about eight years ago.
“It was sort of an odd feeling sitting next to the richest man in the world,” he says, “but he was just a very down-to-earth guy, just sitting there—playing bridge.”
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