Student Lindsey Griffin watches intently as cards are laid down during a recent tournament at the Kaw Valley Bridge Club.

Gifted Students from South Junior High School play bridge at the Kaw Valley Bridge Club, 1025 N. 3rd inside the Tanger Mall.

The bidding box sits ready for suits of cards.

As the gifted education consultant for South Junior High School, Janice Fullerton’s job is to engage and condition some of the smartest students in Lawrence. But this semester the lesson plan went from mostly work to mostly play – literally.

For three hours a week, eight of her kids sidled up to a table to play a game that happens not only to be fun but also might help them on their ACT scores down the road: bridge.

Incredibly popular 50 years ago, modern-day bridge got a heaping helping of support in 2005 when billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates ponied up $1 million to start a program to teach children how to play a game they’ve found useful in maintaining their high-profile minds. But it wasn’t until the Kaw Valley Bridge Club called her up that Fullerton learned about how bridge could be used as an academic tool.

“I said, ‘OK, we got this call, they want to come in and teach us bridge.’ And they’re going, ‘Bridge?’ – I had to explain what bridge is,” Fullerton says. “I said, I don’t know very much about bridge, but what I do know is it’s kind of like chess, it’s problem solving, and they’re going, ‘OK, well, maybe we’ll try it.'”

Starting at the beginning of the semester, players from the club began meeting with the kids – eighth- and ninth-graders – two times a week during their 90-minute class periods. This past week the kids got their “final exam” – a for-fun bridge tournament held at the club center, 1025 N. Third St.

So, how does bridge work? The type of bridge the South Junior High kids are learning is called duplicate contract bridge. The game involves four players, all 52 cards in one deck, code words and lots of strategy. One of the kids’ bridge mentors, Pat Lechtenberg, explains.

“It’s a card game, that has strains for a contract,” Lechtenberg says. “You make a contract and it can be in a hierarchy of suits or no trump and the goal is, for the people who have made the contract, is to complete that contract, and the goal of the defenders it to make sure they don’t.”

It sounds easy, but it’s a difficult task resulting in a stretch of a player’s everyday thought processes. In fact, Lechtenberg says that returning to the game after a 20-year hiatus resulted in her brain feeling like “Jell-O.”

“I promote this as exercise for healthy minds. You have to suffer a little when you’re trying to get in shape,” she says. “Anybody who likes to play games, who likes a challenge, who understands any kind of mathematical probabilities or can do analytical thinking, those people are going to enjoy – love – duplicate bridge.”

Which is exactly why bigwigs like Buffett and Gates believe in teaching kids bridge. Both men have been quoted as saying they believe the game is great for teaching problem-solving and exercising the mind. Meaning the students can use their card-table skills in their academic lives.

“I would say it helps us think things through better, especially when we’re doing long homework assignments,” says eighth-grader Kyle Wittman, who calls the game the opposite of video games. “It helps us keep focused because we have to play this for a long time, just like you have to do homework for a long time.”

Fullerton says she hopes to be able to add a bridge curriculum to more of her gifted classes because she really sees the benefits of playing what she calls “chess and cards at the same time.” She says she’s thankful that there’s a support structure in place for her to continue to use something so fun to teach such important skills.

“I think it’s awesome that there’s a $1 million grant out there. I mean, they got free books, free T-shirts, we’ve got cards and things to play with,” Fullerton says. “And with the budget cuts, that’s a big plus to have something that we can (use to) encourage their intelligence and still have fun.”