Jump Start Bridge: Patty Tucker on Bridge in Schools

29,531 students. 42 states. Free to any school that asks, with a stipend for the teacher who runs it. And the woman behind it still cannot find a corporate sponsor.

By Tracey Bauer

Both parts of my conversation with Patty Tucker, filmed at the Minneapolis North American Bridge Championships in July 2026, are embedded below.

The moment I keep replaying is smaller than the numbers. I got my teacher accreditation earlier this year, and when we filmed I was five or six weeks into teaching. So I asked a Hall of Fame teacher for advice. Her answer was three words.

"Keep it simple."

Who Patty Tucker is

Patty Tucker co-founded Atlanta Junior Bridge in 2006, offering free bridge education to children, and later launched Jump Start Bridge, which puts bridge into school curricula. She is an American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) Best Practices Teacher and an American Bridge Teachers' Association Master Teacher, and she entered the ACBL Hall of Fame with the Class of 2019.

The conversation mattered because she is one of the few in bridge who stopped complaining about the pipeline and built one.

What Jump Start Bridge actually is

Jump Start Bridge reaches schoolchildren through the classroom teacher rather than around them. A teacher signs up and receives free supplies, books, PowerPoint presentations and lesson plans, plus a stipend for every group they teach. No cost to the school or teacher.

Patty was blunt about why the usual approach had not worked. "A lot of the bridge community has the best interest at heart, but they're so far removed from what an elementary or middle school environment is nowadays," she said. Most of us picture a classroom from 40 years ago.

So Jump Start went where teachers already look. "That was the reason we wanted to go to the conferences, because that's a place that the teachers would go looking for something new."

In front of a teacher, the pitch is not a card game. "You're expanding the kids' brain. You're teaching them resilience, right? They're having a great time. You get to be the fun teacher where you're still teaching them math and strategy."

She surveys her teachers every year. "Every teacher that replies that has started a class, the kids loved it."

29,531 students, 42 states, and a lag that is killing her

Sign-ups are excellent. Classes are slower to start, because schools do not run on a calendar year.

• 55% of the teachers who registered in the 2023/24 school year have run a class.
• About 25 to 26% of the schools from 2024/25 have started.
• 17% of the 2025/26 group had already started, which surprised her.

"We think, as organizations, in a calendar year," she said. "Schools operate in a fall-to-spring calendar year. That's their calendar year. And most of the teachers already have their curriculum set at the first of the year for the remainder of the entire year." A teacher who signs up midyear is teaching bridge next fall, not next month.

"It's that lag that's just killing us. Because people say, oh, you have 90-something individual teachers that have signed up and they've registered over 29,000 kids. Isn't that wonderful?"

I said I thought the figure was around 20,000 last time we spoke. She corrected me on the spot. "We're 29,531. 42 states."

Watch Part 2: Growing the Future of Bridge

The other shortage nobody talks about

Somebody has to teach them, and that side is thinning out.

"We had a lot of teachers retire after COVID, and a lot of teachers had been maybe on the verge of retiring, and when COVID hit it was just like, okay, I'm done," Patty said. "Our teachers' ages have gone up some as well."

The obvious replacements are the juniors, and the juniors are busy. "A lot of the kids that are playing at the NABCs I think are more interested in playing right now than they are in teaching right now." She also named the economics: a junior can play online with a client for $25 an hour without leaving the house.

I could not argue. I have played for 20 years and always knew I would be well suited to teach, and I was far more interested in playing. Her answer was one line. "Well, who doesn't like to play?"

Her message to club owners: no night game, nowhere to go

"Clubs are hurting. I understand that they want more players and they are looking at the older players, but we need more people in the 50s and 60-year-old range," she said. "And all you club owners out there, I know you might not have a night game or something like that, but we can't get your younger players if we don't offer some kind of night game."

Take a learn-to-play day. Run it Saturday and turnout is bigger. "But if you run it on a Saturday and have no weekend class or night class that those people can go to, that's extra people you got in, then you've spun your wheels. You had an extra 20 or 30 or 40 people in, but they don't have anywhere to go."

She was careful not to lecture. "I know this isn't all easy... I know you don't have enough teachers to teach those classes. I just think we have to figure out a way to make it work. And I certainly don't have all the answers and I don't own the club." Fair. But the arithmetic does not care. An adult who falls for bridge on a Saturday and finds only weekday morning games is a player you recruited and lost.

Advice for new bridge teachers: keep it simple

Then came my selfish question. "Keep it simple. That's the biggest piece of advice."

She explained it through mentoring games, where a member walks a newer player through everything they did wrong afterward. Her fix was to pick one thing instead: take the hands where they missed a finesse, name the single concept, and tell them that getting this right will improve their game.

Then the line that landed hardest. "If you give them too many things they won't remember any of it, and they'll feel stupid." And her standard for a class: "If they walk out of your class having learned whatever your main concept was for the class, mission accomplished."

I told her about my own habit, which runs the other way. I keep books recording every game I have played for the last four or five years, and at a national I review them at night. Patty's answer was the correction I needed. "But you also have been playing for 20 years now."

What works in a beginner class, I have found, is admitting your own wreckage. My husband Keith taught me this game, including weak twos. Then I picked up six ♣ and opened 2♣, in the room where I now teach. I point at the chair. Everybody relaxes.

Her summary: "Don't overwhelm them, because they'll freeze. Make it fun." I said I thought fun was the whole job. She corrected the easy version of that. "But they did come to learn. Pick a concept, or one or two pieces that they need to know when they leave. And they can do it, and then they feel like they accomplished something."

I said I would make a thousand mistakes before I found my own process. She was unbothered. "You're going to develop your own style. Every teacher does... There's billions of people in the world. We need lots of teachers, because different people are going to gravitate towards different teaching styles and different personalities." Then the caveat. "You could be the best teacher in the world, but if your personality grates on a student, they're not going to continue on."

So the answer is more teachers, of more kinds.

Watch Part 1: The Secrets of Bridge

Part 1 is the origin story: how Patty learned bridge at age 11, the personality types the game attracts, how it compares with chess, and where Atlanta's youth bridge programs came from.

How to help Jump Start Bridge

I asked what a bridge player watching could do. Her campaign has one question at its center: who do you know? A schoolteacher. Somebody on a school district or education board. A recently retired principal. A school counselor, who knows which kid needs an outlet. Somebody on a corporate board.

That last one is the real ask. "I'm desperately looking for some kind of corporate sponsor. We need to find somebody where this would be like a niche. I mean, think about it, guys. We have kids. We go everywhere. We're free. Teachers can earn a stipend and we're open to everyone. We should be able to find a corporate sponsor. We hit all the buttons."

She is right, and the fact that it has not happened says more about how invisible this work is than about the work. Here are the doors.

• Jump Start Bridge, the main site and teacher sign-up.
• Contact Jump Start Bridge, where an introduction goes.
• Atlanta Junior Bridge, the program Patty co-founded in 2006.
• Donate to Jump Start Youth Bridge, if money is what you can give.

And if you have been thinking about teaching: our beginner's guide to bridge and 50 Conventions in 50 Days are both built one concept at a time, which is the whole lesson here.

Frequently asked questions

What is Jump Start Bridge?

Jump Start Bridge is an initiative that puts bridge into school curricula by supporting classroom teachers directly. Teachers who sign up receive free supplies, books, PowerPoint presentations, lesson plans and a stipend for every group they teach. It costs the school and the teacher nothing.

How many students has Jump Start Bridge reached?

29,531 students across 42 states, with more than 90 individual teachers signed up, as stated by Patty Tucker on camera in July 2026. Registration runs ahead of teaching because schools set curriculum a year in advance.

What advice does Patty Tucker give new bridge teachers?

Keep it simple, and teach one concept per class. A lesson that piles on too much leaves students remembering none of it and feeling stupid. Her standard is that students walk out having learned the concept you chose.

Why do bridge clubs need night and weekend games?

Because working-age players cannot attend a weekday morning game. A club can run a well-attended Saturday learn-to-play event and still gain nothing, because the new people have nowhere to go afterward. Clubs that want players in their 50s and 60s need a game those players can graduate into.