Bridge, with its complicated system of bidding and tricks, is considered one of the most difficult card games to master. Rachael Gosling discovered it in secondary school in England.

“I had a mathematics teacher who was very keen on bridge,” she said. “He taught a couple of us to play. I loved the game from the start.”

After high school, a summer trip to visit her parents working in Liberia, West Africa turned in to 15 months when her mother fell ill. She entertained herself by playing bridge with local women’s groups.

“I gained experience playing cards, but still did not have a deep knowledge of the game,” she said.

When she moved to Bermuda in her twenties she wanted to continue playing and learning.

To do this, she had to join the Bermuda Bridge Club at 7 Pomander Road, Paget, but her first encounter with them was not positive.

In 1984, she had just started working as a chemist oceanographer at what is now the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences.

“I went to a women’s fair in Hamilton,” she said. “There was a table manned by an elderly woman from the Club. I told her I really wanted to play bridge.”

The woman coldly looked her up and down. “She said, ‘you do, do you?’,” Ms Gosling remembered. “I thought it was the way I was dressed. I said I was sorry, I had just come from work. If there was a dress code, that was fine.”

With apparent reluctance, the woman handed her an application form, and Ms Gosling filled it out in her best handwriting. She never heard back.

She said: “Two weeks later, when no one had phoned me, I thought, if that is the friendliest person they have on the recruiting desk, maybe I do not want to meet the others.”

It was not until 1996 that she tried again. “I still wanted to play bridge,” she said.

This time when she contacted the club, she got an entirely different reception. An enthusiastic lady answered her phone call, and invited her to play with the club that evening.

“I have been with them ever since,” Ms Gosling said. “The first thing I did was look around for the woman I had spoke to in 1984, but I never saw her.”

When she first joined the club, there were about 300 members.

“Bermuda had a big bridge playing population for our size,” she said. “Now we are probably down to about 170 people. Covid-19 hit us badly. A lot of people are now playing online and have not come back to the club. I think that is sad, because bridge is a partnership game.”

The membership that remains is ageing. “You look at a room full of bridge players, and they are mostly older,” she said. “We do not want it to die out.”

She joked that if a young scientist came knocking on their door today, wanting to play, not only would they welcome her, but they would also want the name of five friends who also wanted to play.

The group is working hard to bring fresh, diverse blood into the organisation.

“The game is endlessly fascinating,” Ms Gosling said. “There are bridge players who have been playing for 50 years, and they play four times a week. There is always something to learn.”

Those who do play, tend to be passionate about the game. Famed American investor Warren Buffett once said that he would not mind going to jail, as long as he had three cellmates who were decent bridge players, willing to keep the game going for 24-hours a day.

“You can play when you do not know all the stuff, as I did,” Ms Gosling said. “You can play fine, and have fun. It is a complicated game though, and there is a lot to learn.”

To encourage new members, the club held beginners’ workshops in February.

The workshops were recommended by the American Contract Bridge League. However, the material turned out to be too complicated for some newcomers.

“Some of our beginners had never played cards before,” Ms Gosling said. “That did not even understand about trick taking or following suit.”

The lessons started with 42 keen players and ended with about eight. Some of the people who survived the workshop were so tentative that they took four or five minutes to place a bid.

“They had to consult the text book at every play to make sure they were doing things right,” Ms Gosling said.

In desperation, she e-mailed British bridge teacher, Audrey Grant, known for a number of educational books on the game.

Ms Grant was happy to offer her suggestions to the club. Then she offered the use of 20 online lessons for free. Then she suggested she to come to Bermuda to teach four lessons, for free.

She would also do teacher training, so that experienced club members could continue to help people new learn the game.

Ms Gosling was thrilled by the offer and quickly said yes. This month, 45 people took part in lessons with Ms Grant, some of whom had taken part in the classes offered earlier in the year.

The workshops appear to have been successful.

“After only four lessons, the beginners were sitting there using the bidding boxes and playing,” Ms Gosling said. “That was amazing.”

The club is now preparing for the Bermuda Bridge Regional in January at the Hamilton Princess & Beach Club.

After retiring as a catastrophe modeller in 2022, she decided to get the tournament back up and running. She is now the Club’s tournament chair.

“We held the first one since Covid-19, this year,” Ms Gosling said.

“It was very scary because these things cost a lot to put on, and if you don’t recoup the expenses, they would be a pretty big loss to the club,” she said.

It did not fail, but brought 257 bridge players to the island for the three-day event.

Ms Gosling said: “One of our members is an actuary. They did an economic assessment and calculated that the tournament brought $1.2 million to the island.”

Next year, the club is hoping to bring in even more tourists.

Membership dues at the Bermuda Bridge Club are $150 a year. For more information see bermudabridge.com.