1997-06-02 Buffett On Bridge
AS THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON TRAINED ON THE PLAYING FIELDS OF ETON, WARREN BUFFETT TRAINS AT THE BRIDGE TABLE.
正如惠灵顿公爵在伊顿公学的操场上接受训练，沃伦·巴菲特的训练场则是桥牌桌。
BY ALEXANDRA ALGER
作者：亚历山德拉·阿尔杰
My virtual bridge game with Warren Buffett is off Buffett’s regular partner and a Wells Fargo sen-ior vice president. Buffett is teamed up with his old friend Charlie Graham, who used to run a Buick dealer-ship in Omaha.
我和沃伦·巴菲特的虚拟桥牌游戏开始了，搭档是他在富国银行担任高级副总裁的老搭档。而巴菲特这边则与他的老朋友查理·格雷厄姆搭档，格雷厄姆曾在奥马哈经营一家别克汽车经销店。
This being an Internet game, we’re all sitting in our own homes, in front of computers—I in New York, Osberg in San Francisco, Buffett in Omaha and Graham in San Diego.
由于这是网络游戏，我们各自坐在自己家中对着电脑——我在纽约，奥斯伯格在旧金山，巴菲特在奥马哈，格雷厄姆在圣地亚哥。
Osberg and Buffett each type in a message to me. A bidding box appears on my computer screen, blocking their words. Click, click. I can’t get my mouse to move that box! Click, click. “Wait,” I type. “I can’t see what you’re saying, the bidding box is in the way.”
奥斯伯格和巴菲特各自给我打字留言。这时电脑屏幕上跳出一个叫牌框，挡住了他们的文字。咔哒咔哒，我的鼠标怎么也移不动这个框！咔哒咔哒。“等等，”我打字说，“我看不到你们说的话，叫牌框挡住了。”
My husband, in disgust, wrenches the mouse from me and moves the box. “I won’t chronicle this in next year’s annual report,” Buffett jokes, trying to put me at my ease.
我丈夫无奈地从我手中抢过鼠标，把那个框移开。巴菲特开玩笑地说：“我不会把这写进明年的年报里。”他这是在试图让我放松。
It’s 9:30 p.m. EST on a recent Thursday night, and we are one of 125 foursomes at OKbridge, a virtual bridge club. Buffett, a.k.a. tbone—his log- on name and favorite food—is a regular. Pick any night of the week, and odds are tbone’s here, with friends from all over the U.S.
这是某个星期四晚上的东部时间晚上9:30，我们是OKbridge这个虚拟桥牌俱乐部中125个四人组之一。巴菲特的登录名是tbone——他最爱的食物，也是在这里的常客。一周七天，无论哪天晚上，tbone几乎总在这儿，和来自美国各地的朋友一起打牌。
Buffett’s been a bridge fan almost as long as he’s been a stock market player. He learned the game while at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1940s. But thanks to the Internet, he’s now an addict, logging 12 hours a week on OKbridge without even leaving his home. Seeing Buffett’s obsession, his friend Bill Gates has tried to limit his own enthusiasm for the game. Buffett explains: “He doesn’t want to get addicted, so he only plays with me.”
巴菲特打桥牌的年头几乎和他炒股一样久。他是在20世纪40年代就读宾夕法尼亚大学时学会这项游戏的。但多亏了互联网，他现在已经成瘾，每周在OKbridge上投入12小时都不用出门。看到巴菲特如此痴迷，他的朋友比尔·盖茨也努力控制自己对这项游戏的热情。巴菲特解释道：“他不想上瘾，所以只和我打。”
Buffett and sidekick Charlie Munger once took on Gates and Sharon Osberg at Gates’ place. They started around noon. “Seven hours later dinner guests were knocking at the door, but Bill wanted to keep playing,” Buffett recalls.
巴菲特和他的搭档查理·芒格曾在盖茨家里，与盖茨和莎伦·奥斯伯格对战。他们从中午开始打牌。“七小时后，晚餐的客人已在敲门，但比尔还想继续打，”巴菲特回忆道。
What is it about bridge that fascinates brainy people like Buffett and Gates? Fifty years ago no one would have had to ask. Bridge was a national pastime. But today, according to U.S. Playing Card Co., while 40% of American households play cards, only 2% play bridge. Most bridge addicts are old enough to be grandparents. At the American Contract Bridge League, the median member is 66 — exactly Buffett’s age.
是什么让像巴菲特和盖茨这样头脑灵光的人如此着迷于桥牌？五十年前没人会问这个问题，桥牌是全民娱乐。但如今，据美国纸牌公司统计，尽管有40%的美国家庭玩纸牌，只有2%的人玩桥牌。大多数桥牌爱好者年纪都可以做祖父母了。在美国合同桥联盟，会员的平均年龄为66岁——正好和巴菲特一样大。
Maybe there are too many distractions today. Maybe young Americans lack the attention span. At any rate, Buffett thinks they are missing out. “It’s got to be the best intellectual exercise out there,” he says. “You’re seeing through new situations every ten minutes.”
也许是当今诱惑太多，也许是美国年轻人注意力不够集中。无论如何，巴菲特认为他们错过了好东西。“这无疑是最好的脑力训练，”他说，“你每十分钟就会面临一个全新的局面。”
Bridge is a highly cerebral game—the luck of the draw is much less important than how you play what you draw. You must make decisions based on necessarily vague signals from your partner, from fragmentary evidence and from a disciplined memory for the cards already played.
桥牌是一种高度用脑的游戏——抽牌的运气远远不如你如何打出手中牌更重要。你必须根据搭档模糊的信号、零碎的线索以及对已经出过的牌的有序记忆做出决策。
Sophisticated players recognize bridge as a game of probability—like the stock market. To win you have to figure out the location of the cards you don’t have. (Any big market player will recognize the parallels.) “It’s a game of a million inferences,” Buffett explains. “There are a lot of things to draw inferences from—cards played and cards not played. These inferences tell you something about the probabilities.”
老练的牌手将桥牌视为一场概率游戏——和股市一样。要赢，你必须判断出你手中没有的牌在哪儿。（任何一个资本市场老手都会意识到这两者的相似之处。）“这是一场由无数推理组成的游戏，”巴菲特解释道，“有太多细节可供推断——出过的牌和没出的牌。这些推断能告诉你概率的走向。”
To play bridge well consistently you have to play with the odds, which involves shrewd guessing. “In the stock market you don’t base your decisions on what the markets are doing, but on what you think is rational,” Buffett says. “In bridge, too, if you always do the rational thing, you’ll be a winner over time, though not necessarily that might.”
要持续打好桥牌，你必须遵循概率做出精明的猜测。“在股市中，你不是根据市场的动作来决策，而是基于你认为合理的判断，”巴菲特说，“桥牌也一样，如果你总是做出理性的选择，长远来看你会成为赢家，尽管那一局不一定赢。”
He adds: “Bridge is about weighing gain/loss ratios. You’re doing calculations all the time. It’s also a partnership game. You can mess up your partner or bring out the best in him. You can’t win alone.”
他补充说：“桥牌是在权衡得失比，你时时刻刻都在计算。这也是一项合作游戏。你可能拖垮你的搭档，也可能激发出他的最佳表现。你无法独自取胜。”
You’d think a guy like Buffett, who as a child could spout the populations of U.S. cities, would be a bridge whiz. In fact his enthusiasm outruns his talent here, and he is modest enough to admit it. “In business you don’t have to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results,” he says. “You have to have a sound approach, but you don’t have to be brilliant. But you have to have some special gifts at bridge to be at the very top. You have to have an extremely good memory for cards, and an ability to draw inferences.
你可能会以为，像巴菲特这样的人，从小就能背出美国城市的人口，一定是桥牌高手。事实上，他对桥牌的热情远胜于他的技巧，而且他也足够谦逊地承认这一点。“在商业中，你不需要做非凡的事情就能取得非凡的结果，”他说，“你需要有一个稳健的方法，但不一定非要才华横溢。但要在桥牌中达到顶级水平，你就需要一些特别的天赋。你必须拥有极其出色的记忆力，以及推理能力。”
“If you play with someone like Bob Hamman \[the top- ranked bridge player in the world] they can look like they’re having a drink or eating a sandwich, but they’ll know everything that’s going on.”
“如果你和像鲍勃·哈曼（世界顶级桥牌选手）那样的人打牌，他们看起来好像只是在喝饮料或吃三明治，但他们其实掌握了局势中的一切。”
If people like Buffett feel humble playing against the Hammans of this world, imagine how I felt matched against Buffett and partnered with Sharon Osberg. She is a two- time world bridge champion. And she’s the one who got Buffett—famous for saying he’d never need a computer—to buy an IBM PC so they could play together regularly.
如果连巴菲特面对哈曼这种人都感到自惭形秽，那你可以想象我在对阵巴菲特、并与莎伦·奥斯伯格搭档时是种什么感觉。她可是两次世界桥牌冠军。而且正是她让巴菲特——那个曾说自己永远不需要电脑的人——去买了一台IBM PC，以便他们能经常一起打牌。
If only Osberg could help me bid. I sit staring at my first hand. Bids start to appear on my monitor. How do they make decisions so quickly? Osberg bids hearts and ends up winning the hand for us. Tbone and Graham win the next.
要是奥斯伯格能帮我叫牌就好了。我坐着盯着我的第一手牌。叫牌开始出现在我的屏幕上。他们怎么能这么快就做出决定？奥斯伯格叫了红心，最终帮我们赢下这一局。Tbone和格雷厄姆赢下了下一局。
“You would’ve beaten us if Sharon had had six spades instead of five,” reads a message frombone.
“如果莎伦手里有六张黑桃而不是五张，你们就赢我们了。”tbone打字说道。
“How’d you know she had five?” I ask. “Because she bid spades,” comes the typed reply.
“你怎么知道她有五张？”我问。“因为她叫了黑桃，”对方打字回复。
It’s one of the most basic rules in bridge: To open bidding in spades or hearts, you should have at least five of that suit. “Bidding or lack of bidding always means something,” he notes.
这是桥牌中最基本的规则之一：如果你用黑桃或红心开始叫牌，你至少要有五张那个花色的牌。“叫牌或不叫牌总是有含义的，”他指出。
Finally I have a really good hand. Osberg and I are on the offensive, having bid three hearts. We’re going to try for 9 out of the 13 tricks. Feeling confident, I play a few cards very quickly. “You don’t get points for speed,” bone types. “Don’t make a move until you know what the next move is going to be. S.J. Simon, chapter two.” The reference is to Buffett’s favorite bridge book, *Why You Lose at Bridge*, a 1946 classic that’s still in print.
我终于拿到了一手好牌。奥斯伯格和我开始进攻，叫了三红心。我们准备争取赢下13墩中的9墩。自信满满的我很快地打出了几张牌。“速度快是没分的，”bone打字说，“在你确定下一步怎么出牌之前，先别出牌。S.J.西蒙，第二章。”他指的是巴菲特最喜欢的一本桥牌书——《你为什么会输在桥牌上》，这本1946年的经典至今仍在出版。
Sure enough, I’m hurt by my quick moves. We win but only just. Graham won one trick with a jack I didn’t know he had. Better players keep count of what high cards haven’t been played—I’d lost track.
果不其然，我太快出牌吃了亏。我们虽然赢了，但也只是险胜。格雷厄姆用一张我不知道他有的J赢了一墩。水平更高的牌手会记住哪些高牌还没出——我已经记不清了。
“It takes a while to get the hang of it, but that’s what makes it such a terrific game,” bone writes. “There are always new levels.”
“掌握它需要时间，但这正是它成为绝佳游戏的原因，”bone写道，“它总有新的层次可探索。”
Will getting better at bridge make me better at picking investments? “No,” comes Buffett’s reply. “But the better you understand the game the more fun it is.”
桥牌打得更好，会让我更会选股票吗？“不会，”巴菲特答道，“但你对这游戏理解得越深，它就越有趣。”
深入的关系往往跟安全感有关。
OF THE BILLIONAIRES I HAVE KNOWN, MONEY JUST BRINGS OUT THE BASIC TRAITS IN THEM. IF THEY WERE JERKS BEFORE THEY HAD MONEY, THEY ARE SIMPLY JERKS WITH A BILLION DOLLARS.
在我认识的亿万富翁中，金钱只会放大他们本来的个性。如果他们原本就是混蛋，成了亿万富翁后，也不过是个有十亿美元的混蛋。
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