Editing Duplicate bridge (section)

==History==
[[Image:BridgeTournamentPlayingArea.jpg|350px|thumb|right|Duplicate bridge tournament playing area]] The origins of duplicate bridge are based on the emergence of duplicate whist in the game of [[whist]]. In the introduction to his book ''Duplicate Whist'', the author comments on the early emergence of duplicate whist: {{quote|text=The writer has it on good authority that it was played in Berlin and Paris as far back as 1840, and later in Philadelphia and New York...|sign=[[John T. Mitchell]]|source={{cite book  |title = Duplicate Whist  |url =https://archive.org/details/duplicatewhist00mitcgoog|publisher = A. C. McClurg and Co |location = Chicago, IL  |year = 1891  |oclc = 9153326 }}}}
Mitchell also recounts the Cavendish experiment of 1857 to demonstrate the merits of duplicate whist in reducing the element of luck and to distinguish between the skill levels of better and poorer players. Cavendish concludes: {{quote|text=...that this experiment does not altogether eliminate luck, as bad play sometimes succeeds. But by far the greater part of luck, namely, that due to the superiority of winning cards, is by the plan described quite got rid of.|sign= [[Henry Jones (writer)|Cavendish (Henry Jones)]]|source=Card Table Talk}}
Initially, owing to the early clumsy mechanics of card resorting to reconstruct the hands of a just played deal,<ref>In one approach, each player recorded his hand in a register so that the cards for each hand, having been played to and gathered from the center of the table in the traditional way after each trick, could be reconstructed by sorting through the just played tricks and redistributing the cards in accordance with the register. Later, the method of playing to a trick by placing one's cards in front of oneself instead of to the middle of the table allowed the hands of each player to be remain intact. See {{cite book  |last = Mitchell   |first = John T.  |title = Duplicate Whist  |url = https://archive.org/details/duplicatewhist00mitcgoog   |publisher = A. C. McClurg and Co |location = Chicago, IL  |year = 1891  |oclc = 9153326 }}</ref> the problems resulting from errors made in the transferring of cards between tables, and the unaccustomed movement of players between tables and the resultant slower pace of play, duplicate whist did not gain instant popularity. Nevertheless, the evolution of duplicate whist continued and the procedures and apparatus (known as ''trays'' or now, more commonly, ''[[Board (bridge)|boards]]'') for more conveniently maintaining and transferring the cards of each deal for replay had been greatly improved so that by the 1890s duplicate's popularity had become widespread. In turn, as the game of whist was superseded by [[contract bridge]], so was duplicate whist by duplicate bridge.