This is most definitely not true. You just aren’t aware of how difficult it gets yet. A decent percentage of hands play themselves, but good judgement in bidding isn’t required in most hands either.
“Competent level” is difficult to define here but I am competent at both games and a master at neither and I’d call them similarly difficult. Your posting about bridge here is along the lines of “the hard part of getting competent at poker is remembering the starting hand chart”.
Edit: There’s finer gradation at the top end at chess I guess because bridge is a game which does involve some variance, but I’d say becoming an IM at chess and becoming an expert at bridge, like acknowledged as such by other experts, is similarly difficult.
I’m not sure I agree, apart from competence (someone else’s definition I adopted) being hard to define.
Let’s have a go anyway…
Imo competence at chess should include being generally able to complete the opening against a player of similar strength without a large disadvantage, being aware of simple combinations otb, having some sense of very strong and very weak positional moves and being able to convert crushing advantages into wins. Of course things go wrong sometimes …
Feel free to modify or add to that short list (I might add facetiously knowing when to resign).
My definition is basically be able to formulate a working plan to win the maximum amount of tricks before you play any cards and then execute that plan as the contract holder (I’m not at all familiar with the correct terms). Then of course be able to recognize the plan and play accordingly on defense. Like you should be able to say “I’m going to get X tricks for sure and then Y more depending on distribution”.
But I suck at bridge and almost never play, but even I can do that. But I assume that when people say “bridge is easy” or “the bidding is the hard part” that they mean they can at least do that.
. Don’t tell me the reunion is cancelled, just don’t.
Corona