Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.

The quip uses a card-game analogy to deliver a characteristically Woody Allen blend of sexual anxiety and self-deprecating humor. “Bridge” evokes a social, strategic pastime where success depends both on cooperation (a good partner) and on luck (a good hand). Transposed to sex, the line suggests that intimacy is ideally mutual and relational, but if that fails, one falls back on whatever personal “assets” one has—charm, technique, confidence, or sheer good fortune. The joke’s sting comes from its cynical pragmatism: it treats sex less as romance than as performance and contingency, while also poking fun at the speaker’s insecurity about needing compensatory advantages.

1) “Sex is like bridge. If you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.”
2) “Making love is like playing bridge—if you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.”
3) “Sex is like playing bridge: if you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.”