November 13th, 2007 ~ Ray Lee ~ 8 Comments 
Let me describe a scenario for you. In order to choose Canada’s Olympic hockey team, we invite players to form teams across the country and compete with one another in a regional playoff competition. Eventually, the winner will be Team Canada, and get to pick their own coach. It won’t bother us if Gretsky and Lemieux play on different teams (and as a result we can’t send both of them), because the whole process is fair and egalitarian. Ridiculous, you say? Well, that’s exactly what we do in bridge.
It has been obvious to me for a long time that while it is nice to have the CNTC and CTWC as national championship events, they are a very poor mechanism for selecting international representatives. If anyone needs proof of this contention, simply look at our finishes in the Bermuda Bowl and Olympiad over the last 10 years. We are not the United States. We cannot afford to send our third or fourth or eighth best team to a world event, confident that they will be top contenders. We must do everything in our power to send our three best pairs in each team. Full stop. End of discussion.
Now, there are those who will immediately cry, ‘What about ‘team chemistry’?’ In my view, it’s vastly overrated – and in so far as you need it, it can be developed. More important is to have people who can perform at this level of competition. I was at the 1972 Olympiad, in which Canada took the bronze medal in the Open event, behind the Blue Team and the Aces (no shame, that). I don’t remember Murray or Kehela spending 5 minutes with their teammates away from the table. And Gowdy and Phillips spent most of the time feeling furious because they weren’t getting to play very much. Not much chemistry, but six guys who were terrific bridge players. As Casey Stengel put it, ‘Nice guys are ten a penny; give me someone who can hit.’ Year after year we’re sending groups of players who like each other, who have formed themselves into teams with ‘chemistry’ – but who, at this level, patently cannot hit.
How do we change this? I’m going to propose something so radical here that I know it will not happen in Open competition for a long time. So I’m going to suggest that it be tried for the women, for two reasons: 1) I think if you take a survey of CWTC level women in Canada, you’ll find they like my idea – certainly the few I talked to in Shanghai did. 2) When they see that it works, the Open players will want to try it themselves. But before I explain it, let me sketch in some background.
We have several problems in Canada: lack of funds (addressed in a previous post), geography, and a small population. I doubt there are more than about a dozen women players in the country who are both seriously interested in playing internationally and have any chance of being competitive at that level. These players are scattered across a very large country. Leaving them to find and form their own teams, based on who knows whom and who likes whom, is a formula for disaster. But there is a model that could work, one that has been tried successfully in other small countries – Australia and the Netherlands come to mind immediately. It is as follows:
1) Identify a group of perhaps six pairs to join an international squad. Talented individuals in remote areas can be identified, and encouraged and helped to find appropriate partners. Pairs Trials from time to time can be used to help identify newcomers and augment the group as people are cut or drop out.
2) Under the guidance of a national coach/manager, the squad practices and trains on an ongoing basis. Internet play and matches can be very helpful here.
3) Teams selected from the squad are sent to high-level events to gain experience against the best opposition – the Nationals are an obvious place to start. It’s also very easy to arrange Internet matches against good opponents.
4) Teams for world championships are selected from among the squad by the coach, in consultation with a Selection Committee composed of top-level players with international experience. Ideally, this should be a four or five person group with representation from each area of the country. However, let me emphasize that this Committee is composed of players, not politicians. It should be self-perpetuating, thus ensuring that replacement members are of a calibre similar to the persons being replaced.
Now this takes time and effort, and most of all money. But this is the CBF’s job!
I recognize that for Open teams, this is a pipe dream and won’t happen unless its efficacy can be demonstrated for the women. However, without doing anything quite so radical, I would urge the following immediate changes to the current system.
1) CNTC entry should be restricted to six-person teams. Failing this, augmentation should be done by a CBF Selection Committee (see above).
2) CNTC entrants should have to commit to playing in the next world event. This year, three members of the CNTC winning team were unable to go to Shanghai, and were therefore replaced. I wonder how the second place team felt about that? Should anyone drop out for medical or other acceptable reasons, the replacement players should be chosen and/or approved by the Selection Committee, rather than rubber-stamped by the Board as at present.
3) The team captain should be either selected by the CBF, or chosen by the team from a list of approved captains provided by the CBF. A prerequisite for being a team captain should be international experience as a player or captain. The job requires organizational skills, people management skills, and sufficient bridge ability to understand and judge a pair’s performance level and act accordingly. It’s not enough to be good buddies with the team – in fact it’s probably a negative, because it makes it harder to sit out a pair when you have to. In addition, it’s helpful to have been to a world event, to understand how things work, and how to get things done when necessary.
I’;d be very interested in feedback from readers on some of these ideas.
November 2nd, 2007 ~ Ray Lee ~ No Comments
I’m sure everyone by now is familiar with the incident in Shanghai, where the US Venice Cup team held up an anti-Bush sign during the medal presentation ceremony. However, not everyone will be aware of what has happened since.
The whole thing sparked a fair amount of controversy in the USA — reactions ranged from amusement to outrage. There were voices calling for lengthy suspensions from international play for the culprits. But many of those voices have suddenly been stilled by a more recent action of the ACBL Board, which is threatening to cancel International Fund games — the main source of revenue for the USBF and US international teams (other than the usual array of wealthy sponsors, of course). Suddenly, for many, the idea of losing that money seems to be worth more than any kind of patriotic principle.
Let me further relate that I received an email this morning from a prominent Canadian, urging me to organize a letter of support for the beleaguered American women from my Venice Cup players, to help prevent the loss of this funding for Canada. My response was that (a) I personally didn’t support them (I think at best it was the height of discourtesy to the WBF and their Chinese hosts, not to mention Americans who don’t happen to agree with their particular political viewpoint) and (b) I wasn’t sure Canada wouldn’t in the end be better off without relaying the ACBL to dole out money to us.
Over the last few hours, though, I’ve been thinking, and it seemed to me that this whole thing goes much deeper. I remembered that a few weeks ago, Linda received a personal letter from Jay Baum congratulating her on being appointed captain of the Canadian Venice Cup team, and proclaiming her a worthy representative of the ACBL. Now this was curious for two reasons: first, she was selected and approved by the CBF, who then submitted her accreditation to the WBF — the ACBL had no involvement at all; second, she’s actually not even a member of the ACBL, but prefers to pay annual dues directly to the CBF to belong to that organization.
Now the ACBL BOD, in response to the actions of some US players, are effectively threatening to cut off international funding from Canadian and Mexican teams. Just after we returned from the tournament, the ACBL web site carried a piece on how the US teams did — no mention of Canadian teams. What price ‘representing the ACBL’ now? And unless one of the people who were there submits an article, I’ll bet there won’t be any coverage of our teams in the Bulletin either. Any time you get close to the organization, it’s hard to escape the impression that the ‘A’ in ACBL is very meaningful — it’s run by Americans for Americans, and Canada is just a great source of revenue. Let me give you one more example. Every NABC includes an International Fund game, and on the basis that some percentage of participants have to be Canadian, the CBF used to receive some of the money raised. That was cancelled a few years ago; these days, any Canadians who play in that game should be aware they’re funding the US teams.
In a previous blog, I opened a discussion of fund-raising by CBF, and how we have to do more of it, and do it better. Perhaps if the ACBL cuts us off completely, we’ll get moving and organize our own International Fund Week across the country. We won’t have to pay the ACBL sanction fees, and I suspect we’ll get a whole lot more revenue from it. But in any event, the CBF will be forced to get moving and raise its own revenue. I suspect too many people are too much in love with their masterpoints that we can’t get Canada out of the ACBL in the foreseeable future, but at least we can separate out the whole business of our international representation and run our own show in that regard.
October 29th, 2007 ~ Ray Lee ~ 2 Comments
I heard today the very sad news that Kate Buckman’s Bridge Studio is no more. It is hard to put into words what this club meant to Toronto bridge players of my generation. In recent years, under Barbara Seagram and Alex Kornel, it had regained much of its past glory and once again was the pre-eminent mid-town club. However, it was sold last year, and in a few short months, the new management has driven it into the ground. Kate Buckman’s Bridge Studio in Toronto was one of the great bridge clubs of North America. It is also an illustration of the truism that a bridge club is made or broken by the personality of its owner.
What follows is an article I wrote about the club and its legendary founder for Canadian Master Point magazine over ten years ago. It seems appropriate to reprint it here for those who may not have seen it at the time.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The recent passing of Toronto’s Kate Buckman, at the age of 94 after several years of ill-health, set me thinking about the lady I had known, and her influence on me and on the rest of Toronto’s bridge community in the 60s and 70s.
Kate had introduced duplicate bridge to Vancouver in the post-war years, and opened her Toronto premises in 1959. By the time I arrived in Toronto, ten years later, there was only one major duplicate club in the city: Kate Buckman’s Bridge Studio, known to everyone as just "Kate’s". It was called "Kate’s" for simplicity, and because in every meaningful way, the club reflected its owner, the redoubtable Kate Buckman whose personal management of the operation made it what it was. It had become the largest bridge club in Canada, and the third-largest in North America, averaging three hundred tables a week, and introducing almost a thousand students to the game each year. The major competition, the venerable St. Clair, catered only to rubber bridge and an IMP league. For matchpoint players, there was only one choice.
But it was an easy and pleasant choice, for "Kate’s" truly was a ‘club’, a place to meet your friends and a place to feel at home, whether or not you actually wanted to play bridge that afternoon or evening (although there would usually be some gentle persuasion applied to get you involved). As a newcomer to Toronto (and Canada), I found it especially welcoming. Hanka (Kate’s able assistant) found me another expatriate, Brian, who could play the Acol system that was all I knew at the time; Brian traveled on business a fair amount, but when he was in town, I could expect a call from Hanka to round me up for a game that night.
But I quickly became friendly with a group of players around my own age who, some more than others, seemed practically to live at "Kate’s". Some of them have drifted away from the game over the years, but most of them still play bridge, and I still regard many of them as friends. People would drop in and out of the club during the afternoon, and a group would usually gather between five and six o’clock, whether or not they intended to play bridge that night. The surroundings were congenial, and depending on your mood, you could play cards, or just hang out in the comfortable lounge, swapping bridge stories with whomever happened to drop by.
If you wished, you could even have dinner at the club (the kitchen was presided over by a man with the unlikely name of Cary Grant). A few tables at one end would be transformed with tablecloths, red linen napkins, and glistening silverware, and a fine three-course meal was available. For most of my crowd, however, the preferred spot was Fran’s, around the corner. It was cheap, cheerful, licensed, open 24 hours, and had a plentiful supply of paper napkins on which you could write out hands and auctions. I’m not sure I ever saw it earlier than 1 A.M., our usual time to head over after the game for post-mortems.
It was at Kate’s that I met my future wife, Linda — she was running the bridge school, and I became, for a short time, one of her staff. But we were not the only couple whose partnership, founded at "Kate’s", came to extend beyond the bridge table.
This was an atmosphere in which young players could not help but grow and develop their game; there was consistent high-level competition, and top stars like Murray, Elliott, Kehela, Cowan and Gowdy were often there to play. It was at "Kate’s" that short-lived conventions such as ‘Knapik over Notrumps’ were first tried, alongside such longer-lasting innovations as ‘Guoba rescues’. Anything went, and you might encounter pairs playing Blue Team Club, Precision, Acol, EHAA, or even No-Peek during the course of an evening.
The games were a good size, and frequent special prize events added to the good-natured competition (I well remember the first Midnight Game, which followed after the regular duplicate and ended with a breakfast buffet!). This was in the days before computer scoring, of course, so someone had installed a huge whiteboard on one side of the playing area, which you could watch as the scores were entered and boards matchpointed at the end of the game (which was why we rarely got to Fran’s before 1 A.M.!). Sometimes other groups would continue through the night – rubber bridge, or gin and other quasi-legal ‘short-cards’ games. These were the players who never showed up until midnight, but who might, on occasion, still be there at noon the next day.
And over it all presided Kate herself, regal and firm, making sure that everything was exactly as she wanted it, and that her club was always a place where people wanted to come and spend their time. The club ran into some financial difficulties in the early 70s, and there were several ownership changes, but eventually Kate re-established control. However, I started a new job in late 1973, and the first time I went out of town on business, fire destroyed the old building that housed the bridge club (for some reason I have always felt a vague sense of responsibility for the disaster). The club reopened in another location, but the old "Kate’s" atmosphere was gone, and a period of decline followed that lasted well past the point where Kate Buckman’s growing ill-health would not allow her to continue to play an active role. Happily, today, under the energetic ownership of Barbara Seagram and Alex Kornel, "Kate’s" has once again become the preeminent club in central Toronto,
Kate Buckman was named winner of the Edwin A. Wetzlar Memorial Award and an Honorary Member of the ACBL for lifetime services to bridge in 1973, the first Canadian to be so honored. She is remembered in Toronto through the Kate Buckman Award, given annually to the Toronto-area person adjudged to have contributed most to people’s enjoyment of bridge; she was, naturally, the first recipient.
There could be no more fitting memorial to a great lady.
October 23rd, 2007 ~ Ray Lee ~ 2 Comments
The raison d’etre for the existence of the Canadian Bridge Federation is the selection and funding of Canadian teams for international competition. It does neither well. It is time that the organization took responsibility for the proper selection, adequate funding and competitive preparation of our teams. Too much is simply left to members of the teams to organize for themselves, usually with far too little time before the event to do anything properly. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to post my own thoughts on how we should approach some of these issues.
I know what the problems and obstacles are, better than most. I’ve attended more World Championships than most Canadians, in one capacity or another; I’ve even been President of the CBF. I know how limited the CBF’s resources are, in money, time and manpower, but in the end, those aren’t acceptable excuses.
Let’s start by looking at the sine qua non, the problem that needs to be addressed before we can really tackle the others with any hope of success.
1) Funding
The biggest single problem is money. Members of my Venice Cup team in Shanghai had to pay most of their own expenses, and were out of pocket to the tune of perhaps $4000 each for the privilege of representing their country. That does not even count cumulative (and possibly unpaid) time off work to play in qualifying events and the VC itself. And they got lucky, because Mexico declined to send a team to play off against us for the VC spot, so no money or time was required for that event. There was, however, essentially no money for coaching or other team preparation.
By contrast, I listened in Shanghai to US players complaining that their stipend for expenses from the USBF was only about $7000 each, and that this paltry sum didn’t really cover business class travel. My heart bled for them. Much of that funding comes from the ACBL, and at least some of that money comes from Canadian players.
All 3 Canadian teams (Open, Women and Seniors) at an event like this should be fully funded. In addition, the CBF needs to be able to underwrite an adequate coaching program, so the teams are properly prepared for what they will face on world competition.
Fund-raising for international events has to be a year-round pursuit.
There should be a permanent CBF sub-committee that takes responsibility for ensuring that funds are available, through sponsorship, or national fund-raising events, or both. When I was president of CBF I appointed someone to chair such a committee, but I don’t think it ever really became active (it certainly didn’t before I left the CBF Board to deal with some pressing business issues of my own).
Money can be raised, for example, through tournaments and events across the country — and as long as masterpoints aren’t involved there’s no need to go through the ACBL and pay its exorbitant table and directors’ fees. Just as an example, it wouldn’t be hard to attract prize donations from sponsors, and it isn’t expensive to license something like the Ecats software to run a nation-wide computer-scored game in the clubs. The ACBL is sucking enormous amounts of money out of Canadian bridge players — much of which resides in the bank accounts of ACBL Units and Districts across the country. We have to find a way to tap into that income stream.
The CBF obviously needs to make a serious professional attempt to market the game to wealthy individuals and corporate sponsors. Both those adjectives are chosen deliberately.
Unless the financial underpinnings are put in place, nothing else matters a whole lot. We’ll just continue to be an amateur-hour operation, living from hand to mouth, and hoping the players can fund their own trips, figure out their own coaching and training, and not embarrass us too much at the world level. We can do better than that, and there’s no excuse for not doing so.
Next time: selecting the best teams, and why we don’t.
October 11th, 2007 ~ Ray Lee ~ 10 Comments
I am sitting in the Vugraph room yesterday, watching George Jacobs struggling in the final of the Bermuda Bowl, and thinking about how much I hate the idea of playing sponsors. It tarnishes the event somehow when the world championship is not being contested by the best players — the USA team in each of the three finals is carrying a sponsor. And I use the word ‘carrying’ deliberately.
When Jacobs has been in, the USA team is losing IMPs to Norway — so the question is, are they good enough to win those back when he’s on the bench? The USA women’s team has a sponsor who admits to being merely a club player, and who notoriously failed to cash her nine tricks in 3NT earlier in the event, costing her side a game swing. Rose Meltzer is a very nice lady, but despite being the first woman to have been on a Bermuda Bowl winning team, I don’t think she would claim to be a world-class player.
I remember about fifteen years ago acting as a recorder at a Vanderbilt final. I was excited to be right at the table, in the middle of the action with all these great players. But I soon realized there were only three real players at that table — the fourth was there by virtue of the size of his wallet. Even that far back, it felt very sad.
At the same time, I realize that I don’t have a problem with my old friend Glen Holman, who moved away from Toronto some years ago, bankrolling the South African team. For one thing, he and his partner played almost every set, anchoring the team. For another, he’s not simply hiring a bunch of top pros to carry him to some undeserved success. Those guys don’t exist in South Africa. What he is doing is making it possible to do in style and comfort what they were probably going to do anyway. More power to him.
There’s no doubt sponsorship has some plusses, in that it allows some people to make a decent living out of the game, improving their own skills as a result. But it has its dark side. Quite apart from the ‘purity of the game’ issue, it is attracting young players to play in and for the USA rather than their own countries. Canada has lost Fred Gitelman, Geoff Hampson and Gavin Wolpert, just to name three recent defections. Sweden’s Jenny Reiman, Gavin’s wife, now lives in the States, and who know how long she will continue to play for Sweden? Probably exactly as long as it takes some sponsor to offer her enough money to play in the US Team Trials.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the last couple of weeks about the way we go about this international stuff in Canada — what we’re doing wrong, and the kind of changes we need to be looking at. Watch this space for a series of blogs on this topic over the next little while.
October 9th, 2007 ~ Ray Lee ~ No Comments
Well, it was a great ride, but it had to end sometime.
Stanza 4 yesterday was our high water mark — after trailing early, we came storming back and actually took the lead with four boards left. Then 20-odd IMPs slipped away at the end of the set, and although we had won the session, we still trailed by 12. This set was broadcast on the Chinese Ourgames Internet site, which is roughly analogous to BBO. It’s tough to navigate if you don’t read Chinese, but with the help of a friend my son Colin managed it, and was able to follow the play from back home.
There was no doubt that Linda, although improved over the day before, was not going to be able to play more than one set, so I elected to send the same four back in to do it again. I’m still not sure whether I was right or wrong, but lightning did not strike twice, and we finished another 20 down, for a net of about 33.
That was Francine and Julie’s last appearance — Linda and Pamela went back in, while I kept Sylvia and Isabelle in to try to muddy the waters against Auken and von Arnim. The good news was that we scored enough IMPs to win the match; the bad news was, so did they.
We did win two out six sets against Germany, and other than the France vs USA2 1-IMP nailbiter, it was by far the closest match of the quarters. A great run had come to an end, and the little team that could had finally run out of gas.
This was a big swing hand in that exciting fourth set.
|
♠ K J 5 2 |
|
| ♥ Q 4 3 |
| ♦ A 9 5 |
| ♣ A J 4 |
| ♠ Q 10 9 6 4 3 |
 |
♠ 7 |
| ♥ A K 9 7 5 |
♥ J 10 8 2 |
| ♦ — |
♦ K J 6 3 2 |
| ♣ Q 10 |
♣ 9 6 2 |
|
♠ A 8 |
|
| ♥ 6 |
| ♦ Q 10 8 7 4 |
| ♣ K 8 7 5 3 |
N/S Vul.
West North East South
Auken Francine von Arnim Julie
pass pass
1♠ 1NT pass 3NT
all pass
West North East South
Sylvia S-Meuer Isabelle Alberti
pass pass
1♠ pass 1NT 2NT
pass 3♣ pass pass
3♥ 4♣ 4♥ pass
pass dbl all pass
At both tables West opened 1♠ in third chair. Francine elected to overcall INT, and Julie raised to game. The opening lead was a low diamond, which went round to the 9, West throwing the ♠10, suit preference for hearts. Francine now played a club to the king followed by another back to the queen and ace. That was nine tricks, and with hearts wide open she sensibly decided to settle for that rather than playing around with the spades for an overtrick. Good thinking, in my opinion.
The excitement at the other table began when North did not overcall. After Isabelle’s 1NT response, it was South who entered the bidding with an overcall of 2NT for the minors. Despite having the hand with the most high cards, North gave a simple preference to 3♣. With a 6-5 hand, Sylvia wasn’t going to let the opponents play in this contract, and balanced with 3♥. North made another effort to catch up with 4♣, but undeterred by what must surely be wasted diamond cards Isabelle pressed on to 4♥. By now no doubt thoroughly frustrated, North closed proceedings with a double.
The defense started with the ♣A, and a club continuation would have left declarer scrambling — in fact 4♥ went three down on this defense in the China-England match. But at this point North, clearly worried about the spade position, found the catastrophic play of a small trump. Sylvia won in dummy, and played a spade to South’s ace. The defense continued clubs, and declarer ruffed in on the third round. Now came the ♠Q, covered and ruffed, a heart to the ace, and a ruffing finesse against the ♠J. That was +590 and 15 big IMPs to Canada.
October 7th, 2007 ~ Ray Lee ~ No Comments
Shanghai, Monday .
There’s a huge difference between qualifying for the playoffs here and making the semifinals. Just winning that one match puts you in the final four, and 3-1 on to come home with a medal. It also means four more days of bridge and no vacation, but that’s another story!
For those who don’t know how these competitions work, let me explain what happens in the Bermuda Bowl, Venice Cup and Seniors Bowl after the Round robin phase. Each field is now down to 8 teams. The first place team gets to pick its semifinal opponents from the teams that finished 5th-8th. Then the second place team gets to pick from the three remaining, and so on. Several people told me that the worst place to finish is fourth, because then you get to play the team no-one else wants to face.
In the VC, USA 1 picked first and chose Egypt, to no-one’s surprise. Then Germany chose us — which to me was a surprise. We were clearly a team with momentum, while England had struggled throughout and didn’t look that good to me. So then China went for England, leaving USA2 stuck with defending champions France (see what I mean about finishing fourth?).
The USA 1 team also got to pick their semifinal bracket, and chose China. However, if both USA teams win, they have to play one another. So if we win, we’ll play France if they win, or else the China/England winner (I’m assuming USA 1 takes care of Egypt, which right now looks likely). I would like our chances in the latter scenario.
Meanwhile we have to play Germany, and we got off to a poor start. Linda was getting sicker, and retired to bed after she and Pamela had struggled in the first stanza. We dropped about 20 IMPs in that set. So Sylvia and Isabelle came off the bench, and proceeded to fight a valiant holding action for the next 32 boards. We lost each set by a few IMPs, but there was more to it than that. This pair are very aggressive (playing 10-12 notrumps, for example) and my feeling was that Auken and von Arnim wouldn’t enjoy playing them that much. I also followed the standard strategy of putting my best player (Francine) at the other table in Sabine’s seat, and it all seemed to pay off. We ended the day down about 28 — with plenty of boards left.
The Germans had seating rights in the fourth set, and I was delighted this morning to see they had moved Sabine and Dani from their almost invariable North-South seats to avoid a third set against Sylvia and Isabelle. We don’t have seating rights now until the last stanza, but the junkyard dogs will be back in their faces again in that session for sure! It’s still anybody’s match, and if we can a few back in the first two sets, anything can happen.
October 6th, 2007 ~ Ray Lee ~ No Comments
The job of any work force is to make the boss look good — and my team has certainly accomplished that. It’s slightly embarrassing to be walking around here getting congratulated for something that I feel I had very little to do with — but it is fun!
Those of you who read yesterday’s post know that I agonized over the right strategy for the final day, but my team made me look like a genius. I think I was right about the first match being the key. Netherlands were by far the most dangerous team behind us — they won this event 6 years ago with a very similar team, and are always contenders. They started the day 15 VPs back, and had the prospect of facing the US1 juggernaut in Round 20. So they needed to beat us big-time.
It didn’t happen. Our pairs played a solid game, and the Dutch ended up with a 3-IMP win that must have felt like a loss. They had gained only two VPs on us. Sure enough, they went on to lose a near blitz to US1, and they were effectively finished. Meanwhile, I was aiming for 40+ VPs for the day — 10 each in the first two matches, and 20 against Argentina to finish. We were 4 VPs ahead of that pace.
That being the case, I rested Linda and Pamela for the Germany match. I positioned Francine and Julie N-S, where they would compare with Auken and von Arnim, and gave Isabelle and Sylvia a chance to play a set against the best women’s pair in the world. They rose to the challenge and didn’t lose too much, which was great; meanwhile, Francine and Julie were playing a blinder (just look at their Butler for this round) and we emerged with the third big upset result of the day (the other two were in the Rugby world cup).
With an unlooked for 19 VPs out of the Germany match, we simply needed not to lose by more than 40 or so against tailenders Argentina. I don’t think anyone was paying too much attention, and we had a meaningless loss to end 6th in the final table.
BTW, in these days of litigiousness and poor sportsmanship at the bridge table, I want to recount a small story to redress the balance slightly. After the Argentina match, we noticed that the official scoreboard had a slightly different IMP total than we did, which actually made a 1-VP difference to us. As I was about to go check this out, I was flagged down by the Argentine captain, who was very concerned that they had been credited with 3 undeserved IMPs. Their scorecards agreed with ours, and she insisted we both go to the scoring desk right away and have her 3 IMPs removed. That accomplished, she turned to me and congratulated our team on qualifying, and wished us luck the rest of the way. I was very impressed with this classy lady.
I want to congratulate all our players on their performance this week. Francine and Julie finished 8th in the Butler, and were outstanding throughout (of course, one expects that of Francine!). Even more remarkable was Pamela and Linda’s 12th place finish — remember, this pair had never played a single deal together before this tournament, and managed roughly 2 hours of system discussion before they sat down to play last Sunday. Sylvia and Isabelle seemed understandably nervous at the start, and a couple of poor sets early didn’t help their confidence. But by mid-week they had settled down somewhat, and were able to come off the bench and produce the games we needed when called upon in the later rounds.
It’s been a great ride so far — let’s see how long we can keep it going!
October 5th, 2007 ~ Ray Lee ~ 4 Comments
The Lees (me, Linda, Colin and Luise) are all online gamers, the game du jour being Everquest II, a MMORPG. One of the features we take advantage of in playing EQ2 is a Verntrilo server, which allows multi-way Internet voice communication. I mention this because it explains how I have been chatting to Colin for an hour or so every morning here (evening his time). This morning, we were talking about my strategic options for the 3 matches left.
I just realized I haven’t said anything about yesterday – we got more VPs than I had expected or hoped, and find ourselves starting today in 5th. This might actually be a high-water mark for Canadian Venice Cup teams — I’m going on memory here, but I believe the three WBF women’s medals in our history all came in Olympiads; the last two certainly did. We hung tough against China to come away with a creditable 10 VPs, then went to work on Japan. Sylvia and Isabelle had a decent set while Linda retired to bed, and we picked up a useful 23 VPs. With Linda and Pamela back in, and Francine and Julie still in, we put together a near-perfect session in the final match to add 24 more against India. So a great day, everyone played well, nuff said.
So back to strategy. I won’t go through all the permutations, which are very complex, since several of the top group are playing one another. My issues are basically these: we play first the Netherlands, who are 15 VPs behind us and are almost in a must-win situation. They are good team that started badly and are coming on strongly. Then we face the powerful German squad, and finish against Argentina, who are well down the field. I have two pairs who are performing well, and a third who have not been able to produce their best bridge this week with any consistency. However, one of my top pairs tells me they don’t think they can handle three sessions today, and one member of the other top pair is sick, and also doubtful for three sets.
It was while Colin and I were kicking some of these ideas around (he’s an excellent strategic gamer, and good to bounce things off since he often approaches problems from a different angle than I do) that Luise said she thought the discussion was very interesting and I should write about it on the blog. So here we are. Colin’s view was that the key match was Germany, and that whatever else I did I should play our best lineup in that one, to set ourselves up as best as possible for any quarterfinal matchup. My own view is that the Netherlands is the critical round. If we win that, we’re in great shape; if we don’t, we can still see what we can get out of Germany and then go for a blitz in the last round against Argentina.
My reckoning from the start, and Colin agrees, is that 340 VPs will Q. That means we need 42 today, so if we can beat Argentina big, we only need 10 or so out of each of the other matches. But I’d rather not have to blitz in the last round! So I’m playing my two best pairs against Netherlands, and hoping we can beat them. If we do, then both of them can get a match off later in the day.
Wish us luck again!
October 4th, 2007 ~ Ray Lee ~ No Comments
It’s hard to believe, looking back at the rather despondent tone with which I was writing earlier this week, that we are sitting in sixth place as I write this entry. But much has happened, and so far it has all been good.
The huge win against England on Wednesday proved to be the turning point, at least it looks that way so far. The team was determined to capitalize on that, and delivered a nice win over Egypt in the third match that day. Yesterday, we started off with a hard-fought narrow loss to France, one of the top teams here (in fact, the defending champions from Estoril in 2005). That didn’t dismay us, and we went on to face New Zealand still feeling momentum was building.
It certainly was. The result of this match was 53-6 — and a whopping 25 VPs. We were finally in a Q-spot, lying 8th. With Linda back from her sickbed, we cruised to a comfortable win over Croatia in the last set, finishing the day in a tie for 6th, and beginning to open up a gap over 9th place.
With two days to go, we still have three tough matches left: China, Netherlands, and Germany, but our fate is in our own hands, which is where we want it. We also have two of our pairs sitting proudly in the top 15 of the Butler rankings.
Wish us luck today!
The match against the Kiwis had two points of interest, the first being that Pamela Nesbit herself hails from New Zealand. Having failed to win a spot on the ladies team Down Under some years ago, she was determined to show them the error of their ways as a Canadian — and she certainly managed that!
The other interesting point was that one of their pairs was playing MOSCITO, a system rarely if ever seen in North America. MOSCITO stands for Major-oriented Strong Club, Tactical openings. Among its features are a forcing club, with a complex relay structure, and one-level openings that do not show the suit bid. So, for example, a 1D opening shows hearts, a 1H opening shows spades, and a 1S opening shows diamonds. 1NT is 11-14, and 2C is natural with a 6-card club suit.
The inventor of the system, Paul Marston, actually wrote an article in Australian Bridge this year on how to play against it, so we were prepared! Basically, if they open at the one level, you pretend they have opened the suit they show. So if they open 1D, showing hearts, double is takeout of hearts, and everything else has a normal meaning (1NT would include a heart stopper, of course). That leaves a 1H overcall free for whatever you want — a light takeout, or a Raptor type hand with 4 spades and a long minor for example. So the strange openings really should work to the opponent’s advantage.
The relay system after the 1C opening (which is 15+) is very revealing — also for the opponents! Linda told me that she has never defended so many hands double dummy, since often declarer’s exact shape was known before the opening lead was made. There was also a deal on which the MOSCITO pair used several rounds of relays but failed to get the information they needed to bid a cold grand, settling for six making seven.
We certainly squished this particular MOSCITO pretty flat!
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