Restricted Choice – part 1

May 6th, 2008  ~  Ray Lee  ~  7 Comments 

It’s funny how topics start cropping up in your life after lying dormant for a while.  It’s been years since I gave any thought to the Monty Hall Problem, and the bridge application of it, Restricted Choice.  But the May IBPA Bulletin just arrived (or a least a URL link to it did), and John Carruthers has written an article on just that subject.  Meanwhile, only last week, there was the same topic staring at me from a manuscript I was editing.

Allow me to digress for a moment.  We are planning to publish this Fall a collection of bridge writings by the late Frank Vine, a prolific contributor to The Bridge World and other publications in the 1970s and1980s.  I remembered some of Frank’s work, but it wasn’t until I started rereading it recently that I realized just what a fine writer he was. 

The particular piece I was working on was entitled ‘How I abolished the Rule of Restricted Choice’, and I’ll get into its theme shortly (actually mostly in my next blog).  For now, let me recap the Rule itself, and the related game show problem.

The best-known case is the one where you have 9 cards in a suit between the two hands, and are missing QJxx.  Everyone knows ‘8 ever, 9 never’, which expresses the fact that by the time you have played one round of the suit, and then led it a second time and had one opponent follow, you are slightly better to play for a 2-2 split rather than back the a priori favorite, the 3-1 break, and finesse.

But all this goes out of the window if an honor appears on the first round, leaving you a potential finessing position if it was a singleton.  Now your cases are singleton Q (say) and doubleton Q-J — and it turns out you are almost 2:1 on if you finesse, as opposed to playing for the drop (actually 1.84 to 1 — remember that for a paragraph or so).  The theory is that your opponent might have played either card from the Q-J doubleton, but had no choice about playing a singleton.

In the game show, ‘Let’s Make Deal’, host Monty Hall would offer you the choice of one of three doors.  Behind one of them was a prize, while the others concealed joke winnings, known as ‘zonks’.  The contestant selected a door.  Monty now opened one of the other doors, always revealing a zonk, and offered the contestant a chance to change his selection from the original pick to the other unopened door.  Classic restricted choice — Monty couldn’t open a door with the prize behind it, so if the contestant hadn’t picked the winner already the unopened door contained the prize.  Contestants rarely switched, but in fact the mathematics says they should have done so — by odds of 1.84 to 1, a familiar ratio to bridge players.

Back in the days of Canadian Master Point magazine, we ran a series of articles on Restricted Choice, variously by Chuck Galloway and Eric Sutherland, which later were republished in our anthology, Northern Lights. I remember we got a citation in a doctoral thesis penned by a graduate student in mathematics at Dartmouth College.  There were also letters to the editor from non-believers.  Personally, I love to play against people who don’t believe in mathematics, especially if there is money involved.

But back to Frank Vine.  In his story, he is playing a critical deal in a tight IMP match.  The familiar nine-card fit missing QJxx is part of the scenario, and RHO duly drops the queen behind the ace.  About to apply Restricted Choice and take the finesse, Frank is stopped by LHO who alerts his partner’s play.  ‘We always play the queen from QJ doubleton,’  he explains.

Declarer begins to think about this.  Obviously the odds have now changed, but to what?  Does Restricted Choice apply any more?  And does his opposite number at the other table have a mathematically better chance to make the hand than Frank does?  If so, does that make any sense?  I thought I knew the answers to these questions, but decided to consult some experts before going any further — my son Colin, a bridge expert with a degree in Combinatorics, and Bob MacKinnon, author of Samurai Bridge and my go-to guy on all matters involving probability and information theory.  I heard back very quickly from both of them — and I’ll tell you what they said in Part 2.

Bridge on Broadway — part 2

March 18th, 2008  ~  Ray Lee  ~  1 Comment 

When David Silver dropped in to the MPP offices a few weeks ago for coffee and a chat, he brought with him something even more interesting than his usual ‘You hold…’ stories from recent games.  Unearthed among the effects of a recently deceased elderly uncle, it was a program from Henry Miller’s Theatre (sic) which stood at 124 West 43rd St. in New York.  Dating from May 1927, the program relates to a comedy called ‘The Play’s the Thing’ by Ferenc Molnar. (I looked him up later.  Molnar was a distinguished Hungarian emigre of whom I confess I had never heard.  Two of his plays were later adapted as musicals:  one became The Chocolate Soldier — an earlier version of which was based on Shaw’s Arms and the Man — and one became the rather better-known Carousel, by Rogers and Hammerstein.

The program itself is a delightful period piece — mostly it consists of advertising (which makes fascinating reading — cosmetics, cars, elegant hotels, a flower shop, tires, cigarettes, even bridge scorecards).  However, there are a few features designed to keep the audience amused, one of which is a ‘Prize Bridge Contest for Theatregoers’.  (Think how common a part of social life bridge must have been to warrant a full page in a Broadway program every week, not to mention the ad for scorecards.)  The contest setter was Sidney Lenz, and it seems to have been a regular weekly feature.  Readers were encouraged to mail in their solutions, and each week there were prizes.  First prize was two orchestra seats, second prize an autographed copy of ‘Lenz on Bridge’, and third prize a year’s subscription to ‘Auction Bridge’ magazine.

Contract bridge had recently been invented, but while it was on the upswing, clearly ‘auction’ was still the main variant being played.  Perhaps, though, in recognition of the ongoing changes in bidding and scoring, Lenz presented double-dummy play problems for his contest.  Here’s the one for the final week of April, 1927:

Diamonds are trumps.  South is on lead, and must take seven of the last eight tricks against best defense.  Try it before reading on.

Solution

This is an exercise in timing.  With two dummy entries, the spades could be set up, but West can frustrate that plan by rising on a low diamond from the South hand, or ducking the DJ.  So something more subtle is needed.  The correct first move is a low heart from hand.  The defense wins, and a heart continuation is actually best.  This is ruffed low in the North hand, and East must cover a high spade from dummy. Back in hand, South leads a low diamond, and West must put in the king (otherwise declarer will win the D10, finesse in spades again, cash the high spade, return to the DA and enjoy the thirteenth spade).  After the DA wins this trick, East must not cover the next high spade from North, but the hand is over by this time.  The third round of spades lives, and declarer makes the D10 and DJ separately on a crossruff as the defenders underruff helplessly.

So — did you win the theatre tickets?

Bridge on Broadway

February 14th, 2008  ~  Ray Lee  ~  3 Comments 

I’m a big fan of Broadway, and it’s always bugged me that chess has its own show but bridge doesn’t. But as you’d expect from such a popular game, bridge has put in its appearances in film and theatre.

The best known is ‘Grand Slam’, a 1933 Hollywood production starring Paul Lukas and Loretta Young, which can still be seen on late night television from time to time. Based on the novel of the same name by Russell Herts (I would dearly love to own a copy of that, if anyone reading this knows where I can get one) it parodies Culbertson and the Culbertson-Lenz match, among other aspects of the game.

The plot goes as follows. After waiter Peter Stanislavsky marries Marcia, he learns to play bridge to please his wife. Her friends all play, although their games frequently end in arguments. One evening Peter is a waiter at a high society bridge party and is asked to fill in at the table where eminent bridge expert Cedric Van Dorn (the Culbertson character) is seated. Peter is a big winner, and when asked about his methods, he jokingly says the Stanislavsky method – a method which has no rules for bidding or play. The idea catches fire: a best-selling book is written for him followed by a national tour with Marcia as his partner. But Peter begins to criticize Marcia’s play, violating only rule in his system. And when he starts giving private lessons to a wealthy socialite, Marcia leaves him thinking there is an affair going on. His public reputation collapses with his marriage, but Peter eventually devises a plan to turn things around…

It’s not the greatest movie you’ve ever seen, but bridge players will find it fascinating, even 75 years later. They don’t get everything about the bridge scenes right, but it’s still a lot of fun.

But back to Broadway, because the show I wanted to make better known is a personal favourite. The 1966 made-for-TV "Evening Primrose" has a score by Stephen Sondheim; Sondheim’s long-time friend Anthony Perkins (yes, ‘Psycho’) plays the romantic lead (!).

"Evening Primrose" is based on a short story by John Collier.  It starts with a sensitive would-be poet retreating from the world by moving into a department store. He plans to hide and sleep while the store is open, coming out only after closing for food and writing materials from the store stock. But he soon learns that the store is populated by a bizarre group who spend their daylight hours disguised as mannequins. Among them is a beautiful girl (Ella) who got separated form her mother in the store as an infant and has lived there ever since. The others use her as a very convenient maid-of-all-work The young man falls in love with her and tries to rescue her… and I won’t spoil the ending for you by telling you more.

There are a number of good songs along the way, which can be found on CD in a double album with Nathan Hale’s recent recording of another brilliant early Sondheim work, ‘The Frogs’. However, my favourite is the one which revolves around a bridge game. The hero has been coerced into playing bridge; he would much rather be with Ella, who is in the background cleaning and fetching coffee for the players. The way Sondheim weaves the auction into their unspoken dialogue is nothing short of brilliant. Here’s a sample:

Charles:

Ella look at me

This way, Ella

Ella, concentrate hard.

Ella hear me

And turn before I deal another card.

‘It’s your bid dear’

Charles:

‘Oh, I pass…. I pass… I pass the hours

Planning things to teach you

Ella:

I pass the hours

Planning things to teach you

‘Charles, we’re waiting for you’

Charles:

‘Oh sorry, one heart

One heart, one heart is beating wildly,

Can she hear it?

Ella:

One heart is beating wildly,

Charles is near it

and so on…

It’s incorrect to call this 1-hour show a TV special. It was an episode of ABC’s 1966-67 anthology series Stage 67, which featured plays by writers like Truman Capote and also included another musical by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

Unfortunately, as far as I know this show isn’t available on commercial video, although I do own a bootleg videotape that I bought on eBay. If you can find a copy, it’s well worth watching (the 1960s commercials are fun too!).

Setting it straight

January 28th, 2008  ~  Ray Lee  ~  3 Comments 

Anyone who reads this blog knows I am not a big fan of the sponsorship game in bridge.  It’s a necessary (?) evil at best and it devolves into a farce when the sponsor whose team carries him or her to some title is lauded as a great player.

Having said that, there are sponsors and sponsors.  One of the better players among them is Jimmy Cayne, until recently CEO of investment house Bear, Stearns in New York.  He stepped down (or up) to Chairman in January after the company took huge losses in the asset-backed paper fiasco that continues to plague the US financial scene.  Cayne has been a long-time supporter of bridge in many areas (of which more below).  

ACBL District 17 President John Van Ness, writing in the most recent Western Conference monthly bulletin, takes a rather gleeful swing at Cayne for having been demoted.  He also seems to take special pleasure from Cayne’s own financial losses in the recent market downturn.

Perhaps there’s some personal history — maybe Cayne’s team beat up on Van Ness’s on the way to winning the Reisinger in San Francisco last Fall.  It seems odd that he would go out of his way, in a column otherwise devoted to local news about tournament schedules and entry fees, to replay the gossipy Wall Street Journal November 2007 piece about Cayne being absent playing bridge while the company fell apart.

Now, I suspect John Van Ness doesn’t know any more about how Jimmy Cayne spends his time than I do.  But I do know a couple of things that he probably doesn’t.  First, 13 years ago Cayne ‘loaned’ money to support the 1995 Team Trials, without which they could not have been held.  Indeed, he expected never to see that money again, and was very surprised when it was repaid.

More dramatically, he played a key role in the Nargassans affair in the late 90s, something that could have wiped out the ACBL.  For anyone not familiar with what happened, the ACBL was approached by Nargassans, who claimed to be an experienced events promoter.  For a mere $2 million in seed money, he would create a marketing machine that would put bridge on the map.  At the time, producing this sum would have required the ACBL to reduce its staff and member services drastically; nevertheless, many Board members were in favor of the idea.  When Jimmy Cayne met Nargassans, he smelled a rat, and arranged for a background check, which showed no evidence of Nargassans ever having done any of the things he claimed.  This still didn’t convince everyone on the Board, but eventually the proposal was rejected.  For a full behind-the-scenes account of this astounding affair, I refer readers to Bobby Wolff’s forthcoming autobiography. The Lone Wolff.

So next time Mr. Van Ness decides to take a swing at Jimmy Cayne, he should remember that he may well owe the existence of the ACBL and his District presidency with all its nice perks to Mr. Cayne.  There are sponsors and sponsors, and for me at least, Jimmy Cayne (like Nick Nickell) is one of the guys in the white hats.

About Ray Lee

January 22nd, 2008  ~  Ray Lee  ~  Comments Off on About Ray Lee 

Ray Lee is co-owner of Master Point Press, the world’s leading
publisher of books on bridge.  He was the
bridge columnist for the Toronto
Star 1972-1978, editor of the Ontario Kibitzer from 1972-1975,
contributes to a number of other bridge publications, and is a member of IBPA.

As others see us

January 10th, 2008  ~  Ray Lee  ~  2 Comments 

The ACBL has to be one of the most complacent organizations in the bridge world.  I well remember in 2001, when the world championships were in Paris, Marc Fiset and I (CBF officers at the time) spent a fascinating day at the HQ of the French bridge organization, and were impressed with their education department and their weekly nation-wide games scored over the Internet.  None of the half dozen ACBL Directors at the event bothered to do the same thing, I assume feeling that there would be nothing to be learned.

I was reminded of this by an article in the latest issue of  ‘Australian Bridge’ by Paul Marston, who attended the recent San Francisco Nationals.  Here’s part of it, which gives an outsider’s views of the pluses and minuses of ACBL tournaments.

While there is much to admire about an NABC, system control is not on that list.  The ACBL have tried to dumb the game down in a misguided attempt to serve the rank and file bridge player.  For example, you can only play a Multi 2D if you carry around a 4-page defense for the opponents.  As one American opponent said as he and his partner read painstakingly through the notes at the table, "It feels kind of dirty to be playing bridge this way."

Before each round I was required to tell our opponents that we play a strong club with unusual responses.  When Reisinger winners Alfredo Versace and Lorenzo Lauria arrived at the table, Versace stopped my speech by waving his finger like a metronome, and with a big smile he sang, "I am not Americ-aaan!"

The ACBL’s intentions may be right, but they have gotten it wrong.  They stifle system development without providing any useful benefit to ordinary players.  Ordinary bridge players do not have a problem with system innovation.  I know from years of playing forcing pass.  Most opponents enjoyed the novelty and they soon adapted.  In new Zealand in the late 1970s, no one gave a hoot whether a pass meant less than 12 HCP, 15+ HCP, hearts, spades, or any combination of the above.  Even the pairs that came last had a defense.

The ACBL should understand that it is only yesterday’s heroes who have a problem with system innovation.  The sad part is that the committees that decide these things are well stoked with yesterday’s heroes so there is little hope for common sense to prevail until they fall off the perch.

If you are a seriously addicted bridge player, then I advise you to put an NABC on your list of things to do.  They are very well run with every detail being long proven.  This is part of their strength and part of their weakness.

The strength is you know the complete timetable: you know when the breaks will be and you know what the food stalls will be serving up.  Also, the formats are very good.

The weakness of familiarity is that there are none of the advances offered by the Internet.  In total contrast to this country (Australia), there is almost no information of relevance presented on the web.  You cannot even see the scores by electronic presentation at the venue.  The only way to check the score is to trudge down to where you were playing to read the printout from an old dot-matrix printer.  It is hard to understand that they have failed to keep up on these fronts when you consider that they are the richest bridge nation on earth and the ACBL has a full-time staff of close to 100.

On press

January 8th, 2008  ~  Ray Lee  ~  No Comments 

With The Lone Wolff in final prepress stages, and finished books only about 3 weeks away, here’s another brief excerpt from Bobby Wolff’s autobiography. It comes from a chapter appropriately entitled, The Agony of De-feet.

In bridge, dealing with cheats can be a tricky exercise. For one thing, the laws of the game were not designed or set up to handle cheaters. There is nothing in the rule book about what to do if you catch someone cheating. Leads out of turn, revokes and so forth are right there in the rules, but cheating is considered such aberrant behavior that it is not formally dealt with in the laws. It’s as though the rule givers didn’t want to consider cheating a possibility.

In fact, according to the Official Encyclopedia of Bridge, 5^th edition: ‘The laws of Contract Bridge are not designed to prevent cheating or to provide redress. The lawgivers have taken the view that it would be wrong to accord cheats a status by providing legal remedies against their activities. This also is the policy of the ACBL: exclusion from membership is the penalty for premeditated cheating, but cases of momentary weakness often are dealt with by temporary suspension.’

So what happens if a player is caught fixing hands or a pair is detected giving hand signals?  Students of bridge history will remember the notorious scandal involving the Italian players in the 1975 Bermuda Bowl who were caught tapping toes under the table. That famous case is an apt reference, as it turns out, because it demonstrates with sickening clarity what can happen when politics is mixed in with the adjudication of cheating issues.

In case you are unfamiliar with the 1975 brouhaha, although the Italians were caught red-handed (or better yet – red-footed), they were merely given a slap on the wrist – not even tossed out of the tournament. Off the top of my head, I could rattle off half a dozen similar cases where justice was thwarted because of politics. What politics were at work in Bermuda all those years ago, you ask? Consider the following.

The cheaters, Facchini and Zuchelli, were caught touching toes under the table during the bidding and before the opening lead was made. They were not practicing for the Ballet Russe. The facts were made available to authorities at the tournament, but while the investigation was in progress, one of the ACBL’s sorriest politicians, Lew Mathe, blew the lid off what was, at that point, a low-profile inquiry. His actions were strictly political and egomaniacal in nature. When the charges became public, the authorities responsible for the tournament made the disgusting politically-motivated decision to go easy on the accused. They felt that the government of Bermuda, which had contributed heavily to the tournament, would not be happy with a cheating scandal on their turf — an appalling, inexcusable and self-serving reason for sweeping it under the carpet. This position was totally unacceptable to those honorable participants who were forced to continue playing under utterly abominable circumstances, but that was the decision of the WBF. Protection of the guilty, one more time. So — what else is new?

I vividly recall listening in disgust as the two cheaters tried to assuage the press by attempting to justify some of their unusual actions in the play, which obviously had been based on their illegal signals to each other. For example, with no help from the bidding, one of them led low from 10xxx in hearts against a notrump contract when he had five spades headed by the K-Q. It just so turned out that partner had a singleton spade but five hearts to the K-Q. Rational observers could not believe these skunks were getting away with this.

In order for you to understand my own outrage, I would like to share my personal firsthand account of the whole affair. The Facchini-Zuchelli Incident happened over thirty years ago, and its beginnings can be traced back earlier by another six months. It is a piece of history known to very few and it is important that you follow the timeline as you watch everything fall into place…

Wolff at the door….

December 13th, 2007  ~  Ray Lee  ~  No Comments 

Bobby Wolff’s autobiography will be going to press just after the holidays, and shipping in time to launch at the February Regional in Las Vegas, where Bobby will be signing books.  It’s sure to raise some hackles — in fact, one of our proofreaders suggested we consider printing this book on asbestos paper!  Here’s a quick preview of some of the topics covered, chapter by chapter:

Chapter 1 Firing Ira 

Convincing Ira Corn that the Aces couldn’t succeed if he insisted on being a playing sponsor.

Chapter 2 Tracing My Addiction

Bobby Wolff’s early years and introduction to bridge through Oswald Jacoby and other greats

Chapter 3 Playing Pro Versus A Real Job

Wolff’s early bridge career — playing club pro, and playing on Charles Goren’s team

Chapter 4 The Birth of the Aces

How the team came into being, and how the personnel were selected

Chapter 5 The Death of the Aces and Thereafter

The great years of the Aces, and what happened after Ira Corn’s death

Chapter 6 Reflections

Some of the celebrities the Aces rubbed shoulders with… George Burns, Omar Sharif, and others

Chapter 7 ‘Serving Time’ on the Board

Behind the scenes politics — how the ACBL really works — inventing the Recorder system

Chapter 8 Blunders and Indiscretions

How the ACBL Board hired and fired an incompetent CEO

Chapter 9 The Agony of De-Feet 

The inside story of the ‘foot soldiers’, the Italian pair caught cheating in the 1975 world championships

Chapter 10 The Colossus of Rhodes Revisited! 

More skullduggery, this time in the 1996 championships in Rhodes

Chapter 11 The ACBL… Flirting with Disaster! 

How the ACBL Board almost gave $2 million to an unqualified stranger to ‘promote bridge’

Chapter 12 A Tale of Survivorship

The three women who shaped Wolff’s life

Chapter 13 The Special World of the WBF 

How Denis Howard was ousted as WBF president, how Wolff became president, the politics of world bridge, and the recent Shanghai affair involving the US Venice Cup team

Chapter 14 Losing Team Wins! 

The inside story of how the Canadian team was robbed in the Geneva world championship, losing a match they had actually won as a result of politics

Chapter 15 Looking Out for Number One

Professionalism, sharp practice, and outright cheating…

Chapter 16 Paying the Piper 

The Nickell team — the glory years, the break-up of the Hamman-Wolff partnership, and Wolff’s firing

Chapter 17 Weapons of Mass Destruction and Lesser Atrocities 

Full disclosure, system proliferation, and bizarre conventions

Chapter 18 Professionalism, Personal Agendas and Recusals 

The undue influence that professionals, politicians and sponsors wield over international team selection in the USA and elsewhere

Chapter 19 Even Idols Have Clay Feet

Edgar Kaplan, the Blue team, the Burgay Tapes affair, and an anonymous attempt to smear Wolff

Chapter 20 An Appeal to Remember

The strange, often nonsensical, appeals process reflected through a tortuous recent case that caused the ACBL Board to make new policy

Chapter 21 The “C” Word

Cheating — examples, cases, efforts to combat it

Chapter 22 Restoring Equity and Meting Out Punishment

Wolff as Appeals Chairman and National Recorder — more cheating cases and the infamous ‘Oh, shit!’ ruling.

Chapter 23 What’s to Become of America’s Talented Youth?

Heading up the USA Junior program in the early 90s, and what needs to be done to keep the game alive amongst the young.

Chapter 24 Where Do We Go from Here?

The big issues facing bridge today — money, sponsorship, professionalism, politics, the structure of the ACBL, cheating, systems development and control, the alert system, the handling of appeals… and more.

ONLY TWO MORE MONTHS UNTIL YOU CAN READ IT!

An improbable book

December 5th, 2007  ~  Ray Lee  ~  4 Comments 

As a book publisher, I usually refrain from commenting on books I haven’t myself published, but I decided to make an exception in the case of The Backwash Squeeze and other improbable feats, by Edward McPherson.  Since this is an outsider’s look at the world of bridge, it seems only fair that an insider take a look at the look, so to speak.

Despite a fair amount of cynicism about bestseller lists, I approached this book with optimism — indeed, someone I knew said he was half-way through it and enjoying it immensely.  So, I asked myself three chapters in, why wasn’t I?  Why was this book so disappointing?

Perhaps I know the scene too well.  Was it that there’s nothing in here I didn’t know before I began reading?  Why did I find the whole thing so dull?  Here was an author who had decided to write about that bizarre social group that I’ve been part of for decades, and yet it wasn’t interesting…  As I soldiered on, I began to come to the conclusion that it wasn’t me, but the book.

This is an author who’s fascinated by surface details.  We learn the minutiae of what a bridge club looks like inside, and what each opponent is wearing.  We share the author’s amazement when he learns about bidding boxes.  We follow him around to various clubs and tournaments in the USA (and even for some reason to London, but not Canada and definitely not any non-English-speaking countries).  And we certainly get that he had lots of fun learning bridge at Harper Collins’ expense.  But in the end we don’t learn anything we really want to know.

The title actually gives it away.  ‘Backwash squeeze’ is a term the author came across, refers to once as a cute piece of jargon, uses as his ‘grabber’ title — and never mentions again.  He has no idea what it is, he just likes the sound of it. This is a narrative that resembles the Mississippi river — it’s 2 miles wide and half an inch deep.  Throughout, the author struggles to understand the fascination of the game without really coming to grips with it — even though he gets bitten by the bug himself.  He interviews top players and Ray Leeistrators, but there is a sense of awe rather than objectivity — the questions are powder puffs, and the tough cross-examinations never happen.  When he outlines some of Zia’s radical ideas for popularizing the game in the media to (then) ACBL president Harriet Buckman, he lets her get away with pooh-poohing them in favour of the status quo.  The most insightful comment comes early on (before addiction, perhaps?) when he remarks how successful the ACBL has been at marketing and selling something of no value whatsoever — the master point.

And in the end, it is a narrative.  It’s a description of ‘A year in Bridgeland’, which leaves the most interesting questions untouched.  Here are a few of the things I would have liked a perceptive outsider’s take on:

How hard is this game to learn?  What are the toughest parts of it for a beginner?  I’ve been involved in enough teaching to sense how hard it must be, but it would be fascinating to see the process from the student’s viewpoint.

What does an outsider notice about the top players?  What makes them different?

Why do master points have the attraction for most people that they do?

How do you account for the incredible international appeal of bridge?  How about the way it cuts across social strata? 

Why do so few young players take up the game, compared to other mind sports like chess?

Why does the bridge gender gap exist?  What are the parallels in other endeavours, if any?

And above all, what exactly is the addictive quality of the game?  What is it that keeps people from beginners to world champions coming back to all the places it is played, from social clubs to tournaments and big money clubs?  McPherson does attempt to get at that, but in the final analysis can never answer the question.  By the time he’s in his first supervised play session, he’s an addict himself, without even knowing it, and the objectivity is gone.  No longer the observer, he’s become one of the lab rats.

There is definitely a book that needs to be published on bridge sociology, but this one isn’t it.  If you want to see what I have in mind, take a look at The Immortal Game (David Shenk, Random House) which is a book on chess that does do the job — it examines the complexity and fascination of the game through the ages, as well as looking at the personalities and talents of top performers.  In contrast to bridge, chess is a game that does seem to appeal to young people — perhaps if we understood why that is the case, and what the issue is with bridge, we would be on the way to being able to prevent our game from dying of old age. 

Echo of Shanghai

November 27th, 2007  ~  Ray Lee  ~  1 Comment 

Readers who know me will know that I am rarely seen without my Tilley hat — it’s a sort of trademark in some ways, and it certainly makes me recognizable when I’m meeting someone who doesn’t know me by sight.

Part way through the Shanghai World Championship tournament, I walked into the Press Room sans hat, and Jan, the PR Manager, called me over.  It was very important, he said, that I wear my hat the next day, as Echo, one of his student aides, was very much taken with it.  Okay, I said, I can do that.  The next day I wore the hat again, and Echo was visibly delighted.  It was clear I was going to have to send her a hat when I got home, so Jan set about trying to measure her hat size with a makeshift ruler.  That wasn’t working well, so I suggested when she got home that night she should find a tape measure and do it properly.

The next day, Echo came over to me with a serious expression.  ‘I do not think,’ she began, ‘That it is appropriate for you to give me such an expensive gift.’

‘Echo,’ I said, ‘that will be my pleasure. You are getting a hat — that’s not under discussion — so let’s talk about whether you get one that fits or whether I have to guess your size. But if it makes you feel better, I want you to do something for me in exchange.’   Now she was looking apprehensive.  ‘I want you to send me a picture of you wearing the hat,’ I went on.  Now she gave me a big smile.  ‘Of course! I can do that.’

When I got home, I headed over to the Tilley HQ to get the hat, and they gift-wrapped it for me.  I packed it up and sent it off, hoping the hat would make it safely to Shanghai.  All was well, as it turned out — in due course I got an email from Echo, thanking me and enclosing several pictures. Here’s one  of them:

The student aides at the tournament were terrific, by the way.  Several dozen of them took part in the event, working as scorers, receptionists, and in other Ray Leeistrative positions — all immediately recognizable in their smart pink golf shirts.  They were university-level language students; most spoke very good English, and often other European languages as well.  I ran into one girl who spoke Italian and German fluently as well as excellent English.  Jan (who is Dutch) called me over another time and asked me to explain the concept of ‘noblesse oblige’ to Echo.  These are young people whose understanding of English is very sophisticated indeed!

I’m looking forward to going back to China next year, to Beijing.  Trust me, these people are going to running the world in 20 years.