Ebooks Bridge

Well, www.ebooksbridge.com is live and we have already had some people who have downloaded the free issue of Canadian Master Point magazine.  Go ahead download it.  It’s worth it.  Well it’s worth more than free, for sure. 

I was just looking at more of the issue.  One article was labeled Beijing Snapshots.  Now you remember that Canada placed second in the 1995 Beijing World Championships.  I thought that this would be some hands and highlights but actually it was pictures.  In 1995 the tournament sponsor was Marlboro (how times have changed).  There is the Canadian team holding plaques and singing O Canada at the top of their lungs.  Two of the winners Joey Silver and Fred Gittleman would go on to win a gold medal for Canada at the Olympic Demonstration event in Salt Lake City.  Alas the last time Fred would play for Canada.

The rest of the team was

Irving Litvack (npc), George Mittelman, Eric Kokish,  Mark Molson and Boris Baran.

Mark Molson (several years later)

There was an interesting deal that Ray Jotcham presented.  It starts with an opening lead problem.

Partner opens 1◊ and RHO bids 4S and you are on lead.  Can you beat the contract?  I am not sure if this is something you can deduce but the deal is cute.  Have a go and I will show you the deal tomorrow.  I will give you a hint.  Declarer buys a pretty good dummy.

Next John Gowdy describes a system for bidding over 1NT doubled.  It is called Gouba (named after a local player who is now happily retired) and is still played by a lot of players in Ontario and Quebec.  In fact Isabelle and I play a souped up version of this system.  I had no idea that it was written up all those years ago in our magazine.

Mike Cafferata who went to university with me, a few years ago has a nice story about a hearing partner open the bidding when you have a huge hand.  He describes some expert bidding.

Oddly enough one of my favorite articles isn’t really about bridge.  It is about teams.  John Ross who was then a management consultant talks about the team principle in his practice and then applies it to bridge teams.  I needed this article.  I have had several discussions with partners about team interactions.  Its easier on some teams than others.  Win-win post mortems allow questioning for learning (curiosity) and not for teaching.  So it is acceptable to ask “Does four spades always make?” or questions like that.  I am not so sure about that John but I get the idea.

I haven’t mentioned everything but I did want to point out that there were also two articles for bridge students including one by Barbara Seagram and one by Karen Allison.

So go ahead, read it yourself.  Tell me what you like and while you are at it, tell me what you think of the site.  Luise Lee, my talented daughter-in-law designed and programmed it.  (By the way, she is available for contract work.  You can reach her at here at luise@masterpointpress.com if you need a bridge website designer with bridge skills, design skills and programming skills.  Although the latter two are stronger than the former, for now at least.