Bridge Week – At the Mile Post

May 31st, 2010  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

In the premier event after 14 of 23 rounds my picks aren’t looking bad at all.  Teams in bold were my picks for the top 8.

The leading team is Gartanganis

Judy and Nck Gartaganis, Gordon Campbell, Piotr Klimowicz

This four man squad has done well year after year including winning the event.  They won the Commonwealth Games and with Judy ineligible they won the Olympic Demonstration event in Salt Lake City.  It is no surprise that they are off to a great start this year.

Team Whiteman consists of Jonathan Steinberg, Michael Kenny, Mike Cafferata, David Colbert, John Zaluski, Ed Zaluski

The Zaluski’s have previously won this event.  Mike Kenny and Mike Cafferata (and old school buddy of mine) have played together for years.

Tied third place is Hanna who are one of the favorites.

Nader Hanna, Robert Lebi, Drew Cannell, George Mittelman, Martin Kirr, Arno Hobart

Also tied third are Todd

Bob Todd, Douglas Fisher, Neil Kimelman, K.W. Gohl, Marielle Brentnall, Jerry Cohen

Neil is on of our authors and is on the CBF Board.  At the board meeting we discussed his team.  After that I walked away convinced I had made a mistake in not picking them to make the final 8.  It was just that I didn’t only know some of the players.

Rounding out the top eight places are

5th Rayner

It is not a surprise that Rayner is in qualifying position with a solid team.

6th Gamble

7th Jotcham

8th Korbel tied with Jamicki

Thurston is  behind just 3 VP 8th place in 10th.

For full results

Day 3 CNTC Results

After 3 of 7 rounds the 4 woman squad Demme remains solidly in first.

Ina Demme, Hazel Wolpert, Linda Wynston, Lesley Thomson

Hazel and Ina previously won on a team with me and we all played in Istanbul.  Its great that they are in such good form but with half the field of 8 going forward to the semi-finals the top few teams should feel very little pressure.

Fund raising for Canadian Bridge and a thought or two about team selection

May 29th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  4 Comments 

First let me say, as I think many others have, that Nader Hanna is doing a terrific job as President of the Canadian Bridge Federation.  This organization has many challenges starting with an unclear mandate.  In the US the responsibilities of the ACBL and the USBF seem to be fairly well defined.  But in Canada while the CBF role is certainly to select and “nurture” Canadian teams the role is really larger than that.  The CBF is the face of Canadian bridge and takes on duties that in the US would have been handled by the ACBL.  Sure the ACBL is still important to Canadian players, running and organizing tournaments all over North America, providing tournament directors, the Bulletin and other local magazines and newsletters, and issuing master points among other things.  But there is a gap.

The current CBF Board has been trying to fill that gap.  But they don’t have a lot of visibility doing it despite the fact that they provide a magazine which is sent to non CBF members periodically, run a website, a new Bulletin Board, run a Rookie-Master event, manage charity funds, and run national events beyond the team trials, run some tournaments,  set up the Canadian Bridge Hall of Fame and so on.

They appreciate that they need to win the support of Canadian players to be effective and to do that they need to continue to do things for Canadian players beyond the star players who will form the international teams.

Which brings me to fund raising…  I talked to Nader about my willingness to help the CBF a few months ago.  Pamela Nisbet and Mike Yuen joined me as we discussed approaches to fund raising.  The current plan is to try to come up with events and other things that will not only raise money but add value for our players.  We would also like to reach out to non ACBL affiliated clubs (there are a lot in Canada) and make them a part of “Bridge Canada”.   Yesterday I attended a Board meeting and the reception was wonderful.  So our little committee with I hope lots of additions will start to develop our first event with the help of the CBF.  If you are interested in helping send me an email  Believe me we can use all the help we can get.

There was quite a lot of discussion at the Board lunch about Judy and Bobby Wolff and the discussion around team selection.  Most of the current board with one or two exceptions has no realistic chance of being on a Canadian team.  But they and probably most Canadians like the event.  They like giving everyone a chance to form a team, enter an open competition and try to win.  It may be true that team selectors could do a better job but it hasn’t really helped in many of the countries that have tried that approach.  I think the best way to improve Canadian teams is to work to find the money to provide coaching and training of the players we have and perhaps in this way provide incentives to play for Canada.  Maybe the other approach would be to find somebody with a lot of money who would sponsor a team, like Mrs. Lavazza, as NPC.  It is hard to compete with full-time professionals from a country which by and large only has amateurs.

Mark Twain speaks to my friend Victoria

May 26th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  1 Comment 

My friend Victoria just sold her house and gave away most of her unnecessary things.  (She said I can’t believe all the unneeded junk I have accumulated.)  She finished her job assignment and has no job now.  She gave her car to her kids and put her very good furniture and most important memorabilia in storage.  She is headed off to the Caribbean to sail with a friend for many months to harbors unknown.  She has no plans, just dreams of adventure.  She said her goodbyes last night but one more in an email this morning.  I replied with this:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
~ Mark Twain

I realized after I sent it that it applies to me and maybe many of you.  I need to be more willing to go forward to new challenges and take risks and have adventures.  Some of them will be around the wonderful game we love and some won’t.  I am not ready to cast off leaving all behind me like Victoria but surely there are more adventures closer to home.

Canadian Bridge Championships – May 29th to June 5

May 25th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  1 Comment 

For many Canadian bridge players this is the event of the year.  While this year these  event are not designed to pick Canadian representatives they are like all Canadian team trials  fair and open events.   All eligible Canadians simply enter the event as a team and play a giant round robin. 

The Canadian Championships will take place in Markham Ontario a suburb of Toronto.  This will include the induction of the first group of bridge players into the Canadian Bridge Hall of Fame.  This years the winners of the major team events will receive cash prizes and will have the right to call themselves team Canada in the Open World Championships in Philadelphia later this year.  One of these teams will wear the Master Point Press name on their (figurative) shirts.  The three events requiring pre-registration are the Canadian National Team Championships (Open) Flight A and Flight B and the Canadian Women’s Team Championships (CNTC).  But the Seniors, Imp Pairs and a 2-session Swiss are still open to all entrants.  The Open Pairs event required club prequalification.  Here is more information about those events.

CANADIAN SENIOR TEAMS (CSTC) Wednesday, June 2 – Saturday, June 5, 2010

All participants must be paid-up members of the Canadian Bridge Federation.

ALL TEAM MEMBERS MUST BE BORN IN 1950 OR EARLIER

Guaranteed 2 days of play

CANADIAN IMP PAIRS (CIPC) – Thursday, June 3, 2010

All participants must be paid-up members of the Canadian Bridge Federation.

CANADIAN OPEN PAIRS (COPC) – Friday, June 4 & Sat, June 5, 2010

Club qualification required

All participants must be paid-up members of the Canadian Bridge Federation.

Two session one day qualifying followed by two session final

SWISS TEAMS – Saturday, June 5, 2010

Two session Regionally rated Swiss teams.

Open to all – no pre-registration, no pre-qualification & CBF membership is not required

So even if you haven’t signed up if you are qualified there is still time to come and play!

The Rosters for the CNTC A and B and the CWTC.  From the CNTC Flight A some notables to readers of bridgeblogging or Master Point Press are:

Paul Thurston author and newspaper columnist and his new partner David Willis.  He is playing with Roy Hughes, author of some prizing winning books with Dave Turner, David Lindop and Doug Baxter.  Best wishes fellows.

Others include:

• Author Neil Kimelman
• Master Point Press helper Ron Bishop
• Author Jim Priebe
• Auhor Andy Stark
• Blogger Ross Taylor
• And opponents in many of my blogs: Jeff Smith and David Sanbourin

And of course special luck to all of the women in the CWTC.  I am not naming any of you specially because all of you are my friends.

There are many other great players and dear friends and I wish them all luck.  Bridgeblogging will be featuring the trials by having an all Canadian crew of featured bloggers.  We hope there will be lots of blogs about the trials especially if the matches are featured on BBO.  

There are 57 (wow) teams in the two Open Competitions.   To the eight teams in the CWTC enjoy it.  While it is perhaps not the most challenging competition ever in this event you will all still have lots of interesting and challenging bridge and if you are planning to play in Philadelphia it will be a good practice.

Stay tuned for my predictions of the CNTC finalists in a future blog.  Me <==== Glutton for Punishment

Linda Lee

Porch Envy

May 24th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  2 Comments 

It was a gorgeous day on Sunday of this holiday weekend.  In Canada we celebrate Victoria Day on the weekend nearest May 24.  Yes we really celebrate the official birthday of an ancient foreign queen with fireworks!.  For most Canadians though it is the start of summer.  A time when you buy your bedding plants and garden and put out the lawn furniture.  We have a huge pine tree in the backyard with the branches almost reaching our porch.  Pines through off a lot of stuff and after picking up dozens of pine cones I had to clean the pine resin from our outdoor table.  It was not easy.  I looked across at our neighbors who had a huge table with a big orange umbrella.  It had a crisp white tablecloth and was set with fine china and crystal.  Our chairs were too dirty to sit in so I brought a chair out sat in the sun drinking ice tea and thinking about how I envied the neighbors there beautiful deck in their pineless garden and their lovely table.

Yes, sometimes the grass does grow greener (or the porch more lovely) on the other side of the fence.  Today Ray and I were both commentating on a match from the Hungarian Cup but at different tables.  When Ray finished about 8 boards ahead of me it was looking a look greener in the office across the hallway.  We did get to talk about some of the deals and what happened in each room (and what was said in each room).

Here is one such deal:

Board 29 Both Vulnerable Dealer South

	North KJ5 AJ6 K6  AKJ107
West 63 Q1032 AQ9853 8		East A98 9754 J72 Q93
	South Q10742 K8 104  6542

At my table this looked like a simple enough hand.  North opened a forcing club in third chair and South bid a negative one diamond.  West now took the opportunity to bid 2.  North showed his big notrump hand with 2NT.  South transferred to spades and then gave north a chance to pick contracts with 3NT.  With his minimal diamond stopper and three card support it was easy enough to bid the spade game.

The play was simple.  West won the opening diamond lead and switched to a club.  North played trumps and East-West had a choice of a club ruff or a club trick, making 4. 

My fellow commentator was effusive in his praise for the 2 overcall.  I wasn’t so sure.  I pointed out that it made it easy for North to play spades rather than notrump.  While it is true he probably would have chosen the spade game anyway he might have given notrump some thought.  Here it got no thought at all.  Of course, on the hand East would likely have led a heart and 3NT would have made but at least there is a chance to beat it if East’s fingers stumble on a diamond.  (Okay it is a faint hope).  But it does also help the play.  If dummy has a negative than dummy probably doesn’t have a whole lot of entries and a diamond lead might well help declarer.   Not too mention the smaller chance that 2 might go for a number on a different arrangement of the cards.

I admit that at this point East-West could still have their share of the cards and want to compete and that a diamond lead might be better than another lead which might give away a trick.  My point wasn’t that overcalling 2 wasn’t a bad idea just that it had its dark side too.

Little did I know what was happening at the other table until later when my spouse alerted me to what happens to 4 on a heart lead.

At the other table North opened 2NT in third chair and after partner transferred to spades jumped to the spade game.  With out much to go on East led a low heart which declarer won in hand with the J.  How should he play the hand? 

My better half thought he should unblock the K, play a club to hand and take an immediate heart pitch.  His argument was that the greatest risk to the contract was the  A with East and the A with West and a club loser.  So if you take the heart pitch as long as hearts break well which seems almost certain form the lead and clubs are not 4-0  (and you can even handle some of those)  you are near certain to make the hand since even if there is a club ruff it has to be with a club trick.  The odds of the aces aligning in a troublesome way is 25% and the odds of a 4-0 club break or some weird happening with a 3-1 club break are quite a bit worse than that.

Our declarer and most of the other commentators did not agree with him.  But I do honey!  He played spades and in the end with East holding the A he had no risk.

Now I know that the board was a push and in the end the diamond overcall only worked to make the hand end much faster but it still took a more complicated hand and made it simpler and who knows if things had been a bit different made it would have made even more difference than that.  So Ray keep fighting the good fight about your play ideas.  And I will keep discussing the merits of being active in the auction or staying quiet.   I for one will not always be “right” but in bidding there are seldom absolutes.

If you think I am wrong speak up – its okay to speak up if you think I am right too!  Think of West’s bid as a MSC challenge!

Sondra and Love Chapter 4

May 19th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

Chapter 4 of Clyde E. Love bridge squeezes complete is dedicated to the two suit strip squeeze.

Yes, it has its own chapter, Chapter 4.  It is one of the most important types of squeezes because it does come up so often. 

Yesterday we had the last scheduled match for a while with Sondra and Isabelle.  Colin missed the game last night when he found out that his firewall at work would not let him assess BBO.  He was working very late.  So thanks to David Woods who filled in.  Here Sondra showed that she had a good understanding of Love Chapter 4.

Ron Smith, Isabelle Smith & Sondra Blank in Reno (courtesy Jonathan Steinberg)

	J94 KJ1094 QJ7  108
	A103 A73 A64  KQ73

This was the auction

David	Isabelle	Linda	Sondra
			1
DBL		pass	2NT
pass	3*	pass	3
pass	3NT	all pass

3 was a transfer to hearts and with 4-3-3-3 Sondra chose to play 3NT rather than the 5-3 heart fits.  David lead a spade and Sondra won the 10.  Sondra then guessed the heart suit playing David the doubler for the queen.  She now ran five rounds of hearts.  David had three and I had two.  On the run of the hearts she threw two clubs.  On the run of the clubs David threw a club and a diamond while I threw a club and two diamonds.  She now gave up a club to the ace and David exited with the K.  This was the ending

	J – QJ7  8
Q85 -  K10  –		– – 98  965
	3 – A64  Q

Sondra cashed the Q and David threw a spade while Sondra.  Now Sondra exited a spade to endplay David.  Had David nonchalantly thrown a diamond (or perhaps even thrown one earlier) Sondra might have had a guess.  After all for his takeout double of clubs David was more likely to be 4-3-4-2 than 5-3-3-2 and Sondra might not have realized he had stiffed his K.  But somehow I think Sondra would have found the right play no matter what.

What distinguishes this deal from an ordinary endplay is that David must throw a spade winner along the way.  Therefore when he is finally thrown in on the  Q he has only one other spade to cash.  The play of the Q removes a winner.  Love calls this a surplus winner strip squeeze.

Here is the whole deal.  You may notice that the way that the spot cards work out in the club suit and with the spades breaking 5-2 it is possible to make another trick on the actual lie of the cards by playing clubs first  and then playing the strip squeeze but that would be a very strange approach indeed.

	J94 KJ1094 QJ7  108
KQ875 Q85 K102  A2		62 62 9853  J9654
	A103 A73 A64  KQ73

Never give up, there’s always a chance for a squeeze

May 14th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  1 Comment 

I was playing with my mentee yesterday.  First true confessions.  When we play I usually accept opponents of any level.  They can see that I am playing with an intermediate and I usually write on the description, teaching table.  Anyway,  yesterday I wound up with a really good player on my left which is just fine but unfortunately he was a bit too competitive including “yelling” (in an online way) at his partner.  It is a bit harder for me to handle a very aggressive and demanding expert when I am playing with an intermediate so when this deal, about the last we played, came up I made an aggressive, well crazy bid.  I promise I really tried hard to make normal, standard and sane bids with a mentee but forgive me for this one.  Here is my hand

KJ107
A109
void 
QJ8653

I opened 1 and Mr Aggressive bid 5.  He was vulnerable against not so I believed him.  This was passed back to me.  Here is my excuse.  I was pretty sure he had about 9 nearly solid diamonds for this so even though I had none my partner probably didn’t have a fistful.  Thus, we probably had some sort of fit.  I decided to take a shot.  Either we could make something, he could make five diamonds and we weren’t going for too big a number or well if it was bad it wouldn’t be really really bad.  So I bid 5 .  This was doubled and I was happy that partner pulled to 6.  There was the routine double.  The diamond ace was led and this awesome dummy came down.

54
862
K96 
AK1094

Well maybe not that awesome but good enough that it wasn’t going to be a slaughter.  What was –300 between friends.  But since 5 looked a bit rocky that was not going to be a good score especially when the clubs split 1-1.  I finessed the spade and the ace won and a diamond came back.  I won this one throwing a heart.  Here was the position

	5 862 9  K1094
	K107 A10 void  QJ86

What were my chances?  Well the simplest one is the simple squeeze on East in hearts and spades and as I thought about it, that wasn’t so unlikely.  West had 8 or 9 diamonds a club and at least one spade.  If he held only one heart I didn’t care which and no more than 3 spades then Eat would be squeezed. So I repeated the spade finesse cashed the top spade and ran clubs and YES West had the stiff K and 6 doubled romped home.  The squeeze was easy I know.  I just had to watch for the top spades and when they didn’t all disappear play for the hearts to come in.  It would have been on about page 5 of Love Bridge Squeeze Complete, New Edition.  But it still felt nice and my mentee loved it too.  Here was the whole hand

	54 862 K96  AK1094
A8 K AQJ1087532 2		Q9632 QJ76543 4  7
	KJ107 A109 void  QJ8653

By the way I just heard that the new edition of Clyde E. Love (as updated by Linda Lee and Julian Pottage) was nominated for the ABTA Book of the Year Award.  I can’t believe it really.  I never expected to have a book to be part of the author team on a book nominated for a prestigious award.  Of course for Julian it is old hat.  More about this another time.

How did that work out for you?

May 13th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

Colin and I played a match on Tuesday with a lot of the “usual” crowd.  Well at least the other 7 played.  I was mostly wandering around on the planet Mars or maybe it was Jupiter.  I didn’t really notice. 

I have this idea that in a bridge match we make a lot of decisions, reasonable decisions but some work out well and some badly.  It’s worth it to go back and analyze the good and the bad results.  Here is a decision that Colin and Sondra had. 

With everybody vulnerable in first chair do you bid:

K J86 3  KQ987532

Do you bid

a)3  b)4 c) 3NT if you play that as a broken minor preempt (as we do) d) pass e) other

  K
J86
3  
KQ987532

What should you open in first chair with a broken eight card minor suit.  

With an eight card minor the opponents could easily be on for something and a bid at the four level will completely disrupt their auction.  But then again it still could be you hand and you have now bypassed 3NT.  I have no obvious answer to this question.  Colin and I would open the hand either 3NT if we wanted to open at the four level since we used this bid to show a broken 8 card minor preempt. 

Bidding either 3NT or 3 appears to work best at the table.  If you make either of these bids you will end in 3NT.  Bidding 4 leads to 5 which looks pretty grim when dummy came down on the lead of the A.

Isabelle/Linda

AJ92
Q5
AKJ7 
J106

Sondra/Colin

  K
J86
3 
KQ987532

3NT has a decent play even on a heart lead but 5 the contract that was reached by Isabelle-Sondra looks to have very little play after a heart lead.  (A club lead is no better and even a diamond lead needs the finesse).  But wait the A is singleton and the defense could not cash out their winners!    Which brings me to my second and third theme, one that has made some partnerships very successful.  Bid game, maybe it makes, if it doesn’t let them beat it.   If all else fails hope for good luck or as Ray says it’s smarter to be lucky than it’s lucky to be smart (whatever that means).

What’s Sondra did wasn’t wrong but it did lead to the wrong contract.  On a different layout it might work out best.  But it is worth thinking about, how will it usually work out.  I prefer Colin’s choice but then again I am generally a less aggressive bidder than Sondra and I have seen her choices work out very well a lot of the time.

You’ve come a long way baby

May 12th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  2 Comments 

When we started bridge blogging a couple of years ago we had a dream that we could have a place where people who loved the game could write and tell their stories and that it would be available for all those who like me love to read their stories.  My first ever blog was written on August 26th 2007 and tells the story of the Canadian women’s bridge team in Shanghai

When I wrote this blog I had been asked to step in as NPC and had no idea that I would end of playing with Pamela Nisbet.  I remember that in the rush to find a substitute for Rhoda Habert who had pneumonia poor Pamela had to leave the partnership she had worked so hard on with Isabelle to play with me.  I assured her that we would not let the side down and we didn’t.  We played very well together despite the lack of practice although once or twice I had to tell opponents when they asked about a bidding sequence that we had never discussed it even if it was a fairly common thing, because, well, we never had discussed anything.  I am sorry that Rhoda missed out although I did have problems with asthma in Shanghai and I believe she was right not to go on that long plane ride to that polluted environment.  I noticed a comment of encouragement my brother wrote to me when I was in Shanghai.  I am sure it was the first and last time he ever read anything about bridge.

Ray was the NPC, a position he enjoyed and did very well.  A future team would do well to consider Ray for this position.  He too blogged and he got a lot of advice and support from Canadians. 

Day 1 — off and running

It’s interesting to me how Ray starts his blog:

I’m beginning to wonder whether anyone is reading this — Linda’s getting all kinds of comments posted on hers, and no-one seems to want to add anything to what I put up there.  Sigh.  Ah well, blog on regardless…

Because believe me all bloggers feel like that a lot of the time and we all treasure your comments.  You can see all of these original blogs if you look in the archives under August and September 2007.

We have since always featured the world championships with ambitious blogging, twitter, recaps and features like the annual pick the winner contest which seems to be amazingly popular.

Some features have worked less well like the Hazel Nutt Christmas blog which I thought was quite funny but attracted few readers.

But the big changes were the addition of all the wonderful new bloggers starting with Judy and Bobby Wolff.  We have also had some other bloggers who have attracted quite a following like relatively new blogger Canadian Chuck Arthur who has lots of comments and responses to his Master Solver’s Club and other blogs.  Judy has the record for comments.  She engages her readers like well like nobody but Judy.  From the Sublime to the Ridiculous …. January 2010 was about the Bridge Hall of Fame had 49 comments.  With Judy prepared to respond to her readers.  It also inspired two blogs by me and one by Ray that I know of.  It discussed the interesting issue about whether somebody should be in the Hall of Fame based on results or based on skill or some combination of both.  It also talked about the process and recent nominees.  There have been many others.

Over time we added a lot of feeds from individual bloggers and more on request.  Most of them are still going strong but some were removed due to inactivity or well to be frank, reader’s complaints.  We have never censored anybody but we do ask people not to slander anybody and to keep the language civil and pretty well everybody has even though we have had a few heated discussions.  But some bloggers who came in on a feed for one reason or another just didn’t quite make the standard. 

The addition of Aces on Bridge was a major milestone.  Readers are not only able to read the Aces column but also correspond with one of the greats of bridge.  Bobby really does answer the questions himself.   We host the Aces On Bridge archive but we also pick up other news columns like one of my favorites the New York Times by Philip Alder.  It not only is interesting and well written it discusses current events, players and topics. 

Service has been an issue.  Since this is not and has never been intended to be a money making operation we have tried to kept the costs low.  But as the site has got more complex and busy we are not satisfied with the low-end carriers.  We have twice moved and upgraded the site and have had to deal with everything from spam, to blocked access to and from China, random crashes, lack of service and mixed up feeds.  Throughout this you have all been patient with us and the magnificent Luise with some help from her other half has put this right.

The staff has learned over time a lot about helping bloggers and we do provide all kinds of help from getting them started to spam control and Luise’s special bridge features for movies and suit symbols.

We now host one ad and we are interested in one or two more to defer the cost.  But we will never fill the pages with ads.  So if you have a bridge audience to reach you can contact us for pricing.  The ads are quite inexpensive but we have high standards to make sure the ad does not distract.  (You may not even have noticed the subtle poker ad at the top of the page!)  The advertising is a service and a way to defer some of the cost.  We are “proud??” to say that bridge blogging is not about making money.

So once more we grow and change.  We hope you all like the new design.  Personally I want to thank the bloggers,  Luise the technical whiz, Sally who keeps us up to date on happenings at Master Point Press and Jessica who works on Aces on Bridge, the McKinnon blog and supports other bloggers too,  Ray who pays the bills and to you, readers who are the ones who make it worthwhile.

Reflections on being a mother, a daughter, a granddaughter and a grandmother

May 9th, 2010  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

Mother’s Day is best when you have little children.  I love it when it is a sleepy morning and wee ones crawl into your bed to cuddle.  That can of course happen on any day.  I love the handmade cards and the smiles and laughter.  

On this day I can reflect on my children.  Colin is much like me in many ways but stronger, calmer and better.  He is brilliant at just about everything he does but like his father and me he is a games player and a good one.  I love watching him play bridge.  His bidding is always thoughtful, sometimes challenging and he is a wonderful card player.  I am very proud that he grew up to be the man he is. Luise is a games player too but while she is keen there is a gap in her bridge skills and those of her husband. And she is good at all the things I am not, she can work with neatess and precision with a guitar, with a camera, with a scrapbook, with design, with tools and with her garden.  Luise comes from a family of bridge players, especially her dad Manny who has been a keen tournament player.

Luise with her mother

My daughter Jennifer never liked bridge although she does love most games.  She is an expert at a game called Carcasson and she initiated us to it.  She likes to play poker too but not nearly as much as her husband Jason who is the gambler, much like my dad.   Jennifer has so many outstanding qualities I am in awe of her.  She is a brilliant organizer, a superb and dedicated teacher, an adventurer, a talented crafts person.  But most of all she is kind and caring.  She works to include me in her family and with her children despite the distance.  It is she and not me who finds ways to make sure we all connect.  She is smart, she is thoughtful, she is kind and she is loving.  So I guess that makes us for the fact that she couldn’t be the other half of a women’s pair in bridge.

Jen with her youngest son Lucas

My grandmother Dora was a card player.  When she was older she lived, as many Canadians do, in Florida.  She had a condominium and a cabana by the beach.  She would go to the cabana each day and play cards in the sunshine.  There are legends about her floating poker and gin game which were illegal in her day.  She was a wonderful cook but messy like me.  I have a feeling that she was a lot like me although she was far away for most of my life so my memories of her are short snapshots.  But I know she was a ham who loved the camera.

My mother always has loved games and bridge in particular.  She loves to play and was the inspiration for our best selling bridge book 25 Conventions You Should Know.  She loves to talk about the game and she loves to win but then again unlike me she doesn’t mind losing.  “I didn’t get the hands”, she says.  

my mother Toby with me (back to you) and her great grandchildren Marcus and Jessica

Today, baring some electronic fluke we will all be together even though some are at a distance.  My mother and my sisters and brother and their children will all be here for lunch.  Colin, Luise, Marcus and Jessica will be here and will go downstairs with Ray, my mother and I to talk to Jennifer, Jason, Lucas, Malcolm and Cassidy on Skype.  I know this will be very special for my mom but then again for me too.  And in this group I can tell that at least two of the boys are future bridge stars.