Top Ten Reasons To Enter Our Pick The Winners Contest

August 24th, 2009  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

Lacking the writing staff of some of the late night talk show hosts I decided since we are at the last minute folks! that I should remind you about our contest and do my best to give you the reasons to enter:

Reason 10 – The economy has tanked and here is a chance to get a freebie!  Everyone gets a gift certificate for an ebook just for entering.  Can’t beat that.

Reason 9 – It’s your way of giving a little support for your favorite country.  Nothing says loving like picking your underdog team as a winner

Reason 8 – You are competitive or you wouldn’t be a bridge player.  You want to win.  You want to get your name in lights (well very small wattage lights anyway).

Reason 7 – It’s easy, peasy (as my favorite sister would say).  You can just copy my entry.  It’s not like school.  Copying is allowed.  Click here to get to my blog with the entry Linda’s Blog

Reason 6 – The link at the top of the bridgeblogging home page seems flaky, that’s nerd speak for it may be broken.  So you might have tried to find out about the contest and well … it’s okay there is still time to enter

Reason 5 – Eric, the intern is going to be keeping score.  He needs the spreadsheet practice.  Besides he loves getting email

Reason 4 – In your heart your know that Canada is going to do well in the Seniors.  This is a very good team folks.   This isn’t Dancing With The Stars, your vote won’t help them to win but it will make them feel good.  Of course, I am going to vote for Bobby Wolff too.  Go Bobby.

Reason 3 – It makes it even more interesting to watch the results.

Reason 2 – You lost at fantasy baseball.  Another chance to win.

Reason 1 – You want to win.  Winning isn’t everything.  It is the only thing…..and there are nice prizes too.

And here are all the details about what you need to do….

1. Select the 8 teams in the quarter finals. (1 point each)

2. Select the 4 teams in the semi finals (2 points each)

3. Select the two finalist (4 points each)

4. Select the winner for an extra 6 points

5. Select third place as the tie breaker.

You can enter both competitions or just one if you prefer.

Details are in this blog….The Contest

Bridge Montreal

August 19th, 2009  ~  linda  ~  2 Comments 

After I posted my last blog a reader posted a comment to let me know that the Montreal Regional provided both prizes and hand records on the website.  Sharyn Reus has picked up my prize (thank you) and I am now looking at the website.Bridge Montreal.

I think this website is worth mentioning in my Internet review.  The first thing to note is that this website is available in both English and French.  (The English and French are listed side by side which is fun because it is a good way to practice my French).  There is a list of bridge clubs on a map of Montreal.

Can you believe that every red dot is a bridge club.  Can I move there, Ray.  This looks like bridge heaven.  When I click on a dot I see a picture of the proprietor, all the contact information, the times and days of games, special events, and a link to their website.  Wow.

Another page contains a list of all local events.  If I click on an event I get more details, like any the entry fee, the types of points awarded, the type of event etc.

The tournament tab shows me the story of local tournaments.  Right now at the top of the page recent CAN-AM Regional that I played in a few days ago is up on the site.  They have pictures of the winners of all the events.  (Great idea).  Below is are the smiling winner of the major pairs event.

All of the results are posted.  In the matchpoint events the entire sheet is posted with the matchpoints board by board.  And there are hand records.

I am in awe.  Do other parts of the country do this?  I need to check this out.  This is what I have wanted for a long time. 

Okay, I just have to check out the Toronto website.  I find Unit 166.  There is a complete event schedule with results.  The results show the placement and masterpoints.  There is a list of masterpoint holdings and recent masterpoint promotions (For those who care).  There is a list of bridge clubs with lots of information about the clubs and all the scores from all the games.  The Kibitzer, the fine Unit 166 magazine, is online with lots of back issues.  Under bridge links I am happy to see bridgeblogging.  I will look around for other good area websites but let me know if you know of one you like too.   Well done too.  I guess bridge is really getting online.

I will look around for other good area websites but let me know if you know of one you like too.

The Weekend – Hurray!

August 17th, 2009  ~  linda  ~  1 Comment 

Don’t you love summer weekends? This weekend I took my mother over to visit her great grandchildren. She bought them gingerbread men. One was a girl and the other was a dark haired boy with glasses. The boy perfectly matched 5 year old Marcus. We sat in the sun in a huge wonderful water play park and watch the kids playing and having a great time before they sat down for juice and gingerbread. It was one of those places that makes you feel that your tax dollars are working.

By the way, the tournament the HCL is held in India each year. It is open to all and with a great sponsor the prize money is excellent. Very few foreigners have been attending but it sounds wonderful to me, the Taj Mahal, a well run tournament, prize money and excellent bridge.

Colin and I agreed to play transfer advances to some extent and I am going to send him the notes I have. But meanwhile we have not been practicing at all although Colin tells me he has been busy researching systems. The Barrie tournament is only a month away.

Ray and I also visited with our friends Fred and Margaret Lerner and Bill and Leah Milgram. Over buffalo burgers and Chez Milgram raspberry wine we didn’t talk much bridge. But I did ask everyone what they thought of this deal. To be fair, I didn’t remember the hand properly see what you think.

You are not vulnerable against vulnerable in a tight match with big prize money.  This is late in the semifinal.  Partner, North, in first seat opens with one diamond and you bid one heart.  Partner bids 2NT.  What is your plan?

At our table South, Venktes, had decided, as perhaps you have, that this hand was headed for six hearts.   So he bid three spades (natural) over 2NT.   He took a guess that he didn’t want a spade lead.  When partner bid 3NT he jumped to 6♥.

Now it was up to West, Sadhu, a wily veteran.

It took him no time at all to lead his spade ace.  On the auction there is almost no chance of a spade ruff since North clearly doesn’t have four spades.  So when Sadhu led the ace he was checking in case you had two losers off the top.  I would have been right there with him.  The auction does suggest that South was always going to six hearts and the spade bid looks suspicious.  But in any case South clearly has lots of tricks and if you can’t take your tricks quickly you won’t get them.  Here is the whole hand.  The contract and result was the same at the other table but they used blackwood instead of “cuebidding”.

Back Into the Fray

August 14th, 2009  ~  linda  ~  3 Comments 

For the first time in a long time I played in a regional and one that was away from home at that.  I headed off for two and a half days in Montreal to play with Sylvia.  Let me start by giving my impressions of the tournament, fresh eyes and all that.

First it was big.  It seemed to fill a lot of big ballrooms.  A few of us started to wonder were tournaments bigger twenty years ago.  I don’t think so.  Montreal runs three sessions a day (no midnight games that I saw though) at 9:30AM 3PM and 7:30PM.  As a result you can play in more than one event a day.  There is also events that run across the 7:30 sessions for people who are working.  Lots of different events mean lots of choice but it does also mean smaller fields.  Free coffee was great along with a bit of fruit in the morning.  Maybe it is asking too much but it would be nice if there was a bit of entertainment and some more food – even food you could buy.  One inexpensive suggestion would be to have one central place where the top places in each event are posted.  With no newsletter, nothing online and score sheets posted in many rooms I have no idea who was playing or who was winning.  Prizes for section tops (or winning an event) would by nice too.  Okay I will stop complaining (I mean suggesting).  In the end I play bridge for the camaraderie (there was lots of that) and the joy of playing.

The Women’s Swiss I played in had 23 teams which seemed small for a regional Swiss but then again I don’t even remember ever playing in a Women’s Swiss before.   Sylvia and I played with Sharyn Reus and Helen Keri who I met at the game.  Helen is pictured below surrounded by guys.

Drew Cannell, Helen Keri-Cannell, Bob McPhee, Jay Whipple at a previous tournament (courtesy Jonathan Steinberg)

Sylvia and I also had a huge matchpoint session the next day in the first set of the pairs, so maybe I am learning to play matchpoints after all.

The evening didn’t go so well.  It all started out on the first board when our opponent dropped Sylvia’s stiff king offside and played the entire hand as if he knew where all the cards were seemingly without thought.  Sylvia asked him at the end (in a nice way) if he had seen her hand.  We were both pretty sure he had.  Thanks for the games everyone and especially Sylvia.  I wish I could remember some hands to tell you but I will say that I made a lot of tricks risking my contract (gulp) in the matchpoint games.

The Israeli Open Team Trials

August 14th, 2009  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

If you recall the Israel did very well in the round robin in the Olympiad last year. If you want to see more look at my blog about the Israeli team during the Shanghai World Championships Blogs about Beijing match.

When I joined in at the end of the fourth set of eight the Herbst team was leading 157 imps versus 84 imps.  I remember the Herbsts’ who have have been doing well in a variety of competitions.    At the end of the fifth segment nothing much had changed but there were a few swings.

The auction shown occurred in the Open Room. Things were a bit different in the Open Room.  Here the Herbst (who were playing weak notrump)  chose a different action over 2♦.  South bid 2♠ over the overcall and North bid 3NT ending the auction.

Ophir Herbst

Now which sequence do you like better?  I am not crazy about a negative double when you do have a five card spade suit.  I suppose you have to decide if you are good enough.  I think the yummy spots make it worth it.  And yes I am prepared for now to give up the club suit.

With clubs behaving 3NT was no problem.  But the Birman’s showed that they could just up and bid things too.  What do you do on this hand?

You are in fourth chair with nobody vulnerable and East on your left starts off with 4♥.  Partner bids 4♠. Do you try the scientific route?  What is the scientific route anyway?  In the Closed Room, Ophir started out with 5♥.  There was some speculation about what that bids means in this auction.  It seems likely it should be a slam try in spades.  Could it be anything else?  Somebody suggested exclusion.  I don’t think that really makes sense.   When partner bid 5♠ what should Ophir do now?  If you bid 5♣ is that a huge hand with clubs or is it a cuebid.  If it is a cuebid is it helpful anyway.  If partner bids 6♦ will that be the information you need for slam.  Maybe 5♥ should be support and demand a cuebid.  My preference is that 5♥ should bid taken as a slam try in spades and partner should bid accordingly.  But maybe 6♣ should be natural.  I realize I haven’t fully worked that out.   What could partner have where 7♠ doesn’t make.  Something like

It is hard to come up with a hand without the ♣A.  At the other table A. Birman just bid 7♠ to pick up a useful swing and stay in the match.  South held (and really could he have been all that much worse?)

Canadian Master Point September 1994

August 10th, 2009  ~  linda  ~  4 Comments 

If you are wondering why we are so slow in posting CMP on www.ebooksbridge.com Eric tells me that it takes him three working days to do all the work needed to post one and there is some other effort required by the lovely Luise.  But it is worth it when I look at the September 1994 magazine

There is some nostalgia for me in looking at this edition. We had been publishing magazines for three years and were now expanding with lots more distribution in Western Canada. Dawn MacNeal was handling advertising with Maureen Culp and John Gowdy on our editorial board. The effect of the magazine had spread outside our borders too as you will notice from letter to the editor from Peter Oakley of New Zealand, author of “The Diamond Major”. I think that our book and software reviews got a lot of play on the “web”.

There is a really cool puzzle which was originally printed in “The Listener”. You have to figure out a bridge deal from the descriptive narrative provided. The problem is that the narrative is missing words which you get by solving the puzzle. It’s really different and fun.

Fred Gitleman writes a story about the 1994 Canadian Team Trials, the CNTC, which his team won.   Now you may recall the Bermuda Bowl was played in Beijing China. The Canadian team was Canada Canada Boris Baran player Fred Gitleman, Eric Kokish, George Mittleman,  Mark Molson and Joey Silver with Irving Litvack as NPC.  This team came in second in the Bermuda Bowl losing to the USA in the finals. The USA team consisted of Bob Hamman, Nick Nickell, Eric Rodwell, Jeff Mekstroth, Bobby Wolff, Dick Freeman with one Edgar Kaplan as NPC. How exciting to have an all North American final. The final was very close but that is a story in and of itself. There is a wonderful story that Fred wrote about his time in Beijing. You can find it at

Fred’s Story

So the prelude story about the Canadian Team Trials is even more interesting.  First Fred had to make it out of Ontario.  His team included him , Geoff Hampson, Joey Silver, George Mittleman and Eric Kokish.  They managed a third place finish to just make it to the National Final!  Geoff dropped off to seek fame and fortune in the USA and the team added Mark Molson playing as five.  The story starts with an incredible double and lead against 3NT by Mark Molson.  I promise that this article alone is worth the cost of the magazine even if it weren’t free.

By the way if you win our World Championship contest you can pick as a prize World Class which includes a story about Fred and his experiences in the Bermuda Bowl.

Tom Dawson, who among other things is a bridge historian, writes a fascinating story about the history of world championships.  Lapt H. Chan contributes an interesting article for the magazine about transfers over 2NT.  He starts off by saying that the ideas in the article were introduced to him by a 23 year old New Yorker, one Brad Moss.  There are two articles for newer players including one on cue bids by Barbara Seagram.  Eric Sutherland, a Canadian bridge player and mathematician has an interesting stories about how to extensions of restricted choice.

There is also an amusing story about the Epson (an instant matchpoint game) where John Cunningham compares his ideas about some deals with the writeups in the handout booklet.

There is lots more with an article by Roselyn Teukolsky, David Silver, the mysterious Trent Valley and more.

The Bridge Web and a Canada Master Point Press Women practice

August 7th, 2009  ~  linda  ~  1 Comment 

I logged on for a few moments yesterday and I chanced on a practice match for the Canada Master Point Press Women who will be going to Brazil in a few weeks.  The hands were set up so they were quite interesting and most of them are worth comment.  I picked this one out because it seems to have an interesting bidding point.

Pamela and Karen at Penticton 2009

Playing 2/1 you open 1♠and partner bids 2♣.  You bid 2♥ and partner now bids 2♠.  Pamela now made the key bid.  She bid 3♣.  It seems to me that the whole point of playing 2/1 is for hands like these.  You can show your support for partner’s club suit in a game forcing auction with spades set as trump.  Once you make this bid you are on your way to slam.  Partner has

After the club bid she was off to the races.  At the table Karen continued with a diamond cuebid and Pamela Nisbet made another nice quiet bid of 3♠.  I am still interested in slam partner but I don’t have a heart control.  Karen then just asked for aces.  Simple, elegant.  At the other table Pamela’s hand cuebid 3D instead of showing club support.  East cooperated with a heart cuebid and later a club cuebid but they drifted into 4♠.  Maybe they could have got there anyway but I like the Pamela-Karen auction.

I often want to include pictures of one sort or another on my blog.  Besides the usual sources like www.worldbridge.World Bridge Federation and of course Claire Bridge there are some others which I haven’t discussed yet.  Jonathan Steinberg has an amazing collection of bridge albums Jonathan’s albums.  The picture above for Canada Master Point Press team members, Karen and Pamela are from one of Jonathan’s albums.  The earliest on this site go back to October of 2005.

Piglet (Michael Roche)   MPP Author Paul Thurston

If you go to his District 2 website (he resigned a while back as District 2 director).  There are hundreds of photo albums dating back to as early as 1996.

1995 Hall of Fame inductee Bobby Wolff with District 2 Director Jonathan Steinberg

Norman Kay, Alfred Sheinwold, and Eddie Kantar at Hall of Fame induction February 29, 1996 in Philadelphia

It is wonderful to look at but just one more and then I am done.  After that you can mosey on over and look yourself.

Here is Ray as CBF president with Marilyn White the Charity Coordinator presenting a check to the Daily Bread Food Bank some years ago.

Which all got me thinking about the history of our game.  If you are going to Brazil you might like these

playing cards.  The illustrated is the Sao Paulo Bridge playing cards.  You can find looks of beautiful decks at the House of Cards. They also had a list of online sites were you could play everything from hearts to euchre or canasta.  I notice that the bridge sites listed did not include BBO.  Bridge is well represented too.  One of the strangest things was tournament solitaire.  It just doesn’t seem right.   For lots of tournament games go to tournament games.  There were over 13,500 entries in today’s tournament solitaire!  (I confess I particularly like spades.

Play Bridge Free had a small amount stuff.  Unfortunately there seemed to be a lot of blinking ads which I hate.  But amid all of the nonsense are a few gems.  First there is a funny story by Eddie Kantar about Lew Mather and his wife Janie.  The links are funny because many of them are links to bridges like big structures across bodies of water.  The glossary is quite idosyncratic with entries like eldest hand, cat, Chernoff defense, Hartman’s Law 4 doubled always makes.  You see what I mean.  There is a tiny bit of history.   But the part I liked was a set of bridge variants.  Here is 5-3-3-2 bridge as an example:

Rules: Each player are handed 5 cards and so the bidding starts as normal. After the first bidding round all players recieve 3 more cards. After the second round of bidding you get 3 more and then the last 2. The bidding closes as normal with 3 passes (or four if it’s the first bidding round) If the bidding should finish before all cards have been dealt, the players are dealt the remaining cards and the play begins.

Whoever wrote all this stuff was under 25, trust me.  As they say in the guide books this site is not worth going to see.

The lovely Claire Martel

August 5th, 2009  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

One of my favorite websites is Claire Bridge.  It has been designed so that you can read it in English or French.  With the sheer number of Bridge Sites on the web I can’t really be devoting a whole blog to one of them.  … Oh yes I can.

Claire’s site is full of fun and surprises. One section is devoted to the love of the game. Claire draws us into an article by Bernard Marcoux entitled about a man about the universe.  It end “Do you know of a more beautiful game, of a game that shows us so clearly the fathomless power of the human brain?”.

Claire has lots of links and pictures, all organized in a lovely way, her way.  It is like entering a piece of interactive art.  I am drawn in and find beautiful pieces some small and some large.  Here I find a link to the bridge guys who have collected bridge poetry from various sources.

I’m giving up bridge (humorous poem by anon)

I’m giving up bridge – tonight’s my last night
It’s Amen to Stayman, I give up the fight.
The insults and muddles are giving me troubles.
And I can’t sleep at night for thinking of doubles.

My cards are all rotten and I have forgotten
Who’s played and what’s trumps
And what’s gone on my right!
So for now its all over – I’m off to the backwood
I’m bidding good-bye to Gerber and Blackwood.

(follow the link for the rest).

She links to Judy Wolff’s blog called What Is Bridge 

and to Marshall Miles a wonderful author (and once in a very rare while my bridge partner). 

AGE NO BARRIER TO NEW CHAMPION
(reprinted from the Daily Bulletin of the 12th World Bridge Olympiad, issue #10, Brent Manley editor)

There are links to every aspect of bridge.  I move on to books.  Some times the links are to very old pages (like a 2000 review of a small number of bridge books on mindzine).  Its still fun to look.  I find a link to an entire book A Bridge Phantasmagoria.  It has an intriguing start

By and large this site is a set of links but it is arranged beautifully.  It may not always be the easiest way to find something specific but it is the easiest way to have an experience.  On the

Bridge Psychology page I find a blog I had written with a link to an article I wrote a while back.

Sports and Bridge Psychology

I hate the picture.  Whatever did I do to my hair.

I love the little bits of bridge history like this link to an Article on Dallas Aces that Claire has put together full of pictures old and new.  She has her own Hall of Fame and like I usually do I follow a chain from one thing to another and end up looking at Tim Sere’s Bols Bridge Tip: Give declarer enough rope.  One of my favorite features is her feature of famous bridge players.  Sabine Auken as 25 pictures of Sabine of all kinds and a set of links to articles by Sabine or about her.

There are so many different things:

When I look to see what are old and new links.  Just things that Claire must have liked or found interesting.  For example there is a blog by Master Point Press’ Luise Lee About the advantage of playing with robots and a description of Precision 8  by Kevin Ward. 

(This variant of Precision includes canapé, Multi Two Diamonds, Lucas Two Bids (or Mudiberg 2’s) and a weaker 1 NT opening (11-13 HCP).  It looks like it might be similar to the system I play with Colin.  I should send him the link.

I seem to remember Claire had a blog but I can’t find it.  I hope she is still writing it.  In any case you will have fun with this site.  It may not be the most direct way to find what you want on the bridge world wide web but it is an adventure you will enjoy.

A Short Review of Lots of Blogs

August 4th, 2009  ~  linda  ~  4 Comments 

There is so much bridge out there on the net I am taking a bit of a shortcut today.  Below is a table of blogs and a little bit about each of them.  This does not include any blogs previously reviewed and all are worthwhile (although a couple of them may be somewhat dormant).

Lest you think I have exhausted all of the good bridge blogs let me assure you that I haven’t and that more will appear in future blogs.

Happy reading.

Back to the Future – Internet Adventure Part 10

August 3rd, 2009  ~  linda  ~  2 Comments 

With the NABC over and fewer bridge distractions it is time to turn my attention back to bridge on the Internet.  As I have started this time I have received a number of emails from bloggers (thank you, I really do appreciate it) who suggested I have a look at their sites.

The first site today is Bridgevaria, an online bridge magazine from the Netherlands.  (As a bonus you can see the site in Dutch if you want.)  It is produced by Ed Hoogenkamp, Peter van der Linden and Pien Steringa.  To start with this site is very attractively designed.   While it is still early days for this site they are adding material fairly frequently and the material is of very good quality and lots of fun.  I will bookmark this site and visit it again.

The first section are all things for you to do and it is called bridge for play. There is lots to do and it is of good quality but warning, most of it won’t be very challenging for experts.

I start with a look at is a small collection of puzzles presented by Dutch junior international Frank Visser, I did like both the declarer play and defense problems although I didn’t find them very difficult.

The puzzles are rated by star and I decide that the two three star puzzle are probably the toughest so naturally I start with that them.  The first problem doesn’t take me much time.  I look at the one star problem and it turns out to be of the same difficulty and of the same basic type.

Here is the first three star declarer problem for you.  Check the website if you want to see the solution.

They have an interesting feature called What Went Wrong.  You are shown the bidding at the table which definitely doesn’t lead to the optimal result and ask to assign the blame and an even cuter feature called 1,2,3 where you have to decide which hand most closely fits partners bidding.  Unfortunately I don’t know what system they are playing.  (Do they have Bridgevaria Standard on the site somewhere?)

I can’t resist the next section” take over from the start.”  Here you are sitting behind a top player and you have to take over from him at “the moment supreme”.  Maybe I shouldn’t try the three star problem but I do.  I get to be Polish star Michal Kwiecien and I am playing against Meckwell in Bermuda at the 2000 Bermuda Bowl.  Sorry guys but I found this problem trivial.  I think you might have to revisit your ratings.  Still I like the idea a lot.

There are too other fine sections as well quizzes and varia (miscellaneous).

The second half of the web site includes bridge to read.  I check out books which is basically a set of ads but I do find one interesting ad for “The Simpson” playing cards which are designed to teach children how to play bridge.  But the sections on great hands and on blunders are fun.  You can also send in questions and they will be answered online by Ed or Peter.

Peter van der Linden

They also have a section on stories but it is blank waiting for you to send them your stories.  I think I might send them some.  You all know I have lots of them.

The next site is very different.  Howard Bigot-Johnson’s Bizarre World of Bridge.  It is a new blog and it seems to be frequently updated with 15 blogs in July.  Is that his real name?  I leave it for you to decide but here is his bio

(That’s him not me although lately ….)

This site is designed to have fun for both the bloggers and the readers.  You have to decide if this is your sort of fun.  The column for Monday August 3 was a list of bridge books that ought to have made it …  It is a game that Ray and I have tried from time to time.  Here are my entries from his list.

Going For The Risky Overtricks……………………….Shirley Knott

Winning At Bridge Makes Me Laugh…………………..Ben Tubble

Honeymoon Bridge……………………………………….Candice B. Love

It does give me a chuckle.  I liked some blogs better than others but it is definitely worth a visit especially when you have had a bad session.  Check out the August 2 blog, The Perfect Bridge Partner.

You may have noticed that we are carrying a blog feed from Peggy Kaplan on our home page.  Pehht seems to be a fairly frequent blogger.  Her website is Minnesota Bridge.  Besides the blog she has a number of other features and she is a great spokesman.  Her blogs have lots of picture (as you may notice from my blogs I like that).  Here is her picture of the Mini Spingold II winners from MInnesota.   Congratulations guys.

I did also find out that Peggy who holds exactly 11294.39 master points has the most in Minnesota.  But the blog is the thing.

Besides the booster stuff Peggy does write about her own experiences.  I liked her story Giant Killers for a day about her experiences in the Open GNT.  Her story about being selected as opponents by Larry Cohen is very funny.  There they were going against a tough team with one last set to go, leading by 1 imp.  Don’t miss the inspiring story by her teammate “My Apollo Creed” about the last match.  It starts out in the year 2000, really.

Believe it or not I have now reviewed 56 bridge websites.  Most of them worthwhile.

Reviewed: Bridgevaria, Bizarre World of Bridge Peggy Kaplan