Ray Lee

Viva Las Vegas

Here we are at the Summer Nationals, which is probably going to set another attendance record, and I have to start by confessing that LV isn't one of my favorite places to spend a week.  I don't gamble, and the constant in-your-face slot machines and pseudo glitz really get to me, not mention external temperatures in three figures and humidity not far off.  But tonight was a lot of fun, I admit.

We'd been looking forward to the evening, because we'd splurged seriously on tickets to see Bette Midler's show at Caesar's Palace (my all-too-wise daughter once asked me, 'Dad, do you want to spend your money on things or experiences?', and we both agreed we preferred the latter).  Eddie and Yvonne Kantar had Midler tickets too, so we decided to make up a foursome for dinner before the show.

Dinner was at the nearby Hofbrauhaus (Eddie's choice), a Munich biergarten somehow transported to LV.  We were offered seats in the main hall (with the oom-pah band and the big tables of serious drinkers) and or the garden, which we were told was quieter.  We went for the garden, which was just as big as the hall, but empty other than ourselves.  However, we'd allowed a lot of time for dinner, to be safe, and after the main course was done, we realized we had at least an hour to kill before we needed to head for the show.  Now Eddie can usually be relied on to be carrying a deck of cards, but not today.  So despite the fact that Linda and I had a dozen decks in our room, and the ACBL doubtless thousands back at the Hilton, he had to nip across the road to the pharmacy to purchase cards.

He returned with a handsome deck with a back design of $100 bills -- somehow appropriate here, we thought.  And suddenly, here we were in the middle of an impromptu version of Eddie's famous Home Game.  Yvonne shuffled and dealt, and then dessert and coffee arrived.  There was a ten-minute pause while the strudel was consumed, after which Linda and Eddie bid their hands quickly and confidently to 7 hearts, Linda somewhat relieved to have negotiated the keycard sequence correctly.  Yvonne led something, and Eddie deposited a 4441 26-count on the table as dummy. The play lasted only one trick.  Eddie confessed he had been in agonies during the dessert course -- he knew he had this hand and had been terrified that something would happen to prevent its being played out!  Perhaps the waitress would clear away somebody's hand, or spill coffee on it.  But all was well.

The next hand Eddie dealt, and the (unopposed) bidding was interesting: I diamond - 1heart - 2 clubs - 2 spades - 3 diamonds - 4 diamonds - 4 spades.  Linda thought for a while, then for the second hand in a row launched into 4NT.  But this was a friendly game, and I felt I had to say something before this sequence got more convoluted -- I was pretty sure that both of them were trying to use Keycard in the same auction!

It so happens that the last thing I did before leaving for LV was finish editing Eddie's final draft of the 5th edition of his book on Keycard (coming this Fall from your favorite bridge publisher). Perhaps half the book is dedicated to discussing minor-suit agreement auctions, which are the toughest.  The reason for this is that 4NT is desperately uneconomical as a keycard ask in minor-suit auctions, since there's rarely any chance to do much before committing to slam.  For this reason, Eddie recommends using other asks, but what the ask is exactly depends on the suit you have agreed, what level you've agreed it at, and what the prior auction has been. (I did say half of the book is dedicated to this!)

The worst auctions, according to Eddie, are the ones involving diamond agreement at the four-level.  And in those auctions, he recommends using the lowest unbid major (i.e. not a first-bid suit) as the keycard ask.  Now, if you go back to our auction, you'll see that since hearts was a first-bid suit, then 4 spades was the keycard ask -- and since Linda had forgotten that, having not read this stuff quite as recently as I had, her 4NT was also intended as Keycard.

As I said, it was nothing if not a friendly game, so we rolled back the auction to 4 spades, Linda made the correct response, Eddie bid 7 diamonds, and again the play lasted exactly one trick.  Two deals, two grands bid and made.  Lucky we weren't playing for money.

Two deals later, Yvonne and I had our own slam auction, in which I got tangled up, but this time Eddie and Linda rescued me.  Yvonne opened 2NT, and I wanted to transfer to spades (my 5-bagger) and then ask her to choose between 6 spades and 6 notrump.   I knew that 2NT-3H-3S-4NT was invitational.  However 2NT-5NT is forcing to 6 and invitational to 7, so it seemed to me (I don't play transfers a lot as you can tell) that 2NT-3H-3S-5NT would also be forcing to 6 and invite to a grand. So I didn't know how to do what I wanted to do.

After some discussion, the table decided that this sequence actually asks partner to pick a slam, so I used it.  Yvonne duly bid 6NT, and she too claimed at Trick 1.  Which leaves me wondering, how do you force to a slam, and invite to a grand, while offering partner a choice between spades and notrump?  Anyone know?

We played half a dozen more hands, but the newness of the deck had worn off, and there were no more blockbuster deals.  But knowing that Eddie writes about his Home Game a lot, I decided I had better get a version out there before he could, so here I am back at the Hilton blogging away.

And the show?  Miss M. was divine.  Nuff said.

Restricted Choice Pt 2

Since my readers have anticipated the mathematics that were going to be Part 2 of this piece, I'm going to redirect the discussion a little.  As Bob and Colin pointed out to me, in Frank's scenario it is actually correct to play for the drop.  Had he seen the jack, he would have been 100% to finesse.

So overall, the opponents' agreement to do something non-random has actually hurt them, and in the long run Frank will have better than 1.84:1 odds when he has to play this combination against them.

But now we get into murkier waters.  What if they don't quite always play the queen from the doubleton queen-jack?  Now we're almost into Game Theory, and the analysis is certainly beyond me...

And as Ulrich asks, can they have this agreement -- that they will play the queen 100% of the time except occasionally they won't?  Let me digress for a moment, since I'm reminded of two situations from my bridge past.  In the first, we were told by the opponents that their carding was random -- no signals or discards meant anything.  The director, when summoned, informed them that this was an illegal agreement (obviously it's very easy to cheat!) but it's not clear to me how that ruling can be enforced.

The second case was closer to the Frank Vine story.  Linda and I were playing in the World Mixed Teams in Rhodes a few years ago, and we sat down against an Irish pair with very complex pre-announced carding and opening lead methods.  It took several minutes explanation before we felt we understood their agreements.  Then on the first board, they made an opening lead that didn't follow those agreements!

We all have some familiarity with the rules about psychic bidding. The danger is that partnerships become aware of their own tendencies, and are more prepared for psyches than their opponents.  The same psyches repeated too often become partnership agreements, and are frowned upon (at least in the ACBL), since now the pair is basically playing 'controlled psyches'.  Some years ago, playing against a pair known to psyche frequently, I sat down and was presented by them with a list of 'things we have tended to do in the past'.  'Ah,' I said, ' so I can assume that you won't do any of those in this set.'  But of course they did, and we ended up in a committee, and things went down a rathole from there.

However, I'm not sure I've ever seen much discussion of psychic carding.  Certainly, books on defense talk about falsecarding as a perfectly legitimate tactic, especially in situations where it doesn't matter whether you deceive partner.  I remember years ago as declarer trying to get a count on a hand to find a queen, and watching Fred Gitelman on my left carefully signal to show three cards in a suit.  Was he giving his partner true count, or playing head games with me?  I went for the latter, and I was right :-)  Fair enough, and definitely part of the game as far as I'm concerned.  But to me, having a specific unusual carding agreement and then deliberately violating it crosses a line.  It's analogous to psyching a conventional bid, which is illegal. 

Linda's comment is interesting here -- in these days of voluminous play records, it should be easy to gather stats on what card people play from QJ doubleton, but I would guess with her that the queen is played significantly more than 50% of the time.  And because of that, I confess that I myself tend to play the jack from that holding (don't know whether she's ever noticed that...).

Finally, a piece of advice from a very wise lady, Mary Paul, who has won both the Open and Women's Canadian team titles, and played in many world championships.  Mary once told us that if you're in a slam and someone leads the jack of trumps, they always have the queen-jack doubleton.  No-one ever leads the stiff trump jack against a slam, and they never lead the queen from the doubleton either.  That's one we've watched out for, and trust me, Mary's absolutely right.

Restricted Choice - part 1

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

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:

 

	North
	S 10982
	H 8
	D A106
	C ---
West		East
S 643		S QJ7
H AJ3		H K94
D K7		D 85
C ---		C ---
	South
	S AK5
	H Q106
	D J4
	C ---

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

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

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.

As others see us

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

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....

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

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 administrators, 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.