BRIAN GLUBOKBrian is a highly accomplished American bridge player hailing from New York City. Glubok, an alumnus of Amherst College, has consistently excelled in North American Bridge Championships, securing numerous titles, including wins in the Jacoby Open Swiss Teams, Reisinger, and Spingold events. In addition to his domestic success, Glubok came close to victory in the World Mixed Pairs Championship in 2010, finishing as the runner-up.. Archives
October 2024
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Diary of a Bridge Pro #399/24/2024 Springfield, April 23 Trying something different with the blog/column today - I wrote these tips back in April, and I revised them this morning at a September regional in downstate Illinois. I’ll return to the usual format in Blog #40, but here, below, I present some broad advice for any of you among the readership who might wish to enter the industry and attempt to earn a livelihood by playing professionally. How to best go about this is a frequent subject for casual discourse when pros congregate, so I offer this up as a kind of collected wisdom, accumulated over the years. Here goes: Seven Tips for Aspiring Bridge Prosby Brian Glubok with Denis Wilsonovich 1) You are in the "Entertaining Rich People" business, not the "Playing Bridge" Business. Your success or failure in the industry is based on your capacity to be a good companion to rich people. Rich people have certain traits in common, generally. While an individual, specific, wealthy person may not have these traits, and there are "exceptions to every rule", as a bridge player we know that we should "go with the odds until proven otherwise". 2) Be punctual - early, even. This one is hard to adhere to, especially in large cities where there are myriad distractions and constant traffic. Incidentally, this tip will serve you well in your dealings with middle-class and poor people, too. 3) Be aware of societal norms. I was never very good at following this tip, but this collection of advice falls into the “Do as I say, not as I do,” category. Rich people generally don’t like to be conspicuous. 4) Make allowances for the special nature of bridge players. Bridge players are immensely more likely than the general population to suffer syndromes like Asperger’s or autism. Bear this in mind and try to manifest kindness and compassion, towards yourself and others. 5) Be conscious of the reasons people hire pros. There are of course all of the obvious and apparent reasons, like “They want to get better at bridge,” or “They want to finish higher in tournaments.” But there is also this: “They want to show other people how smart they are.” Arguably, this is one of the major reasons we compete in tournaments in the first place. Thanks to Chris and Donna Compton for that insight. 6) Talk to your clients as though they are grandmasters (at bridge) I want to thank Miami’s Tudor King for this one. He offered it to me when I solicited some advice from him on how to better serve my clients. It proved to be great advice, but I want to be clear on one point - I am suggesting that you treat your clients as grand masters, in conversation, not in the game itself. In the game itself, you must consistently 7) Build a fence around your partner - protect him from himself. This is sound advice to follow with other top players, but is especially useful, naturally, when partnering weak players. Following this tip can take many forms: On defense, make it obvious. In the bidding, don’t set traps. Don’t make a complicated bid when a simple one will do. Bonus Tip: Have a good time, all the time. If you can manage to appear to be enjoying your bridge game and your day, you will be far more valuable to your clients than otherwise - no one wants a sullen bridge pro. I want to acknowledge that I lifted that “Bonus Tip” from the epilogue to Rob Reiner’s Spinal Tap. Here’s the clip: Thanks for reading!
- BG/DW
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Diary of a Bridge Pro #389/16/2024 Springfield, April 20 Department of Alarming News: I noticed yesterday that the regional in Wisconsin is requiring "Proof of Vaccine" once more. This is beyond amazing to me. August Update: Attendance was terrible at the Wisconsin regional which required proof of vaccination, so - the League came up with the right policy for the wrong reason (imo), specifically: By fiat of the ACBL, effective immediately, districts can not require proof of vaccination as a condition of participation in their tournaments. ***** Here's a deal I was sent from the Gatlinburg regional, which is happening this week. Responder holds: AKJ9x, Jx, x, QT9xx - Opener begins with One Diamond, and the opponents stay silent: We respond One Spade, Partner rebids Two Diamonds. What do we bid now? ***** 
I'm going to spend much of the balance of this column about this deal from the recent regional in Florida - Board 22. I was West and held xx, xx, T9x, AQTxxx - Partner Opened One Diamond, RHO passed. I like to treat 1D - 3C as showing this type of hand - six or seven clubs and 7-9 HCP - Walter and I play a similar treatment, but I knew Wall Street Walter would expect more high cards for an invitational 3 Club response, so I contented myself with One No Trump. This floated around to RHO, who reopened with double. I retreated to 2C, and the lovely and talented Sandra Rimstedt, my LHO, competed with Two Spades. Walter raised to 3C, and Sandra took the push to 3S. Here’s the full sequence: 1D - (P) - 1NT - (P) - P - (Double) - 2C - (2S) - 3C - 3S - All pass. Walter led a club, dummy tabled KJxx, Kxx, Axx, Kxx, and I won my queen. The ten of diamonds shift was appealing, but eventually, after my longest tank of the tournament (two minutes? Very rare that I think as long as two minutes about a single play or bid), I shifted to my doubleton heart - I decided that my best chance to :beat 3S was to find Walter with both major suit aces, and secure a heart ruff. He had both aces, but we didn’t find the winning defense. During the bidding Sandra had kept her hearts concealed, and Walter misread the position, so he tried for something else (diamonds, I think). Here’s a line you can use next time someone complains to you about their partner’s bidding or play, I’ve found it pretty effective at bringing those conversations (typically they’re more of a diatribe than a conversation) to a merciful conclusion: Thought for the Day: Partners are the bane of humanity! ***** Here’s a tough pair of hands I was given to bid, imagine yourself responder after partner opens One Heart, you have this powerful duke: AKQxxx, K, Axxx, Qx. You bid One Spade, partner continues with 2D. . I’d like to recommend a 3S bid here - in Standard systems this second - round jump to 3S is invitational. There’s a lot of merit to playing this bid as a natural force. In WBS, we have an easy time playing this as forcing - 1H - 2S is invitational, so we have that hand covered - using standard methods, you have to “go through fourth suit”, so a second round bid of 3C is obligatory. This makes the bidding more difficult, as we’ll soon see. Swing around to opener’s side of the table - he holds x, AJTxx, KQTxx, Kx - after 1H - 1S - 2D - 3C, many would bid 3 No Trump - they treat Fourth Suit as “Asking for a stopper” - I prefer 3D at opener’s third turn. At the table, my correspondent chose 3 No Trump, the popular bid, I’ll bet. Responder took out to 4D, and then - the specter of a Redwood 4 Hearts hovered over the auction. Ever pragmatic, our opener simply bid 6 Diamonds. Responder, annoyed that Opener hadn’t bid Blackwood, corrected to 6 No Trump. This might have made, if spades had broken 3-3, or a squeeze manifested - neither eventuated and 6 No Trump went down one. I thought this deal revealed a lot, about the psychology of modern bidders, and the downside of fourth suit forcing. Everyone loves the idea of “going through fourth suit” to show their forcing hands, but there’s a lot of merit in allowing Responder to simply show the nature of their force with a second round jump. Certainly we might be more comfortable with a start of 1H - 1S - 2D - 3S - 3NT - 4D. Just sayin’ - Here’s one more modern-day mishap from a recent regional pair game - Our auction began 1C - 2C (inverted raise) - 3NT - I thought that showed a two no trump rebid, somewhere in the 17-19 range - apparently that’s not a universal treatment. Our hands were Ax, Axx, xx, AKxxxx facing KJx, KJ, AQTx, QJxx - Six Clubs is cold (heart ruff in dummy for the twelfth trick) and Six No Trump is on either of two finesses - you just have to choose which one(s) you want to take - in Three No Trump I won the heart lead with dummy’s jack, and played a diamond to the queen for my thirteenth trick. The old plus 520.... Thought for the Day: Modern players don’t like to define ranges. But you have to, how can you bid effectively otherwise? It makes no sense for one guy to think 1C - 2C - 3NT shows a good 13 or 14, while the other guy thinks it shows 18-19. Gotta go, I’m at a regional and it’s not much more than an hour to game time. - BG
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Diary of a Bridge Pro #379/15/2024 Springfield, April 17
Going through a mystical period, a good time to cite a pair of books that have helped me along the way. I’d like to elaborate on what these two books mean to me later on down the line - here's the first: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. The lessons in this slender book are more useful when I write this today, in 2024, than when the book was written back around 1971. Just as Suzuki brought Buddhist teachings to the west, I aspire to have a similar impact on world bridge thinking. Here's another one you might want to read -- the Steve Jobs biography from about ten years ago. Jobs is a hero to all kinds of people, naturally - I like to think there are three of us who share a characteristic, Steverino, yours truly, and Carrie Fisher - Ms. Fisher put it best in one of her novels (Delusions of Grandma?) - “...I felt as though I would always be tragically in-between, with too much personality for one person but not quite enough for two....” ***** Sometimes the cards aren’t worth a dime, if you don’t lay ‘em down.... If you want to order Delusions of Grandma, or perhaps one of her other novels (Postcards from the Edge?) Click here. As an abstraction, I determined that these thirty-something numbered blogs should allow for more scope for reflection, a little less bridge - just as the personal growth gurus like Roshi, Ram Dass, and Gail Sheehy might advise about the decade of the thirties - gotta know who you are before you figure out how to shake loose of that guy! Buddhist Thought for the Day: Sometimes we are playing bridge, and sometimes we are not playing bridge. ***** To excel at bridge, one must learn to concentrate. If you can't hold a train of thought, you can't do well at bridge ***** Roshi Suzuki, author of ZM/BM, was asked to leave Japan in the late 1950's to establish a Zen Center in northern California. Roshi said that he couldn't do that, above his pay-grade. He was, after all, a simple guy. He did, however, agree to move to California and meditate there, and allow others to join him. I could be mistaken with some of these assertions, but I believe it was around 1958 that Roshi established a daily meditative practice in San Francisco. Within weeks there were a dozen people joining him, and within months, more still. Not long after he established a center farther down the coast, near Carmel: The Zen Mountain Monastery. Bridge hooks - Originally from Vancouver, Canadian bridge legend Allan Graves was my personal portal to Buddhism - I guess it began in the 80's, our series of casual conversations on the subject, mostly in tournament playing rooms. Around 1989 or '90, I ventured up to Barnet, Vermont, to the Karme Choling Center, where Allan was working. I took the beginner course over one August weekend and launched a pleasant summer / autumn romance with a fellow student, a nurse from outside Philadelphia. Certainly I didn't become an ardent Buddhist, but that weekend did change my life. That book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, lit the way. Roshi, we call him - or Suzuki. ***** It's pleasant for me to recall where I read the Steve Jobs book - it was on the living room shelf at the Mahaffey estate near Orlando. The house had of course a pool, and it was on a lake you could swim in - I was fortunate to be a houseguest of Mahaffey there at least twice - Passell or Gary (Cohler) told me the house valued at 10,000,000 - Mahaffey himself was a legend. He died in his early 80's around the first month of lockdown, back in March of 2020. It is pleasant to recall him here - he liked to be called King James, that was his nickname - fascinating guy, "Mahaffey Stories" could fill this blog, and the next entry too. He had a great caustic sense of humor, and he was a big party animal. His Florida friends like Shannon, MIke C., the Tudor King, others - more deceased than living, now - would all have "Mahaffey stories" to contribute.- Jeff Overby or Jay Whipple would have a few, no doubt - here's one from me, probably hasn't been heard before, at least it's got that going for it: ***** One year at the end of the last century, the fall nationals were held in Seattle. I'm guessing that this was 1998 or 1999. This was the year that Jayne Thomas, a Tournament Chair and District Representative from Florida, was president of the league. The even bigger convention in town that week was some sort of international organization - maybe the World Economic Forum, I recall there may have been protests. Jayne had almost as big a sense of herself as Jim had of himself, and they got along just fine. She was on his payroll for something, I forget what. Certainly if he needed to call upon her in her role as Tournament Chair she was likely to listen. Mahaffey sought to live an epic life - driving jeeps into fountains, ala F. Scott Fitzgerald. He nicknamed Jayne “The Demon Dyke”, and was immensely pleased with himself for coining that moniker. The scuttlebutt that week in Seattle said that The President of Singapore, in town for the Conference, had offered $25,000 a night for the Presidential Suite, which the ACBL had under contract - Jayne gave that offer the big passerooski - anyway, the first day of the tournament, the opening Friday, I'm walking back from the dinner break, just after twilight, about a block from the venue. Mahaffey is walking there too, I'm thinking he might have been returning from the meal break for the second session with Shannon. We're stuck on the sidewalk waiting, there's a huge, long convoy of SUV's and police vehicles with spinning blue lights,- probably an escort for the King of Siam or something - that was it, it was some kind of Pan Asian Conference. So all these official vehicles are crawling their way down the main drag of Seattle, Olympia Blvd or whatever - Mahaffey looks over the convoy, quite vast really - a dozen cars or more, stretched for close to a block - he sees that he has an audience of bridge players congregating on the street corner, and with his loud booming voice, he comments on the convoy: "Jayne Thomas, coming back from dinner." He laughed at his own joke and I remember it still, a quarter century later. Funny guy, Jim Mahaffey.
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Diary of a Bridge Pro #369/4/2024 Springfield, April 17 The weather started off amazing this morning, and my day did too. I arrived at the Discovery House around a dozen minutes before seven. Approaching the building, I fell into step with a gorgeous blond midwestern woman, a radiant artist type. In the meetings and around the group, Dana is always upbeat and encouraging. Today, in those marvelous minutes of the pre-meeting, she opened up to me about her own extensive trauma, and shared some tips on how she'd dealt with it. Yesterday, I spoke a few sentences in Group - rare for me. I read that script and was enchanted for life with one particular bit of dialogue from that scene: Dr. Evil: (world-weary): My childhood was typical - summers in Rangoon, luge lessons - (sighs) - ***** The outpouring of encouragement I received from other people there has been positive and transformative for me. I'll take this chance to encourage you to consider attending a meeting if you're thinking of it - and if not a 'Friends of Bill" meeting, then find your group uplift wherever you can - churches and temples are a natural place to go, but yoga classes and pickleball games are good choices too. Let me put in this Traveling Wilburys song here - I may have used it already but who cares? Thought for the Day: Find a group and participate - if only as an outsider. ***** Life is about change, they say - change is the single universal element. Coping with change is hard for most everyone - first you have to resolve to accept it, then you have to manage it - and, if you're here on the back nine (golf metaphor for the second half of life, post 35 or 40, say - like a majority of our writers and readership - then you have to manage that change with less energy and less societal support then you had yesterday, and a decade ago. And tomorrow you may have less still! One change that the entire society has undergone in the past five years: We are much less engaged with one another. This is the sort of change I would notice, and I certainly have - but lately I've heard others comment on this, as a voluntary assertion, not brought on by me. Let's look at a bridge deal, from my recent trip to South Florida to play in the regional there.  I held QJT8xxx, xx, Void, K97x - My partner Walter opened One Heart - I responded One Spade. I don't hate a 4 Spade response, but it is a bit of an overbid - the hand may be ours for eight or nine tricks in spades, why rush to a minus score: My LHO bid 2D, and partner bid 3C.
Bidding theorists could debate whether that 3C bid is forcing - as a practical matter it probably shouldn't be, for Opener doesn't want to have to pass with a good opening bid like Qx, KQJxx, x, AQTxx - but he doesn't want to force, either. Proponents of a limited opening bid system like Precision with trumpet the merits of that approach, but that isn't the point here, either. Most of us don't play Precision, and limited opening bid systems have its own problems associated with them. Over Partner's Three Club bid, I simply "put it in Four Spades", making our entire sequence: 1H (P) - 1S - (2D) - 3C - (P) - 4S - (P) - P - (P) I received the apparently favorable lead of the ace of diamonds, and Walter tabled a very solid hand: A, AQxxx, KJ, AQJxx - I ruffed the ace of diamonds and considered my line of play (not necessarily in that order). Clearly I would play the ace of trump at Trick Two. Now I would have to choose how to come back to my hand to drive out the king of spades. Two ways back: 1) Cash the king of diamonds, throwing a heart, then play ace of hearts, ruff a heart with the eight of spades, then lead the queen of spades. 2) Come to the king of clubs and lead the queen of spades from hand. Line One will be wrong (lose a trick to Line 2) when LHO has a singleton heart and the nine of spades. Line Two will be wrong when one player has a doubleton king of spades and three small clubs, , and the other has three small spades and a singleton club - in that variation, crossing to the king of clubs will expose me to a club ruff. I reasoned: A singleton club with three small spades is unlikely - if RHO had that he might well have raised diamonds - therefore, I should be safe crossing to the king of clubs. With the benefit of hindsight, I can see that that was a poor play - the risk is real, and the alternative line - coming to my hand with a heart ruff - is much safer - only wrong when there is a singleton heart on my left, along with the nine of spades in that hand as well. So I made a bad play on this hand, exposing myself to a club ruff by coming to my hand in the wrong suit - I got away with it - LHO won the king of spades and didn't play a second club. Thought for the Day: No Good Deed goes Unpunished - but sometimes you get away with a bad play! |
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