Diary of a Bridge Pro #21

​Toronto, July 23

    The weather remains great here in Canada's largest city, and the mood at the tournament continues to be very positive. As a venue, the Metro Convention Center is spacious and airy, and the players are happy. The Blue Jays play nearby, the homeless on the streets are few in number, and all seems well in the kingdom of bridge.

  I played with an old friend and new client yesterday, Joe Rich. Here's a deal where he and I would have benefited from the method I outlined here yesterday, Deal #1:

​Opposite Joe's 2NT opening, I held T9xxx, T8, QTx, JT7 - I transferred to 3 Spades and passed, the preferred approach with this hand type (0-4 HCP and a five card major).

  Using the method discussed in yesterday's "Blog #20" ("Wilsonovich Responses to Two Clubs?") the bidding would go: 2C - 2S - Pass.

  Since we finished with the normal eight tricks, that auction would have led to a result of +110, rather than -50. a swing of about 1/4 of a board, or 1% on our final session score.

  As most of you realize, if you can pick up a 1/4 board here and a 1/4 board there, simply by stopping at the two level rather than getting to three, this will have a big impact on your results in the long run.

  *****

  I want to begin to write on bridge as a means for personal growth - whether we're fully conscious of this or not, I believe this is a major reason that many of us play. Top Five Ways Bridge Can Contribute to Your Personal Growth:

  1) Playing Bridge Helps You Think Better, Makes You Smarter
  2) Playing Bridge Forces You to Improve Your Capacity to Fit Well in a Group Setting
  3) Playing Bridge Leads You to Improve Your Behavior at the Table, Interacting with Others
  4) Playing Bridge Professionally Leads You to Work at Providing Desirable Services to Clients
 5) Playing Bridge Introduces You to Hundreds, Even Thousands of Different People from Widely-varied Backgrounds and Countries

  *****

  More From the Diary: 

  After the game, Joe, Paulo and I went for dinner in an amazing session on the 52nd floor of a complex on Bloor Street. A sushi restaurant, the eatery was elegant but not pretentious, pricey but not insanely so.

  Easy to see why the rich like being rich.

  *****

  Yesterday Paulo didn't play, so he took the opportunity to re-work our website, placing the link to these blogs near the top of the home page. We should have presented it that way from the start, of course, but neither Paulo or I is a professional web designer, or even an amateur one, so all things considered we did a decent job of designing the site and getting it before potential readers.

  "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good," that's one of our slogans (We didn't make that one up, someone else did.)

  *****

  Three of our WBS pros, all juniors, have had some success here. Specifically:

  1) Harrison Luba, Second Place in the GNT's, representing New England. His teammates included Emma Kolesnik, Adam Grossack and Cenk Tuncok. Spectacular! Harrison's best result ever.

  2) Ethan Wood, leader after one day in the Bruce LM Pairs 

  3) Louis-Amaury Beauchet, Second in the Regional Pair Game yesterday, with Robert Ives of Bethesda.

  *****

  Donna Compton will be recommending this blog to the Comptons' vast following, so let me take this chance to recommend her annual Santa Fe "Land Cruise". I'll provide more information and a link to their web-site in an upcoming blog.

  Call For Reader Input: Let me know what you'd like to see more of in these columns - interesting deals, system suggestions, Inside Bridge stuff, public service announcements, notices of high finishes by WBS pros, more diary type entries. I really want to know.

  Regards From Toronto, and bye for now!

  - BG

---