Diary of a Bridge Pro #27

Springfield, April 8, 2024

  6:58 AM, the weather is mild this morning here in Springfield, the temperature in the low fifties (Fahrenheit). I get it in my head that I should attend the 7 AM Friends of Bill gathering at the Discovery Center, across Edwards Street from my house, so I zip across the street for the fellowship and uplift available from the group, and from the reading of the daily statement and serenity prayer.

  Five years ago when I first visited this midwestern burg there was still a duplicate club here. Attendance was down to four or five tables in each of just a few sessions each week - maybe one evening game, the others in the afternoon. Covid restrictions marked the end for that club, and the end of regularly scheduled open duplicate bridge games in Springfield - I’ll speculate that they’d been conducted for close to 50 years, but attendance had probably been in steady decline since the nineties. 

  From my one visit to the club, I recall it as not an especially happy place. Internal rivalries, petty resentments, processed orange cheese on Ritz crackers - you know the scene. Lots of unresolved anger in the air. .

  *****

  Back in 2024, I’ve spent the morning working on securing players for a match in the Internet KO / Reynolds Team. I recruited a perky seventy year old former dance studio operator turned country club bridge coach to join us for some matches.

  This morning I also wrote some new instructional material - around eight hundred words for a piece titled: Do You or Don't You? (Open the Bidding)?

  I spent the balance of the morning being this new guy - the one with the bridge agency - the one triggered by a pair of events in Springfield - really a trio of events.

   I stopped playing in these internet KO’s around two years ago - just too hard to herd enough cats to have four for every match. But I’m resuming the practice.

  I'm puttin' the band back together....

​ That’s super important to me, what drives me here - the notion that I am part of a group, that we’re all doing this together. 

 *****

  This afternoon, I called long-time client Walter in Florida - he gave me his take on the blog and the website: He thinks it sometimes skews "cutesy".

  Walter is a Wall Street Guy, and what used to be called "a straight arrow". Performance art, conceptual art - not his long suit. Here’s a reconstruction of our exchange:

   "All this stuff about the Flying Wallendas," he griped, "Is that really necessary?"

  "Look, Walter, it's a character," I explained, "This Denis Wilsonovich is a character I created, from a bridge-playing family in Russia."

  "I get to meet this character?" 

  "Of course, I would love for you to meet this character."

  "He has an accent?" Walter persisted. I sensed this was a trap question on some level, but it’s been ten years since I invented this cat, so I was unfazed by Walter’s wariness.

  "He has accent," I assured him. "Naturally he has accent, he is Russian guy. This is bad for you, he has accent? He talks like cross between Lev and Irina Levitina, why you ask me this?"

  "Why would I want to play with this guy?"

  "He is much more fun, and ten percent cheaper than Glubok. Plus you score much higher!"

  For once Walter had no counter.

  Game, set, match.

  Just one thing I didn't tell him, I guess I'll tell him right here:

​  "You forget to give Wilsonovich ruff like you did last week in Florida, he will yell very hard on you!"
  - DW