Goodbye & Hello

Goodbye, Columbus! That was the title of a popular Philip Roth collection of short stories of the late 1950s, with Goodbye, Columbus! being the lead novelette. The title of the book is derived from a song by the class of graduating seniors from Ohio State University as they leave the Ohio capital … [Read more...]

Bridge According to the Stars

The bridge players’ horoscope for the month of September, 2019: Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) – This is your lucky month! Your astrological sign is star-crossed and you’ll consistently get below-average hands in point count. So when you complain about never getting any cards, at least this time it’ll … [Read more...]

Bridge with the Billionaires

My partner Christine and I decided to check out the Nebraska Regional bridge tournament this year (August 2019) because we had heard good things about it. Here are three reasons why it’s such a unique tournament. First, the tournament is actually held in Iowa, in Council Bluffs across the … [Read more...]

Crossing Borders

Crossing international borders for bridge events can result in some odd conversations with customs and immigration officials since they rarely play bridge and don’t know much about the game. A case in point was my partner Christine’s and my recent attendance at the Penticton, British Columbia, … [Read more...]

Where have they gone?

What’s happening to tournaments? Doesn’t anyone want to go anymore? Tired of seeing the same faces from across the state and the country all the time (most of whom are not very sociable anyway)? Apart from a few die-hard pros intent on beating each other’s brains out in knockouts and the souls … [Read more...]

Mr. Ping’s Thing

Last week my partner Christine and I closely followed the Daily Bulletins from the Florida Southeasterns Regional bridge tournament in Coral Springs. Due to her teaching and my directing commitments, we’d be able to play there only one day, Saturday [4-13-2019] Bracketed Swiss Teams with our South … [Read more...]

Doping

The news that the top bridge player in the world, Geir Helgemo, a Norwegian competing for Monaco, has been banned from the game for six months for doping at last fall’s world championships in Orlando has sent shock waves through the game. Helgemo, a 49-year-old man, admitted taking a synthetic … [Read more...]

The Bermuda Triangle

The annual world championship of bridge is called the Bermuda Bowl because the event started out there in 1950 – and returned to the island twice more for the 25th and 50th anniversaries in 1975 and 2000. But all other years, it has been staged somewhere else around the world, from China to India to … [Read more...]

The Partnership Desk

At last week’s Orlando Winter Regional, as a member of the board of the Central Florida Unit (240) that stages the tournament, I felt it was my duty to volunteer any needed services and I was asked, along with my partner Christine, to staff the Partnership Desk for the last three days, which gave us … [Read more...]

The Know-It-Alls

One of the surprises I got when I started directing duplicate games was how little some of the better players actually know about the rules and the laws of bridge – or maybe they do know the rules, but they try to bend them to their favor, intimidating everyone with their reputation as good players, … [Read more...]