| Bridge Trivia | |
In 1931, the best-selling book in the USA was a bridge book, written by the first entrepreneur of bridge. What was its name?
Scroll down to find out. |
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Archive
Did you know that we archive many of our Deal of the Week newsletters? You can read them here. |
The Daily Deal
Each day we "seed" one lesson deal somewhere into our otherwise randomly dealt set of boards. The board number is different each day. You never know which board it is. The daily deal is a free mini-lesson. You can take home a handout of the daily deal every day. We hope you find it educational as well as entertaining. To see past Daily Deals, click here. |
Sitouts Banned!
We have done away with sit-outs, for once and for all. When we have a half-table in the game, you can play the hands you miss on the computer.
Your score vs. the computer does not count in the game, but it sure beats sitting out.
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Replay At Home  You can now replay the boards you've played at the club - in the comfort of your own home.
Replay the exact same hands with any of several commercial bridge programs such as GIB or Bridge Baron if you own one. If you have not purchased one, we have a free program for you to download. Click here for instructions. | |
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Free Bridge Lessons
Rich answers your questions every Tuesday prior to the game. |
Thursdays, we have a vugraph presentation. Rich reviews interesting deals of the past week. Each board in question is projected onto our large video screen for all to see as we discuss it. |
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Bridge Trivia Answer
Culbertson's Blue Book
Ely Culbertson, though not a great player himself, managed to convince the public via his salesmanship, that he was the world's leading authority on the game. Many of the ideas he espoused were those of his wife Josephine (who was a great player) or other professionals he hired to play on his team. |
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Continuing our series of famous bridge deals ...
Did you know that the national magazine Sports Illustrated used to run a regular bridge column? It was authored by none other than "Mr. Bridge" himself, Charles Goren.
While this is not a particularly famous deal, I managed to dig up one of Goren's SI columns from the February 6, 1967 issue. The cover that week featured a young Cassius Clay.
Scroll down to read the article. |
 Interclub Matches |
This one will pay overall masterpoints across both sections and it will be an Upgraded Club Championship (lot's of extra masterpoints).
The following day, Thursday, May 12, we will have our third "post card" match against five other clubs (two in the US and three in Australia). |
BOLS Bridge Tips Online |
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Check out our new page of free lessons online.
The BOLS Bridge Tips competition started in 1974, and took place off and on for more than 20 years. During that time, virtually all the world's greatest bridge players and writers contributed their ideas to the series.
Not sure what to lead? Can't decide the right bid? Want to make more contracts? Get pointers from the all-time greatest names in bridge -Reese, Rodwell, Zia, Flint, Goren, Hamman, Wolff, Schenken, Garozzo, Belladonna, Chagas and many more - they're all represented. All the advice is here in a perfect potpourri for players of every standard.
These tips are terrific. I have finished publishing them here. |
New Location for Saturdays |
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Since St. Demetrios is rented out so often on Saturdays, we are holding Saturday games at Billy Rose's bar, Jester's. It is located at:
801 E. Cypress Creek Road
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33334 |
The Flashy Leghorn Diamond by Charles Goren |
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Late last month one of the most esteemed members of Italy's World Championship Blue Team, Benito Garozzo, disclosed that the team may not defend its title this spring because its boss, Carlo Alberto Perroux, the czar of Italian bridge, wants to replace two of his six men (SI, Jan. 23). Perroux's determination to do this has led Garozzo and Pietro Forquet, two of Italy's best players, to say they will not compete unless the team is kept intact.
One of the more interesting sidelights of this situation is that if Perroux does get his way and manages to quell any rebellion by his aces, the opponents of the Italian team are going to be facing an even wilder bidding system than the ones they have seen-and been unable to cope with-in the past.
What Perroux proposes to do is banish the oldest member of the Blue Team, Walter Avarelli, and Mimmo D'Alelio, the player he has most often kept on the bench when the pressure was high. He would use their respective partners, Giorgio Belladonna and Camillo Pabis Ticci, as a pair, leave Forquet and Garozzo intact and complete the team with two newcomers from Leghorn, Benito Bianchi and Giuseppe Messina.
Both Bianchi and Messina are in their early 40s. They have had considerable international experience and have played for Italy in several European Championships. Among the advantages they would bring to the team is the fact that they would force their opponents to learn yet another very artificial Italian system: the Leghorn Diamond.
The Neapolitan Club already provides an exchange of information about high cards. The Roman Club emphasizes distributional information. The Leghorn Diamond is designed to add a further way to elicit information about both high-card strength and distribution, employing an artificial one-diamond opening, as well as an artificial one club. When the right hand comes along for the system, there is no doubt that it gleans information that no other method can provide with the same accuracy. The deal shown, from the 1965 European Championships, was perfect for Leghorn.
When Britain held the North-South cards, South opened with an artificial forcing bid of two clubs, and the British stopped at five hearts.
The Leghorn Diamond let the Italians get to the slam with ease. The opening bid was artificial and forcing. Messina's heart response did not show a suit, but simply denied any ace or king. Bianchi's spade bid was asking, and Messina's one no trump revealed that he had either one spade or none. Bianchi's two hearts was still another asking bid, and Messina's answer, three clubs, showed either four or five hearts without any of the three top honors.
Bianchi's leap to six hearts was the first natural bid of the auction. He had learned that his partner could ruff the second round of spades, had enough trumps to make the suit playable for only one loser, and that was all he needed to know. Messina, the declarer, had to concede a trump trick to West's queen-jack-6, but he was able to ruff three leads of spades and set up that suit to bring home the slam. |
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