Taken from the Table

At the 1997 Spring nationals in Dallas, Texas I was fortunate enough to finally be part of the assemblage of a team that was destined to heed the second part of the advise of our local expert. We had just a few more seating points than the "junior team" that ended up playing the #1 ranked team headed by Zia and company. Our foes were the Nickell team comprised of "Nick" Nickell, Richard Freeman, Robert Hamman, Bobby Wolff, Jeff Meckstroth, and Eric Rodwell. This team had at least one world title and a half a dozen National titles under their belt and therefore had the distinction of getting to practice against us in the first round. Many teams were in 3-way round robin matches, while we were going head to head for 64 boards as advised by my local mentor.

Shortly before the match began I asked Mark Itabashi, a California Professional I have hired frequently to give our team a pep talk. It went like this. "You have an opportunity here to do something that few people ever achieve in their lifetimes. What other situation can you compete in a real way against the greats of any sport for $26. If I wanted to hire Pete Sampras to fire serves at me for a couple of hours, just so I could hope to get a few back, it would cost me ten thousand dollars if he would do it at all." I have seen Mark come into a town where we were having a bridge tournament and call the local tennis club requesting to have a game with the town's best player, only to leave the local hero whimpering in the corner...therefore the reality of the tennis analogy. Mark continued with "you of course have absolutely no chance of winning today, but there is one thing that you can do; and that's take something away from the table when you are done. Watch what they do in-between hands as well as during the auctions and dummy play. Listen to what they say about the positions and hear their analysis of the results, card play, and state of the match. You can make this a learning experience that will last you for a long time, and it is at their expense so make it pay."

The match proceeded with us taking a minus position on one board and losing 17 imps during the 1st 16 board set to be behind by only 15. It was a sad moment when we scored that board up, but a moral victory when one of our teammates made the statement that he in fact was going to play harder now because he wanted to win. This was not to be in the near future because the line-up was about to include Hamman and Wolfe and by the end of the 1st half we were now down by 59 as we lost a net 44 more imps. Another professional Cameron Doner from Vancouver BC that I have hired and been very helpful in my bridge career offered some encouragement during the dinner break. "At least you are beating the spread." I was later to find out that the spread was 60 for the whole match.

The third set started with the full power line-up: Hamman-Wolfe at the other table and Meckstroth-Rodwell at ours. Their lead advanced to 88. When we were getting ready for the final 16 boards our spirits were still high..."Let's do whatever it takes to keep it under a hundred" was our battle cry. When Nickell-Freeman bid to 7 diamonds and went down on this hand our hopes for achieving the minus 100 were high as my partner and I felt that we had our best set of the match.

AJx,Ax,Axxxxxxx,K opposite Kxx,Kxx,K,AQJTxx Our teammates on the auction 1C - 1D - 3C Reached 7 No-trump and went down when the diamonds didn't break and the spade finesse failed, where they might have settled in 7 clubs which was cold. On scoring up the final segment we had only lost by 3 imps, even after missing a non vulnerable game at our table. Moral victory! A loss by only 91. When we were observing the scores the next couple of days there several matches of near to 150 point difference, so we really felt good about our efforts.

On returning to the point of this article I must categorize the aspects of the game that the champion types play that we normal human beings are barely aware of. First I must pay homage to Bob Hamman and his great book "At the Table". His overlying message in the book is that once the hand is over- IT'S OVER. enter the result on your score card and get ready for the next hand. Perhaps their concentration levels were not as keen playing against us but we still score 112 imps against them. The 1st time I hired Mark Itabashi he told me that any one hand could be "The Event Breaker". Each and every hand requires complete concentration. If your brain fluids are being deprived to the point of getting "Brain Cramps" because your partner is lambasting you for some moronic bid or play or guess you took on the hand 20 minutes ago, how many boards have you destroyed in the meantime? Likewise how does he even know for sure that you have subjected him to a bad result? I once bid an 8-5 hand to go minus 2000 finding our 5-3 fit at the 7 level and didn't hear the end of it for the rest of the match. When we scored it up for a plus 300 and 7 imp gain as the fellow in my seat at the other table stuck to his guns and went down an extra trick in his 8-1 fit. It was the only plus we had in the match, as my partner would'nt have me hear the end of their criticism till they were done criticizing. Consequently, there was NO concentration on the real matters at hand, which was finishing the next 6 boards in a timely and competitive manner. We actually had achieved a partnership position on the board but were too engrossed with recriminations to even recognize our small victory. Analysis of these freak type hands is difficult enough for Professionals and Experts, let alone the common near Flight A or B players.

What I noticed first off was the serious almost stonewalling nature of our opponents. Even though this was an incredible mismatch, and practically a practice session for this formidable team they were down to business. After all, it was the intention of some of our teammates to beat them. after the 1st set being only 15 imps difference and a having a single board be a 17 imp swing their must have been something happening that happens in all matches, or at least most of them. They actually had their guard down and they actually made mistakes. Here is the scenario as I see it. Their bidding was incredibly fierce during partscore battles at the 2 and 3 level. During one set Nickell-Freeman either bid clubs to the 4 level 4 times or determined that they could or should have. Such is the analysis of world-class experts during the hand and the post mortem.

The real key to their analysis strategy is twofold. Firstly what sounded like unintelligible mutter between very tight partnerships was actually very accurate appraisal of plus or potential push positions for our adversaries. The depth of their analysis was so good that we seldom really knew what they were talking about, like it was some coded banter or a foreign language. Something about entry squeezes, backwash opportunities, possible stepping stones and something about a hand they saw during the World Championships in Beijing. Just mutter. Secondly if they had determined that we had achieved a plus position or scored the maximum allowable on the cards given, and we had many due to our good card play or their mistakes or misguesses, they simply put their cards back in the boards-scored them up- and took out the next hand without saying a word. Three pairs of the finest bridge players in the world and I had the opportunity to watch them when they thought our team might have got them. Nothing was said, just complete silence. Kind of like this. I'm certain that Bob Hamman is correct in his book's description of the mental processes that happen when you are fending off an irate partner as well as two to 6 world class opponents. Here is a man who has his entire team practicing what he preaches, and it is obvious to me one of the major reasons why they are consistently on the top of the hill.

I would like to reiterate the advice I received and mentioned earlier. Read good bridge books, and "At the Table" has had more impact on making bridge a quality experience for me and my partners than any other book I have read. There are hundreds of books available on technique for bidding, declarer play and defensive strategy. Whatever your skill level is you will get better results if you nurture the attitude and attention span of your partner and teammates. Get a copy of the .PRECIOUS PARTNER.article by Grant Baze, you may find it on his website amidst the several articles he has shared with us.

Finally, get together 3 other friends and enter the Spingold or Vanderbilt team games, strap yourself in and let me know how you did.

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