ACBL BOD in Chicago -- complete response in one posting
Jim
Chris Pisarra correctly states that the Board of Directors will meet in
Chicago to vote upon the revised proposal for the League to work with Grand
Slam Bridge.
That meeting will be next weekend, March 3rd. President Howard Piltch
has not asked the Boardmembers to keep secret any aspect of this matter.
The editors of COI NEWSLETTER strongly support the current plan to contract
for the services of GSB, which is headed up by leading Australian bridge
teacher & club operator Paul Marston with successful U.S. major-event
promoter Robt. Nargassans.
They are organizing a sponsored cash-prize pro tour and have a network TV
bridge series in pre-production. These two big projects involve no
direct ACBL participation, yet should bring wide attention to our game.
That should mean eventual benefits to us, in terms of increased membership.
(COI NEWSLETTER articles can be found at w3.ime.net/~timg/coi/ and in
CompuServe's Bridge Forum.)
As for the proposal itself (agreed to via extensive negotiations several
weeks ago and detailed in a contract drawn up by the attorneys for both GSB
and ACBL), GSB will organize massive promotional operations aimed at
rubber-bridge players and at public & private high schools across North
America. They also will offer to every ACBL-affiliated club a new type
of player-ranking system – one which already has had substantial impact in
Australia, turning dying clubs into prospering clubs. Through Mr.
Nargassan's impressive network of top-level corporate contacts, GSB plans
to find substantial sponsors for ACBL events & activities.
These programs will entail large start-up costs for ACBL, with a commitment
along the lines of $1.5 million over the next two years. (The second year
is contingent upon successful results during the first year.) If the
various programs turn out to be largely unsuccessful, we would end up with
a net loss after one year of perhaps $250,000; if just modestly successful
after two years, we would have additional funds in our treasury and find
ourselves with a larger---and growing---membership.
A copy of an interesting open letter from Brian Trent to the Board on this
subject should appear on the COI Web Page soon, presumably Tuesday April
29th.
JIM WOOD
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here – this is the War Room!" …Pres. Merton
Muffly
Chyah Burghard
Jim Wood wrote:
They also will offer to every ACBL-affiliated club a new type
of player-ranking system – one which already has had
substantial impact in Australia, turning dying clubs into
prospering clubs.
====================
I would really like to know more about this ranking
before the BOD vote.
-Chyah
David Lindop
My understanding (based on a recent visit to Australia) is that the rating
system is similar to the handicap system. You are rated based on your
results and given a rating such as 64%. When you compete, if your result is
better than your rating, your rating improves; if it is worse, your rating
drops.
IMHO, this is not a popular scheme for rank and file players. It was
rejected by the Australian Bridge Federation (ABF) and Paul Marston broke
away the ABF to set up 5 bridge clubs using this approach. Two of these
clubs have since been closed. A third club is trying to get out of the
arrangement and return to the old ABF scheme of masterpoints.
Some of the reasons for the unpopularity of this approach:
1. The formula for calculating the ratings is complex and must be handled
by computer. While there are lots of computers to do the work, the players
don't understand the algorithms and the majority "just don't get it."
2. Your rating can go down as well as up. If you have a rating of 64 and
you happen to finish below average, your rating falls. That doesn't happen
in a masterpoint scheme. Your masterpoints accumulate; if you lose, you
don't lose masterpoints. While some might argue that masterpoints are just
a measure of how much you have played, rather than how well you have
played, most casual players like to win something when they do well, but
not lose anything when they do poorly.
Putting something at risk when you play is a disincentive for most casual
players, not an incentive. It brings out fear and stress . . . not the
desired approach for letting most enjoy the game. Give the players
something to gain but nothing to lose. Leave the hard-core winning and
losing for the professionals or serious tournament players. Keep it far
away from the majority of players who are in the game for social reasons.
(Personally, I liked the old idea of awarding ACBL scrip for winning -
which could be accumulated and then exchanged for something concrete. I
think Grand Slam may have something similar in their overall scheme.)
3. Perhaps related to the previous point, many players under this scheme
can no longer play with their friends. A player rated 70 isn't willing to
play with a player rated 50 and risk seeing their rating go down. If the
partnership has a game worth 60 (I'm not sure how all the details work but
I like to think of it as percentages), then the 50% player's rating will
increase while the 70% player's rating will decrease. So the better players
only want to play with the better players so they have a chance of
improving (or keeping) their rating by beating up on the little guy.
As I said earlier, this is my impression to those club managers, ABF
officials, and players I met in Australia. ACBL should probably get some
direct feedback from the Australians themselves. It would be short-sighted
to accept the word of those who have a lot to gain by seeing their methods
adopted in North America. (And ACBL doesn't have a good track record for
introducing things on a trial basis rather than as a "done thing" - Classic
Bridge, Alerts, etc.).
Chyah Burghard <DMF...@prodigy.com> wrote in article
<5k0ebl$3e...@newssvr01-int.news.prodigy.com>...
Henk Uijterwaal
David Lindop wrote:
> Some of the reasons for the unpopularity of this approach:
> 1. The formula for calculating the ratings is complex and must be handled
> by computer. While there are lots of computers to do the work, the players
> don't understand the algorithms and the majority "just don't get it."
> 2. Your rating can go down as well as up. If you have a rating of 64 and
> you happen to finish below average, your rating falls. That doesn't happen
> in a masterpoint scheme. Your masterpoints accumulate; if you lose, you
> don't lose masterpoints
This looks more like a PR problem than anything else. Of course,
ratings
can drop, that's the whole idea of a rating system.
> 3. Perhaps related to the previous point, many players under this scheme
> can no longer play with their friends.
Interesting kind of friends :-)
> A player rated 70 isn't willing to
> play with a player rated 50 and risk seeing their rating go down. If the
> partnership has a game worth 60 (I'm not sure how all the details work but
> I like to think of it as percentages), then the 50% player's rating will
> increase while the 70% player's rating will decrease.
If this is true, then the algorithm should be tuned.
Suppose you have a good (70%) and an average (50%) player, who team up
for a game. The expected score for the partnership is based on the
50% and 70% numbers. Now let's, for the sake of the argument, assume
that the expected partnership score is the average of the two, or 60%.
The game is now played and the partnership has indeed scored 60%. This
shouldn't affect the rating of either player. If the partnership
scores 61%, then both ratings should go up, as the partnership has
scored better than what one could expect from the individual rankings.
The same goes if the partnership scores 59%, the rankings should
go down as the partnership has done worse than expected.
> So the better players
> only want to play with the better players so they have a chance of
> improving (or keeping) their rating by beating up on the little guy.
This looks like another flaw in the algorithm. Beating up the little
guy should have little inpact on the ratings, just as me losing a chess
game against Kasparov won't improve his ELO ratings.
> IMHO, this is not a popular scheme for rank and file players.
Has the ABF (or anybody else) considered to introduce this scheme
for the top players only? If you start with the top 500
players and show that it provides a much more meaningful list
than a masterpoint based one, the average player might be
interested to find out where he is ranked w.r.t. the top
pros and how he improves/disimproves over time. At that
point, the ranking scheme might be expanded to more players.
Also, why not masterpoints _and_ rankings, rather than one or
the other?
Henk.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
%DCL-E-NOCFFE, unable to locate coffee - keyboard input suspended.
Tim Goodwin
lig...@u1.farm.idt.net (Richard Lighton) wrote:
>I've asked before and got no answer, but I believe Sweden has a
>rating scheme. Does anyone know how it works? Is the Marston
>scheme the only one that has been tried? Are we about to be landed
>with another piece of marketting sold to the Board of Directors without
>serious analysis. This one can be tried on past results.
There is a dynamic rating scheme used in Sweden, but it is only for
top rated players.
Tim
Jeff Goldsmith
Jim Wood <j...@wood.com> writes:
>That meeting will be next weekend, March 3rd. President Howard Piltch
>has not asked the Boardmembers to keep secret any aspect of this matter.
Indeed, we had a district board meeting last weekend
and some of the proposal was read to us.
>They are organizing a sponsored cash-prize pro tour and have a network TV
>bridge series in pre-production. These two big projects involve no
>direct ACBL participation, yet should bring wide attention to our game.
We get this for free? Cool. I didn't hear that
as part of the proposal. I thought we had to pay
for the TV show. I'm curious about this "network"
word---they already have an arrangement to air it
on a real major American TV network? That's amazing. If,
in fact, this is the case (I heard "PBS" at the meeting,
which is quite a different kettle of fish) then they are
already pulling rabbits out of hats.
>As for the proposal itself (agreed to via extensive negotiations several
>weeks ago and detailed in a contract drawn up by the attorneys for both GSB
That's overstating the case, I think. The first proposal
from GSB was rejected by the full board. They assigned
a committee (of five, I believe) to hammer out a new proposal
with GSB. Indeed, Jeff Polisner is on that committee, if
I remember right, so ACBL attorney(s) "agreed" to it, but
the proposal is just a proposal. The full board has to
agree to it for it to happen.
>and ACBL), GSB will organize massive promotional operations aimed at
>rubber-bridge players and at public & private high schools across North
>America. They also will offer to every ACBL-affiliated club a new type
>of player-ranking system one which already has had substantial impact in
>Australia, turning dying clubs into prospering clubs. Through Mr.
Note that these are independent options. We can accept the
promotion stuff and reject the rating scheme. Personally,
I'm very very dubious about the rating scheme, and I don't
see any good reason why we ought to pay for one. If the
ACBL were to believe that we need a real rating system, all
they'd have to do is ask their membership to suggest one.
ACBL members have plenty of expertise in this area.
The ACBL has a computer group (albeit a small one) in Memphis,
and it's not a particularly difficult job to get one implemented.
I don't know how much we'd have to pay for Marston's, but it doesn't
seem like a good idea to me. My guess, also, is that the statement
"turning dying clubs into prospering clubs" is propaganda. The
spirit of experimentation and the addition of Mr. Marston's
personal input to a club might well spark the members' interest,
but I very much doubt that a rating scheme did it by itself.
>Nargassan's impressive network of top-level corporate contacts, GSB plans
>to find substantial sponsors for ACBL events & activities.
The descriptions I heard were quite impressive, yes.
>These programs will entail large start-up costs for ACBL, with a commitment
>along the lines of $1.5 million over the next two years. (The second year
>is contingent upon successful results during the first year.) If the
>various programs turn out to be largely unsuccessful, we would end up with
>a net loss after one year of perhaps $250,000; if just modestly successful
>after two years, we would have additional funds in our treasury and find
>ourselves with a larger---and growing---membership.
This doesn't jibe with my understanding. GSB didn't make
any guarantees about saving the ACBL a million bucks.
Or about bringing it in. I think we have to consider
that the worst-case scenario is that we are out $1.5
million.
The numbers that I heard for break-even in the proposal
seemed way off-base to me. In order to cover a million
and a half, we'd need A LOT of new members right away
or serious financial input from elsewhere, and/or cost
savings. Membership increases aren't going to have that
much impact, I predict. If we see a 3% increase, we
are talking 5,000 new members. To produce a net average
increase of 3% over one year would be amazing. To save
$1.5 million through 5,000 people means $3000 a head.
Yeah, right. Obviously, GSB is planning on getting
sponsorship and other funding. I don't think it is
too pessimistic to consider the possibility that this
might not work, or might not work as well as proposed.
A 2-year time frame is also very fast. We should assume
that the majority of benefit we obtain from this plan
will not occur for at least two years.
All this is not to say that I am against the proposal.
I think marketing and promotion is something that the
ACBL needs to start doing in earnest. I have not read
the plan, just a very short summary. I didn't see any
fact-finding work planned, but there must be some, since
new employees will be hired to do marketing and
promotion. I think that the biggest obstacle to promoting
and marketing bridge is that we don't know very much about
our market. I'm also often dubious about grandiose plans
that do not appear to have a great deal of planning done
before implementation, but for all I know, Nargassan and
Marston may have been studying this problem for years.
If I had my druthers, I think I'd hire a very good
consultant and learn about the process of agressive
marketing and promotion, have him suggest a bunch of
different plans, and then buy pieces of the GSB proposal
that made sense from what I had learned. I'd probably
go for it piecemeal and start a little more slowly than
is currently planned. This, however, just reflects my
nature. It could easily be right to go for it. It
could wrong to the tune of $1.5 million. That's $10
per member. I think I'd try to get a competing proposal,
also. It might be that a different company would be
able to do many of these things more cheaply. Maybe I'm
just conservative, but I think I'd be very careful before
allocating that much money to something. I definitely wouldn't
pay for a new rating system unless it was positively brilliant,
containing many ideas I've never seen before.
My $0.02,
--Jeff
Richard Lighton
In article <33661CBE...@ripe.net>,
Henk Uijterwaal <he...@ripe.net> wrote:
[Lots of good commentary snipped on ratings schemes in general]
>
>
> > IMHO, this is not a popular scheme for rank and file players.
>
> Has the ABF (or anybody else) considered to introduce this scheme
> for the top players only? If you start with the top 500
> players and show that it provides a much more meaningful list
> than a masterpoint based one, the average player might be
> interested to find out where he is ranked w.r.t. the top
> pros and how he improves/disimproves over time. At that
> point, the ranking scheme might be expanded to more players.
>
One can only hope that the ACBL start in some such way. Nah, too
obvious. One way would be to start the scheme with only Nationally
Rated events, then work down to Regional events, then to sectional
events. It might even be a sensible idea never to include club
events. Open to debate.
> Also, why not masterpoints _and_ rankings, rather than one or
> the other?
>
In ACBLand, I think the idea of giving up on the masterpoint
scheme would be
a) a good idea, and
b) extremely unpopular.
Certainly the ACBL should keep masterpoints going, however meaningless
they have become (or always were, and have become worse).
I've asked before and got no answer, but I believe Sweden has a
rating scheme. Does anyone know how it works? Is the Marston
scheme the only one that has been tried? Are we about to be landed
with another piece of marketting sold to the Board of Directors without
serious analysis. This one can be tried on past results.
--
Richard Lighton | Anything worth doing is worth
(lig...@idt.net) | doing badly.
Wood-Ridge NJ |
USA | -- G. K. Chesterton
Stu Goodgold
In article <33661CBE...@ripe.net>,
on Tue, 29 Apr 1997 18:07:26 +0200,
Henk Uijterwaal <Henk> writes:
>David Lindop wrote:
>
>> Some of the reasons for the unpopularity of this approach:
>
>> 1. The formula for calculating the ratings is complex and must be handled
>> by computer. While there are lots of computers to do the work, the players
>> don't understand the algorithms and the majority "just don't get it."
Well, do they really have to understand the formula?? Or is it the
concept that they "just don't get". How many players (Henk excluded)
really understand pairing schemes and board movements in tournaments.
It doesn't stop them from playing.
By comparison the US Chess Federation uses a non-trivial computation
to determine players ratings. Not only do USCF members 'get it',
they wouldn't be without it. Are chess players really that different
than bridge players? (Just so you don't think this is a rhetorical
question, I do think they are indeed different :-).
>
>> 2. Your rating can go down as well as up. If you have a rating of 64 and
>> you happen to finish below average, your rating falls. That doesn't happen
>> in a masterpoint scheme. Your masterpoints accumulate; if you lose, you
>> don't lose masterpoints
>
>This looks more like a PR problem than anything else. Of course,
>ratings can drop, that's the whole idea of a rating system.
>
Exactly. So do this mean that bridge players do not want to compete,
or that they fear declining skills based on old age?
Perhaps a rating system would be just the thing to attract younger
players. They would be able to have a rating on par with established
competitors without having to wait 20 years to catch up.
>
>> 3. Perhaps related to the previous point, many players under this scheme
>> can no longer play with their friends.
>
>Interesting kind of friends :-)
>
>> A player rated 70 isn't willing to
>> play with a player rated 50 and risk seeing their rating go down. If the
>> partnership has a game worth 60 (I'm not sure how all the details work but
>> I like to think of it as percentages), then the 50% player's rating will
>> increase while the 70% player's rating will decrease.
>
>If this is true, then the algorithm should be tuned.
>
>Suppose you have a good (70%) and an average (50%) player, who team up
>for a game. The expected score for the partnership is based on the
>50% and 70% numbers. Now let's, for the sake of the argument, assume
>that the expected partnership score is the average of the two, or 60%.
That need not even be the case. The partnership rating could be
tilted one way or the other. You could even use it as an incentive
for stronger players to partner weaker ones. For example, the 70 and
50 players could have a partnership rating of 55. On top of that,
there is nothing that requires each side of the partnership must
receive the same increase or decrease as a result of their performance.
>
>The game is now played and the partnership has indeed scored 60%. This
>shouldn't affect the rating of either player. If the partnership
>scores 61%, then both ratings should go up, as the partnership has
>scored better than what one could expect from the individual rankings.
>The same goes if the partnership scores 59%, the rankings should
>go down as the partnership has done worse than expected.
>
>> So the better players
>> only want to play with the better players so they have a chance of
>> improving (or keeping) their rating by beating up on the little guy.
>
>This looks like another flaw in the algorithm. Beating up the little
>guy should have little inpact on the ratings, just as me losing a chess
>game against Kasparov won't improve his ELO ratings.
>
>> IMHO, this is not a popular scheme for rank and file players.
>
>Has the ABF (or anybody else) considered to introduce this scheme
>for the top players only? If you start with the top 500
>players and show that it provides a much more meaningful list
>than a masterpoint based one, the average player might be
>interested to find out where he is ranked w.r.t. the top
>pros and how he improves/disimproves over time. At that
>point, the ranking scheme might be expanded to more players.
>
An interesting concept. But remember that the ELO ratings used for
international chess competition got their start at the hands of
Arpad Elo, who devised the system for the rank and file of the USCF
members first. Once it was established and proven, then it was
propagated to the higher levels of the international chess world.
One afterthought: if resistance is so high to a rating system,
why can't something akin to masterpoint efficiency be published along
with the masterpt totals. It should be a simple matter to determine
the number of pts won in a year (or whatever time interval you choose)
divided by the max number of pts available to you
in all the events you entered over the same period.
Of course, we'd have to multiply by a factor of 1000 (10000?)
to give everyone the impression of a respectable integer :-).
Stu G
Richard Lighton
In article <33667469...@news.ime.net>, Tim Goodwin <ti...@ime.netX> wrote:
> lig...@u1.farm.idt.net (Richard Lighton) wrote:
>
> >I've asked before and got no answer, but I believe Sweden has a
> >rating scheme. Does anyone know how it works? Is the Marston
> >scheme the only one that has been tried? Are we about to be landed
> >with another piece of marketting sold to the Board of Directors without
> >serious analysis. This one can be tried on past results.
>
> There is a dynamic rating scheme used in Sweden, but it is only for
> top rated players.
>
I repeat, please DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW IT WORKS!
Is there anything about it that makes it only work for top
ranked players? Is it something like the ACBL seeding points
for major knockouts?
The US Chess Federation uses a rating scheme. Most other chess
organizations use a rating scheme. If I want to, I can find out
how they work and compute my own rating after every game I play.
I can examine the scheme for flaws. I can make suggestions for
change. The USCF has made changes to its rating system more than
once when flaws have been detected in the system.
Why are we being kept in the dark about how the Marston method works?
Is Nick Straguzzi's suggested system being considered?
Jeremy Mathers
In article <5k79tp$g...@u2.farm.idt.net>,
Richard Lighton <lig...@u2.farm.idt.net> wrote:
(someone else wrote the > > stuff)
> >
> > There is a dynamic rating scheme used in Sweden, but it is only for
> > top rated players.
> >
>I repeat, please DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW IT WORKS!
>
>Is there anything about it that makes it only work for top
>ranked players? Is it something like the ACBL seeding points
>for major knockouts?
A couple (or so) of comments:
1) Given the concerns raised about the intra-partnership
implications (I.e., that if a single score is used to rate a
partnership and the effects of play are identical to each
partner's rating), obviously, something like the "OK Bridge"
"Lehman rating" is needed. In fact, why not use the Lehman
rating system, a system which, despite endless claims in the
mailing list that it is faulty (which boil down to explanations
as to why the poster's Lehman doesn't adequately convey his/her
own immmense bridge skill), seems to me to be well constructed
and does the right things?
2) In any case, I can't imagine that a rating system is rocket
science, regardless of which system is eventually used. Easiest
to just pick one and get on with it.
3) I don't think the implication above was that it only
would/could/did work for the top players, but only that it
was, in fact, only used for them. The implication is that there,
as here, the idea just isn't popular with the "rank-and-file".
************************************************************************
Please take note:
- py...@quads.uchicago.edu, who is still costing the net
hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars, every time he posts -
************************************************************************
rwvpf wpnrrj ibf ijrfer
AlLeBendig
In article <336683...@gg.caltech.edu>, Jeff Goldsmith
<je...@gg.caltech.edu> writes:
>If I had my druthers, I think I'd hire a very good
>consultant and learn about the process of agressive
>marketing and promotion, have him suggest a bunch of
>different plans, and then buy pieces of the GSB proposal
>that made sense from what I had learned. I'd probably
>go for it piecemeal and start a little more slowly than
>is currently planned. This, however, just reflects my
>nature. It could easily be right to go for it. It
>could wrong to the tune of $1.5 million. That's $10
>per member.
It doesn't surprise me that Jeff has some misinformation. He heard about
the proposal from a strong opponent of the plan. I happen to be a strong
supporter. This proposal by GSB contains many different facets which they
are offering to perform for the ACBL. They have a proven track record for
promoting events and organizations. Their customer list is very
impressive. A couple of weeks ago, there were three references to bridge
on ESPN. They were just "throw-away" lines. Example: announcer is
discussing the Grand Slam and adds that it pay a big bonus in bridge.
There were two other such references. To be able to get such discussions
with just a phone call demonstrates a terrific amount of power, IMO. If
GSB is going to perform these acts in partnership with the ACBL, we will
take their program basically as it is presented. They are the ones who
seem to have the expertise and the contacts to make it work. Jeff allows
as how this will cost $10 per member. I see it as ONLY costing $10 per
member. GSB will get a good deal of money on the back end ONLY if their
programs prove to be successful. They will become partners with the ACBL
in sharing in the success of their plans. They make much more money if
they can perform.
>I think I'd try to get a competing proposal,
>also. It might be that a different company would be
>able to do many of these things more cheaply.
If we want, we will get a lot of competing proposals. I could offer one
for 20K and next week someone else could offer one for 10K. Before long
it will be much cheaper. But what good are "bids" if they come from
companies that do not have that much expertise? The ACBL has spent much
money in the past trying to deal with these problems. And we have proven
that we have no idea what we are doing. Management is clearly not good in
this area. I believe it is time to get someone working with us who has a
proven track record. And the established contacts are a bonus. Let's say
you go to a psychologist because you're suffering from depression and he
convinces you that he can cure your depression. The cost will be $200 per
hour. If you believe in him, do you go looking for a cheaper dr?
>Maybe I'm
>just conservative, but I think I'd be very careful before
>allocating that much money to something. I definitely wouldn't
>pay for a new rating system unless it was positively brilliant,
>containing many ideas I've never seen before.
This "rating system" is NOT what is being discussed in this thread. It
was not intended to be a rating system for the ACBL (it could become
more). Paul designed this system for the clubs and that is where it is
currently being used quite successfully in Australia. He has several
successful clubs in Australia (I think two were just sold) and other clubs
clamoring for the program. The CARDS (name of program) system
accomplishes several things. It rates individuals and partnerships and
the entire field. It deals with past performance and as a result requires
about 9 months of input to make it effective. The concept is to give
players an idea of how they should be doing based on the field they're
playing in. Are many of you aware of how many players we lose out of the
clubs because of total frustration? They show up time after time and have
their 35 - 45% (on a good day) and never get any masterpoints. More than
once I have posted scores and heard a squeal "WE BEAT SOMEBODY!" Sad.
Many eventually give up. CARDS will allow us to show them some goals that
they should be accomplishing and they can see some progress without ever
getting near any masterpoints. This handicapping method will in no way
replace our masterpoint system. Despite what some posters would have us
believe, many actively seek this valuable commodity. I agree that it is
not an effective way of rating players. But is still extremely valuable
to the ACBL and serves a very real purpose.
It is not clear if the BOD will accept this proposal this weekend. At
this point I would guess it is less than 50% to pass. I am very unhappy
with the "reasons" that are being given for turning it down. I firmly
believe that many will vote no because they're scared. They talk about
having just over 3 million in reserves and how terrible it would be if we
lost a good portion of that because this proposal didn't work. Despite
all the naysayers, we would not be bankrupt and would still be in much
better shape than we have many times in the past. They sound like my
mother. Perhaps when I'm that age I'll be able to understand this
rationale. How much good will those reserves be in ten years if something
drastic doesn't happen for bridge? I'm 49 and don't give a damn about the
money. I want a viable organization that can actively promote a wonderful
game that I love. I believe that GSB can help make that a reality again.
We have always been taught there were no guarantees in life. And GSB is
offering us none. The only thing I am certain of is that bridge as we
know it is in serious trouble. Here's someone offering us some concrete
proposals to counteract that trend. I think it's time to take that risk.
We're all able to accept a line of play that yields down five in order to
make our contract. Especially when we know down one is useless. That's
where we are, IMO. Make the contract and win the event...
> My $0.02,
And mine.
%%%
O O
( > )
\ 0
/ \
Alan LeBendig
Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot...
Tim Goodwin
py...@midway.uchicago.edu (Jeremy Mathers) wrote:
>In article <5k79tp$g...@u2.farm.idt.net>,
>Richard Lighton <lig...@u2.farm.idt.net> wrote:
>(someone else wrote the > > stuff)
>> >
>> > There is a dynamic rating scheme used in Sweden, but it is only for
>> > top rated players.
>> >
>>I repeat, please DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW IT WORKS!
No, I don't. I was given an e-mail address for a Swedish bridge
official (by a Swedish player who I found on OKBridge), but got no
response to my request for information. (And, I have long since lost
the address.)
>A couple (or so) of comments:
>
> 1) Given the concerns raised about the intra-partnership
> implications (I.e., that if a single score is used to rate a
> partnership and the effects of play are identical to each
> partner's rating), obviously, something like the "OK Bridge"
> "Lehman rating" is needed. In fact, why not use the Lehman
> rating system, a system which, despite endless claims in the
> mailing list that it is faulty (which boil down to explanations
> as to why the poster's Lehman doesn't adequately convey his/her
> own immmense bridge skill), seems to me to be well constructed
> and does the right things?
> 2) In any case, I can't imagine that a rating system is rocket
> science, regardless of which system is eventually used. Easiest
> to just pick one and get on with it.
Just picking one and getting on with it is a bad idea. Certainly the
merits of the rating system should be examined. There are a couple of
things that are (IMO) wrong with Lehmans: 1) I don't believe that a
arithmetic average should be used when determining the rating of a
partnership. But, I could be wrong. Cartainly this could be tested,
and perhaps already has in Australia. 2) I believe that a partnership
experience factor should be used -- a pick-up partnership should not
be expected to perform as well as an experienced partnership (of like
rated players).
Do I think these things would make much of a difference? No. But, to
me, they would lend legitimacy to a dynamic rating system. They
would, of course, also make the ratings calculations more complex and
thus make it harder for players to understand just what is affecting
their ratings.
Another problem I have with a Lehman type system (and Nick's rating
system) is that the ratings are determined on a hand-by-hand basis (in
Nick's case on a MP percentage basis). But, when I enter a MP event,
my objective is to win -- not to score 58% or 62%. If I score 58% and
win, I have done better than if I score 62% and come in second. This
is especially true of KO event. Haven't you ever been up (or down)
significantly and as a result adjusted your game in an attempt to
reduce (or increase) the number of swings? This strategy may be
flawed on the basis of acheiving an optimal IMP result on an
individual hand, but may be an optimal strategy for winning the event.
Anyway, a rating system which does not take into account the
conditions of contest is flawed.
Tim
Win Schaeffer
5000 people at $3000 per head is $15,000,000. Even so, $300 each is
unlikely.
Win Schaeffer
bobby goldman
Let me start out by saying that I support the ACBL-Grand
Slam Bridge proposal in general concept.
As an analogy, let me use:
My house is old, run down and I am starting to
visualize a day when it will no longer be standing.
I have some money put away that I've been hoarding for my
retirement, but I guess I will have to dig into it. I keep
making minor repairs to the house, but its reached the state
that making repairs to the repairs is only creating more
repairs to make.
Some friends take me house hunting and I see a
magnificent house (at least on the surface, I don't have the
skills to examine it further). I love the house and decide I
want to buy it.
Conversation with the owner leads to a price of $1.5
million FIRM. Sounds high, perhaps higher than I can afford.
The seller assures me its a great house. I ask him how long
he has lived in it. He says he hasn't, but he has lived in a
similar house.... well at least similar to the degree that
it was priced in the millions.
My friends tell me that I'm a fool to worry about the
price. I have 150,000 business customers, just add $10 to
each one's next purchase and I can pay for it that way..
hmmmmm .....and besides my dilapidated house might
collapse tomorrow.
One element of the house looks oddly familiar. Its a
super-duper shower nozzle. I see in a note supporting the
overall price that the nozzle has a $50,000 evaluation. I've
been told that all the sweet young things at the nearby
sorority house will be clambering to use my super duper
shower nozzle. :> It does look very similar to the one they
have at OKBridge. Bet something like OKBridge's could be
obtained or recreated for $5000 or less.
Yes, I do really want this house... need it, in fact. But
I think I better have a competent appraiser spend a little
time determining what a fair price for it would be.
You say the owner of the house demands an immediate YES
or NO answer. It's buy today at 1.5M or never? For some
reason that scares me.
Bobby Goldman
David Shao
I'm afraid that decades of non-optimal support by the ACBL to
promoting bridge at the highest levels is coming home to roost.
Almost every sport or game in the US that has attempted to increase
public awareness through a massive media campaign has relied on
the success of Americans competing for the world championship.
US chess needed Bobby Fischer.
US women's basketball needed the women's team to win the gold medal
at the Atlanta Olympics.
US hockey needed the miracle at Lake Placid.
Americans want to root for the best in the world, not just in the
US. Note that decades ago the major US professional soccer
federation went bankrupt. We shall see if the new US major
professional soccer league succeeds in drawing public interest.
Relative to the huge numbers of people in the US who either play
soccer or have kids who play soccer, it is at first surprising
to realize how low the support is for watching professionals,
until one realizes that maybe one major factor is that the US
team can't compete at the highest levels.
Americans want to watch Americans winning world championships,
and they also want human interest stories. Americans want a
Tiger Woods. Americans want to see young rising stars smashing
social barriers, beating the establishment.
I could believe that the GSB proposal has a chance to succeed
if someone could just tell me who American contract bridge's
Tiger, or better yet in my opinion Tigress, Woods is going to be,
and who American contract bridge's Nike is going to be.
Bob Hamman is a player for the ages, but it is ridiculous to think
that he can be sold to the public as a celebrity. It's not going
to work to try and sell Meckwell, or Hamman and Wolff, or Zia and
Rosenberg, or Martel and Stansby, etc., to a new generation.
And what company with billions of dollars of revenues has natural
links to bridge? Are we somehow going to get Nike interested in
selling all of us bridge clothing or apparel?
The other way to sell bridge is to advocate that it's good for the
young to learn. Not even bridge players I've heard on this
newsgroup make any argument that bridge is good to learn. Chess
seems to have totally triumphed as the educational high intellect
game for high schools.
At this point, US contract bridge has nothing to sell.
David Shao
Donald A. Varvel
In <5k5ian$e...@u1.farm.idt.net> lig...@u1.farm.idt.net (Richard
Lighton) writes:
>
>In article <33661CBE...@ripe.net>,
>Henk Uijterwaal <he...@ripe.net> wrote:
>
>[Lots of good commentary snipped on ratings schemes in general]
> >
> >
> >
> > Has the ABF (or anybody else) considered to introduce this scheme
> > for the top players only? If you start with the top 500
> > players and show that it provides a much more meaningful list
> > than a masterpoint based one, the average player might be
> > interested to find out where he is ranked w.r.t. the top
> > pros and how he improves/disimproves over time. At that
> > point, the ranking scheme might be expanded to more players.
> >
>obvious. One way would be to start the scheme with only Nationally
>Rated events, then work down to Regional events, then to sectional
>events. It might even be a sensible idea never to include club
>events. Open to debate.
>
> > Also, why not masterpoints _and_ rankings, rather than one or
> > the other?
> >
>In ACBLand, I think the idea of giving up on the masterpoint
>scheme would be
>
>a) a good idea, and
>b) extremely unpopular.
Now, hold on a moment.
Masterpoints have always been a marketing ploy. Anyone with
any sense realizes it. At any given skill level, the more you
play the more you win.
So why should the ACBL give up a wonderful, proven-effective
marketing ploy? I don't understand how anyone can say that's
a "good idea". The fact that doing away with masterpoints
would be "extremely unpopular" is a very strong argument that
it would in fact be a *bad* idea.
I favor the use of a rating system in addition. As I have said
before in this forum, I'm not sure ratings should be made
public, but I think it would make a lot of sense for the ACBL
or any other organization to know who the best junior players
are, for instance.
I have seen only one valid objection to ratings. That is that
the players don't understand them. All of the other objections
simply go to prove that one.
In a reasonable rating system, if a player with a 70% rating
played with a player with a 50% rating, and their expected
result was 60% in a field averaging 50% (I could be convinced
it wouldn't be, but there *is* an expected result in any case),
scoring 60% should leave both ratings unchanged; scoring above
60% should cause both ratings to rise; and scoring below 60%
should cause both ratings to drop. Since rating systems with
exactly that property have been known for years, and Marston
almost certainly knows it, I find it nearly impossible to believe
he would use something else.
OKBridge has a rating system, and Marston has played OKBridge.
-- Don Varvel
David Stevenson
Richard Lighton wrote:
>Henk Uijterwaal wrote:
[s]
> > Also, why not masterpoints _and_ rankings, rather than one or
> > the other?
> >
>In ACBLand, I think the idea of giving up on the masterpoint
>scheme would be
>
>a) a good idea, and
>b) extremely unpopular.
Why would it be a good idea? Despite a lot of flak in RGB [and
similar complaints in England!] many people like such schemes, which are
achievement-based. I can never understand the logic that people who do
not want achievement-based schemes want to take them away from those who
do.
I am happy with additional schemes [Gold Points, which are degradable,
have been introduced over here] but the idea of getting rid of people's
enjoyment because of the basis seems most unreasonable to me.
>Certainly the ACBL should keep masterpoints going, however meaningless
>they have become (or always were, and have become worse).
In what way are they meaningless? The only serious complaint I have
ever heard of them is that they are achievement-based, and that is far
from the same thing as meaningless.
--
David Stevenson MayDay Swiss Pairs in Liverpool!
Nanki Poo is FOUR! Hughes Simultaneous Pairs at end of June!
nank...@blakjak.demon.co.uk See my Homepage for details
Homepage: http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk
Richard Lighton
In article <wCztwjAn...@blakjak.demon.co.uk>,
David Stevenson <ne...@blakjak.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Richard Lighton wrote:
> >Henk Uijterwaal wrote:
>
> [s]
>
> > > Also, why not masterpoints _and_ rankings, rather than one or
> > > the other?
> > >
> >In ACBLand, I think the idea of giving up on the masterpoint
> >scheme would be
> >
> >a) a good idea, and
> >b) extremely unpopular.
>
> Why would it be a good idea? Despite a lot of flak in RGB [and
> similar complaints in England!] many people like such schemes, which are
> achievement-based. I can never understand the logic that people who do
> not want achievement-based schemes want to take them away from those who
> do.
>
_I_ think it would be a good idea to get rid of them because they
provide no meaningful measure of how good player A is compared with
player B. I did not say that the ACBL should get rid of them.
As Don Varvel said in another response, they are a wonderful marketting
tool. However, the ACBL has now so over-inflated them that they begin
to look like 1920s Deutschmarks. See later comments.
> I am happy with additional schemes [Gold Points, which are degradable,
> have been introduced over here] but the idea of getting rid of people's
> enjoyment because of the basis seems most unreasonable to me.
>
> >Certainly the ACBL should keep masterpoints going, however meaningless
> >they have become (or always were, and have become worse).
>
> In what way are they meaningless? The only serious complaint I have
> ever heard of them is that they are achievement-based, and that is far
> from the same thing as meaningless.
They are far more attendance based within the rankings of players of
comparable playing ability. Look at the ACBL Top 500 lists every year.
Yes, with one or two exceptions the leaders are world-class players,
but equally strong players have vastly fewer points won.
Last year I think I acquired 130ish masterpoints. I did not play
any better than two years earlier, and I played far less in good
competition. Two years ago I acquired 80ish master points. What's
the difference? The ACBL made "adjustments" to the masterpoint
scheme. Now, winning the Vanderbilt gets you 200. Not long ago
it got you 150. Do you have to play any better to win it? No.
In a stratified event, when I am in Flight B and do well, I get
more masterpoints for finishing 1st in B/4th in A than if I were
3rd in A. Did I do better? No. If you want to award masterpoints
for lower flights in stratified events, work out what the masterpoints
would have been in the overall rankings _if they had gone down to28th_
and give 3rd in C points based on that.
The system has got so silly that:
a) In a two-session regional pairs event last August I noted
that 74% of the field won masterpoints
b) In the regular Monday night club game I play in, where the
standard of most of the field is awful (I'm having a bad game
if I don't get 60%, and I'm not what I call "Flight A material")
it is by no means unusual for 7 pairs in a 5 table game to get
points? Why? Because the thing is stratified and the lady who
runs the game is an expert at giving away masterpoints.
For "1000 ACBL masterpoints" to mean anything to me, I need to know
a. How long the holder has been playing
b. How much they play
c. WHEN they got their masterpoints.
If someone in his eighties tells me that he has not played
much recently and he has 4 masterpoints, I am far more impressed
if he then adds that two of them were for winning some team event
at Asbury Park in the 1930s. He probably won the Vanderbilt.
Richard Lighton
In article <5ka7kt$l...@u3.farm.idt.net>,
Richard Lighton <lig...@u3.farm.idt.net> wrote:
>
[Long rant on ACBL masterpoints snipped]
>--
>Richard Lighton | Anything worth doing is worth
>(lig...@idt.net) | doing badly.
>Wood-Ridge NJ |
>USA | -- G. K. Chesterton
I _really_ should remember what my .signiature file currently
is before writing about the ACBL masterpoint system :-)
David Stevenson
Stu Goodgold wrote:
> Henk Uijterwaal <Henk> writes:
>>David Lindop wrote:
>>
>>> Some of the reasons for the unpopularity of this approach:
>>
>>> 1. The formula for calculating the ratings is complex and must be handled
>>> by computer. While there are lots of computers to do the work, the players
>>> don't understand the algorithms and the majority "just don't get it."
>
>Well, do they really have to understand the formula?? Or is it the
>concept that they "just don't get". How many players (Henk excluded)
>really understand pairing schemes and board movements in tournaments.
>It doesn't stop them from playing.
OKBridge has a Lehman rating. It does seem to lead to a lot of
argument, and some of it seems to me to be because it is not understood.
Chris Pisarra
AlLeBendig presented to the world:
: This proposal by GSB contains many different facets which they
: are offering to perform for the ACBL. They have a proven track record for
: promoting events and organizations. Their customer list is very
: impressive. A couple of weeks ago, there were three references to bridge
: on ESPN. They were just "throw-away" lines. Example: announcer is
: discussing the Grand Slam and adds that it pay a big bonus in bridge.
: There were two other such references. To be able to get such discussions
: with just a phone call demonstrates a terrific amount of power, IMO.
Are you saying that GSB is already on the job? Are they taking
credit for these mentions? Is this a free sample, blind coincedence,
dumb luck or the start of their paid function?
Chris
--
Chris Pisarra pis...@ccnet.com
The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.
--Plutarch
Stu Goodgold
In article <7aOvmYBT...@blakjak.demon.co.uk>,
on Thu, 1 May 1997 21:45:07 +0100,
David Stevenson <David> writes:
>Stu Goodgold wrote:
>>
>>Well, do they really have to understand the formula?? Or is it the
>>concept that they "just don't get". How many players (Henk excluded)
>>really understand pairing schemes and board movements in tournaments.
>>It doesn't stop them from playing.
>
> OKBridge has a Lehman rating. It does seem to lead to a lot of
>argument, and some of it seems to me to be because it is not understood.
>
in chess has been around for decades (about 4 of them).
Many chess players do not know the fine points of the calculation.
But they do put faith in the ratings because they view them as a fair
indication of playing strength and understand that if you play well
against equivalent or better opposition your rating will go up.
A newer rating system (of any group) is likely to be a little unstable.
The USCF gives newer players "provisional" ratings until they have
enough tournament results to reduce the variance.
The Lehman rating may not as yet be a reasonable indicator of playing
strength, due to its relative newness and sparcity of data points.
That would lead to inaccuracies and thus suspicion of its worth.
Over time it should stabilize if the system is well-designed.
One of the reasons to start a bridge rating system only with the top
experts is that
a) they play regular,
b) their skill level is not changing very quickly, and
c) they are much better able to judge if the rating system
is a good measure of bridge ability.
Stu G
David desJardins
Alan LeBendig <alleb...@aol.com> writes:
> A couple of weeks ago, there were three references to bridge on ESPN.
> They were just "throw-away" lines. Example: announcer is discussing
> the Grand Slam and adds that it pay a big bonus in bridge. There were
> two other such references. To be able to get such discussions with
> just a phone call demonstrates a terrific amount of power, IMO.
I wouldn't pay a plugged nickel for this. I think the reason that ACBL
membership is low is not that people have never heard of bridge. It's
that the game is difficult, and is an acquired taste, and the barriers
to entry are fairly high. I'd much rather spend our money on making it
easier for people who might want to be bridge players to do so (i.e.,
subdized bridge lessons and education, reduced membership fees for young
people, "Bridge America", etc.) than on Public Relations designed to get
people to "feel good" about bridge.
David desJardins
--
Copyright 1997 David desJardins. Unlimited permission is granted to quote
from this posting for non-commercial use as long as attribution is given.
David desJardins
David Shao <ds...@best.com> writes:
> I'm afraid that decades of non-optimal support by the ACBL to
> promoting bridge at the highest levels is coming home to roost.
> Americans want to watch Americans winning world championships,
> and they also want human interest stories.
I don't particularly agree with this goal, of course. (I don't dislike
soccer because Europeans are better than Americans, I dislike it because
games that often end with no score after 60 minutes are stupid and badly
designed from a statistical point of view). But your comments about
needing strong young players, especially women, do bring a thought to
mind. Maybe we could get a jump on the rest of the world in producing
strong woman players by abolishing women's events in the US, and by
refusing to select teams for WBF women's events.
And even if it didn't work, we'd have virtue on our side. I doubt this
would produce the desired short-term result of increased attendance,
though.
Sue Picus
David desJardins wrote:
>
> David Shao <ds...@best.com> writes:
> > I'm afraid that decades of non-optimal support by the ACBL to
> > promoting bridge at the highest levels is coming home to roost.
>
> > Americans want to watch Americans winning world championships,
> > and they also want human interest stories.
>
> I don't particularly agree with this goal, of course. (I don't dislike
> soccer because Europeans are better than Americans, I dislike it because
> games that often end with no score after 60 minutes are stupid and badly
> designed from a statistical point of view).
you know David you spoil your case by making such ourageous comments as if they
were God's writ. Whjat you may happen to dislike of ind stupid is not
necessarily goping to be followed by the rest of the world. As a keen baseball
fan I can see the same arguiment might apply to Baseball too. That does not
stop people watching either game in much larger numbers than Beridge. Cultivate
- if not humility - a little common-sense.
But your comments about
> needing strong young players, especially women, do bring a thought to
> mind. Maybe we could get a jump on the rest of the world in producing
> strong woman players by abolishing women's events in the US, and by
> refusing to select teams for WBF women's events.
I think other than trials that women-only events are relatively rare in the
rest of the world. My recollection is that most UK congresses will have at most
one such event as opposed to the 3/4 in the US National; not quite a fair
comparison since the US events are longer...
> And even if it didn't work, we'd have virtue on our side.
Why? more moral judgments with nothing but your opinion to support them
Barry
Thomas Andrews
In article <r88bu6u...@aleph.CS.Princeton.EDU>,
David desJardins <de...@CS.Princeton.EDU> wrote:
>Alan LeBendig <alleb...@aol.com> writes:
>> A couple of weeks ago, there were three references to bridge on ESPN.
>> They were just "throw-away" lines. Example: announcer is discussing
>> the Grand Slam and adds that it pay a big bonus in bridge. There were
>> two other such references. To be able to get such discussions with
>> just a phone call demonstrates a terrific amount of power, IMO.
>
I agree with David here. I couldn't help but think this is where the
infomercial audience gasps and applauds at some mundane and useless
feature of a product.
Basically, the arguments I have heard for Grand Slam have been,
"The ACBL is so bad, turn the reigns over the anybody else."
That mentality is, of couse, precisely why the ACBL is so bad.
Mentioning bridge on ESPN is not going to get the kids to play
the game. Maybe we should see if we can get bridge into a music
video or something :-)
Grand Slam Bridge might be a good thing. I just start feel like I'm
buying a used car when I read the arguments in its favor. I start
feeling nervous when the car salesman spends too much time showing me
useless features and keeps telling me how bad my current car is.
--
==
Thomas Andrews tho...@best.com http://www.best.com/~thomaso/
"Harry Truman's a goddamn liar. No
pidgeon ever lit on my head." - Senator Sam Rayburn
Kathy Fallenius
Tim Goodwin wrote:
> There is a dynamic rating scheme used in Sweden, but it is only for
> >> > top rated players.
> >> >
> >>I repeat, please DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW IT WORKS!
>
> No, I don't. I was given an e-mail address for a Swedish bridge
> official (by a Swedish player who I found on OKBridge), but got no
> response to my request for information. (And, I have long since lost
> the address.)
>
Re Swedish Ranking system. It's been in effect for several years,
started by Bjorn Fallenius and currently maintained for the Swedish
Bridge Federation by Anders Ljung. It can be seen at the SBF's
site:www.bridgefederation.se under Ranking. I am sure you can get info
by e-mailing Micke Melander or A.Ljung at that address.
Chyah Burghard
David wrote:
think the reason that ACBL membership is low is not that
people have never heard of bridge. It's that the game is
difficult, and is an acquired taste, and the barriers to entry
are fairly high.
I'd much rather spend our money on making it easier for
people who might want to be bridge players to do so (i.e.,
subdized bridge lessons and education, reduced
membership fees for young people, "Bridge America", etc.)
than on Public Relations designed to get people to "feel good"
about bridge.
=================================================
In high school, I had to take ball room dancing. Maybe
at the time they thought you needed to learn ball room
dancing for proper social skills. But what if when you
choose an elective (optional) class, you were able to
choose learning bridge instead. Children/teenagers
have the ability to learn rapidly when they are interested
in something.
On the negative side, there are certain things that we
in the bridge world do, that leaves such a bad taste in
the mouth, that it turns people off from wanting to learn
bridge.
I am talking about the kinds of negative behaviors
these kids witness when they are caddying or even
watching their parents at the kitchen table. Then what
happens is they don't give bridge the same chance that
a kid in high school might give the game who knows
nothing about the game previous to the exposure in
school.
The other thing is if bridge is "perceived" to be an
old person's game, then a child would not want to
learn the game because it wouldn't be "cool/kewl".
At one of the NABC's I witnessed a midnight game
with all the available Caddys playing in a very relaxed
environment where they could ask for lots of help.
The kids were having a great time and getting to
socialize with those of their own age group.
If I were kid and came away from the nationals with
memories of a good time, I would want to go home and
learn bridge so the next time I played, I could be
better than everyone else!
-Chyah
Kathy Wagner
In article <r88afme...@aleph.CS.Princeton.EDU> de...@CS.Princeton.EDU (David desJardins) writes:
>David Shao <ds...@best.com> writes:
>> I'm afraid that decades of non-optimal support by the ACBL to
>> promoting bridge at the highest levels is coming home to roost.
>
>> Americans want to watch Americans winning world championships,
>> and they also want human interest stories.
>
>I don't particularly agree with this goal, of course. (I don't dislike
>soccer because Europeans are better than Americans, I dislike it because
>games that often end with no score after 60 minutes are stupid and badly
>designed from a statistical point of view).
Actually, they usually manage to go 90 minutes without scoring...
50% more boring than Dave dJ thinks...
David desJardins
Chyah Burghard <DMF...@prodigy.com> writes:
> If I were kid and came away from the nationals with memories of a good
> time, I would want to go home and learn bridge so the next time I
> played, I could be better than everyone else!
I think that's great. (Although I don't think one's enjoyment should be
predicated on being "better than everyone else"; after all, very few
people can ever achieve that.) I think that if more people could come
to the Nationals and enjoy themselves, while other attendees enjoy
themselves no less, that is obviously a good thing.
But I don't see though that any of the sort of promotion that Grand Slam
Bridge is proposing would make people, young or old, enjoy themselves
more at ACBL tournaments. Getting bridge mentioned on ESPN certainly
won't.
And some of the things that the ACBL has done to its tournaments don't
seem to me to increase anyone's enjoyment. Like complex and constantly
changing alert rules. Or stratified events, that throw players who
appreciate the game in different ways and from different points of view
into the same events. One can certainly guess that there are more
complaints about "rude director calls" in stratified events than in
Flight A events.
What is it that you think could actually be done to achieve your goals?
Just saying, "Why can't everyone just be nicer and get along?" may be a
fine sentiment, but I don't think saying that has any real effect.
Jeff Goldsmith
AlLeBendig wrote:
>
> In article <336683...@gg.caltech.edu>, Jeff Goldsmith
> <je...@gg.caltech.edu> writes:
>
> >If I had my druthers, I think I'd hire a very good
> >consultant and learn about the process of agressive
> >marketing and promotion, have him suggest a bunch of
> >different plans, and then buy pieces of the GSB proposal
> >that made sense from what I had learned. I'd probably
> >go for it piecemeal and start a little more slowly than
> >is currently planned. This, however, just reflects my
> >nature. It could easily be right to go for it. It
> >could wrong to the tune of $1.5 million. That's $10
> >per member.
>
> It doesn't surprise me that Jeff has some misinformation. He heard about
> the proposal from a strong opponent of the plan. I happen to be a strong
> supporter. This proposal by GSB contains many different facets which they
> are offering to perform for the ACBL.
Not surprisingly, I think some of them are great ideas,
and some need more careful consideration. It is not
impossible that I could be sold on all of them, but
I want to see data.
Indeed, it turned out that the person who gave me most
of the info I had was an opponent of the plan. Oddly,
I wasn't at all sure of this until after he said so.
From my perspective, the information he gave us was
pretty much simply a summary of the line items in the
plan. He did end up voting "no," though.
On the other hand, I'm enormously in favor of SOME
marketing plan. I just am not sure that the ACBL
has done enough learning to judge if this is a good
idea. Large expenditures ought to be reseached. To
the best of my knowledge, the last serious analysis
of the bridge market was done around 1970.
> They have a proven track record for
> promoting events and organizations. Their customer list is very
> impressive.
So was the Titanic's, to steal an analogy.
> A couple of weeks ago, there were three references to bridge
> on ESPN. They were just "throw-away" lines. Example: announcer is
> discussing the Grand Slam and adds that it pay a big bonus in bridge.
> There were two other such references. To be able to get such discussions
> with just a phone call demonstrates a terrific amount of power, IMO. If
I'm not so sure how valuable this is, but, frankly,
I don't know that it isn't. Culbertson designed his
bridge jargon so that this sort of thing would in fact
happen. He was a marketing expert.
What does this really mean: it means that GSB can probably
do what they say they can do. Good! Is what they say they
can do what we want? Hmmmm...
> GSB is going to perform these acts in partnership with the ACBL, we will
> take their program basically as it is presented.
Why? Barry Goldwater could get all the networks talking
about him. Does that mean that his proposals are a good
thing?
> They are the ones who
> seem to have the expertise and the contacts to make it work. Jeff allows
> as how this will cost $10 per member. I see it as ONLY costing $10 per
> member. GSB will get a good deal of money on the back end ONLY if their
> programs prove to be successful. They will become partners with the ACBL
> in sharing in the success of their plans. They make much more money if
> they can perform.
That's exactly what our district board thought was lacking
from the proposal as we saw it. In the first proposal, a
great deal of GSB's compensation was tied to performance
measures. In the current one, little was. Personally, I'm
not so sure that's important. I feel fairly sure that GSB
will try their best and do a great job of whatever they
attempt to do. I'm just worried that they are shooting in
the dark. Do they know what will gain the goals they want?
Putting more firepower to bear against a problem is just
not sensible until one knows exactly what is the problem.
*Why* are we losing 3% membership/year? Is it simply a poor
public image? It can't be---indeed, I'd assume that if
GSB were wonderfully successful and added 50% to our membership
after two years, we'd start losing 3% again eventually, IF WE
DON'T SOLVE THE PROBLEM that is causing the drop. Indeed, if
they don't market towards the share of the market that is likely
to join, they won't be efficient.
> The ACBL has spent much
> money in the past trying to deal with these problems. And we have proven
> that we have no idea what we are doing. Management is clearly not good in
> this area.
I'm not so sure about the "much money," but I agree with
the rest of this quite strongly. In fact, my primary
reason behind suggesting putting GSB on hold stems directly from
those reasons. It's classic to see a company fall behind
on some project then allocate lots of resources to catch
up the project, only to fail because the resources never
addressed the problem in the first place. Then, someone
figures out what was the problem, fixes it, and everything
goes smoothly.
So: I agree completely. "We have proven that we have
no idea what we are doing." Obvious next step: find out.
"Management is clearly not good in this area." Obvious
next step: augment or replace management. By the way,
one of the most maligned items on the GSB proposal is
to implant some marketing folks in Memphis. That's one
of their better ideas, I think. I'm not sure the scope
of the job is well laid-out, though; I'd like to see a
ramping-up done. I think it'd take several months to do
a good market study about bridge. I think the ACBL ought
to get that done, and pronto. If GSB is the vehicle through
which this gets done, that's fine.
> This "rating system" is NOT what is being discussed in this thread. It
> was not intended to be a rating system for the ACBL (it could become
> more). Paul designed this system for the clubs and that is where it is
> currently being used quite successfully in Australia. He has several
> successful clubs in Australia (I think two were just sold) and other clubs
> clamoring for the program.
It was a large line item in the proposal as I understood it.
Indeed, also as one of the folks who voted on the proposal
seemed to understand it. If that is not the case, then the
proposal needs to be rewritten to be much more clear.
> The CARDS (name of program) system
> accomplishes several things. It rates individuals and partnerships and
> the entire field. It deals with past performance and as a result requires
> about 9 months of input to make it effective. The concept is to give
> players an idea of how they should be doing based on the field they're
> playing in.
As would any rating system, although 9 months is way too long.
Typically, rating systems settle down quicker than that if the
player plays a fair bit. I don't remember exactly, but I think
the chess system gives a provisional rating system until 20 rated
games have been played. For a club bridge player, that's a couple of
months or so.
> Are many of you aware of how many players we lose out of the
> clubs because of total frustration? They show up time after time and have
> their 35 - 45% (on a good day) and never get any masterpoints. More than
> once I have posted scores and heard a squeal "WE BEAT SOMEBODY!" Sad.
I don't know, but my guess is that if someone constantly scores
35-45% at club games, nothing is going to keep them playing bridge.
(OK, good pizza and beer during the game might do the trick.)
It's just no fun to keep getting creamed. Progress and learning
is obvious, though---if they are getting better at a reasonable
rate, they know it. Also, someone who regularly scores 35% at
a club game probably does not have a lot of talent for bridge.
Certainly, if they've been trying to improve for 9 whole months and
still score 35%, I'd not do anything to try to keep them. Either
they like it and are hooked, or they aren't. My guess is 90+%
drop out long before that if they keep getting obliterated.
> Many eventually give up. CARDS will allow us to show them some goals that
> they should be accomplishing and they can see some progress without ever
> getting near any masterpoints.
Yeah, right. "Guys, I know it feels bad, but you were only
expected to score 11% in that field. Don't worry that you
didn't get any positive scores or make any contracts. It'll
come with time." C'mon. I guess GSB has some pretty good
salesmen.
By the way, some people are going to try bridge and drop out.
I've some experience in folks' learning hobbies. The Pasadena
Ice Skating Center teaches beginning skating to adults on
Thursday nights. They teach in banks of 10-week lessons.
There are almost always about 30 people in the beginner class.
About half to 2/3 drop out during/after that class. The 2nd
class is usually 5-15 people. About half to 2/3 drop out
then. The third class is usually about 4-7 people. About
half to 2/3 drop out there. The last class is an ergotic
state (if you graduate from it, you take it again) and typically
has about 8-10 participants. They aren't the same every season,
but the turnover is slow. Bridge has to expect the same sort
of attrition. When I taught beginner classes, that's what I
saw, too. 30+ would show up to the first lesson. By the
end of the first ten weeks, about 8-10 survived. After that,
I had more attrition each class until only a few made it to
regular players. We have to expect that. Those who made it
to the club games and got crushed everytime didn't keep going.
Those who did OK sometimes and badly others often did. When
they kept playing, their scores improved. Sometimes they won.
There is a danger, therefore, to rapid growth at the base level.
Unless it is sustained, the resources allocated to dealing with
them (beginner's classes, novice games, etc.) will suddenly become
obsolete. Clubs could crash and burn. A more modest slower long-
term growth is probably more desirable, I think.
> It is not clear if the BOD will accept this proposal this weekend. At
> this point I would guess it is less than 50% to pass. I am very unhappy
> with the "reasons" that are being given for turning it down.
I figured it to be way less than 50%. $1.5 mil sounds like a lot.
I suspect that a significant fraction of the board isn't interested
in any marketing plan. Add to them those who feel rushed by GSB,
or just don't know enough to judge to spend it, or don't feel good
about the whole thing, and I am suprised that the proposal got as
many votes as it did.
> We have always been taught there were no guarantees in life. And GSB is
> offering us none. The only thing I am certain of is that bridge as we
> know it is in serious trouble.
Hold it. How do you know that? Do YOU know why the ACBL
is losing membership? I don't. I don't know that we are
not going to stablize at our current level. I don't know
that we are not about to grow. I don't know WHY any of what
has been happening has been happening. If you do, please
tell everyone else---if we knew, we could fix the problems,
then go market ourselves and have a hope of keeping some
of the new blood.
I could live with a marketing plan of this size even though
we haven't solved many of our internal problems. I can't
see doing it without a clue as to what our potential market
really is. Can we sensibly attract and keep people in the
25-40 year-old range? What do we need to change to do it?
Should we emphasize 12-18 year-olds? 60-70s? I don't know.
GSB might know, but I don't know that they know. Let's see
some data and understanding and I'm fully willing to be sold
on the plan.
--Jeff
--
# "I'm a blonde; I'm a blonde: B-L-A-N-D!"
# ---
# http://muggy.gg.caltech.edu/~jeff
Robin Michaels
....
[huge snip]
: Hold it. How do you know that? Do YOU know why the ACBL
: is losing membership? I don't. I don't know that we are
: not going to stablize at our current level. I don't know
: that we are not about to grow. I don't know WHY any of what
: has been happening has been happening. If you do, please
: tell everyone else---if we knew, we could fix the problems,
: then go market ourselves and have a hope of keeping some
: of the new blood.
:
: I could live with a marketing plan of this size even though
: we haven't solved many of our internal problems. I can't
: see doing it without a clue as to what our potential market
: really is. Can we sensibly attract and keep people in the
: 25-40 year-old range? What do we need to change to do it?
: Should we emphasize 12-18 year-olds? 60-70s? I don't know.
: GSB might know, but I don't know that they know. Let's see
: some data and understanding and I'm fully willing to be sold
: on the plan.
: --Jeff
As I see it, and I may be wrong, there are two problems with the ACBL that
combine to contribute to its inevitable decline.
i) The older players in the ACBL _want_ it to decline, because, by and large
they object to younger players, who don't play the way they are used to
coming in and spoiling their fun with people of their age.
Younger players are often made to feel unwelcome, and further, in my
opinion, the ACBL does nothing to stop this.
The ACBL membership is currently at a _local_ maximum (which is decreasing
due to the dying off of older members). To encourage new younger players
to join, would take a change of attitude that will upset many of the older
players. The powers that be
are presumably not prepared to do this because they
believe that this will substantially downsize the scale of the ACBL in the
short term, and the ensuing thrift will mean they no longer get given
absurd amounts of money to have free holidays (my perception).
THE ACBL WILL HAVE TO SHRINK FURTHER, AND IN A DIFFERENT WAY, BEFORE IT
CAN START TO GROW. And until an older player who is rude and patronising
to a younger player is given the same penalty as would be assigned were
their positions reversed, and treated by the director in the same way,
independent of ages, the game will be in decline.
ii) Bridge has an image of a boring game played by sad old retired people
with nothing else to do in their lives, and who the hell would want to
associate with a class of people like that.
How do you get rid of this image ?
Well, it is the attitude outlined above, which has persisted over many
years that has lead to this state of affairs, along with the utter
complacency of the ACBL, happy it can squeeze money out of wealthy
retirees.
One major thing that needs to be done, is to make playing bridge cheaper
for younger people.
Another is to take stern disciplinary measures against club owners,
directors, and players who discriminate against younger players.
If I go to a new bridge club with my partner, and because we play a
weak NT, some regular player complains, the owner should not have a right
to ban me. As it currently stands, I believe that could easily happen.
Especially if I did well.
Putting money into promoting bridge in Colleges would be a good thing, and
an important long term strategy. In the old days, people learnt to play
bridge for social reasons. Today, it is no longer a social necessity.
But those who learn to play bridge (on a kitchen level) in college, are
those that _may_ later play duplicate and join the ACBL. Without those
potential players, the ACBL is sunk.
As I said, it is long term. It may be 10 years before these players,
become ACBL members- maybe via an initiative like Bridge America- but
they _need_ to know about the game first before becoming duplicate players.
I think the ACBL is looking for a short term fix to a long term problem.
The problem has been staring at the ACBL for years, but has been ignored so
that it may complacently continue to accumulated and squander money.
Now the only solution, I believe is a selective downsizing of the entire
organisation to make it leaner, more efficient, and aimed at tomorrow rather
then yesterday.
But this won't happen. Not least because no one wants to give themselves less
freebies.
(pessimistically)
Robin Michaels
(The above comments about the Powers that Be refer to no individuals in
particuler, but to the general attitudes I perceive the bodies running the
ACBL to have)
Steve Willner
In article <336E6D...@gg.caltech.edu>, Jeff Goldsmith
<je...@gg.caltech.edu> writes:
> The last class is an ergotic state (if you graduate from it, you
> take it again)
Hmmm... at first I thought "ergotic" might be a misprint for
"ergodic," which refers to a process that covers all possible phase
space states. "Ergot" is a fungus -- the type that produces LSD and
similar compounds, if I'm not mistaken. So it seems not to have been
a misprint after all....
Maybe this is a California thing....
--
Steve Willner Phone 617-495-7123 swil...@cfa.harvard.edu
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
(Bad news service; please email your reply if you want to be sure I see it)
AlLeBendig
In article <r88bu6u...@aleph.CS.Princeton.EDU>, de...@CS.Princeton.EDU
(David desJardins) writes:
>Alan LeBendig <alleb...@aol.com> writes:
>> A couple of weeks ago, there were three references to bridge on ESPN.
>> They were just "throw-away" lines. Example: announcer is discussing
>> the Grand Slam and adds that it pay a big bonus in bridge. There were
>> two other such references. To be able to get such discussions with
>> just a phone call demonstrates a terrific amount of power, IMO.
>
>I wouldn't pay a plugged nickel for this.
Nobody did pay anything for this, David. And furthermore, it was never
suggested that anyone should.
> I think the reason that ACBL
>membership is low is not that people have never heard of bridge.
Very good observation. How do we get them to not only hear about it but
develop an interest in it? Can you think of a better way than through a
well organized PR campaign? It has to be perceived as "sexy", as
something that everyone wants to do. It was that way years ago as late as
the 40's and into the 50's. A well run PR campaign has a chance of
achieving this.
>It's
>that the game is difficult, and is an acquired taste, and the barriers
>to entry are fairly high. I'd much rather spend our money on making it
>easier for people who might want to be bridge players to do so (i.e.,
>subdized bridge lessons and education, reduced membership fees for young
>people, "Bridge America", etc.)
First you acknowledge that people have never heard of bridge, and now you
suggest that we subsidize people who want to learn to play bridge. Do you
have sany concept of how few people are seeking bridge lessons? I is
decreasing faster than our membership. I'm not sure what you mean by the
"barriers to entry". It is still cheaper than many hobbies. And it is
only as difficult as one wants it to become. Many beginning lesson series
make it very easy to "learn" bridge. We all know that a player may then
take it to any level they wish.
>than on Public Relations designed to get
>people to "feel good" about bridge.
The Public Relations concept is to make bridge a household word once
again. Our decreasing numbers make it clear that we are in trouble if we
want a viable and active organization. I don't want to be playing
regionals in the basements of churches with 20 of my closest friends.
My point in the opening line was that Grand Slam Bridge has demonstrated
that they have many contacts in high places. This could have been very
helpful in their proclaimed goal. Thanks to the Chicago BOD vote, has all
become irrelevant...
jka...@cts.comx
On Mon, 05 May 1997 16:28:42 -0700, Jeff Goldsmith
<je...@gg.caltech.edu> wrote:
AlLeBendig wrote:
>> We have always been taught there were no guarantees in life. And GSB is
>> offering us none. The only thing I am certain of is that bridge as we
>> know it is in serious trouble.
And maybe that's a good thing! Maybe it would be better and less
frustrating for most if the emphasis would shift from quantity to
quality, or from getting those that don't want to play to play,to
making play more interesting for those who want to play in the first
place ?!
-
jan kamras (jk) - founder of the "Minors Lib"- organisation
Please delete the "X" at end of address when e-mailing reply.
Chyah Burghard
David desJardins wrote:
What is it that you think could actually be done to achieve your goals?
================
Increase having bridge taught in the schools.
I am not sure what the best age group is, so I don't want
to lock my suggestion into an age range. I guess the
best age is whenever you can get a bunch of interested
kids together, whether it is during school as an elective
or after school as a club.
We have blue, red and silver ribbon pairs. The Junior
programs of today didn't exist for the USA when I was
in that age range, but it seems to me that we should
have a pair event for the under 25 range group.
I have upon occasion seen under age X scheduled for
a relaxed 1 session event. On the same day there were
two 1 session events scheduled. They gave away
T-shirts, but the mode in the room was very pleasant.
I think young people want to find other young people
and this enables that to happen.
-------------
The ACBL has a pilot program in district 16, I don't
think I can do justice to the explanation, but there is a person
wearing two hats at the moment and one of their
duties is as an educational liaison.
I think the ACBL is hoping to have an educational
liaison for every district some day.
-----------
In reference to my comment about going home and
studying bridge to the next time you came to the
nationals you would be better than the rest of the
kids:
Anything we dedicate our lives to, we do so because
we like to win. I think this is true for kids more so
than any other age group. They must achieve some
kind of satisfaction to continue in their dedication to
something, else they go find something else they can
be good at.
First we learn to win, then we learn to be good sports.
Coming out of one of the ACBL major team games
when the team had just accomplished a Three-peat,
I asked Bob Hamman if winning ever got to be
"yawn, ho hum, another championship."
His reply to me was that winning never got old, that it
was the reason we play this game, to win.
-Chyah
David Shao
I haven't seen anyone on this newsgroup give a coherent simple
explanation of why learning contract bridge is good for the young.
In fact, some of the more progressive voices on other issues have
argued on this newsgroup that learning bridge can be detrimental.
I suggest that until there is a one paragraph sound bite that can
convince a school board that bridge is good to teach, bridge will
make no real progress in United States schools.
Soccer for example is very easy to sell in the US schools, and
no one has any objections other than those who don't want the
more athletically talented males siphoned off from American
football. Soccer is a team sport. It is good that kids learn
to play as a team. Soccer is good exercise. Soccer is relatively
cheap to equip the players as long as a playing field is available.
Playing soccer is fun for a wide variety of kids.
Can someone, anyone, step forward and make a similar argument for
bridge?
David Shao
Bruce McIntyre
David Shao <ds...@best.com> wrote in article
<3370CF...@best.com>...
OK, let's try:
1) BRIDGE IS SOCIAL. Social skills, especially in a difficult
context--balancing competition with sociability, emphasizing teamwork
simultaeous with full disclosure of aggrements--are important.
Bridge presents a unique assortment of sociability problems to
stimulate young players. Respect for opponents, teamwork between
partners, courtesy at the table are just a few of many. (Some of us
adults may find we have lots to learn from younger players in this
regard.)
2) BRIDGE IS INTELLECTUALLY STIMULATING (WITHOUT BEING OVERBEARING).
There is a hierarchy of rules in bridge that makes it a valuable
pedagogical tool. The highest level of rules are the Laws
themselves. We learn these when we first learn the game--maybe not
all of them, but the ones which describe how the game works are the
most important ones. The lowest level of rules are the various
maxims like "lead through strength," and "cover honour with honour."
These "rules" move the results generated by beginners from chaotic
randomness to some measure of bridge prowess. In between the maxims
and the Laws are practically every rule we've adopted to try to win
more often, from the basic point count, the rules of hand evaluation
and bidding, to how to execute a double squeeze. Learning these
rules, and placing all of these rules in their proper order, is a
process which never ends, but which stimulates the brain every time
you play. At the same time, the division of bridge into separate
deals, each of which is vastly different, makes the task on the brain
manageable. Somebody once described the difference between chess and
bridge thus (I'm paraphrasing): "Chess is like a great puzzle that
you work on for several hours--to win you must solve the puzzle.
Bridge is like several dozen smaller puzzles of varied difficulty
that take several hours to work on, and your success depends on how
many you solve."
3) BRIDGE IS DEMOCRATIC. There is a huge difference between the
expert and the neophyte in bridge, but unlike other partnership
sports, the expert and the neophyte can play together, and both will
have to play well (relative to their skill level) to succeed. (If a
tennis star played doubles with a person who'd just been handed a
racket for the first time, the team's success wouldn't depend at all
on what the novice did.) There may be other sports and games where
unknowns can theoretically play against great experts, but in no
other sport does this occur as often as in bridge, and in no other
sport is this encouraged, through grass-roots events and completely
open tournaments, to the extent that it is in bridge.
4) BRIDGE IS FOREVER. You can play and succeed in bridge from your
youth until you die. Nobody ever stops learning.
5) BRIDGE IS FUN, WIN OR LOSE. Well? Isn't it?
--Bruce McIntyre
Jeff Goldsmith
Robin Michaels wrote:
This seems to be a fairly popular viewpoint, but I
don't have a whole lot of evidence to support it,
other than anecdotal evidence and the one statistic
that our mean age is rising. I'm skeptical of both
of those: the former because it's point sampling, and
because there's plenty of similar evidence to the
contrary, and the latter because the US population is
aging and because it is not the case that rise in the
mean age implies shrinking membership.
> As I see it, and I may be wrong, there are two problems with the ACBL that
> combine to contribute to its inevitable decline.
> i) The older players in the ACBL _want_ it to decline, because, by and large
> they object to younger players, who don't play the way they are used to
> coming in and spoiling their fun with people of their age.
> Younger players are often made to feel unwelcome, and further, in my
> opinion, the ACBL does nothing to stop this.
I don't know how often this is. I don't play much at
clubs, but my experience is that I'm not made particularly
unwelcome anymore at most of them. Most of the young people
around Pasadena, anyway, are not as unpopular as perhaps they
might be :) I have encountered a few silly people who were
obnoxious because they didn't like young people. I've met
far more people who were just plain obnoxious. Now that
there are senior events, I've not heard any of that crap in
years. If I were to, I'd tell the perpetrator, "please play
in the senior game or shut up." Given my personality, I might
just give them a piece of my mind, suggesting that they ought
to grow up and behave, that such obvious moronic bias is
quite counterproductive, and ought to be kept to one's own
self, but I've been good lately :)
The ACBL has policy against behavior of this sort, but has
never enforced rudeness penalties of any sort against anyone
of any age. The enforcement, I'm afraid, falls upon the
shoulders of the directors and club managers. The former
are generally unwilling. I don't know about the latter;
I do know some bar obnoxious people from their clubs.
It seems to me that if there were a few people driving
members away from my club, I'd make them immensely unwelcome
instantly. Club managers---do you make this clear to your
patrons? Interestingly, in my experience, those clubs which
do bar rudeness offenders tend to grow and thrive more than
those which don't.
> The ACBL membership is currently at a _local_ maximum (which is decreasing
> due to the dying off of older members). To encourage new younger players
> to join, would take a change of attitude that will upset many of the older
> players. The powers that be
That could be. The first derivative is currently close to
zero, but the second derivative is positive. (Decreasing
decline) That suggests a local minimum, but I don't think
I'd extrapolate given the current environment.
The second statement seems false. Potential members
generally don't have the opportunity to see this attitude
(if it's there) before they choose to learn to play bridge.
> are presumably not prepared to do this because they
> believe that this will substantially downsize the scale of the ACBL in the
> short term, and the ensuing thrift will mean they no longer get given
> absurd amounts of money to have free holidays (my perception).
Almost certainly a false perception. I very much doubt
that castigating the tiny number of offenders will have
a noticible impact on the size of the ACBL, at least in
from their leaving. I think it'd rather produce a
small short-term improvement. The reason why no one confronts
the offenders is that the vast majority of ACBL directors
and club managers are not willing to, perhaps because they
are not the sort of person who does that, or perhaps for
other reasons.
I don't think many do ACBL volunteer work for the boondoggles.
It doesn't seem to make sense to me that they would; the
cost/effort ratio is probably less than a second job as a
fry cook. ACBL President might be an exception, but only
if one is intending to play a heck of a lot of bridge anyway.
Still, knowing the folks who have been ACBL president recently,
I think the two main reasons people want to be president are
a desire for power and a desire to improve the state of the ACBL.
> THE ACBL WILL HAVE TO SHRINK FURTHER, AND IN A DIFFERENT WAY, BEFORE IT
> CAN START TO GROW. And until an older player who is rude and patronising
That's not true, but so what?
> to a younger player is given the same penalty as would be assigned were
> their positions reversed, and treated by the director in the same way,
> independent of ages, the game will be in decline.
Frankly, I think most directors ignore rude behavior from
anyone, but if I were directing, it'd make more sense to
try to improve the young player's attitude. The fix'll be
worth more in the long run, and he's probably not as stuck
in his ways as the old player. Still, I don't see much
behavior adjustment therapy at all.
> ii) Bridge has an image of a boring game played by sad old retired people
> with nothing else to do in their lives, and who the hell would want to
> associate with a class of people like that.
> How do you get rid of this image ?
That's easy. Marketing and promotion.
> One major thing that needs to be done, is to make playing bridge cheaper
> for younger people.
Maybe. Junior discounts are quite readily available. Many
districts, units, and clubs have them. All nationals do.
There's not much that can be done about travel costs, although
young people, if willing to sacrifice some amenities, can often
travel fairly cheaply. I do.
For what it's worth, if your club, unit, or district does not
have junior discounts, please contact them and ask. Enough
requests will likely have an impact. Remember, it's not costing
them much at the moment.
> Another is to take stern disciplinary measures against club owners,
> directors, and players who discriminate against younger players.
> If I go to a new bridge club with my partner, and because we play a
> weak NT, some regular player complains, the owner should not have a right
> to ban me. As it currently stands, I believe that could easily happen.
> Especially if I did well.
The club owner has the right to ban anyone for reasons other than
the actionable ones. Since he's a businessman, we really ought not
take that right away from him. But so what? Have you really been
barred from a club for playing weak NTs? Really? Not because of
any other reason? Any club owner who does that, by the way, is just
being silly. He's losing money by doing so, so either he's a fool,
or he has a good reason.
"Could easily happen?" Does that mean you just think this would
happen and are making up this scenario? I wouldn't worry about it.
I've never heard of a player's being barred for any reasons other
than conduct or ethics. (OK, aroma, but that's conduct.)
> Putting money into promoting bridge in Colleges would be a good thing, and
> an important long term strategy. In the old days, people learnt to play
> bridge for social reasons. Today, it is no longer a social necessity.
> But those who learn to play bridge (on a kitchen level) in college, are
> those that _may_ later play duplicate and join the ACBL. Without those
> potential players, the ACBL is sunk.
There's as much money for college bridge as there are people willing
to spend it. More, actually. The limiting factor in college bridge
is not money, but people willing to spend the time being club managers/
directors/organizers. I know this from long personal experience.
> As I said, it is long term. It may be 10 years before these players,
> become ACBL members- maybe via an initiative like Bridge America- but
> they _need_ to know about the game first before becoming duplicate players.
Nope. Usually they become members within a year. I've had
success at creating new ACBL members at college clubs. It's
a fair bit of work, however, and I find it quite difficult to
convince anyone else ever to do it. Would YOU be willing to
start a college bridge club near you? I'd be happy to tell you
what you need to do, help arrange some funding/resources, etc.
> (The above comments about the Powers that Be refer to no individuals in
> particuler, but to the general attitudes I perceive the bodies running the
> ACBL to have)
That one might have those perceptions is a bad thing in and
unto itself, regardless of whether they have any basis in
reality. The ACBL definitely needs to work on the public
image being perceived here. Hmmmm...public image...does
that mean "marketing?" ...or "promotion?" ...or "public
relations?"
OK, let's summarize. You think that club owners and directors
ought to get off their butts and deal with rudeness properly.
I agree. I don't think it'll happen anytime soon, but it's
certainly a good idea. You think college bridge ought to be
promoted. Is anyone out there willing to do some of it? I
can offer lots of help. We need volunteers. The reason the
ACBL is downsizing college bridge activities is simply that
participation is so small and is SHRINKING. You think the
ACBL's image is a shambles. OK, we have plans to do some
PR work. I agree that this is a good idea.
Jeff Goldsmith
David Shao wrote:
>
> I haven't seen anyone on this newsgroup give a coherent simple
> explanation of why learning contract bridge is good for the young.
> In fact, some of the more progressive voices on other issues have
> argued on this newsgroup that learning bridge can be detrimental.
> I suggest that until there is a one paragraph sound bite that can
> convince a school board that bridge is good to teach, bridge will
> make no real progress in United States schools.
>
> Soccer for example is very easy to sell in the US schools, and
> no one has any objections other than those who don't want the
> more athletically talented males siphoned off from American
> football. Soccer is a team sport. It is good that kids learn
> to play as a team. Soccer is good exercise. Soccer is relatively
> cheap to equip the players as long as a playing field is available.
> Playing soccer is fun for a wide variety of kids.
>
> Can someone, anyone, step forward and make a similar argument for
> bridge?
OK. Bridge is a partnership game. It is good that kids
learn to play as a partnership. Bridge is good mental
exercise. Bridge is extremely inexpensive to play as
long as a deck of cards, a table, and four players are
available. Playing bridge is fun for a wide variety of
kids.
I'll add a few others. Children can compete with and
against adults and have a chance to win and to exchange
ideas positively. Bridge is a great way to make contacts
for later in life. Boys and girls can play together.
Children and parents can play together, providing more
quality time for families. Families can play as teams.
No one gets hurt playing bridge. Bridge skill is often
associated with other skills potentially valuable later in life,
including computer programming, stock/options trading, and law.
Tournament play is always supervised by responsible adults
in safe places.
Jeff Goldsmith
AlLeBendig wrote:
> My point in the opening line was that Grand Slam Bridge has demonstrated
> that they have many contacts in high places. This could have been very
> helpful in their proclaimed goal. Thanks to the Chicago BOD vote, has all
> become irrelevant...
Say what? Did the BoD vote to tell GSB, "we never
want to hear from you again," or "we're not sure
we are happy with this proposal right now. Let's
keep talking." I was pretty sure it was the latter.
I don't suppose GSB is taking credit for Peanuts this week?
Stu Goodgold
In article <3370CF...@best.com>,
on Wed, 07 May 1997 11:53:34 -0700,
David Shao <David> writes:
>I haven't seen anyone on this newsgroup give a coherent simple
>explanation of why learning contract bridge is good for the young.
>In fact, some of the more progressive voices on other issues have
>argued on this newsgroup that learning bridge can be detrimental.
>I suggest that until there is a one paragraph sound bite that can
>convince a school board that bridge is good to teach, bridge will
>make no real progress in United States schools.
>
>bridge?
>
as the game of the intellect. The USCF has been highly active in
promoting chess as an activity that develops the mind. Schools officials
now have definitive evidence that children develop better analytic skills
after learning and playing chess. This is especially true in
inner-city classrooms.
The USCF is hosting an elementary school tournament in NY aboard the
USS Intrepid (aircraft carrier turned museum), and expects a turnout
of 4000.
My feeling is that bridge is "too little, too late" here.
Adding to that, many of the general public will view bridge as
a form of gambling (and I don't just mean 3NT :-).
It was only a generation ago that bridge clubs couldn't legally play
for money because state legislatures took such a view and categorized
bridge along with poker as a form of gambling.
Older threads on rgb have talked about how bridge is not a reasonable
game for grade school children and why there are no bridge prodigies
as there are in chess. If that is valid (and it is IMO),
we should be looking elsewhere to attract aspiring players.
Finally, I read with amusement the musings of other rgb posters
with their suggestions of promulgating bridge among the masses,
or which issue is keeping the populace from taking up the game.
Unfortunately, the ACBL member is not representative of the average
citizen, and the rgb posters are not representative of the average
ACBL member. About 0.03% of the population of N. America belongs to
the ACBL. Less than 0.1% of all ACBL members regular post on rgb.
Now how many of you rgb'ers out there are over the median ACBL age
of 66 years?? So we are not a decent sample of the ACBL, let alone
the general populace.
Well, on the bright side, we are rarer than 1 in a million!! :-).
Stu G
David desJardins
Alan LeBendig <alleb...@aol.com> writes:
> Nobody did pay anything for this, David. And furthermore, it was never
> suggested that anyone should.
You will understand that it is difficult for readers here, who are not
in high positions in the ACBL, to understand exactly what it is that it
is suggested that we should pay for.
> How do we get them to not only hear about it but develop an interest
> in it? Can you think of a better way than through a well organized PR
> campaign? It has to be perceived as "sexy", as something that
> everyone wants to do. It was that way years ago as late as the 40's
> and into the 50's. A well run PR campaign has a chance of achieving
> this.
I don't believe any of this. I believe that people actually do a fairly
good job of determining what it is that they do and don't enjoy. I
think that loss of membership in the ACBL is due primarily to the fact
that the people who might be members are making valid decisions that it
isn't what they want to do. I don't think you can change that by PR; if
you want to change that, you can only do it by changing the nature of
the activities themselves, by making bridge itself more appealing, just
not by selling it better.
This is what the people who believe that online bridge is the solution
seem to think, for example. They want to make bridge more appealing by
playing online, which has several advantages over conventional duplicate
events. Personally I think that the disadvantages are even greater,
though, and that this isn't really much of a solution, although it of
course does not hurt.
Chess has always gotten a lot of great PR; I don't think in the long run
that has much effect at all on the number of USCF members.
> First you acknowledge that people have never heard of bridge, and now you
> suggest that we subsidize people who want to learn to play bridge. Do you
> have sany concept of how few people are seeking bridge lessons? I is
> decreasing faster than our membership.
I said that I do NOT think that people had never heard of bridge, and
that that is NOT the problem.
I don't think you can change the number that are seeking bridge lessons
through "PR" or by getting bridge mentioned on ESPN or by running a pro
tour with big money prizes. (If anything, I think the latter is more
likely to lead to cheating scandals which could kill bridge.)
> I'm not sure what you mean by the "barriers to entry". It is still
> cheaper than many hobbies. And it is only as difficult as one wants
> it to become.
I don't agree that it is only as difficult as one wants it to become.
Chyah Burghard says basically the opposite, that "the reason we play
this game is to win." Also "First we learn to win, then we learn to be
good sports." If the reason you play is to win, then that puts a lot of
constraints on how you can approach the game and your enjoyment of it.
I think those priorities are backwards, but I think it's very difficult
to learn to play for the enjoyment of playing instead of to play in
order to win. Perhaps the ACBL could make that easier, although I'm not
sure exactly how. I do think it's easier in chess than in bridge,
because if the existence of meaningful ratings. But I also think bridge
is inherently much less suited to ratings than chess is.
> The Public Relations concept is to make bridge a household word once
> again. Our decreasing numbers make it clear that we are in trouble if we
> want a viable and active organization. I don't want to be playing
> regionals in the basements of churches with 20 of my closest friends.
I don't believe that this is a trend that can be affected by how the
game is marketed. Perhaps I underestimate the power of marketing and
advertising.
Barbara Seagram
>Jeff Goldsmith wrote:
> The ACBL has policy against behavior of this sort, but has
> never enforced rudeness penalties of any sort against anyone
> of any age. The enforcement, I'm afraid, falls upon the
> shoulders of the directors and club managers. The former
> are generally unwilling. I don't know about the latter;
> I do know some bar obnoxious people from their clubs.
> It seems to me that if there were a few people driving
> members away from my club, I'd make them immensely unwelcome
> instantly. Club managers---do you make this clear to your
> patrons? Interestingly, in my experience, those clubs which
> do bar rudeness offenders tend to grow and thrive more than
> those which don't.
Units 166, 246 and 249 (Southern Ontario...Toronto and widespread areas
around it) have a policy of Zero Tolerance for Unacceptable Behaviour at
Bridge Tournaments. Directors at Sectionals and Regionals are requested
to issue automatic procedural penalties (1/4 board penalty) for
unpleasant behaviour. Second offense: Out of the game. Posters,
depicting and ogre with a line through him (No smoking type logo) are
placed at tournament sites with lists of commendable and unacceptable
behaviour placed in miniature on all bridge tables as well as on huge
posters. Announcements are made at all sessions by directors encouraging
the niceties of the game and announcing that scoring penalties will be
issued. The result has been an outstanding improvement in atmosphere. We
have created user-friendly conduct report forms so that anyone with any
complaint receives a letter from our Conduct and Ethics Chairman, Paul
Cronin. At least they recognize that we care.
There is some reluctance on the part of some directors but we are
gradually overcoming this. Our posters have been sent all over the US
and Canada with info about our program. Many tournaments all over are
adopting this policy.
We are practising the policy at several clubs and it is working. Unit
166 has written to club owners suggesting that they adopt this policy.
There is no question (IMO) that rudeness is the single most common
ingredient that is driving players away from the game of duplicate
bridge. It is interesting that since, for so many years, players saw
that directors never did much about disciplining this problem, that they
seldom call the director. As a result, many directors believe that we
are making much ado about nothing. The unfortunate part is that the
players say nothing but vote with their feet and fail to return.
If you encounter resistance by directors, it may be useful to quote Law
80 F and 90 B 8
> Junior discounts are quite readily available. Many
> districts, units, and clubs have them. All nationals do.
> There's not much that can be done about travel costs, although
> young people, if willing to sacrifice some amenities, can often
> travel fairly cheaply. I do.
Our Unit charges $5.00 (Can.) to play in any tournament. Our club
charges $5.00 to buy a pass for the year (available to any University
student)and then they can play free in any game at the club throughout
the year.
Anyone wishing more info about our Zero Tolerance programme may e mail
and I will be happy to mail further info to them.
Best wishes,
Barbara Seagram
Unit 166
Toronto, Ontario Canada
Thomas Andrews
In article <19970509....@vnet.ibm.com>,
Stu Goodgold <st...@vnet.ibm.com> wrote:
>Some reasons:
>a) Chess has always enjoyed a vastly better public image.
> It has been the premier intellectual challenge for over 400 years.
> Bridge is a relative newcomer.
> Many non-chess-players recognize the name Kasparov.
> How many non-tournament bridge players, let alone the general public,
> can name any world champion bridge player of the last 10 years?
Add: Much easier to get a game together. Got an urge to play
bridge? Gotta find three people. Got an urge to play chess?
Gotta find one.
Add: Novice wants to learn chess? Just need one person to teach
the game and play a couple of time. Want to learn bridge?
Three people have to be engaged in the effort.
Add: Want to learn chess? A computer can help you by playing
a pretty decent game. Want to learn bridge? The only thing
to be learned from a bridge program is the sad state of artificial
intelligence software :-)
One of the great things about online bridge is that it solves
some of these problems. Much easier to find a fourth when
you have the whole world to canvas :-)
Jeff Goldsmith
> > How do we get them to not only hear about it but develop an interest
> > in it? Can you think of a better way than through a well organized PR
> > campaign? It has to be perceived as "sexy", as something that
> > everyone wants to do. It was that way years ago as late as the 40's
> > and into the 50's. A well run PR campaign has a chance of achieving
> > this.
>
> I don't believe any of this. I believe that people actually do a fairly
> good job of determining what it is that they do and don't enjoy. I
> think that loss of membership in the ACBL is due primarily to the fact
> that the people who might be members are making valid decisions that it
> isn't what they want to do. I don't think you can change that by PR; if
> you want to change that, you can only do it by changing the nature of
> the activities themselves, by making bridge itself more appealing, just
> not by selling it better.
I suspect that your opinion is right for some people,
but not the vast majority of them. For example, people
probably do a good job of determining which soft drinks
they do or do not enjoy. It has been found, however, that
advertising has an enormous effect on which
soft drinks people buy. It is possible that bridge players
do not fit this model, or fit it less so than the general
population, but I'm skeptical. Advertising works, sad as
that might seem in some sense.
> This is what the people who believe that online bridge is the solution
> seem to think, for example. They want to make bridge more appealing by
> playing online, which has several advantages over conventional duplicate
> events. Personally I think that the disadvantages are even greater,
> though, and that this isn't really much of a solution, although it of
> course does not hurt.
I'm not sure that this is right. It doesn't seem to me that
anyone believes that "online bridge is the solution." It is
a tool, perhaps, but isn't the whole solution to the problem
of getting more people to play bridge. As far as advantages
and disadvantages go, because it has a different set, that's
good---it's not competing as much with face-to-face bridge as
it would if the advantages were very similar.
For what it is worth, online bridge is working. Last week,
OKbridge's duplicate game had over 100 tables. Regularly,
they have 80 tables in play for normal games. 100 tables/session
is still less than a normal regional, but it's starting to get
to the same ballpark.
> Chess has always gotten a lot of great PR; I don't think in the long run
> that has much effect at all on the number of USCF members.
Do you have any data on this? Figure skating experiences a
huge surge in enrollment in classes right after a winter
Olympics, particularly after an American woman does very
well. I assume other countries have similar experiences,
but I don't know about them. It is not the case that bridge
classes see a large surge in attendance right after an American
team wins the Bermuda Bowl. It seems to me that the difference
between these two occurrances is marketing and promotion.
> I don't think you can change the number that are seeking bridge lessons
> through "PR" or by getting bridge mentioned on ESPN or by running a pro
> tour with big money prizes. (If anything, I think the latter is more
> likely to lead to cheating scandals which could kill bridge.)
Let's hope the latter doesn't come to pass, and take great
pains to prevent it. I think, however, that you are dead
wrong about the former. Perhaps not about ESPN or any
specific mention, but the number of people willing to start
an activity is almost certainly related to the number of
people made aware of it. Glamor matters, too. Bridge has
to be seen as exciting, fun, glamorous, sexy, etc. for this
to work. That's promotion.
> > The Public Relations concept is to make bridge a household word once
> > again. Our decreasing numbers make it clear that we are in trouble if we
> > want a viable and active organization. I don't want to be playing
> > regionals in the basements of churches with 20 of my closest friends.
>
> I don't believe that this is a trend that can be affected by how the
> game is marketed. Perhaps I underestimate the power of marketing and
> advertising.
I'd say that's clear. How many product names are part of
your everyday language? How many do you recognize? Do you
ever buy "name" brands rather than generic ones when the
former is more expensive? Do you always search for generic
brands? It might be that your answers are quite different
from other people's. I think of myself as fairly immune to
advertising (I don't even own a television), but my answers
are "many; many, even for products I never use;
yes, sometimes; no." Advertising works.
Does the ACBL want to advertise? I don't know. Tournaments
advertise. Presumably that increases their attendance.
OKBridge advertises. Presumably they spend that money
believing that it will get them more subscribers. They've
increased their advertising rate recently; presumably they
did that because it seems to be working. My guess is that
advertising, marketing, and promotion would be successful
if done by the ACBL. I think it is not obvious how to do
this, however, and that has to be figured out before it is
implemented. Maybe Robert Nargassans has already figured it
out. I don't know. I hope that GSB's next proposal consists
of a set of choices so that the ACBL can pick their level of
commitment.
Kent Feiler
I like the theory that bridge prospers in bad economic times and
declines in good economic times. Skimpy evidence, but the all time
high for bridge was probably in the 30s - the depression years. If so,
all we have to do is wait for the Dow to drop about 4,000 points and
bridge will take off!
BTW, are we just talking about the ACBL or about bridge in general?
Okbridge is growing fast and I believe some of the ACBL equivilents in
other countries are doing fine.
Regards | The three laws of thermodynamics
| Law #1 You can't win
Kent Feiler | Law #2 You can't break even
kfe...@cpiusa.com | Law #3 You can't quit the game
http://www.enteract.com/~kfeiler/mypage.htm
bobby goldman
David Shao <ds...@best.com> wrote:
>I haven't seen anyone on this newsgroup give a coherent simple
>explanation of why learning contract bridge is good for the young.
>In fact, some of the more progressive voices on other issues have
>argued on this newsgroup that learning bridge can be detrimental.
>I suggest that until there is a one paragraph sound bite that can
>convince a school board that bridge is good to teach, bridge will
>make no real progress in United States schools.
>
David, you bring up an important topic, particularly at
this point of upheaval and introspection by the ACBL.
I, and most other World Class players of my generation
have an intriguingly similar characteristic in our
Background:
Started playing bridge about the time of entering
college. Played some in college lounges and student
union centers. Played more and more bridge. Finally
dropped out of college.
Getting youth involved in bridge is definitely good for
the ACBL. IS IT GOOD FOR THE YOUTH?
Which is the more important issue? (I'm sure you can
guess my opinion ;> ).
I have been having discussions with my local middle
school principal, vice principal and some members of
the Math and Computer departments about installing the
logic game Mastermind onto their computers and to a lesser
degree about doing some bridge classes.
Question: If one could get the entire Freshman class of
a high school "hooked" on bridge, would that be a good thing
or a bad thing?
If the ACBL succeeded in "hooking" our youth, would that
make it more like Intel and Microsoft or more like the
Tobacco Companies?
I think there are a lot of profound questions that need
answers before we throw tons of money into marketing.
I suspect that some of the members who voted for the GSB
proposal did so feeling that GSB MIGHT have the capability
of dealing with many issues that the current
structure/leaders of the ACBL does not have.
Bobby Goldman
Tom McGuire
In article <ymyb9pg...@runner.ccr-p.ida.org>, David desJardins
<de...@runner.ccr-p.ida.org> wrote:
> Alan LeBendig <alleb...@aol.com> writes:
> > Nobody did pay anything for this, David. And furthermore, it was never
> > suggested that anyone should.
>
> You will understand that it is difficult for readers here, who are not
> in high positions in the ACBL, to understand exactly what it is that it
> is suggested that we should pay for.
>
> > How do we get them to not only hear about it but develop an interest
> > in it? Can you think of a better way than through a well organized PR
> > campaign? It has to be perceived as "sexy", as something that
> > everyone wants to do. It was that way years ago as late as the 40's
> > and into the 50's. A well run PR campaign has a chance of achieving
> > this.
>
(snip)
> I don't think you can change the number that are seeking bridge lessons
> through "PR" or by getting bridge mentioned on ESPN or by running a pro
> tour with big money prizes. (If anything, I think the latter is more
> likely to lead to cheating scandals which could kill bridge.)
>
(snip)
> > The Public Relations concept is to make bridge a household word once
> > again. Our decreasing numbers make it clear that we are in trouble if we
> > want a viable and active organization. I don't want to be playing
> > regionals in the basements of churches with 20 of my closest friends.
>
> I don't believe that this is a trend that can be affected by how the
> game is marketed. Perhaps I underestimate the power of marketing and
> advertising.
>
> David desJardins
>
> --
> Copyright 1997 David desJardins. Unlimited permission is granted to quote
> from this posting for non-commercial use as long as attribution is given.
There is an old marketing acronym -- AIDA -- that may help explain why PR
and/or advertising (not the same thing at all) can help popularize
bridge. AIDA = Awareness, Interest, Demand, Adoption.
No one can buy a product or service that he/she is not Aware of, so that
is the first step in marketing. What is the awareness of bridge? Hard to
say, but I think it's safe to assume it is low (especially tournament
bridge) in comparison to other leisure activities. Secondly you have to
stimulate Interest -- Is this product/service something I (a prospective
player) might like? Once the prospect knows your product and has some
interest in it you need to move to the Demand phase -- they have to ask
for it, seek it out. And once having sampled it the customer can move to
the Adoption phase -- it now becomes one of the group of products and
services that he/she regularly uses.
But how can prospective bridge players ever go through that process unless
an active effort is made to reach out to them? PR can stimulate awarness
and interest. Advertising can give information about the benefits of
playing (i.e. fun, competition, social contact) and tell customers where
they can find this product.
It is true that you can't sell people what they don't want to buy. And it
may be that bridge is a product for another era. But unless we make the
effort to reach out to prospective players, the game will become
increasingly irrelevant.
Tom McGuire
Lauge Schaffer
Kent Feiler wrote:
> BTW, are we just talking about the ACBL or about bridge in general?
> Okbridge is growing fast and I believe some of the ACBL equivilents in
> other countries are doing fine.
Many bridge federations in Europe are growing at the same rate as ACBL
is declining (particularly in Scandinavia and the Netherlands).
We have a fair number of junior players and lots of bridge courses.
The mean age is nowhere near the 60-odd of ACBL (and we certainly don't
have the generation gap between youngsters and oldsters).
Rudeness is not considered a general problem.
I think that the mean age at our club in Copenhagen is in the mid to
upper thirties.
Lauge Schaffer
Mike Vaughn
In article <01bc5baa$d65cb8a0$33f8...@direct.ca.direct.ca>, "Bruce
McIntyre" <mcb...@direct.ca> wrote:
> David Shao <ds...@best.com> wrote in article
> <3370CF...@best.com>...
[intro deleted]
> > Can someone, anyone, step forward and make a similar argument for
> > bridge?
> >
> > David Shao
> OK, let's try:
>
> 1) BRIDGE IS SOCIAL. Social skills, especially in a difficult
> context--balancing competition with sociability, emphasizing teamwork
> simultaeous with full disclosure of aggrements--are important.
Full disclosure of agreements may or may not be useful in the business
world. It is hard to see how middle school students can fully appreciate
the concept.
> Bridge presents a unique assortment of sociability problems to
> stimulate young players. Respect for opponents, teamwork between
> partners, courtesy at the table are just a few of many. (Some of us
> adults may find we have lots to learn from younger players in this
> regard.)
And all these can, and should, be taught in a family setting. I cannot really
see any school board voting to hire a bridge teacher, when art and music
and language and science and even physical education for the masses are
being cut due to financial pressures. The examples of chess programs
cited work mainly because there are teachers who know chess and teach it
as an adjunct to their regular classes.
Games such as checkers, or chess, or Go develop formal logical thinking,
which is an identifiable skill which can, and should, be developed early
in life (or it may not get developed at all). For this purpose, bridge is
inferior, since it involves decision-making in the face of uncertainty,
which is a far more advanced skill.
> 2) BRIDGE IS INTELLECTUALLY STIMULATING (WITHOUT BEING OVERBEARING).
So are checkers, which is surely simpler, and chess, which in many ways is
also simpler than bridge (it will be a while before a computer in competitive
with a world class bridge player). There is no convincing argument that
bridge is superior to other favorite card games (hearts, pinochle, etc, or
a game like skat, which is more popular than bridge in Germany, for example)
as a learning vehicle.
> There is a hierarchy of rules in bridge that makes it a valuable
> pedagogical tool. The highest level of rules are the Laws
> themselves. We learn these when we first learn the game--maybe not
> all of them, but the ones which describe how the game works are the
> most important ones. The lowest level of rules are the various
> maxims like "lead through strength," and "cover honour with honour."
But then you had better teach the exceptions to the rules, and the idea
that rules are not meant to be followed blindly. This is difficult enough
with college students, let alone middle school students.
> These "rules" move the results generated by beginners from chaotic
> randomness to some measure of bridge prowess. In between the maxims
> and the Laws are practically every rule we've adopted to try to win
> more often, from the basic point count, the rules of hand evaluation
> and bidding, to how to execute a double squeeze. Learning these
> rules, and placing all of these rules in their proper order, is a
> process which never ends, but which stimulates the brain every time
> you play. At the same time, the division of bridge into separate
> deals, each of which is vastly different, makes the task on the brain
> manageable. Somebody once described the difference between chess and
> bridge thus (I'm paraphrasing): "Chess is like a great puzzle that
> you work on for several hours--to win you must solve the puzzle.
> Bridge is like several dozen smaller puzzles of varied difficulty
> that take several hours to work on, and your success depends on how
> many you solve."
How about poker?
> 3) BRIDGE IS DEMOCRATIC. There is a huge difference between the
> expert and the neophyte in bridge, but unlike other partnership
> sports, the expert and the neophyte can play together, and both will
> have to play well (relative to their skill level) to succeed. (If a
> tennis star played doubles with a person who'd just been handed a
> racket for the first time, the team's success wouldn't depend at all
> on what the novice did.)
The novice still has to serve one game in four.
> There may be other sports and games where
> unknowns can theoretically play against great experts, but in no
> other sport does this occur as often as in bridge, and in no other
> sport is this encouraged, through grass-roots events and completely
> open tournaments, to the extent that it is in bridge.
In games such as Go, or Chinese chess, it is feasible to give handicaps to
weaker players which do not fundamentally alter the game (at least if
the playersare not too far apart).
> 4) BRIDGE IS FOREVER. You can play and succeed in bridge from your
> youth until you die. Nobody ever stops learning.
> 5) BRIDGE IS FUN, WIN OR LOSE. Well? Isn't it?
The same can be said for any worthwhile game.
Bottom line is -- there are people who make a living out of bridge -- playing,
administering, teaching beginners, selling books, promoting bidding systems,
etc., and times are hard as demand decreases.
People in most fields of higher education in the industrialized world are
facing the same problem, due to demographic factors which are fairly well
known. The solution there has been to bring in large numbers of foreign
students, which is a mixed blessing.
I don't think that solution will work for bridge -- the bridge teachers will
have to go to China to find their markets.
> --Bruce McIntyre
--
Mike Vaughn | A ship is safe in a harbor
Physics Department | But that is not what ships are
built for.
Northeastern University
Thomas Andrews
In article <33736C...@gg.caltech.edu>,
Jeff Goldsmith <je...@gg.caltech.edu> wrote:
>
>> Chess has always gotten a lot of great PR; I don't think in the long run
>> that has much effect at all on the number of USCF members.
>
>Do you have any data on this? Figure skating experiences a
>huge surge in enrollment in classes right after a winter
>Olympics, particularly after an American woman does very
>well. I assume other countries have similar experiences,
>but I don't know about them. It is not the case that bridge
>classes see a large surge in attendance right after an American
>team wins the Bermuda Bowl. It seems to me that the difference
>between these two occurrances is marketing and promotion.
I think the difference here is that it take no knowledge of figure
skating to admire good figure skating. It certainly takes knowledge
to discern the subtleties of skating, but that is not really what
draws the kids in.
Bridge requires knowledge to recognize the beauty and brilliance
in the bidding and play. Or even to understand what is going on :-)
The other obvious difference is that the champions are younger
and more attractive in skating. What we need is the Aerobic Contract
Bridge League.
Jeff Goldsmith
bobby goldman wrote:
> I, and most other World Class players of my generation
> have an intriguingly similar characteristic in our
> Background:
>
> Started playing bridge about the time of entering
> college. Played some in college lounges and student
> union centers. Played more and more bridge. Finally
> dropped out of college.
>
> Getting youth involved in bridge is definitely good for
> the ACBL. IS IT GOOD FOR THE YOUTH?
This is a fascinating question, one that I wish I'd
thought of bringing up.
I have a strange opinion on the matter of students who
persue an activity to the extent that it destroys their
college careers. I think that this behavior is intrinsic
to the student. If bridge were not the activity that you
persued, I suspect that there'd be some other one. That
is, students who are going to fail out of school will do
something with their time. Talented students are going to
do that well. If it is not bridge, it might be drugs,
sex, poker, table tennis, pinball, athletics, sleeping,
science fiction, Dungeons and Dragons, devil worship (OK,
I'm not staying too serious here :)), or something.
> Which is the more important issue? (I'm sure you can
> guess my opinion ;> ).
No guess. School is more important than bridge, but
the number of potential bridge players who won't fail
out is much larger than the number who will. I think,
in fact, that the number who will fail because bridge
is available is nearly zero; they'd do something other
than bridge.
> Question: If one could get the entire Freshman class of
> a high school "hooked" on bridge, would that be a good thing
> or a bad thing?
Good for bridge. Probably good for the students.
The students whose careers might be destroyed are
not going to be in that group. The social dynamic
is likely to prevent it. It's the loners who are
likely to immerse themselves in bridge to the
extent that everything else is forgotten. Certainly
an experiment can be done. One can probably be done
now. Constrast a set of high school students who
have taken up bridge to a set that hasn't. Try to
find good comps (controls are hard, because of
individual variation) so that the test scores of
one set prior to bridge are very similar to others,
etc. Wait a year. See if there's been a significant
change in grades, test scores, college acceptances, etc.
My guess is that the two groups would stay similar in
general, but if a group all at one place were to become
bridge players, they'd improve past the norm because
of the new availability of people with whom to do
schoolwork as well as bridge.
> I suspect that some of the members who voted for the GSB
> proposal did so feeling that GSB MIGHT have the capability
> of dealing with many issues that the current
> structure/leaders of the ACBL does not have.
I very much doubt it. This is the first time I've heard
anyone say anything about this at all.
To summarize: is it ethical to sell a product (bridge) that
has the possibility to be used to destroy one's life/career/
family. The USA has decreed that this is so, at least from
a legal standpoint; protecting oneself from oneself is assumed
to be one's own job. Still, is it personally ethical? I think
so, at least in this example. I doubt there are more than a
very few cases of bridge-related career damage that weren't
going to happen anyway. Bridge has the bonus that it can
become a career. This is far better than tobacco or alchohol
can offer.
Robin Michaels
Jeff Goldsmith (je...@gg.caltech.edu) wrote:
: bobby goldman wrote:
:
: > I, and most other World Class players of my generation
: > have an intriguingly similar characteristic in our
: > Background:
: >
: > Started playing bridge about the time of entering
: > college. Played some in college lounges and student
: > union centers. Played more and more bridge. Finally
: > dropped out of college.
: >
: > Getting youth involved in bridge is definitely good for
: > the ACBL. IS IT GOOD FOR THE YOUTH?
:
: This is a fascinating question, one that I wish I'd
: thought of bringing up.
:
: I have a strange opinion on the matter of students who
: persue an activity to the extent that it destroys their
: college careers. I think that this behavior is intrinsic
: to the student. If bridge were not the activity that you
: persued, I suspect that there'd be some other one. That
: is, students who are going to fail out of school will do
: something with their time. Talented students are going to
: do that well. If it is not bridge, it might be drugs,
: sex, poker, table tennis, pinball, athletics, sleeping,
: science fiction, Dungeons and Dragons, devil worship (OK,
: I'm not staying too serious here :)), or something.
I strongly disagree here.
I personally know that out of the near-expert bridge players I knews at
college, those that did best at bridge (and played excessively) almost
all did less well academically than they 'should have'.
Bridge is, more or less, uniquely good at helping people to drop out.
cheers,
Robin
David desJardins
Tom McGuire <tomc...@mail.idt.net> writes:
> No one can buy a product or service that he/she is not Aware of, so that
> is the first step in marketing. What is the awareness of bridge? Hard to
> say, but I think it's safe to assume it is low (especially tournament
> bridge) in comparison to other leisure activities.
Here is where we disagree. I don't understand why you think the
awareness of bridge is difficult to judge, or would assume that it is
low. It seems that some people are assuming that awareness of bridge is
low simply because they can't imagine any other reason why throngs of
people are not turning out to play bridge. I think that popular
awareness of bridge is clearly very high, due to its long history which
has left it ingrained in the popular culture. Newspapers still have
*daily* bridge columns; that's really an enormous amount of coverage in
proportion to the actual amount of time people spend playing bridge
(especially tournament bridge).
I don't know what you want to compare it to, but let's take another
"leisure activity" that might have an awareness problem. How about
orienteering? I can easily imagine that there are a fair number of
people who might be interested in orienteering, but know only vaguely
about it, and a PR program might increase awareness. I simply don't
think the same thing can be said for bridge.
I might be wrong; I don't claim that I can "prove" it won't work. But
if you are just going to "assume" that awareness of bridge is low,
that's not going to be an effective way to convince people to agree with
you.
Stu Goodgold
In article <33736C...@gg.caltech.edu>,
on Fri, 09 May 1997 11:28:43 -0700,
Jeff Goldsmith writes many thing with which I fully agree,
but snipped so Chris Ryall can read it :-).
>David desJardins wrote:
>>
>> Chess has always gotten a lot of great PR; I don't think in the long run
>> that has much effect at all on the number of USCF members.
>
>Do you have any data on this? Figure skating experiences a
>huge surge in enrollment in classes right after a winter
>Olympics, particularly after an American woman does very
>well. I assume other countries have similar experiences,
>but I don't know about them. It is not the case that bridge
>classes see a large surge in attendance right after an American
>team wins the Bermuda Bowl. It seems to me that the difference
>between these two occurrances is marketing and promotion.
>
The US Chess Federation membership surged and nearly doubled in 1972
after Bobby Fischer vied for and won the World Championship amidst
enormous publicity. The contest between Fischer and Spassky was viewed
as a microcosm of the cold war, even to the reporting of 2 dead flies
in a light fixture suspected of containing spying apparatus.
When Fischer subsequently forfeited the title 3 years later,
USCF membership ebbed back to near pre-1972 levels.
In the '80s the USCF made a concerted effort to increase the level
of membership, and did so through internal volunteerism along with
some minor incentive prizes. Last I looked, membership now exceeds
the highest level of the early '70s and is still growing.
The USCF did not hire a professional publicity firm, AFAIK.
Some reasons:
a) Chess has always enjoyed a vastly better public image.
It has been the premier intellectual challenge for over 400 years.
Bridge is a relative newcomer.
Many non-chess-players recognize the name Kasparov.
How many non-tournament bridge players, let alone the general public,
can name any world champion bridge player of the last 10 years?
b) The USCF seems to have more energetic support.
Their campaign to increase membership was directed at the grass roots
level - they enlisted the aid of local clubs and tournament directors.
c) The USCF invested funds for educational purposes. They reached
children at the grade school level, and have achieved impressive
results and support there. No doubt many of those exposed to the
game at an early age have gone on to the tournament level.
d) Chess is a young person's game. A world champion in his 40's is
considered well beyond his prime and vulnerable. There are very few
world class players in their '50s. Perhaps this partially explains
items b) and c).
Let's face it. Games are something done in one's leisure time and
leisure time is greatest for children and retired people. In the US today
mid-life adults have little leisure time for organized mental games
in general, so any PR campaign is going to have to change attitudes
or cater to the market segment most apt to use the product.
Since the former is extremely unlikely, and
since children are not good candidates for bridge (in many opinions
other than mine), bridge may have to be marketed to the same group
that "Depends" is.
However, it may be appropriate to study why bridge is thriving in
countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark, where the average age
is nowhere near the retirement level. Is it predominantly cultural
or it is an effect of demographics? Did they employ any active PR
to promote the game?
Stu G
David desJardins
Jeff Goldsmith <je...@gg.caltech.edu> writes:
> For what it is worth, online bridge is working. Last week, OKbridge's
> duplicate game had over 100 tables. Regularly, they have 80 tables in
> play for normal games. 100 tables/session is still less than a normal
> regional, but it's starting to get to the same ballpark.
Why would you compare this to a regional? I haven't been on okbridge in
a year or two, but it seems more like a club game which happens to be
online. If you were to add up all of the club games in the US on any
given day you would probably find thousands and thousands of tables in
play. As successful as okbridge may be, the actual increase in the
amount of bridge being played in the US that it represents is pretty
small. Not to mention that some of those players are playing on
okbridge instead of in clubs or wherever they usually play.
Anyway, you said it yourself, no one thinks that online bridge is "the
solution." Is it a good thing to make available to people who want it?
Sure? Is it going to affect the long-term decline in the ACBL?
Probably not. Is there any benefit to be had from trying to expand ACBL
sanctions and regulation to online bridge? I'm doubtful. All of the
success that you point to has taken place without any ACBL involvement;
perhaps that could even be the reason for some of the success.
> Figure skating experiences a huge surge in enrollment in classes right
> after a winter Olympics, particularly after an American woman does
> very well. I assume other countries have similar experiences, but I
> don't know about them. It is not the case that bridge classes see a
> large surge in attendance right after an American team wins the
> Bermuda Bowl. It seems to me that the difference between these two
> occurrances is marketing and promotion.
That's true to an extent. But notice that the actual popularity of
figure skating in the US (the actual amount of time that people spend
doing it) is very small. The enormous popularity of watching figure
skating hasn't translated at all into a large community of amateur adult
figure skaters who spend much of their leisure time traveling to figure
skating "regionals" and "nationals" with thousands of competitors. It's
probably true that the popularity of figure skating leads more parents
to put their children into lessons, and if a certain fraction of those
turn out to be really good at it, that eventually increases the number
of competitive figure skaters in high-level competition, ten or so years
later. But so what?
This all doesn't seem to have very much to do with bridge. My opinions
about the likely effectiveness of PR for promoting bridge aren't based
on analogy with other activities which are quite different. They are
simply my opinions. I don't claim that they are anything but opinions,
and of course they could be wrong. But I don't think that analogies to
rather different activities like figure skating are going to do much to
determine that.
>> I don't think you can change the number that are seeking bridge lessons
>> through "PR" or by getting bridge mentioned on ESPN or by running a pro
>> tour with big money prizes. (If anything, I think the latter is more
>> likely to lead to cheating scandals which could kill bridge.)
>
> Let's hope the latter doesn't come to pass, and take great
> pains to prevent it.
Yes, I propose that we should prevent it by not getting involved with
big money prizes. That seems to me the most effective method of
prevention.
> I think, however, that you are dead wrong about the former. Perhaps
> not about ESPN or any specific mention, but the number of people
> willing to start an activity is almost certainly related to the number
> of people made aware of it.
But I think virtually everyone is already aware of bridge.
> Glamor matters, too. Bridge has to be seen as exciting, fun,
> glamorous, sexy, etc. for this to work. That's promotion.
But what will happen when they find out the truth? At most you will get
people to try it who aren't suited for it, and they will quickly find
out it doesn't match the promotion, and then they will not be back. So
what have you gained?
If you had hundreds of millions of dollars to spend, the kind of money
involved in major sports like golf or tennis, things might be
different. Perhaps you could build up bridge entirely through
marketing. If playing bridge required that you buy a $500 deck of
cards, and if I were in a position to make $300 for every deck that I
could sell, then yes, I might launch a massive PR and advertising
campaign as the best way to maximize my income. But bridge is very
unlike that and I don't think it's particularly useful to promote it as
if it were. And, for that matter, I'm quite happy that it's not like
that, and wouldn't want to see it become like that, even if it meant an
increase in the number of people playing bridge.
> I'd say that's clear. How many product names are part of your
> everyday language? How many do you recognize? Do you ever buy "name"
> brands rather than generic ones when the former is more expensive? Do
> you always search for generic brands?
Brand names and advertising are a complex issue, which are getting
pretty far afield from the main points here. In summary, I often buy
brand name products even when they are more expensive than similar
generic products, as do most people, and I think I do so for quite
rational reasons, as do most people. I think that the main reasons that
advertising and brand names are effective is that they give the vendor
an incentive for quality. If I buy a generic widget and it is defective
or inferior, and I don't even know who made it, the maker isn't any
worse off than if it turns out to be an excellent product. (Assuming
it's too much trouble to return, or that it's not the type of product
that can reasonably be returned.) Even if I know who made it, if it is
a small company only in that one business with little advertising, I was
unlikely to be a repeat customer anyway so my impressions are rather
unimportant.
On the other hand, if I buy a name brand product and I like it I am more
likely to buy other products under the same brand, and if I dislike it I
am less likely to buy other products under the same brand. Thus brand
names give the producer more incentive to produce a quality product.
Now, if the vendor spends money advertising the brand name, then that
makes the vendor's investment in that brand even larger. Thus it
becomes even more important for that vendor to satisfy its customers,
because it has a larger investment in its brand name, and more to lose
by cutting quality or otherwise losing its customers. Effectively,
advertising is in large part a way that producers eliminate the natural
incentive for them to shortchange consumers in the short term, by
creating long-term incentives to keep their customers happy.
There's a lot more to it than that, but the summary is that I don't
agree that the fact that advertising works implies irrationality on the
part of consumers (or producers).
> Does the ACBL want to advertise? I don't know. Tournaments
> advertise. Presumably that increases their attendance. OKBridge
> advertises. Presumably they spend that money believing that it will
> get them more subscribers. They've increased their advertising rate
> recently; presumably they did that because it seems to be working. My
> guess is that advertising, marketing, and promotion would be
> successful if done by the ACBL.
Certainly the ACBL can significantly increase (or decrease) its
membership through such activities. For example, my decisions in the
past several years about whether to pay or not to pay my "life master
service fee" have had nothing to do with the cost; they have been based
on how I perceive the ACBL and the way it is spending the money. So if
it were to present a more positive image, it would certainly be more
likely to receive my money.
Even advertising seems to me a perfectly reasonable notion, although I
don't think we can afford enough of it to have any significant effect.
But that's quite different than raising "awareness" of bridge through
"public relations", which is what I am dubious about.
Karen S. Walker
In a previous article, je...@gg.caltech.edu (Jeff Goldsmith) says:
>bobby goldman wrote:
>
>> I, and most other World Class players of my generation
>> have an intriguingly similar characteristic in our
>> Background:
>> Started playing bridge about the time of entering
>> college. Played some in college lounges and student
>> union centers. Played more and more bridge. Finally
>> dropped out of college.
>> Getting youth involved in bridge is definitely good for
>> the ACBL. IS IT GOOD FOR THE YOUTH?
[ Many interesting points snipped...]
>To summarize: is it ethical to sell a product (bridge) that
>has the possibility to be used to destroy one's life/career/
>family. The USA has decreed that this is so, at least from
>a legal standpoint; protecting oneself from oneself is assumed
>to be one's own job. Still, is it personally ethical? I think
>so, at least in this example. I doubt there are more than a
>very few cases of bridge-related career damage that weren't
>going to happen anyway. Bridge has the bonus that it can
>become a career. This is far better than tobacco or alchohol
>can offer.
I think it's far more ethical to "sell" bridge to youth than to sell
them the promise of a spot on the Little League All-Star Team, or a
college football scholarship, or an NBA career. The number of children
and young adults whose hearts have been broken (and future careers have
been destroyed) by pursuing these goals is astronomical compared to the
number of people who flunked out of college playing bridge.
Once all these people grow up, the latter group has a clear advantage
over the former because at least they can still participate in the pastime
they love. The adults who grew up with the "sports is everything"
mentality have little to pursue once they hit middle age; they're reduced
to watching it on TV, or shelling out $5000 for a fantasy baseball camp.
The lack of interest in bridge and other intellectual pastimes has
little to do with their intrinsic benefits, which have been supported well
by Bruce McIntyre and Jeff and others here. It has much more to do with
the media and our society in general, which over-emphasize physical
strength and beauty and over-glorify physical sports.
Physical team sports are wonderful activities for children, but in
moderation and with the proper perspective. I don't see much of either
today. Schools and communities offer so many different sports that some
children actually develop stress-related illnesses from trying to
participate in too many of them. Their parents often push them into it,
with no encouragement to balance their choice of extracurricular
activities -- to join just one (or two) sports teams, and write for the
school paper (or join the bridge club?).
And, since I have two degrees in advertising, I'll offer that a strong
promotional campaign CAN sell bridge to young people, and old ones, for
that matter. And yes, just casual mentions of bridge by ESPN announcers
can be important.
Another poster mentioned the four goals/steps of an advertising
campaign (AIDA -- Attention/Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action). It's
important to remember that advertising cannot in itself induce action. It
can only affect what happens in the consumer's mind -- it can increase his
level of knowledge of a product and persuade him of its benefits, but it
cannot "make" him buy it.
That's why advertising/promotion is most effective in accomplishing the
first goal -- creating awareness -- and plays a decreasing role in
influencing the other three elements in order. Creating a greater
awareness of bridge and its benefits is the most important step, and to do
that, you have to hit the potential consumer from every direction and at
every opportunity (even if it's just a throw-away line on ESPN).
[ Caveat emptor for the above: Bobby Goldman's observations about how
most world-class players went through a "bridge-bum" period is applicable
to us "town-class" players, too. I discovered duplicate bridge in grad
school and, although I finally graduated, I believe I still hold the
department record for most C's. So I'm sure I managed to learn the
absolute minimum about advertising theory during those years. ]
A final word about the GSB proposal: I'm thrilled that the ACBL Board
recognizes the need for a major promotion and is ready to spend some money
on it. And although I'm as anxious as anyone for them to get started, I
think their rejection of GSB's proposal was wise. This is a big
commitment, and it's crazy to consider just one bid (especially one where
it seemed the promoters were pressuring for a quick decision). The Board
needs to solicit proposals from several groups and insist on more
flexibility than the GSB proposal was offering. Once they get some bids,
then I hope they can act in atypical fashion and make a fast decision.
--
=====================================================================
Karen Walker, http://www.prairienet.org/bridge
Champaign IL http://bridge.miningco.com
Kevin Cline
st...@vnet.ibm.com (Stu Goodgold) wrote:
>Older threads on rgb have talked about how bridge is not a reasonable
>game for grade school children and why there are no bridge prodigies
>as there are in chess. If that is valid (and it is IMO),
>we should be looking elsewhere to attract aspiring players.
Meckstroth and Rodwell were world champions in their early twenties.
Perhaps if they had been able to start seriously studying the game when they
were seven or eight years old they could have played world-class bridge even
earlier. Chess prodigies are more carefully nurtured than very young bridge
players.
Donald A. Varvel
In
<4A6B83F6A0D106F4.592B7107...@library-proxy.airnews.net>
bgo...@airmail.net (bobby goldman) writes:
>
>David Shao <ds...@best.com> wrote:
>
>>I haven't seen anyone on this newsgroup give a coherent simple
>>explanation of why learning contract bridge is good for the young.
>>In fact, some of the more progressive voices on other issues have
>>argued on this newsgroup that learning bridge can be detrimental.
>>I suggest that until there is a one paragraph sound bite that can
>>convince a school board that bridge is good to teach, bridge will
>>make no real progress in United States schools.
>>
> David, you bring up an important topic, particularly at
>this point of upheaval and introspection by the ACBL.
>
>have an intriguingly similar characteristic in our
>Background:
>
> Started playing bridge about the time of entering
>college. Played some in college lounges and student
>union centers. Played more and more bridge. Finally
>dropped out of college.
>
> Getting youth involved in bridge is definitely good for
>the ACBL. IS IT GOOD FOR THE YOUTH?
>
>guess my opinion ;> ).
Yes, I can guess it, and I have some misgivings of my own.
I would say that in your case the bridge did more good than
the college classes you dropped out of. That's just a
guess. You can answer that better than anyone else, and I
suspect you may have a bit of uncertainty.
I dropped out of college after playing more bridge than
studying. I then dropped back in, after a stint playing
oboe in an Air Force band and winning two Armed Forces
postal chess championships. (Some men of my generation
found even more peculiar ways of dealing with the Vietnam
War.) After teaching in public schools for four years, I
dropped back in again, and again, and again, and eventually
got a Ph.D.
If I hadn't been playing bridge I doubt that I would have
been studying. I think Eddie Kantar, for instance, would
simply have played more table tennis. I'm not sure what
I would have done. Drugs were a possibility. So was
table tennis, for that matter.
I've been in a position to try to teach bridge at several
colleges, or to run or help run a college bridge club.
I've never done it. I suspect that it doesn't do any real
harm, but I also suspect that it would be easy to blame
bridge for the student's loss of interest. My parents
certainly did.
I think there are good reasons for teaching kids to play
bridge. I probably play a better game of chess than bridge,
and probably always will, but I haven't played serious
chess in years. Bridge involves interacting with the
personalities of other people. Chess does only indirectly,
if at all. Chamber music, team research, and bridge all
have a built-in social aspect that I find appealing. You
have to be able to build and participate in groups of from
two to about 5 people. At this point in my life I find
that much more interesting than simply finding the fastest
way to destroy somebody at the chessboard. I think
partnership building and team building are skills that many
young people could profit from learning.
-- Don Varvel
Barry Margolin
In article <4A6B83F6A0D106F4.592B7107...@library-proxy.airnews.net>,
bobby goldman <bgo...@airmail.net> wrote:
> Getting youth involved in bridge is definitely good for
>the ACBL. IS IT GOOD FOR THE YOUTH?
Young people will find all sorts of reasons to drop out of college and
(possibly) ruin their lives. A high school friend played too much
"Adventure", a college roommate was active in the SCA and played "Dungeons
and Dragons". Others abuse drugs or alcohol.
Should we stop promoting all activities that young people might abuse?
--
Barry Margolin
BBN Corporation, Cambridge, MA
bar...@bbnplanet.com
(BBN customers, call (800) 632-7638 option 1 for support)
Lauge Schaffer
Stu Goodgold wrote:
> (snip)
> However, it may be appropriate to study why bridge is thriving in
> countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark, where the average age
> is nowhere near the retirement level. Is it predominantly cultural
> or it is an effect of demographics? Did they employ any active PR
> to promote the game?
In Denmark, most club bridge is for members only, i.e. you sign up to
play, say, every Wednesday for an entire season (September to April).
This means that people tend to play once a week since they already paid
their card fees for the whole season. Some people are members of more
than one club of course.
I think that the main difference between Denmark and the ACBL is that
people in Denmark usually do not drop out of bridge for years when they
have kids, i.e. we don't have the "lost generation" problem.
The resulting broad age distribution makes it easier to recruit new
players.
There are lots of opportunities to learn bridge, both in a
"night-school" setting, and in a more club like format.
Lauge
Tim West meads
Jeff Goldsmith <je...@gg.caltech.edu> wrote:
> bobby goldman wrote:
>
> > I, and most other World Class players of my generation
> > have an intriguingly similar characteristic in our
> > Background:
> >
> > Started playing bridge about the time of entering
> > college. Played some in college lounges and student
> > union centers. Played more and more bridge. Finally
> > dropped out of college.
> >
> > the ACBL. IS IT GOOD FOR THE YOUTH?
>
> thought of bringing up.
>
> I have a strange opinion on the matter of students who
> persue an activity to the extent that it destroys their
> college careers. I think that this behavior is intrinsic
> to the student. If bridge were not the activity that you
> persued, I suspect that there'd be some other one. That
> is, students who are going to fail out of school will do
> something with their time. Talented students are going to
> do that well. If it is not bridge, it might be drugs,
> sex, poker, table tennis, pinball, athletics, sleeping,
> science fiction, Dungeons and Dragons, devil worship (OK,
> I'm not staying too serious here :)), or something.
Hmm, seven out ten - no wonder I dropped out:-) But bridge has several
advantages over many of the alternatives. In the big wide world of work
the value placed on the *content* of academic learning is relatively
trivial (exceptions made for doctors, lawyers and several others). What
recruiters are frequently looking for are "social adeptness", "analytical
skills", "decsion making ability", "leadership potential" and the like -
they happily tolerate supplying job related knowledge to candidates with
these qualities - all qualities that can be developed at least as well,
if not better, at the bridge table than in the classroom.
Personally I would expect that dropping out of a tyical college course
and being reasonably successful at bridge would do little to damage ones
career chances. (It might make it harder to get a job at the sort of
place you wouldn't wish to work). Dropping out and then failing would
obviously be damaging - but would it be fair to blame bridge for that?
There is also the potential with bridge to make useful contacts at the
club which can be used to help leg-up a career.
So on the whole I believe bridge is good for youth. Certainly I have no
regrets about dropping out, I hope that Bobby has none either.
Tim West-Meads
a...@nji.com
David desJardins wrote:
> I believe that people actually do a fairly
> good job of determining what it is that they do and don't enjoy. I
> think that loss of membership in the ACBL is due primarily to the fact
> that the people who might be members are making valid decisions that it
> isn't what they want to do. I don't think you can change that by PR; if
> you want to change that, you can only do it by changing the nature of
> the activities themselves, by making bridge itself more appealing, just
> not by selling it better.
Five thousand years of advertising down the drain with one post!
Unless bridge is different from any other human activity, it can
certainly be promoted by advertising and PR. Look at dirt bikes, moon
rocks, the hula hoop, pop music, junk food, tulip bulbs, clothing
fashion, various hair styles, bungee jumping, and literally tens of
thousands of useless, crummy, tacky fads. Why do you think platform
shoes are coming back? Did the US consumer suddenly begin making "valid
decisions" regarding these ugly products after years of ignoring them?
Unfortunately human beings are incredibly easy to convince of anything.
Organizations like US Chess and the ACBL don't promote because, by and
large, they're non profit organizations whose CEOs are in and out after
a year or so and don't have a lot to gain by increasing membership. If
it were otherwise you'd see massive promotional campaigns, more cash
prizes, corporate sponsorship, and many more (and younger) members.
By contrast there is a lot of for-profit activity at the very highest
levels of the chess world, as exemplified by the recent Kasparov-IBM
debacle. Intel used to sponsor a series of chess tournaments because it
felt the publicity was favorable. Believe me, if there was a buck to be
made from bridge we would be arguing about how money is corrupting our
game rather than how ACBL is dying.
Maybe the solution is to sell ACBL to a company or individual who will
run it like a business instead of like the small-town hospital auxiliary
which it resembles today.
angelo
bobby goldman
I've been getting in the habit of not focusing my
rhetorical questions well enough lately so lets
modify this a bit.
Let's assume a group of RGBers could go through
the transcripts of all school records nationally and pick
out 10000 fifteen year old kids who would seem like good
candidates for tournament bridge in their lifetimes.
Would this group be better off being taught (and hooked
on) bridge at 15 years of age or at 24?
Bobby Goldman
PS ... This proposition assumes and acknowledges that
there are many good things about getting involved with
bridge.... and is unrelated to any issue of whether it is
easier to make the connection during school years.
ro...@math.utexas.edu (Robin Michaels) wrote:
>Jeff Goldsmith (je...@gg.caltech.edu) wrote:
>: bobby goldman wrote:
>:
>: > I, and most other World Class players of my generation
>: > have an intriguingly similar characteristic in our
>: > Background:
>: >
>: > Started playing bridge about the time of entering
>: > college. Played some in college lounges and student
>: > union centers. Played more and more bridge. Finally
>: > dropped out of college.
>: >
>: > Getting youth involved in bridge is definitely good for
>: > the ACBL. IS IT GOOD FOR THE YOUTH?
>:
>: This is a fascinating question, one that I wish I'd
>: thought of bringing up.
>:
>: I have a strange opinion on the matter of students who
>: persue an activity to the extent that it destroys their
>: college careers. I think that this behavior is intrinsic
>: to the student. If bridge were not the activity that you
>: persued, I suspect that there'd be some other one. That
>: is, students who are going to fail out of school will do
>: something with their time. Talented students are going to
>: do that well. If it is not bridge, it might be drugs,
>: sex, poker, table tennis, pinball, athletics, sleeping,
>: science fiction, Dungeons and Dragons, devil worship (OK,
>: I'm not staying too serious here :)), or something.
>
INNDinky
bobby goldman <bgo...@airmail.net> wrote:
> Getting youth involved in bridge is definitely good for
>the ACBL. IS IT GOOD FOR THE YOUTH?
I've seen some preliminary studies that indicate that calculation heavy
activities, such as bridge, seem to have a significant lessening of the
chance to come down with Alzheimer's. My bridge skills got me my current
job, and have led to many fine travel opportunities. And as a gaming
addict IMO the networking one does at the bridge table is far likelier to
lead to employment opportunities than the networking done playing
role-playing games or taking drugs.
At the very least, bridge is no more harmful than any other leisure
activity.
Fast: richard...@imagin1.com Reliable: innd...@aol.com
Opinions: yes, please, but my own, not The ImagiNation Network's.
"The play's the thing..."
<< text destroying the relevance of prior quotation snipped>>.
a...@nji.com
bobby goldman wrote:
> Let's assume a group of RGBers could go through
> the transcripts of all school records nationally and pick
> out 10000 fifteen year old kids who would seem like good
> candidates for tournament bridge in their lifetimes.
>
> Would this group be better off being taught (and hooked
> on) bridge at 15 years of age or at 24?
And, quoted by someone else...
> >: > I, and most other World Class players of my generation
> >: > have an intriguingly similar characteristic in our
> >: > Background:
> >: >
> >: > Started playing bridge about the time of entering
> >: > college. Played some in college lounges and student
> >: > union centers. Played more and more bridge. Finally
> >: > dropped out of college.
Take it from someone who was a full-time student until age 30: I think
it's worth quitting college to be a world-class anything.
I always laugh at newspapermen and sports pundits who bemoan the fact
that some poor guy from Harlem whose whole life is sports and who will
never be a scholar in 1000 years of "higher education" leaves school for
a lucrative football or basketball career. You'd think it was more
important to the individual, or to society, to have another 6'7"
D-student 30 credits short of graduation (after 5 or 6 years) compete
for a job as a UPS driver.
Assuming you love whatever it is you're expert at -- and it's probably
difficult not to love it if you're that good at it -- what's wrong with
dropping out? College is not a guarantee of a happy life. In fact these
days college isn't much of anything at all.
You can always go back to school, as hundreds of thousands of adults
have done, after you're set in your career. Or you can learn about
things on your own by reading.
The tragedy is someone who's merely addicted but not very good. He/she
will have a tough time in school because they play cards all day (or
shoot pool, or get drunk, etc.) and, unlike Mr. Goldman et al., have
nothing to show for it.
angelo
Karen S. Walker
In a previous article, innd...@aol.com (INNDinky) says:
>bobby goldman <bgo...@airmail.net> wrote:
>> Getting youth involved in bridge is definitely good for
>>the ACBL. IS IT GOOD FOR THE YOUTH?
>
>I've seen some preliminary studies that indicate that calculation heavy
>activities, such as bridge, seem to have a significant lessening of the
>chance to come down with Alzheimer's. [ ... ]
A year or two ago, The Discovery Channel had a program on this, and
I've been looking for the written documentation it was based on ever
since. One of the claims made in the program was that games like bridge
and chess, played regularly, stimulate electrical activity in the brain
and actually help it create new synapses. These new connections were said
to slow the development of Alzheimers' disease, forestall senility and do
some other good things that I don't remember. (Perhaps I haven't been
firing enough neurons at the table lately ...)
Does anyone know where these studies have been published? I've done
searches on the web and in magazine indexes at the library, but I haven't
found anything that deals directly with this topic. I think a good
magazine article on this subject would be a great motivator for bridge-class
students. Thanks for any help.
Donald A. Varvel
In
<9A3CA09008ADA85B.C250981E...@library-proxy.airnews.net>
bgo...@airmail.net (bobby goldman) writes:
>
> I've been getting in the habit of not focusing my
>rhetorical questions well enough lately so lets
>modify this a bit.
>
>the transcripts of all school records nationally and pick
>out 10000 fifteen year old kids who would seem like good
>candidates for tournament bridge in their lifetimes.
>
> Would this group be better off being taught (and hooked
>on) bridge at 15 years of age or at 24?
I would say age 15. People will always find reasons to
drop out of college. My experience with 15-year-olds,
including myself, suggests that many of them need some
social skills that they don't have; and that there are
lots of worse things they can and will be doing.
My ex-father-in-law once said, "You might as well send
them to college. They aren't good for anything else at
that age."
-- Don Varvel
Joseph A. Wetherell
In <5lbi0s$4...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> kwa...@prairienet.org (Karen S.
Interesting comment, Karen!
I worked for many years as a computer programmer and I've noticed that
the folks I worked with seem to be fearing their senior years very
well.
Computer Programming is in many ways similar to Chess and Bridge as
well as other "think" games.
Regards,
Joe (texinpa on OKBridge)
Kevin Cline
bgo...@airmail.net (bobby goldman) wrote:
> I've been getting in the habit of not focusing my
>rhetorical questions well enough lately so lets
>modify this a bit.
>
> Let's assume a group of RGBers could go through
>the transcripts of all school records nationally and pick
>out 10000 fifteen year old kids who would seem like good
>candidates for tournament bridge in their lifetimes.
>
> Would this group be better off being taught (and hooked
>on) bridge at 15 years of age or at 24?
I sure wish I had learned bridge at 10 or 15 instead of 27.
I could'a been a contendah!
Seriously, many young people don't have enough opportunities for socially
acceptable recreation. Perhaps times have changed, but in the early 70's,
where I grew up (Western PA) there were few opportunities for young people to
engage in intellectual competition. Team athletics are fine, but they aren't
for everybody. I believe that for every activity there is some set of kids
that will find that activity engaging. And the most important thing for many
is to engage them in the first place. I doubt that bridge is any more
detrimental to scholarship than football or thespianism. I do know one young
woman who nearly flunked out of CMU due to amateur theatrics.
Kevin Cline
innd...@aol.com (INNDinky) wrote:
>bobby goldman <bgo...@airmail.net> wrote:
>> Getting youth involved in bridge is definitely good for
>>the ACBL. IS IT GOOD FOR THE YOUTH?
>
>I've seen some preliminary studies that indicate that calculation heavy
>activities, such as bridge, seem to have a significant lessening of the
>chance to come down with Alzheimer's.
I don't think that bridge prevent's Alzheimer's; I suspect that people who get
Alzheimers are not likely to enjoy bridge. Discover magazine recently
reported a study correlating a lack of expressiveness in biographies written
by novices in a midwestern nunnery with the later appearance of Alzheimer's.
The conclusion was that whatever caused Alzheimer's was definitely already
present and detectable in the late teens.
a...@nji.com
Thomas L. Goodwin wrote:
>
> a...@nji.com wrote:
>
> >Unless bridge is different from any other human activity, it can
> >certainly be promoted by advertising and PR. Look at dirt bikes, moon
> >rocks, the hula hoop, pop music, junk food, tulip bulbs, clothing
> >fashion, various hair styles, bungee jumping, and literally tens of
> >thousands of useless, crummy, tacky fads. Why do you think platform
> >shoes are coming back? Did the US consumer suddenly begin making "valid
> >decisions" regarding these ugly products after years of ignoring them?
>
> Nice going, angelo! All we have to do is turn competitive contract
> bridge into a useless, crummy, tacky fad, and promote it as such, and
> we've got it made.
>
> What cr*p!
You assume that every good or service that's heavily promoted is junk. I
don't. The examples I gave were in response to a post which stated, in
essence, that people do whatever they want to do regardless of
advertising and promotion.
The topic of this thread was how to get more people playing bridge,
preferably under the auspices of the ACBL. My suggestion was to use what
has worked for other (much less worthy as well as some more worthy)
goods and services: make it a profitable enterprise.
Angelo
> TLG
J. Robert Beck
bobby goldman wrote:
>
> I've been getting in the habit of not focusing my
> rhetorical questions well enough lately so lets
> modify this a bit.
>
> Let's assume a group of RGBers could go through
> the transcripts of all school records nationally and pick
> out 10000 fifteen year old kids who would seem like good
> candidates for tournament bridge in their lifetimes.
>
> Would this group be better off being taught (and hooked
> on) bridge at 15 years of age or at 24?
>
I'm a parent of an 11 year old youngest child who started learning
bridge in the ACBL Club Series last spring, and is interested in
tournament bridge. Partly this interest is due to the upcoming
departure of the second-youngest to college in a year, whereupon
Meredith will have six years with Mom and Dad, who are intermediate
tournament players looking forward to playing more once middle-kid is
off.
Meredith is the only regular club and tourney player under college age
in Houston, I believe. With the reduction in novice games at our home
club she plays in the open stratified game. I have been thinking about
how to approach the Houston area school districts to start a youth
bridge program that would compete with soccer, chess (also at our club
by the way), etc., and am having some difficulties getting untracked.
Anyhow, my answer to Bobby's rhetorical question is, a search and
development program for 10000 15 year old players would be more likely
to produce a strong US Junior Team down the road, and would probably
burn out a lot of second-tier level kids early who might have more
staying power at 24. Such seems to be the case with any sport pursued
early. For every Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods, there are many whose
names you never hear outside the home club, who were pushed too early
and for whom it ceased to be "fun."
At the moment it's fun for Meredith, who plays not-quite-weekly with a
mentor (not one of the parents) and occasionally with Mom, Dad or a
pickup partner. I'm trying not to push.
--bob beck
--
J. Robert Beck, M.D.
One Baylor Plaza
Houston TX 77030
kris oddson
>
> Interesting comment, Karen!
>
>
> Joe (texinpa on OKBridge)
If you dont use it you lose it. No scientific studies required.
Jeremy Mathers
In article <5lb5kf$9tt$2...@news.ime.net>,
Thomas L. Goodwin <t...@mainelink.net> wrote:
...
>Nice going, angelo! All we have to do is turn competitive contract
>bridge into a useless, crummy, tacky fad, and promote it as such, and
>we've got it made.
>
>What cr*p!
Besides being a cheap shot (but then again, this is the Usenet), I think
this attitude is exactly the key to the whole situation.
Angelo is, of course, dead on about the value and power of advertising, but
I am convinced that "bridge people" - that is, the people who are involved
in any serious way with the game and those who run/control it at the highest
levels are, like DDJ, people who could never bring themselves to admit it
(the power of advertising) to themselves or others. And, deep down, this is
probably why they rejected the proposal.
No other game depends so totally on the 2 basic assumptions about the
participants:
1) Rationality
2) Basic Human Goodness
The notion that people could be manipulated by advertising flies in the face
of each of these assumptions.
************************************************************************
My version of Shakespeare, as applied to traffic safety:
First thing we do is kill all the cabdrivers!
- py...@quads.uchicago.edu, who is still costing the net
hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars, every time he posts -
************************************************************************
rwvpf wpnrrj ibf ijrfer
Stu Goodgold
In article <5lbk91$b...@sjx-ixn7.ix.netcom.com>,
on 14 May 1997 05:57:53 GMT,
Joseph A. Wetherell <tex...@ix.netcom.com(Joseph> writes:
> --- snip ---
>Interesting comment, Karen!
>
>I worked for many years as a computer programmer and I've noticed that
>the folks I worked with seem to be fearing their senior years very well.
Yeah! Especially with the 90's trend of down-sizing. :-).
>
Stu Goodgold
Karen S. Walker
In a previous article, jrb...@bcm.tmc.edu ("J. Robert Beck") says:
[ ... ]
>Anyhow, my answer to Bobby's rhetorical question is, a search and
>development program for 10000 15 year old players would be more likely
>to produce a strong US Junior Team down the road, and would probably
>burn out a lot of second-tier level kids early who might have more
>staying power at 24. Such seems to be the case with any sport pursued
>early. For every Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods, there are many whose
>names you never hear outside the home club, who were pushed too early
>and for whom it ceased to be "fun."
If ACBL is trying to field a good junior team (and get some publicity
for youth bridge), Bob's idea is definitely the way to go. I'm convinced
that identifying and developing bridge talent is purely a numbers game.
My husband and I teach beginning and intermediate classes that average
about 25 total students, and from the typical class, we can get perhaps
four or five to even *try* duplicate. If we're lucky, one of them might
have a real flair for the game become a semi-regular player. We've
taught about 800 people to play over the last 20 years, and just last
week, we had a club party for the ONLY one of those 800 (that I know about
anyway) who has ever made Life Master. I was more excited about his
accomplishment than he was!
ACBL's past approach has been to sink a lot of money into supporting a
handful of talented junior players, in the hope that their success would
generate publicity and get other teens interested in the game. I've
thought for a long time that this money would be better spent to introduce
the game to the masses and let the numbers game work. ACBL has the right
idea with the subsidized high-school and college lesson programs. By
expanding it -- and adopting an aggressive promotional campaign -- I
think we can make bridge attractive to young people, and have a better
chance of finding those who have the basic talent necessary to become
regular players.
Stu Goodgold
In article <5lb5kf$9tt$2...@news.ime.net>,
on 14 May 1997 01:47:59 GMT,
"Thomas L. Goodwin" <t...@mainelink.net> writes:
>a...@nji.com wrote:
>
>>Unless bridge is different from any other human activity, it can
>>certainly be promoted by advertising and PR. Look at dirt bikes, moon
>>rocks, the hula hoop, pop music, junk food, tulip bulbs, clothing
>>fashion, various hair styles, bungee jumping, and literally tens of
>>thousands of useless, crummy, tacky fads. Why do you think platform
>>shoes are coming back? Did the US consumer suddenly begin making "valid
>>decisions" regarding these ugly products after years of ignoring them?
>>
>
>>angelo
>
>Nice going, angelo! All we have to do is turn competitive contract
>bridge into a useless, crummy, tacky fad, and promote it as such, and
>we've got it made.
>
>What cr*p!
>
And why this elitist attitude? Do you want to limit this game to
serious Flight A players and experts to the exclusion of all else?
What do you think made bridge so popular in the first place? Especially
among the masses in the 30's and 40's? It was just that...a fad.
It started as a gentile pastime for the upper crust;
after all contract bridge was invented by Harold Vanderbilt,
whose family represented the epitome of old money in the USA.
By the early 30's bridge was a sociable aspect of high society and this
image was ingrained in the public eye. See the Marx Brothers'
Animal Crackers (1931) for a nice lampooning of this image.
Bridge appears to have filtered down to the 'masses' a few years later,
no doubt due to its high society image and the desire of the middle-class
to absorb some social graces, but also due to the promotions
of Culbertson and later Goren. Sadly, the public perception
of bridge has changed little since its popularity 50 years ago.
Maybe it's because no one has made a serious effort to update that image.
Stu G
Chyah Burghard
>I don't think that bridge prevent's Alzheimer's;
So much is not known about Alzheimer's yet.
But what is more correct is not that Bridge
prevents Alzheimer's, but prevents deterioration
of that part of the brain.
It is kind of like having a stroke that may
disable only part of the brain.
My grandfather could remember child hood
memories better than he could remember
recent memories, but never lost the ability
to play cards. It was the one part of the brain
that stayed in almost perfect condition.
I am sure the daily exercise of playing cards
and the fact that this was important to him
probably played a big part in retaining the
ability.
-Chyah
Joseph A. Wetherell
In <19970514....@vnet.ibm.com> st...@vnet.ibm.com (Stu Goodgold)
writes:
Well Stu, I had a finger fehler there and really meant bearing!!!
Regards,
Joe
Joseph A. Wetherell
>Interesting comment, Karen!
>
>I worked for many years as a computer programmer and I've noticed that
>the folks I worked with seem to be bearing their senior years very
>well.
>
DBlizzard
In article <ymyb9pg...@runner.ccr-p.ida.org>, David desJardins
<de...@runner.ccr-p.ida.org> writes:
>Chess has always gotten a lot of great PR; I don't think in the long run
>that has much effect at all on the number of USCF members.
I have to disagree here. I am sure that many people who have, for
example, seen "Searching for Bobby Fisher" have started to play
chess because it looked attractive in the movie. Now, I am equally
sure that many, even most, players didn't stick to it because they
didn't enjoy it as much as they thought, or for other reasons. However,
they certainly picked up players who may never have tried the game
if they hadn't been exposed to the game.
David A. Blizzard
David A. Blizzard
AlLeBendig
In article <5lb5kf$9tt$2...@news.ime.net>, "Thomas L. Goodwin"
<t...@mainelink.net> writes:
>a...@nji.com wrote:
>
>>Unless bridge is different from any other human activity, it can
>>certainly be promoted by advertising and PR. Look at dirt bikes, moon
>>rocks, the hula hoop, pop music, junk food, tulip bulbs, clothing
>>fashion, various hair styles, bungee jumping, and literally tens of
>>thousands of useless, crummy, tacky fads. Why do you think platform
>>shoes are coming back? Did the US consumer suddenly begin making "valid
>>decisions" regarding these ugly products after years of ignoring them?
>>
>(lots snipped)
>
>>angelo
>
>Nice going, angelo! All we have to do is turn competitive contract
>bridge into a useless, crummy, tacky fad, and promote it as such, and
>we've got it made.
>
>What cr*p!
>
>TLG
I know we're all getting older, but it is still hard to comprehend how
anyone could give any such interpretation to Angelo's posting. Several
posters don't seem to understand that noone has suggested turning
COMPETITIVE bridge into anything less than it is. But where do you think
the competitive bridge players of tomorrow are coming from? Maybe you
don't care, TLG. When many of us got involved in bridge it was something
very popular and the "in" thing to do. Many of my college friends never
got involved deeply in competitive bridge but still loved it and still
play today.
Surely some of the posters here can remember the popularity of bridge
40-50 years ago. Others could easily read about it. It was in the papers
then and in the news. It was constantly in front of the public and
something that everyone "had" to learn. Yes, there were many "bad"
players as a result, but so what? How could that ever negatively affect
our world of competitive bridge? We can't possibly be developing bridge
players if we don't have people wanting to learn bridge.
Angelo's excellent posting on the powers of advertising and promotion
suggests that we could see a resurgence of popularity for bridge if these
same techniques were applied. I really can't understand why TLG and David
Desjardins in particular either don't believe that can happen or think it
would be a terrible thing if it did? Could someone please tell me the
downside of bridge becoming popular again?
Alan LeBendig
Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot...
Chyah Burghard
I got a peek at a newspaper clipping that was
talking about one school in particular (Illinois)
that had a bridge club and once a month got
in the car and drove the kids to an ACBL
tournament.
I will put in a disclaimer that I am not sure how
to arrive at what I want to accomplish, except
with a lot of volunteers, but it seems to me
that organizing a bridge league where high
schoolers played off against each other is
the way to get high schoolers interested in
bridge. Then you not only get them interested
in bridge, you give them a way to use with
other people of their own age group.
This would mean that every state or
province would have its own league for what
is a reasonable distance to drive teenages
and get them back home in the same day.
The pay off could be a state championship
followed by a high school competition to
be held at a national.
In think that if we could ever get the schools
involved enough to implement a program
like this, we would have a source of incoming
players for a long time to come.
To answer the question of is it better for
someone to learn bridge at 15 or 24, I think
the answer is that in Junior High School,
which is grades 7-9, I think kids are less
committed to extra curricular activities.
When you read grades 10-12, you are
not only talking school and activities you
are talking cars and dating.
I am one of those that learned in college,
thankfully the summer before my last
quarter of college, but I can see how I
could have messed up college pretty bad
had I learned early.
I think proceeded to play bridge just about
6 days a week. Sometimes there were some
of us who went and played in the duplicate
only to go back to the coffee house and
play until 4 am in the morning!
It is this intensity that we have when we are
truly interested in something new that should
get burned out before college.
I guess I envision that we hook the kids when
are young, let them use the extra energy they
have at that age and get the intense excitement
out of their system to the point where they can
handle school and playing bridge once or
twice a week.
Then when they join college they can find a
college bridge club and deal with being in
college. Then hopefully after college, you get
a job, possibly move to a new city and now
have a skill that will allow them to make
friends in the bridge world and make bridge a
life long passion.
-Chyah
Jeff Goldsmith
bobby goldman wrote:
>
> Let's assume a group of RGBers could go through
> the transcripts of all school records nationally and pick
> out 10000 fifteen year old kids who would seem like good
> candidates for tournament bridge in their lifetimes.
>
> Would this group be better off being taught (and hooked
> on) bridge at 15 years of age or at 24?
Good for their bridge game? Most definitely earlier.
As an aside, I think that successful bridge players
generally played cards as youngsters. There are a
few exceptions, but most did. Younger is better.
Is it good for their lives? Averaged over the group
of 10,000, I think it would make no difference to
their "success level" in life, but would make them
happier people.
--Jeff
--
# "I'm a blonde; I'm a blonde: B-L-A-N-D!"
# ---
# http://muggy.gg.caltech.edu/~jeff
a...@nji.com
Just a couple of thoughts on recent postings...
As an amateur chess player (1679 rating, about 1900 strength [I don't
play much against humans]) I'm thrilled when I hear that Kasparov gets
$400,000 for playing four good games and 2 horrendous ones against a
machine. I would like nothing better than for professional bridge
players to be similarly rewarded -- NOT for playing with the likes of me
for $300 a session but for playing great bridge with and against one
another. I'd rather read about Garozzo-Eisenberg at their worst than any
of the famous client-pro combinations at their best.
People don't realize what a mess bridge finds itself in today. The aging
of the ACBL population means there will not be a crop of young, talented
players from which the "Dallas Aces" of 20 years from now will arise.
For competitive bridge to become exciting again will require a massive
infusion of new people and new talent. Unfortunately leisure activities
don't sell on their own. Kids today have TV, video, the Internet, and a
hundred other things that offer them instant gratification with people
their own age. Why should they play bridge with their grandparents?
Fortunately we have at our disposal a phenomenal resource if we ever
dare to use it: PROFIT. Turn over professional/competitive bridge to a
business group and either they will make money or triple the
bridge-playing population (or both, I hope).
When that happens the atmosphere at tournaments will be exciting again,
there'll be thousands of crazed players (like there are at some big
chess tournaments), there'll be TV coverage, real cash prizes, newspaper
coverage, a tremendous boost in US bridge talent, etc. And it will
benefit every bridge player regardless of ability.
I think it's do-able but we really must relegate ACBL to charitable and
good will activities and turn the business of bridge over to a business.
Angelo
Thomas Andrews
Well, we had our second meeting the other day with the marketing
consultants. The conversation went something like this:
Me:
So, how are we gonna sell bridge and make a profit?
Consultant:
Well, I see that you have a number of serious problems,
here. Let's start with the name, "Contract Bridge." First of all,
nobody likes contracts, it makes them nervous and they start
thinking about getting a lawyer. Second, the focus groups told
us that they didn't understand what this game had to do with
"bridge". They didn't see a bridge in site, even one of a metaphoric
nature. The combination of "bridge" and "contract" particularly
disturbed the all-important mafioso demographic, who immediately
envisioned cement shoes and a long drop.
Me:
I see. Well, that's definitely not a demographic we want to offend.
Consultant:
Our focus groups also wanted to know why there had to be so many
cards. People were having a hard time counting up to thirteen.
Some of the superstitious objected to thirteen on principal.
We concluded that nine would be a better number, because the average
person has at least nine fingers. Any more than ten, though, and
we've lost a lot of potential customers.
They also thought the cards were boring. Which led us to think,
because if we actually change the cards properly, we can rake
in a lot of money off the side. Instead of hearts, diamonds, clubs,
and spades, we could have McDs, Michellins, Budweisers, and
Fords.
Me:
Wow. We're gonna be rich.
We discussed some advertising concepts last time you were here.
What did you find out from the focus groups?
Consultant:
The "This is not your grandmother's contract bridge!" campaign
didn't fly. Far more successful were the ads that made fun of
chess weenies. This scored particularly well among bright
highschoolers who didn't want to be seen as too anti-social.
We also tried to get some famous people to do ads, but they
didn't work out.
Me:
Oh, what was the problem?
Consultant:
Well, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett wouldn't do it, unless they
were given a 99% interest in our company. Omar Shariff did not
score well - none of the young people knew who he was.
Me:
None?
Consultant:
Well, one remembered the name, then realized that he had heard
his grandmother say the name in her sleep over and over again.
Me:
So, anything else?
Consultant:
Well, there was one disturbing development.
A number of our focus members actually got indigestion, and a
few fainted.
Me:
My god, what did you feed them!
Consultant:
Oh, it wasn't the food.
It was just that one member of a focus group asked, "how does
one go about learning to play this game." The leader of the focus
group said that there were primarily two methods: taking classes
or reading a 300 page book. At this point, most of the younger
members of the group exhibited the, umm, previously described
symptoms.
--
==
Thomas Andrews tho...@best.com http://www.best.com/~thomaso/
a...@nji.com
Chyah Burghard wrote:
>
> I got a peek at a newspaper clipping that was
> talking about one school in particular (Illinois)
> that had a bridge club and once a month got
> in the car and drove the kids to an ACBL
> tournament.
>
> I will put in a disclaimer that I am not sure how
> to arrive at what I want to accomplish, except
> with a lot of volunteers, but it seems to me
> that organizing a bridge league where high
> schoolers played off against each other is
> the way to get high schoolers interested in
> bridge.
... And lots of other good points.
There's one thing wrong with this scenario: you expect school kids to
become interested in bridge for its own merit, without a supporting
infrastructure, prizes, fame, glory, the perception that it's a "youth
thing," etc. Without the glitz and glory the situation you describe will
be the exception rather than the rule.
Pardon my reiteration of what's becoming a tired analogy: chess. Kids
who get interested in chess do so because they see a critical mass of
interest, of vitality, in the game. I never miss an opportunity to show
my 5- and 7-year-old daughters, who are learning chess pictures of kids
playing chess in big halls, Russian emigres holding their paychecks,
Kasparov playing the machine, etc. I don't know how important this
reinforcement is because the kids are basically nerds anyway, but it's
there.
My daughters are also interested in bridge, by the way, but because they
see their parents play. If I showed them those grainy, obituary-like
photos of the latest 11-year-old Perfect Intergallactic Bridge Master
from *The Bulletin* they'd just shrug and ask why the kid's grandparents
are all in the picture.
angelo
a...@nji.com
Thomas Andrews wrote:
>
> Well, we had our second meeting the other day with the marketing
> consultants. The conversation went something like this:
...
This was one of the all-time great posts on R.G.B. I disagree, of
course, since I don't think marketing necessarily means garbage.
angelo
David desJardins
Stu Goodgold <st...@vnet.ibm.com> writes:
> I do disagree that this needs to be outside the purview of the ACBL.
> The USCF gets involved with major money chess tournaments; it's time
> for the ACBL to re-evaluate its stance on high-stakes bridge.
The ACBL is a nonprofit organization; it should do what its members
want. Unfortunately the form of governance of the ACBL doesn't link its
actions or decisions very directly to the wishes of its members. But if
(as I believe) most of its members very much dislike the idea of ACBL
involvement in (sponsorship of) "high-stakes bridge", then it isn't
something that the ACBL should do. I don't have any problem with
"re-evaluation", so long as what is being evaluated is what the members
actually want.
Given the strong feelings of those who don't want to have anything to do
with "high-stakes bridge", it would seem to me to make more sense to
have separate organizations, so that people could choose to belong to
those organizations that are pursuing activities that they approve of.
Perhaps one day it will be the supporters of amateur competition who
will have to leave the ACBL to find an organization that shares their
views, but given the long history of the ACBL as an organization devoted
to precisely that, it's not clear to me that that is the way it should
be. And it might make more sense to organize high-stakes bridge as a
for-profit enterprise, anyway.
David desJardins
--
Copyright 1997 David desJardins. Unlimited permission is granted to quote
from this posting for non-commercial use as long as attribution is given.
Thomas L. Goodwin
Yes, Mr. Andrews' little scenario was highly amusing.
Nobody suggests that marketing necessarily means garbage:
classic straw-man tactics are not helpful in advancing the discussion.
The suggestion is that IF what you are marketing is garbage, THEN
marketing means garbage. Just another way of saying, focus first on what
you want to market (and why), and THEN try to figure out the best way of
marketing it. The "why" is critically important: if your focus is to
make a profit, you may draw one set of conclusions; if your focus is to
keep alive a competitive sport that many have found to be a valuable part
of life, you may draw different conclusions.
The "bridge-is-a-business" school has got its priorities wrong, and
is taking an increasingly prominent role, with the result that
"bridge-as-a-competitive-sport" is deteriorating. At least that is
the suggestion.
Cordially,
Thomas L. Goodwin
Chyah Burghard
There's one thing wrong with this scenario: you expect school kids to
become interested in bridge for its own merit, without a supporting
infrastructure, prizes, fame, glory, the perception that it's a "youth
thing," etc. Without the glitz and glory the situation you describe will
be the exception rather than the rule.
No, actually I was proposing that there BE a structure
that rewards them. If you play off against other schools,
you can win first prize and that might be a trophy or
a ribbon. Very often high schools have newspapers
of their own and there could be an article in there
about the team.
Comparing to debate and declamation contests for
a second: Each school can host a tournament at
various times of the year. Any schools who wish
to come to that tournament can either pre-register
or just show up. I think this gets your comparison
of Chess into the picture.
If at a certain point in the year you win in your region,
you are rewarded with a trip to the state tournament
and if you win there, your 4-6 person team gets a
free trip to the nationals to play against other kids
from ACBL land.
Then part of the package is to get into the newspaper,
Even if it is a little blurb. Maybe the weekly tournaments
do not get mentioned, but the regional, state and
national tournaments could get mentioned.
Can you see the publicity of a state publishing a before
the tournament article that the state was sending a
certain foursome to the nationals?
I have lived in Minneapolis and in Rochester, Minnesota.
There was a big difference in what the newspapers
carried. The Minneapolis Star and Tribune was likely
not to care. I don't know if this was because nobody
pushed it or their policies. But the Rochester Post
gobbled up all sorts of stuff like this. The first time
I won an event at the nationals, the ACBL sent press
releases to the various people's home towns and I
actually got my name in the paper!
-Chyah
Chyah Burghard
What does bridge have going for it?? Honor, that's it. Unfortunately
honor alone doesn't sell very well to the general public.
Not any more than masterpoints sell to the rgb crowd.
Let's have a championship where a million bucks is at stake.
===========
I think that your are very much on the "money <g>" here!
Not that we have to start with a million bucks. Sectionals
could have small prizes, regionals larger, nationals
yet larger. I really miss the days where script (ACBL
monopoly money to be used later as entries to
anything associated with the ACBL) was the rule
rather than the exception.
I can't count the number of times people have asked me
what you win at the nationals and when you try to
explain masterpoints, honor and possibly fame within
the bridge community, you lose their attention.
I have noticed that there are some regionals that
have a money zip swiss game. This seemed to be
well received. They got sponsors and gave away
some pretty impressive prizes as well as script
or money.
I know the ACBL has tried this at the nationals and
it didn't go over big. I don't think the idea should be
eliminated. It should be looked at for what went wrong.
It is probably appropriate to have a money game for
the average folks and better rewards for winning
something like the Blue Ribbon Pairs.
-Chyah
Stu Goodgold
In article <ym911fg...@tang.ccr-p.ida.org>,
on 16 May 1997 16:29:45 -0400,
David desJardins <David> writes:
>Alan LeBendig <alleb...@aol.com> writes:
>> Several posters don't seem to understand that noone has suggested
>> turning COMPETITIVE bridge into anything less than it is.
>
>"high-stakes bridge"; I think that is something "less" than amateur
>bridge played for personal satisfaction and the enjoyment of the game.
Just who do you think is likely to win these "high-stakes" games?
Anyone other than one of the top experts in the world today?
They are all professional bridge players, making their livelihood
at this game. Whether they collect royalties, speaking fees,
syndication fees, or client fees, they are still not amateurs.
Also, money games already exist in the form of Calcuttas;
they can involve substantial stakes (for many pros at least).
The same set of pros play in the larger Calcuttas as play in the
national ACBL events. Only the sponsorship is different, not the game.
>--- snip ----
>I don't think that ACBL duplicate bridge, in its present form, can
>become a lot more popular than it is now, because I don't think that it
>is the sort of activity that very many people enjoy. I think most
^^^^^^^^^^^^
>people who might be persuaded to go to those tournaments by PR or
>advertising would actually find them much fun, and I don't think that
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I had to read this twice to be sure, but yes, it's a true rarity:
a DdJ typo!! :-).
>positive PR for bridge can do very much about that. There may also be
>people, like me, who are generally turned off by some of the ways that
>the ACBL is run.
Wasn't duplicate much more popular, relative to the overall population,
in the 50's and 60's?? I don't think much has changed since that time,
yet the ACBL continues to suffer declining membership and duplicate
games at clubs and tournaments are shrinking. So either bridge
has changed substantially (it hasn't) or people's attitudes have.
>
>The large number of people my age (I'm 33) who have drifted away from
>the bridge scene is evidence of all that; if the ACBL didn't have such a
>low retention rate, I don't think people would be so worried about
>attracting new members. I think the retention rate is a very good
>measure of the attractiveness of bridge itself, as distinguished from
>its promotion and marketing. Some other people clearly disagree with
>this opinion of mine, and that's fine.
>
How many of your age group ever belonged to the ACBL in the first place?
Bridge seems to have peaked in attractiveness to the generation that
attended college in the '60s; it has declined sharply since them.
I think the ACBL has a very high retention rate. That is why the
median age is 66 and was climbing at a rate of nearly 1 per year.
The only limiting factor for continued retention seems to be ... death.
Undoubtedly, retention of newer members is an important measure.
And here the ACBL could do much better.
>I do enjoy bridge tournaments, but I'm not a particularly typical member
>of the public. There are other activities that I participate in that
>also aren't enormously popular and don't enjoy broad public appeal, and
>I don't expect them to, nor does it particularly bother me that they
>don't.
>
David, no one can claim that you represent the average person.
You should be rightly indignant if they even insinuated it.
We haven't heard from those who stand to benefit the most from high
stakes games. What do the pros think? Bobby Goldman, are you reading
this? How would you feel about playing a world championship for
a $1,000,000 purse?? How do you think it would affect the game
in general?
Stu G
David desJardins
Alan LeBendig <alleb...@aol.com> writes:
> Several posters don't seem to understand that noone has suggested
> turning COMPETITIVE bridge into anything less than it is.
Some people have suggested ACBL sponsorship and encouragement of
"high-stakes bridge"; I think that is something "less" than amateur
bridge played for personal satisfaction and the enjoyment of the game.
That might be an example of a suggestion made for marketing and
promotion reasons which would be counterproductive from my point of
view, since some people justify high-stakes bridge by saying that it
would increase public interest in the game.
> Angelo's excellent posting on the powers of advertising and promotion
> suggests that we could see a resurgence of popularity for bridge if these
> same techniques were applied. I really can't understand why TLG and David
> Desjardins in particular either don't believe that can happen or think it
> would be a terrible thing if it did?
I don't think that ACBL duplicate bridge, in its present form, can
become a lot more popular than it is now, because I don't think that it
is the sort of activity that very many people enjoy. I think most
people who might be persuaded to go to those tournaments by PR or
advertising would actually find them much fun, and I don't think that
positive PR for bridge can do very much about that. There may also be
people, like me, who are generally turned off by some of the ways that
the ACBL is run.
The large number of people my age (I'm 33) who have drifted away from
the bridge scene is evidence of all that; if the ACBL didn't have such a
low retention rate, I don't think people would be so worried about
attracting new members. I think the retention rate is a very good
measure of the attractiveness of bridge itself, as distinguished from
its promotion and marketing. Some other people clearly disagree with
this opinion of mine, and that's fine.
I do enjoy bridge tournaments, but I'm not a particularly typical member
of the public. There are other activities that I participate in that
also aren't enormously popular and don't enjoy broad public appeal, and
I don't expect them to, nor does it particularly bother me that they
don't.
So I think that any attempt to make bridge much more popular would
require much more substantial changes. Some of those changes might be
things that I would welcome, others would be things I would dislike. To
the extent that I am concerned that making bridge more popular might
really mean changing (doing away with) some of the things about it that
I enjoy, that could potentially be a bad (I would not say "terrible")
thing. If making bridge more popular means changing some of the things
that I dislike, so much the better. It just depends on the specifics.
Warren Usui
In article <19970515153...@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
AlLeBendig <alleb...@aol.com> wrote:
>Could someone please tell me the
>downside of bridge becoming popular again?
And now from the home office, the Top 10 problems if bridge becomes popular
again:
10. The number one country music song is "My wife left me --
in a Moyesian fit."
9. Crowds start chanting "Unblock that trick!" at major tournaments.
8. "Marty Bergen defends the LAW -- next on Larry King"
7. Luke Skywalker uses the force in the next Star Wars movie -- and bids
five no-trump.
6. Wrigleys markets Takeout Doublemint Gum.
5. Chris Berman fails to come up with a good nickname for Zia during
ESPN's coverage of the Bermuda Bowl.
4. A jury in a liability lawsuit awards double the damages -- and fifty for
the insult.
3. The Rueful Rabbit and Hideous Hog become the most popular Beanie Babies.
2. "Goren's Bridge Classics, coming up next on the four-card major network"
and the number one problem if bridge becomes popular again:
1. "Partners who pass transfer bids -- next on Jerry Springer"
David desJardins
Stu Goodgold <st...@vnet.ibm.com> writes:
>> Some people have suggested ACBL sponsorship and encouragement of
>> "high-stakes bridge"; I think that is something "less" than amateur
>> bridge played for personal satisfaction and the enjoyment of the game.
>
> Anyone other than one of the top experts in the world today?
> They are all professional bridge players, making their livelihood
> at this game.
It makes no difference to me who wins. That doesn't affect whether I
think it is a good thing.
It's also not true that all of the "top experts in the world today" make
all or most of their livelihood playing bridge. And many national
championships now held by the ACBL are won by players who are not bridge
professionals and who have never made any money playing bridge. If
these events were held for "high stakes", one would expect the same to
continue, unless you systematically exclude those players, or charge
high entry fees to keep them out, or there is some other reason that you
think they would become much less likely to win.
> Also, money games already exist in the form of Calcuttas;
> they can involve substantial stakes (for many pros at least).
Exactly. These events (the ones with "substantial stakes") have large
entry fees, to keep the rest of the players out.
> The same set of pros play in the larger Calcuttas as play in the
> national ACBL events. Only the sponsorship is different, not the game.
I don't want an organization of which I am a member to sponsor events
that I dislike. I don't care if some other organization does; I can
simply choose to have nothing to do with that organization. I don't see
why this is difficult to understand.
> Wasn't duplicate much more popular, relative to the overall population,
> in the 50's and 60's?? I don't think much has changed since that time,
> yet the ACBL continues to suffer declining membership and duplicate
> games at clubs and tournaments are shrinking. So either bridge
> has changed substantially (it hasn't) or people's attitudes have.
Yes, I think that people's attitudes and entertainment options have
changed enormously since the 1950s and 1960s. I think that's obvious.
David desJardins
FLMas...@mindspring.com
a...@nji.com wrote:
>Angelo
No crop of new players? We only have Eric Greco, who might be the
youngest player to win a national championship since Steve Weinstein.
And Joel Woolridge. Want to include players out of college? I
wouldn't want to play for more money than I can afford against Tom
Carmichael, Shannon Lipscomb, or Chris Willenken. Or Dan Levin and
Sam Hirschman, and I could go on. Admittedly, I'm not sure we have a
crop of juniors right now like we did in 1991, when three of them won
the Bermuda Bowl. But come watch the junior trials some year.
a...@nji.com
Stu Goodgold wrote:
> Just who do you think is likely to win these "high-stakes" games?
> Anyone other than one of the top experts in the world today?
> They are all professional bridge players, making their livelihood
> at this game. Whether they collect royalties, speaking fees,
> syndication fees, or client fees, they are still not amateurs.
Who do you think wins Wimbledon and the French Open? Does that stop the
tennis industry from marketing itself successfully to my wife, who
subscribes to a magazine, spends $100 or so a year on equipment, and
plays in a weekly league game? I dare say tennis would be less
attractive to her and millions of other players if Sampras's only reward
for winning the Australian was a trophy and a kiss from Miss Sydney (or
maybe 300 "Grand Slam Points"). Tennis took off as a spectator and
amateur (i.e. duffer) sport when the pros left their childish,
hypocritical "amateur" posture behind and began making real money.
By the way, there's nothing to prevent there being prizes at every level
of bridge play. Of course that would require a rating system. An
entry-based prize fund for section top or rating group top score would
generate a lot of interest, I think. The possibility of winning $1000 or
so for topping a large tournament seems it would be a tremendous
incentive. It would be easy to generate, too: 50 tables, 50%
participation, at $10/event = a $1000 prize fund.
> [money games] already exist in the form of Calcuttas;
> they can involve substantial stakes (for many pros at least).
> The same set of pros play in the larger Calcuttas as play in the
> national ACBL events. Only the sponsorship is different, not the > game.
Money games today are a freak, a rarity, an aberration. It's not even
worth mentioning them.
> We haven't heard from those who stand to benefit the most from high
> stakes games. What do the pros think? Bobby Goldman, are you reading
> this? How would you feel about playing a world championship for
> a $1,000,000 purse?? How do you think it would affect the game
> in general?
First a comment, then I'd like to add to this question.
Comment: We ALL stand to benefit from a $1 million Bermuda Bowl purse.
It will improve bridge play and interest at every level.
Now for the question(s).
As long as you mention Bobby Goldman, I'd like to pose a rhetorical
question to him which he doesn't have to answer in this forum for
obvious reasons. Mr. Goldman, who would you rather spend your weekends
playing with: Paul Soloway, one of the world's best players, or the
charming, very wealthy, but not very savvy Myrna von Flipshitz? And to
readers of r.g.b. I ask the logical follow-ups to this question:
regarding the bidding and play of bridge hands by those two
partnerships, which one would increase your interest and understanding
of bridge? Which one would you rather read about or watch in action on a
vu-graph?
We're all the poorer, bridge-wise, as long as top players depend on
clients rather prizes for their rewards.
angelo