Hi Bobby and Judy,

Glad to see you’re back! Let me know if you need any help with running this site.

Gladdaseeya, as Phil Silvers would have said.

Bob

Hi Mircea1,

Since I have become thoroughly dedicated to our wonderful group of close bridge friends rather than admit to my life long addiction to our beautiful game, I’m very happy the latest glitch didn’t last one minute longer.

Also thanks for your offer of help, being nice to hear that you, when we are in time of need, are available. Of course, hoping to not have to go in that direction, but it is indeed refreshing to know that you are familiar with such modern tricks of the trade.

If one would only call me a computer dunce, he would be understating it.

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the reference to Sgt. Bilko, an absolute favorite of mine. Where have all the flowers gone?

However, yes, gladdatohrrfromya!

FYI during the downtime, happened to stumble across an article from Sports Illustrated Vault, an archive of past issues (SI.com) from that magazine. Nicely, can search by author, surprisingly, Charles Goren had a column during 60s-70s, and interestingly the Aces and our host are frequently featured. A different era, and some different bidding, etc, but good card play is good card play. Seeing bridge from that era presented within other cultural aspects in the magazine is worth the effort. Who would have known? Now, unfortunately my local papers no longer carry a column. Neither does NYT. Bobby mentions bridge in schools, but bridge in the media would also help kindle an interest in our game.

Hi Joe1,

Yes, and more history which you (and others) may already know, Charles Goren was on the cover of Time Magazine in 1958 when it was estimated that the USA had approximately 40 million bridge players (down to about 8 million now, many of which are in old folks homes).

In 1993 when I was President of the WBF I mentioned during a trip to Beijing at the Peoples Hall of the Republic, when asked by one of their leaders, “What can we do to promote bridge”, I replied, try and teach bridge in your primary and secondary schools, to which they ask to caucas for 20 minutes. They then came back in 10 minutes and said “Done”. It took them a number of years about 5 to 10 to get it started, but now it is being taught as an elective to their students which number around 200 million.

Also in Europe there are 11 countries which teach bridge in their schools to rave notices from the students, their teachers, and IMO the best news, to the parents of the students.

In the USA, they, to my knowledge, have never even approached our National Educational system office, but, in fact, with the logic involved, legal partnership communication during the bidding, numeracy (always important), sportsmanship, ethics, and highly competitive, at least to me, has all the elements needed to be a great elective for students who love to compete.

However Horn Lake, in spite of some goosing from bridge lovers has never sent anyone to Washington with the hope of emulating what is going on in Europe and China, and why not, has never been explained (at least to me).

Yes our newspapers are having trouble staying alive and no doubt, bridge columns are not getting the best of it, but in spite of the lack of publicity and promotion I still have about 100 newspapers which have remained steadfast in keeping my bridge column alive and also some from around the world, but no thanks to the ACBL who seem to only be worried about keeping their own jobs, but not creating different ways to promote the game as more than just worthwhile as an important learning tool with a superior high side to enjoy.

Both Bill Gates and Warren Buffett love the game and will contribute if asked, but we need at least a small group or more to do the heavy lifting.

In any event, thanks for your post and let’s all hope for better things to happen.