I’m getting back into the groove more slowly than I had planned. Anant and I spent a lot of time this week going over our notes. We played a practice match with our teammates for the Trials, Phil Clayton and Danny Sprung. We’re doing lots of Cuebids practice.
I’ve been spending some time playing every day, whether it’s a robot duplicate or a few hands here and there on Bridge Master.
I’ve been looking to the Bridge Winners community for opinions on questions that arise as I work with Greg and Anant. I’ll share them with you in case you haven’t seen them:
One of the coolest things for me about this project has been seeing it motivate other players to up their games and think about what that entails. There were two articles published on Bridge Winners this week, one by Todd Flowerday and one by Prahalad Rajkumar, inspired by my project. Arjune Bose has his own Substack and has been diligent about posting what he’s doing.
I’ve got an exciting episode of the podcast dropping this week: the one and only Larry Cohen! It was great talking to him. I think you’ll get a lot out of our conversation.
Here’s what I did this week:
VuGraph
I haven’t gotten back into this habit since returning from Memphis. Need to return to it.
Robots
I’m trying to play in the Zenith every day, but I missed several days this week. Also the occasional instant tournament. I’m onto Level 4 of Bridge Master.
Play
I played a couple of games with students this week. Anant and I had a practice match with Phil and Danny.
Reading
I’m almost through March’s book, Thinking on Defense.
The plan for April was Kelsey’s Killing Defense at Bridge, but I just bought a few books on judgment and competitive bidding, so I’m going to check those out and might opt for one of them instead. I will keep you posted. Let me know if you’ve ready any of these and have recommendations.
Partnership
Anant and I spent a lot of time going over the notes. We’re trying to simplify some things and focus on general agreements more than specific ones. That includes a lot of Cuebids practice.
Beyond Bridge
The weather has been nice here in New York, so I’ve been out walking every day. I’m still doing my meditation twice a day and getting some stretching in.
I encourage you to share your progress in the comments. We’re all in this together!!
Have a great week.
The Language of Bridge by Kit Woolsey is a great book to cement how partners can connect and better communicate.
Mike Lawrence judgment at Bridge was a pretty good book as I recall. Think I read it twice which I normally don't do. Probably should read it again. But I gave all my bridge works away when I moved.