Barry and Me

It was a long time ago and I was young and green, in bridge and in life. I found myself at my first out of country regional, at Cobo Hall in Detroit. Our group was comprised of seasoned club players with at least 2,500 masterpoints between us, with one member holding 2,000 of those. We were youthful, stupid and arrogant. (In that regard I speak only for myself and my very dear friend David Cravioto; OK, maybe just for him.)

The scoring for the Sunday Swiss was victory points, something I had never even heard of. Mind you I was not an ACBL member as I was one year away from graduating from university with a degree in French and Political Science. My team mates were David, Sharon Cleary (now Jabbour), John Cleary and Caroline Pascoe.

We sailed through the event, mixing partnerships and miraculously winning five matches and tying two to see ourselves on the leader board! That was a lifetime first, and what a thrill. Team French sat in sixth place going into the final match. Barry was just ahead of us by a few victory points. David chanted “Give us Barry, Give us Barry!” Then when we drew Barry he cursed aloud "Shit! We got Barry! Shit we got Barry! We’re gonna get killed!"

It looked like this was the end of the road. I arrived at the table and was shocked to learn of my new-found the celebrity status. I had to squeeze my way through the horde of kibitzers. I had never had (even a girlfriend) kibitz me before, and here we were, like Christians in the Coliseum being thrown to the lions. I suspected some kibitzers might have been there to see our opponents, only David dreamt otherwise. I sat down to find Barry Crane on my left and Mike Smolen on my right. For some reason, I surmise it was purely geography; we were not socially acquainted. There were no pleasantries, no words, just my sweaty palms and an air of disbelief. My heart stopped, if only for a moment when I realized how far over our heads we really were. The kibitzers were three and four deep. I recall that there were 25 or so encircling the table like vultures awaiting the inevitable carcasses of the slaughtered. Hell I believed it, why shouldn’t they? I asked a teenager adjacent to me if he was old enough to buy alcohol. He said yes. I handed him $10.00 and asked him to bring me back two beers. In Ontario you can’t drink during a bridge event, but in the Motor City, well, it was an all new card game.

I played with John; Sharon sat out while David and Caroline (the holder of the 2,000 MPs) faced Tom and Carol Saunders at the other table. The first hand at my table had them bid briskly to slam. Partner led a heart. Dummy had the ace. I had the king of hearts and another ace. Barry played low from the dummy. I grabbed my king, cashed my ace and basked in the glow of a plus. The kibitzers murmured. Maybe it was just the frantic beating of my heart. Barry and Smolen said nothing.

Board two was déjà vu all over again. They bid quickly to 6NT. I led something and Smolen turned to me and said, “If you have 4 diamonds and 4 spades you will be squeezed and I will make seven”. I said “I don’t” and we all put our cards back in the board. Two hands at warp speed and the kid was not yet back with my beers.

Board three saw Barry step out.

I held ATXXX AKXXX AJX –

None vulnerable. After two passes I opened a forcing one club. Barry (on my left) bid 2 clubs, pass, pass back to me. If partner had a penalty double, I had to re-open with double and so I did. All passed, partner led a spade and an ashen-faced Smolen tabled:

QXXX XXX XXX XXX

The carnage was swift and merciless and soon we were appending 1100 (old scoring) to our side of the ledger. I was delirious. A huge digit, a slam down, we had to be well up. I thought it a good time to pray for 1NT all pass for all the remaining boards.

They double my partner in 3S and I am almost apoplectic as they play a a forcing game and they win one trump trick after another taking the AKQ of spades and two side tricks to pip him one, for minus 200. I had feared the dreaded toll-free (800) number so I was relieved. No matchpoints but this is imps. I figures a small loss. This time I pray John has seen the score sheet and decides to lie low.

Finally, the damn kid gets back with my refreshments. I was tempted to hand one to my partner, and against my better judgment I did so. The kid asked if he could see my convention card. I handed it to him. That was rude. I didn’t know better.

The kibitzers are stirring and I have finished a beer in world record chugging time. Does it help calm my nerves? No. American beer! If there is one thing our American friends could learn from us, the Germans, the Dutch or the Irish is how to make a decent beer. Again, I look to the heavens and promise to go to church regularly should we have some boring part score hands. My prayers are answered as the remaining deals are uneventful. I lied about the going to church part; I just wanted my prayers answered. And they were.

Crane and Smolen get up and leave the table. They don’t see the need to verify the score and the thought never crosses my mind. Our swarm of kibitzers diminishes to a few curious bystanders. I tell my partner I am going to go fetch another round. I am so nervous, I feel like a teenager out on his first date and his girlfriend says “kiss me”. I am awaiting a cold slap to awaken me from my dream-like state. I grab my bounty (a lot faster than that kid) and return to the table. David and Caroline are not yet back. Our throng of kibitzers has been decimated to a solo random voyeur.

“How was your set?” I demand of David.

“Nothing unusual” he replies with nonchalance.

“How was yours?” He is suspicious, and I don’t blame him. I decline to assign it an adjective.

“Board 1 we are plus fifty” as I try to conceal my delight.

“Win 11 as we are +460. Did they bid that slam?”

“Yes.”

I sensed there and then, especially with David’s disclaimer, that we had won. Time seemed to slow down. I was enthralled at this moment. A once in a lifetime experience. If you are a golfer, unless you are a big-ticket politician or PGA tour member, you will never in your life play against Jack, Arnie or Tiger. Here I was, a player with zero Masterpoints playing the number one ranked player in the world. I asked Caroline to pinch me – she did. Then I asked her to kiss me.

She smiled and quipped “only if we win”.

“Minus 1430”.

“Push.”

“Plus 1100…..” David nearly jumped out of his jockey shorts. “What happened?”

“What is your score?”

“Minus 450.”

“Win twelve.”

I think there and then I may have passed out. I do know I was in a state of euphoria that no one could deny. I wanted the match to end there; no further results will be accepted. David asked something, I didn’t hear it. I handed him my convention card and drifted off into my own little world. He scrutinized it, without comment, then at the end looking very grim he solemnly announced “win by 21.”

“Who?”

“We win by 21!” He chortles, smiles and then shouts out – "We beat Barry!"

Caroline just about tackles me as she smothers me in feigned affection.

“We win?” Sharon asked as no one could believe it.

Sharon and John embrace. David is jumping up and down like he just won the SuperBowl with a last minute Montana pass. Caroline releases me under my false protests and demands to have a recount and scrutinize every result. David and I are quaffing my refreshments, ignoring Caroline’s inquiries and instead laughing, backslapping, and shaking hands like victorious congressmen before their flock. I hand her our convention card and pay no attention to her requests. These moments are rare. Defeating the number one ranked player in the world! It had never happened before to any of us and I dare say few of us had a moment of comparable joy since.  A lottery winner.

Friends wander over to congratulate us, probably drawn by the noise level of David’s delight. David had slain Goliath. The thrill would linger, as I am still able to revel in that moment’s history almost 30 years ago. Did we win the event? No. We finished fourth if I recall correctly. But we beat Mr. Bridge. That ecstasy was way beyond a few masterpoints. It was history in the making. I think we won about 6.5 gold points. (Awards were less back then, you didn’t win 35 gold points for winning the Flight B – there was no bloody Flight B.) I resolved to sign up and obtain my ACBL membership. Naturally I applied to have my gold points applied retroactively. And so it was. I accrued gold points as my first Masterpoints points on my ACBL record.

Our team drifted apart. I have not seen or heard from John or Caroline in 30 or so years. Sharon I still chat via email. After all, she had the courtesy to set me up with her gorgeous sister – Lu. David and I remain close, even if we hardly play together anymore except socially. Once in a while we share a frosty refreshment, chat about our sons/lives/wives and if we are really lucky – dip our lines in the water. But we share a memory that no one can erase. Nowadays we are not so young or so green and I trust neither so arrogant nor stupid. This time I speak exclusively about myself, not for my close friend David.

Barry Crane Revisited

This story was written a long time ago by Grant Baze, San Diego, Ca, USA.

Thanks to Grant for "granting" permission for it to be seen here.   

Younger readers may not know of Barry or appreciate some of the humor and insight Grant provides into Barry. I love the spots about Barry’s superstitions and the "prediction" Smolen made.

A good story is timeless. I asked Grant for permission to reprint this here and he readily agreed. I hope you can enjoy, whether or not you have seen this before. I had seen it years ago, but somehow, the second time round, it was sweeter and even more compelling. You be the judge.

I played against Barry once. That too is a great story. Maybe I will share it one day. In the meantime, enjoy this. And if you don’t cringe and smile, take up Canasta, poker or knitting. This story provides insight to bridge at its highest level, and that is telling.

C

___________________________________________________________________________

 

Barry Crane was the best matchpoint player of all time. He was also the most flamboyant character I have known in the bridge world. On the minus side, he was a terrible partner; volatile, mean, narcissistic, vindictive, petty … all of these characteristics (except narcissistic) he used when he described himself.

On the plus side, he was good for bridge. He created a lot of action at and away from the bridge table, he was a celebrity in and out of the bridge world (He was a Hollywood producer, best known for the television shows Mission Impossible and Mannix), he had a strong mystique, a strong life force, and he was interesting, the subject of continuous gossip and "war stories" (and he loved it that way). It seems almost inevitable, in a tragic sense, that his brutal murder in 1985 is still an unsolved mystery.

Barry loved a McKinney race. He loved to be a part of it; if he was not going for it himself, he loved to be kingmaker, and usually he was kingmaker. There were three reasons Barry could do this. One, he was a great player. Most years he worked very hard during the week; he finished his productions on or under schedule because he drove his people hard to make sure he was free to play bridge on the weekends. He then would play with whom he had decided should win the McKinney that year. Two, he had a lot of important connections within the bridge world, and by connections I mean with other good and great players, with many important sponsors, and within the ACBL organization itself. Third, and probably most importantly, he was quite wealthy. He came from a wealthy family, and he made a lot of money in his own right in Hollywood. Therefore he chose not to play professionally unless a professional team was the best one available; his partners and teammates were invariably good or great players. Because professionals need to pay our bills, we could not really compete over the course of a year under those circumstances. This did not sit well with many of the great players, as you can imagine.

Barry wanted the race to be acrimonious, and did what he could to make sure it would be acrimonious. This made the year more exciting and therefore more fun for Barry, and frankly it made it more fun and exciting for the rest of us, whether we were directly involved or not. It also meant Barry created a lot of ill will amongst his McKinney opponents and their supporters, but he seemed to thrive on that. That worked to my advantage in 1984, the year I was directly involved against Barry, because I received support from many of the other great players in the country, who were basically fed up with him.

For three days I have been trying to think of a Barry story that would put him into a good light. I have not been able to think of a single one. So I will choose some stories that I know firsthand.

Barry was a partner killer. At the Hawaii Nationals in the Spring of 1985 Barry played with Mike Passell in the Open Pairs. They had a fabulous last session and won the event easily, the umpteenth time that Barry won that event (he was particularly good against non-expert competition). Mike is a friend of mine; after the event I congratulated him on the win. Mike said, "Ah, I play with Barry once a year just to remind myself of how much I hate playing with him."

Jeff Meckstroth went one better. He played with Barry in a two session regional event just because he thought he should play at least once with "Mr. McKinney." At the end of the event Jeff tore their convention card into ribbons and threw the pieces at Barry, making it very clear that he would never play with Barry again.

At the Sacramento regional in 1983 I was playing with Barry. Barry had several superstitious rules that he followed always, and his partners better follow them or all hell would break loose. One of these was that if you had a two way guess for a queen, you did not have to think about it — the queen was over the jack in the minors, and under the jack in the majors. So if you held Axxx and dummy had the KJ109, you would lay down the ace and lead to the J if the suit was a major, and lead to the King and finesse coming back if the suit was a minor. Barry and I wind up in 7NT and that was our club holding, with only 12 top tricks; we each had balanced hands so I did not expect to get a count on the hand. No problem, I’m thinking to myself, I will not be able to get a count on the hand so I will just follow Barry’s rule; if it does not work at least he will keep his mouth shut. I cash a few side suit winners; to my annoyance the suits split crazy and I do get an exact count on the hand. LHO has three clubs and RHO two clubs, which makes it a 50% better play to ignore Barry’s rule. Meanwhile, at the same time, downstairs in another section, Mike Smolen is playing this hand at the same moment; he knows he and I are playing this hand simultaneously. Mike also gets a count on the hand, but decides to follow Barry’s rule. Sure enough, the Queen was doubleton and Mike makes the hand. Mike knows I am going to guess the hand the technically correct way, regardless of Barry’s superstitions; Mike tells his partner "Listen closely, you are about to hear an explosion from upstairs." How right he was. I misguessed the Queen and Barry went ballistic, screaming like a lunatic and then running out of the room. When he came back he deliberately threw the next six boards in a row (we lost the event by one-half of a matchpoint, and of course he blamed me). (Of course, that was his wont after you violated his "rule". CF) Parenthetically, for the rest of the day Barry and I kept track of how often his rule was right; to my shock, in the relevant situations, it was right five of six times. I am telling you, Barry was mystic; there is absolutely no reason it should not be a 50-50 proposition. Nevertheless, to this day, if I have no clues as to which way to finesse in these situations, I just follow Barry’s rule.

After Barry’s death the McKinney was renamed the Barry Crane Top 500; most of us old-timers still refer to the Barry Crane Top 500 as the McKinney, partly because it is easier to say, and partly due to habit.

Also since Barry’s death, there has not been a real race for the McKinney. Sometimes the winner more or less falls into it; sometimes some great or very good player decides he wants to win and no one else is willing to invest the money, time, energy, and possible ill will to contest him; occasionally a good player will decide he wants to win and hires professional support.

This year is somewhat typical. Ron Andersen decided he would like to win the McKinney, and no one wants to contest him. However, Ron is not Barry. He is not wealthy, and must play professionally at most of the tournaments. Also, his health is not good, and a McKinney run is usually a physically draining experience. This means that one of the other great professionals who is getting a lot of work and is having a good year could beat him. This year Jeff Meckstroth is having a very good year and would be the player most likely to give Ron serious competition for the McKinney. I think that will not happen.

When Jeff first began playing professionally, the player who gave him the most help was Ron. Jeff owes Ron for that, and therefore I think Jeff is not going to get in Ron’s way — deliberately. Jeff plays so well, and has such great teammates and partners, that he could win accidentally, but I am sure he will try not to do that. Jeff always plays to win, but if it gets close, I’m guessing Jeff might take a few tournaments off that he otherwise would play. As long as Ron can stay relatively healthy, he should win.

Next year will be somewhat typical as well. Lynn Deas has decided she would like to win. Lynn is one of the great players in the world, and a sweetheart to boot. No one is going to contest, so far as I know, and I would be very surprised if somebody decided to make a race of it. So look for Ron to win this year, and Lynn to win in 1997.

About Cam French

Cam French is a teacher, mentor, former certified director/club proprietor and writer of the game. By day, he is a teacher of developmentally handicapped children for the Toronto District School Board. He has been published in The Bridge World, The Kibitzer and community newspapers. He has not accrued multiple victories in Regional or National events, but claims to be friends with a few who have. He is more of a student of the game than a tournament professional. He plays on-line at www.OKBridge.com (handle Gambit) and recreationally with friends of varying levels.

On this blog site, he hopes to bring personal writings and compelling ones from other players. He is a lover of bridge literature and enjoys sharing that with players of all ranks.  He dialogues frequently with bridge experts especially in reference to his latest story which is a cold case, dating back to events of 1979;  a story which has become a cause célèbre within the expert  bridge community and promises to shed light upon one of the more deplorable acts in ACBL history. He resides in suburban Toronto with his spouse Janice and son Satchel. He can be contacted through this blog or at c.jfrench@rogers.com.

He wonders if the ACBL will ever acknowledge in some way, the injustice inflicted upon Zeke Jabbour, Gary Hann, David Sacks, Mike Cappelletti, Ron Feldman and David Hoffner at Norfolk in 1979. Any ideas are invited.

Strip Squeeze, Trick and Slow Arrival

 

Is there a more renowned card game in history than bridge? Bridge is a descendant of whist. It is essentially an intellectual game of dialogue, logic, intuition, and chicanery. It grew from a game of the elite, to become main stream in twentieth century America and Western Europe.  In the first half of the century it was popularized by Americans Ely Culbertson and later Charles Goren. Both were experts, authors and promoters of the game. Today bridge draws its participants from all walks of life. It transcends professions, generations, borders, and language. 

The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge (which is the source of much of this article) notes that the Duke of Cumberland, son of George III (1738-1820), King of England, was “an inveterate gambler for high stakes” who was allegedly swindled out of £20,000 on a rigged deal. James Bond substituted the same hand in Moonraker to chastise the cheating villain. (No Virginia, in the book our hero played bridge, not poker.) In the American south a similar deal became infamous as the Mississippi Heart Hand, and was used by card sharks to bilk riverboat gamblers.

Some famous personalities to play this game include British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Indian pacifist Mahatma Gandhi, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping, who took up the game when he had time on his hands under house arrest during the Cultural Revolution. The comedian George Burns, movie star Omar Sharif, playwright George Kaufman, Les Brown (of band of renown fame), and Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stephens all played at a high level. More recently Martina Navratilova, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet are known to enjoy a hand or two. 

Who would believe that bridge played a tactical role in American naval history? The following is based upon an account written by Alan Truscott in The New York Times. It happened 1917 in the Turkish harbor of Constantinople, now Istanbul. An American gunboat, the Scorpion was boarded by the Turks who were German allies. The German navy, present in force, wanted the Scorpion for use as a decoy, but the crew much preferred to be interned under Turkish control. The Captain of the ship Lt. Cdr. Herbert Babbitt challenged the Interior Minister Talat Pasha to a rubber of bridge, with the ship as the stake. If he lost, the Scorpion would go to the Germans. If he won, the vessel would be interned where she was. On the critical last hand Babbitt landed a difficult contract (four no trump) to win the stake and Talat was true to his word. The Scorpion and her crew remained in Turkish waters until the war was over. For the rest of his naval career he was known as Four Notrump Babbitt.

In 1898 the USS Merrimac a 3362-ton collier (coal carrying vessel) was scuttled in Santiago harbor by the US navy in an attempt to impede the Spanish fleet. Bridge lexicon appropriated the term. Thus was born the Merrimac Coup, a deliberate sacrifice of a strategic card with the intent of thwarting the enemy.

Bridge cannibalizes its vocabulary from the global society. Some of it bears the names of notable players but most come from history, culture or witticisms. Finesse in bridge is not grace, poise or elegance but a simple card play maneuver novices master quickly. While a squeeze in every day parlance may be a girlfriend or sweetheart; here it refers to the pain a player has when compelled to throw a card he wishes to retain. A few squeeze variations include compound, clash, transfer, backwash, invisible, and a personal favorite, the strip squeeze.

The terms hooker, trick, advance, pickup boy, scoring, and slow arrival may titillate in a non-bridge setting; but within the colloquialisms of bridge they are innocuous terms. A pajama game may sound like your daughter’s sleep over; but is considered a duplicate game with few average results rather lots of tops and bottoms. Some might see endplay as an antonym to foreplay. However according to The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition 2000 it is: “a play in bridge that forces an opponent to lead and results in the opponents’ losing one or more tricks that they would have won had they not been leading”.

Sometimes cards develop their own identities. We have the Beer Card. If under certain circumstances you win the last trick with the seven of diamonds your partner owes you a beer. Greg Morse, with Sheri Winestock and Jeff Goldsmith, traced its origin to a Danish game called Boma-Loma where the seven of diamonds was a vital card. Danish players brought it to Europe. American Junior players picked it up at a Junior Bridge Camp in Poland and imported it home to become part of the game’s vernacular. The Curse of Scotland is the nine of diamonds. This has a dubious origin, one of several being that the nine of diamonds was the chief card used in the game Pope John. It was designated the Pope, the antichrist of Scottish Reformers. What is a MacGuffin?  It derives its origin from Alfred Hitchcock’s designation for such an item, perhaps a piece of microfilm or a list of names that is a key to the plot of a movie. Purloined for bridge lexis by Don Kersey in an article in The Bridge World April 2000 (see their online glossary of bridge terms at www.bridgeworld.com); he called it “a card dangerous to possess but too valuable to discard”.

Avoidance in bridge is akin to real life. It is a tactical play designed to prohibit a certain player from obtaining the lead. One of the more colorful psychological ploys was documented by Frederick B. Turner. In The Grosvenor Gambit ( The Bridge World June 1973) Phillip Grosvenor accidentally pulled a wrong card, which might have allowed the opponent an opportunity to make a contract in which he was destined to fail. The opponent trusting him not to be so foolish, failed to take advantage. It is a purely psychological ruse which if pulled off infuriates its victims. As Turner tells it “Three days after this tournament Grosvenor’s body was found on the beach at Key Largo. The dealing fingers of his right hand had been broken, and there were cruel bruises about his head and shoulders.” Readers were outraged until reassured that the piece was pure fiction.

From medicine we have post-mortem and apply it as the discussion and analysis of hands after the conclusion of play. As in baseball, bridge vernacular shares suicide squeeze, going deep, sacrifice, and stealing. The French gave us coup. In our language we recognize coup (per The American Heritage^® Dictionary) as “blow or stroke”. From that came coup d’état; “the sudden overthrow of a government by a usually small group of persons in or previously in positions of authority”. We have the Devil’s Coup, also known as the disappearing trump trick; the Dentist’s Coup (it extracts key opposition cards),  and the Deschapelles Coup (named after Alexandre Louis Honoré Lebreton Deschapelles) in which one leads an unsupported honor to establish an entry to partner’s hand.

The vocabulary of the auction in bridge is very limited. We have the numbers one through seven, the four suits (clubs, diamonds hearts, and spades), pass, notrump, double, and redouble. The laws do not allow the use of adjectives (as in three invitational spades or penalty double), to bridge to gap between a bid and its intention.

Therefore conventions were developed to harvest the limited bidding vocabulary artificially to address a specific situation. Typically named as are insects or comets after their discoverer, conventions are tools where information is legally solicited and exchanged. In the right situation, a bid of two clubs Stayman says nothing about clubs; rather it asks about hearts and spades. The bid of four notrump is often deployed as Blackwood, asking one’s partner how many aces they possess. The language of bridge spawns offspring too, as later refinements to Blackwood include Super, Key Card, Roman, and most recently, Exclusion.

Bridge has conventions to cope with conventions, sort of a derivative of the original product. For example imagine your partner were to ask how many aces you had. Before you can answer the opponent on your right intervenes with a bid designed to thwart your bidding dialogue. With your partner you might have legal agreements to cope with their temerity. Conventions like DOPI (double with zero aces, pass with one) and DEPO (double with even, pass with odd) allow you to send the desired message.

Bridge is not without humor. The Sominex® Coup (named after the sleep medication) is when a player takes so long, you doze off awaiting his decision. In a chapter from Phillip and Robert King’s The King’s Tales they create the Devil’s Dictionary, a parody of Ambrose Bierce’s work of the same name published in 1911. A couple of entries include “partner; a person who collaborates with the opponents to ensure you lose heavily”; and “master bid”, a bid so ingenious it enables its author to win the post mortem while losing the rubber”.

The Goldwater Rule was a satirical proposition by Tournament Director Harry Goldwater. It suggested that a player should accept a lead out of turn; the premise being, a player who does not know whose turn it is to lead probably does not know the right lead either. The convention Gerber is labeled sardonically as baby food. The suggestive going to bed with is neither an act of procreation nor a recreational indulgence. It means a failure to take a trick with a certain card.

I asked a few bridge experts for their favorite colloquialisms. Grant Baze offered up “Jackson, Tennessee, niner from Carolina, eighter from Decatur, vamp of Savannah”.  I inquired what that was and he answered “Jack, ten, nine, eight, and seven – from my rubber bridge days, but part of my vernacular now.” Larry Cohen mentioned Snapdragon (an obscure convention), the quack (either a queen or a jack) and the Crocodile Coup (where a defender in second seat plays an unnecessarily high card for a strategic reason) as his favorites. Sheri Winestock noted Striped Tail Ape Double, (so designated because one runs like a Stripe Tail Ape if the opponents have the impertinence to redouble) and Last Train, a reference to the Monkey’s song, The Last Train to Clarksville. Barry Rigal added smother, a rare end position where a sure winner is smothered out of existence. New York Times bridge columnist Phillip Alder contributed winkle; a play so rare it appears almost exclusively in bridge fiction; and stepping stone, where one uses the opponents to gain access to winners one can not reach on one’s own.

Remember Four No Trump Babbitt, the USS Merrimac and the role they played in history. The next time you run across words like squeeze, endplay, finesse, or coup, maybe you will consider taking up this game. Bridge is a connection that unites citizens of the world through its unique culture, idioms, ever evolving language, and intellectual exploration.

Cam French is a bridge writer, teacher and player. He resides in Scarborough, Ontario. You may contact him through this blog or at c.jfrench@rogers.com.

(www.bridgeworld.com)