[slothy]

Oops noticed that i did not bid over your opening bid, Fred. Surprised the virtual auctioneer didnt notice...SACK HIM!!

$21,000 | Levin - Weinstein
$22,000 | Zmudzinski - Balicki (Sorry Misho We in a bidding WAR)
$25,500 | Moss-Gitleman

[easy]

my bets are:

20000 bocchi dubion (nicest world class players i have ever known)
15000 seamon ekblad (hometown boy made good)
20000 levin weinstein (never i mean never count bobby out of the mix)


Im not a gambler so im just putting my money on sentimental favorites (that is not to say i dont believe they can win)

btw i see no one has bet on harry tudor and his pard barnet shenkin..harry "the king" tudor is a 2 time winner. he won with seamon and subsequently soloway. Barnet is an excellent player (former partner of michael rosenberg) and is calm enough to deal with harry and his antics. ok ive talked myself into it i'll put

5000 on harry and barnet (im sure he will take at least 50% of this action)

[mishovnbg]

Jedy knight strike again
$23000 -> Cezary Balicki - Adam Zmudzinski (Sorry Slothy )
$16000 -> Aleksander Petrunin - Andrei Gromov(Sorry Gerben )
Misho

[andych]

fred, on May 1 2004, 02:40 PM, said:

The_Hog, on May 1 2004, 12:25 AM, said:

OK Who is going to organise an auction. Virtual or bbo $?
First prize - 1 game with Ben
2nd prize - 2 games with Ben

Would be nice to be able to have betting on the outcome of
the Cavendish using BB$, but not sure it would be trivial for
us to set it up and besides, it is probably illegal.

How about a virtual auction with these rules:

1) Everyone has $100K of virtual money to play with
2) Minimum bid on a pair is $10K
3) Bids must be made in units of $1K
4) For the sake of simplicity, I suggest you use last year's
figures to determine the (virtual) prizes.

1st $231,350
2nd $148,724
3rd $99,150
4th $74,362
5th $66,100
6th $57,838
7th $49,576
8th $41,312
9th $33,050
10th $24,788

Forums is not exactly well-suited for conducting an auction,
but unless someone feels like putting together a web site
for this, I suppose we can make do.

I will open the bidding with:

$10K on Lew Stansby and Joanna Stansby
$15K on Bjorn Fallenius and Roy Welland
$20K on Bobby Levin and Steve Weinstein

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

Does it mean that the pair who bought Fred-Brad win $231350 last year?
Who is that smart pair to bet on Fred-Brad? How much did he spend in the auction for Fred-Brad?

Any news whether the auction would be broadcasted?

[Aberlour10]

According to my first post in this thread I invest all my virtuell money
in two pairs...

$ 51000 on Balicki-Zmudzinski
$ 49000 on Petrunin-Gromov

sorry guys

Robert

[inquiry]

Sorry Fred, my very generous bid to purchase you and Brad has been trumped.... So I have all my 100K back. I think you are now overpriced. :-(

So, I will try to find some bargains,

10,000 for Hammon-Zia
10,000 for Woolsey and Stewart
10,000 for Fleisher - Martel
10,000 for Ekeblad and Rubin
10,000 for Fantoni and Nunes
10,000 for Chemla and Ferraro,
10,000 for Bramley and Compton
16,000 for Fallenius and Welland
10,000 for Greco and Hampson

BTW, when is our virtual auction going to end?

Ben

[luis]

My bets:

$ 30.000 Petrunin-Gromov
$ 25.000 Fallenius-Welland

On the side I played a tournament with a pool like the Cavendish some months ago (obviously in a 1-Zillion reduced scale). My partnership got the highest bid from a wealthy guy who put a lot of money to buy us.
Since we had no money we couldn't even bet for ourselves :-)
With one round to go we were having an excellent session, enough to win, so we decided to "blackmail" the guy who bought us :-)))) It was a lot of fun, the poor dude had to accept 40% of what he was just about to win while my pd flashed redouble cards in front of him and I was trying to "remember" the continuations after 1N-2c :-)

Of course it was just a joke, the tournament ended and we let everybody win what they deserved. But the lesson was: Never bet for crazy unstable young players. No matter how good they might be (or seem to be).

[Aberlour10]

Hola Luis,

I'm sorry, but you have to overbid my $49000 on Petrunin-Gromov

Robert

[Fluffy]

Hi guys!

I still know little but I wanna play, I´ll bet for the pairs I know tha are regular pairs so I at least don´t pick any sponsor.


Sorry had to edit because I missed some rules (took me 10 minuntes)

sincee it seems there is too much money otu there and not so much pairs worth it, I ll assure I at least get 1 pair for me

$100,000 Andrea Buratti - Massimo Lanzarotti

[the hog]

15,000 for Fantoni and Nunes
18,000 for Fallenius and Welland
15,000 for Greco and Hampson

Sorry Ben!

Ron

[mishovnbg]

$26000 -> Brad Moss - Fred Gitleman (Sorry Slothy)
$23000 -> Norberto Bocchi - Giorgio DuBoin (Sorry Rain)
$16000 ->Fulvio Fantoni - Claudio Nunes (Sorry Ron)

Misho

[jillybean]

Does anyone have the web site for the up to date VP standings?
If you do, please post it here.
Thanks

[Erkson]

jillybean2, on May 6 2004, 05:53 AM, said:

Does anyone have the web site for the up to date VP standings?
If you do, please post it here.
Thanks

http://www.dartmouth...ge/cavteams.htm

------------------Quote------------
vugraph106: the standing after FIVE matches:
vugraph106: Deutsch (106); Ekeblad (104); Wigodor (95); Narasimhan (94); O'Rourke (88); Freed (77); Moss (77); Jacobs (73); Meltzer ...
vugraph106: (73); Zimmerman (70); Brachman (69); Hamman (65); Ventin (62); Casen (58); Johnson (48); Welland (41)
.........
vugraph106: Standings after Round 6:
vugraph106: Jacobs (79); Johnson (77); Deutsch (133); Meltzer (84); Ventin (89)
vugraph106: Zimmerman (94); Freed (98); O'Rourke (97); Narasimhan (104);
vugraph106: Brachman (79); Welland (42); Hamman (85); Wigodor (115); Ekeblad (107); Casen (61); Moss (96)
--------------

Erkson

[cwiggins]

When making your bets, you might want to factor in the conditions of the contest, which prohibit such exotic things as a multi 2D, weak two bids showing two suits, one of which is unknown, and transfers to opening bids. See http://www.thecavend...3/COCpairs.html paragraph 11.

I was very surprised to find this out last night when watching the teams competition on Vugraph. What this means is that many of the leading pairs in the world (Meckwell and Bocci-Duboin come to mind right away) would have to substantially or completely overhaul their systems to play in the event, which explains why they are not playing in it. Under these rules, Sontag and Weichesel could not play the system that they won the Cavendish with! Wouldn't you like to see at least a chance that Hamman-Soloway would play Versace-Lauria on the last round for all the money?

For me, this means that the Cavendish has lost much of its bloom. From now on, I will think of it as a tournament whose rules prohibit the best pairs playing against each other at their peak capability, rules that prohibit the same level of competition that you would see in world championships. I.e. the Cavendish may have lots of money, but having prohibited so many of the best pairs, it's an event with second tier competition.

[fred]

This is NOT the reason why some of the world's top pairs
do not play together in the Cavendish. Read an earlier post
I made in this thread if you want to know the real reason.

I know all of the players that make up what most people
would consider the world's top 10 partnerships. I am friends
with many of them. I cannot say this for certain, but I doubt
there is a single pair in this category who refuses to play in
the Cavendish for the reason you suggest.

The 2 reasons the Cavendish organizers have placed
rather severe restrictions on system:

1) They consider it unfair for people to have to face strange
systems in a 2-board round of a pairs tournament.

2) They hope that the Cavendish can be used to help market
bridge to "average social players". If they are successful, there
will be benefits for all of us (bridge on TV, corporate sponsors
putting up big prize money for a series of tournaments, bridge
ultimately becoming a much more popular game).

My guess is that the vast majority of players in the Cavendish
agree with 1). That in itself is a good enough reason to justify
the policy they have. Some may not agree where the line has
been drawn, but just about all of the best players think that there
must be a line somewhere.

If you do not believe 2), consider that for every person who is
interested in seeing unusual systems, there are probably 1000
people whose knowledge of bridge bidding consists of little more
than Blackwood or Stayman. If these people are going to be
interested in watching bridge, they are going to want to watch
a game that resembles the game that they have learned to play.

Your have a right to disagree with me, of course, but I have been in
this business for close to 15 years now and I have had contact with
a LOT of bridge players of all levels of experience in this time. I
did not always think about this issue the way that I do now. I came
around to my current position as a result of hearing what many
"average bridge players" think.

This post will likely reopen a 75-year old can of worms that I
have strayed into many times before (often to my later regret).
The systems buffs tend to be very vocal about their views, but
I believe that most of them are (seriously) out of touch with reality.

No offense intended.

Since I am playing in the Cavendish through Sunday, I may not
be able to make any more posts until next week.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[luis]

As a System buff I'd like to say that I agree with Fred.

I think that in order to make bridge a sport where we can develop and test our most strange systems we must first make bridge available to more people.

Bridge on TV and sponsors are needed, and restrictions on what you can play can be a good way to start, I think that the current state of the art in bridge makes the game very hard to learn for a lot of people and that some simplifications can be good to make the game easy to reach.

I think that my fellow System buffs friends are playing the right war in the wrong time. First we need to help bridge become popular, then we may start to ask to relax the system regulations.

[hrothgar]

Fred wrote:

>I know all of the players that make up what most people
>would consider the world's top 10 partnerships. I am friends
>with many of them. I cannot say this for certain, but I doubt
>there is a single pair in this category who refuses to play in
>the Cavendish for the reason you suggest.

I'll note in passing that an email came across the bridge laws mailing list today in which Jeff Meckstroth is quoted as follows:

>I am on the ACBL Conventions Committee in the US,
>and we have been fairly restrictive, which has
>been criticized in other countries. We feel that
>it has to be that way, though, to protect the
>weaker players, who make up the majority.
>
>However, I am strongly against what has happened
>with the Macallan International Pairs.

[snip]

>we had won it two years in a row, and then the
>following year they brought in the system
>restrictions.

[snip]

>I like the competition, but Rodwell and I will
>not play together in a system-restricted
>tournament again.

[fred]

Bottom line is that if the financial conditions are right, the top
professional players will play in any tournament regardless
of the systems regulations in effect.

I can promise you that if each of the 16 pairs invited to the
Macallan were guaranteed a $20,000 "appearance fee" and
had a chance to win a lot more than that, that you would be
able to get Meckwell on the first plane to London even if only
Stayman and Blackwood were allowed in the event.

Of course Meckstroth would prefer to be able to play his whole
system, but he will go where the money is.

The reason he does not play with Rodwell in the Cavendish has
nothing to do with systems - it is all about money.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[lexica]

Gitelman/Moss 50000
Lindkvist/Fredin 50000
Sry Misho

[the hog]

Interesting to see the Wigodor team do so well:

(Charles Wigodor), Michael Cornell, Gunnar Halberg, Richard Jedyrchowski

Some background -
Charles Wigodor was Michael Courtney's partner when Courtney, (Aust) was living in England for many years. Courtney is one of the world's top rubber bridge players. He has many interesting, some would say eccentric, views on bidding and is a superb card player.

Cornell is a New Zealand international who plays frequently in Australia. Hallberg is another member of the high stakes London rubber bridge scene. Jedyrchowski is a Pole living in Australia. He plays a bit with Pzszkola these days. He and Pzszkola won the Aust Open Pairs in Canberra this year.