[csdenmark]

I wonder why so many play with different partners in a big event. That cannot be a good way I think. Is Cavendish a low priority event? Why does Jeff Meckstroth and Eric Rodwell play with other partners?

I would like to see representatives for interesting systems like:

Balicki/Zmudzinski(Polish Club)
Rubin/Ekeblad(Hamway)
Hampson/Greco(Meckwell)

to be on top.

[fred]

Meckstroth and Rodwell are professional players. They never
play bridge unless they are guaranteed to make some money
from it. Not all professionals have this attitude but many do.

In the Cavendish each pair is forced to purchase at least 10%
(I think that is the number not sure) of themselves back from
the person who bought them.

A pair like Meckwell would rate to sell for $70,000 meaning that
they would have to place a bet of $7,000 on themselves. As great
as they are, this would not be a smart bet (especially when they
can guarantee a nice pay check by playing with a sponsor).

I would like to see a pair playing a natural system win - one
particular pair in fact - mine

By the way, system restrictions are quite severe in this event
(as they should be in any pairs tournament).

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[csdenmark]

Thank you Fred - very informative.

My best wishes for a strong wind to back you and Brad up. I will see what I will be able to do send you some of our strong and steady wind - even it here has a tendency mostly to come from the front.


Good luck Fred!

[hrothgar]

I'll place

$20,000 on Tarek Sadek - Whalid Elahmady

$12,000 on Howard Weinstein - Steve Garner

$10,000 on Aleksander Petrunin - Andrei Gromov

$8,000 on Fulvio Fantoni - Claudio Nunes


$5,000 on Eric Greco - Geoff Hampson

[fred]

csdenmark, on May 1 2004, 05:17 PM, said:

Thank you Fred - very informative.

My best wishes for a strong wind to back you and Brad up. I will see what I will be able to do send you some of our strong and steady wind - even it here has a tendency mostly to come from the front.


Good luck Fred!

Thanks Claus! Your wind is most welcome

At some point I will make another post about how
the money works in the Cavendish as I suspect that
not everyone understands.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[hrothgar]

Hi Fred

I do have a couple questions about what a Calcutta format is like from the perspective of a leading contender.

Most notably, have you and your partner had a formal discussion regarding a "reservation price"? I'm quite sure that if the top bid on you partnership were $5 or so, you'd probably want to go into business for yourselves...

It would be interesting to understand how you go about handicapping yourself.

[fred]

My partner, Brad Moss, and I are not a typical pair, but I can
tell you how we deal with this issue. I am not sure how other
players think about these things. Some are either so wealthy
that it is not important or cannot afford to get involved at all
(they typically have wealthy backers in this case). Most, however,
probably try to guess whether the Calcutta has handicapped them
well or not and choose to get involved only if they think that they
were signifcantly undervalued (not that it is easy for bridge players
to be objective about such things).

I am not a gambler by nature (yes I picked a strange place to
live!) and I have never involved myself in the Calcutta pool
(partly because I think it is almost always a bad bet, and partly
because I do not like the idea of being in a slam and knowing
that it will cost me several thousand dollars if I misguess
the play).

Fortunately my partner is very wealthy so the money he has
to invest to get involved in the Calcutta pool doesn't mean
very much to him. Also, he is a gambler by nature and he is
extremely confident in our partnership. As such, he tends to
get heavily involved in the Calcutta pool and is more than
happy to take my share of action that each pair is required
to buy.

There is a separate pool for the players that is generated by
the $2500 (I think) entry fees to this event. I do pay my share
of this (though I am sure Brad would be willing to do so if I
asked him). There are a few reasons I am willing to do this:

1) It is a much better bet since every pair pays the same for
their entry and a smaller % of the players pool is taken out to
cover tournament expenses than that which is taken out of
the Calcutta pool.

2) Fortunately I am in a position so that it won't kill me to
lose $1250.

3) Still $1250 means something to me and my partner know
this. I hope that the fact that I am willing to part with this
money shows him that I am confident about our chances.

You may be interested in knowing that, when we won the
Cavendish last year, I received a very nice check for $20,000
or so. I am not certain how much money Brad made, but suspect
it was roughly 10 times what I made.

And no, I did not resent having failed to gamble more money
on myself - I have no idea if we would have won if I had a
lot more money on the line, but I suspect this would have
impacted some of the bridge decisions that I made.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Flame]

I don't know who will win but i know who i want to win.
GO fred GO

[inquiry]

My first 20K on Fred and Brad, I will hold my other 80K in reserve until we can figure out who is the best buy.(and Fred, don't buy your own shares.. i don't want you thinking about money so you can win for me).

[slothy]

Ah Well, seems like the Cavendish organisers missed my partner's and my name out of the Cavendish Invitational Pairs web-site listing AGAIN for the second year running....don't you just hate it when that happens???

Despite your lucid explanations, Fred, no closer to understanding how the Cavendish betting works Still, i doubt i will lose any sleep over it...

But i am not a betting man myself either....Last time i put a bet on anything was an egg-and-spoon race in the second grade and one of the opponents to my protegé had glued the egg to the spoon. 15 strawberry lollipops is worth a lot to a kid you know (Especially when you got them in exchange for a pot of glue ) !!

however, if forced into the corner of the barrel would bet this way:-

$20,000 Balicki - Zmudnqtrwprzski (got a 'feeling' this year)

[oops had to wipe my monitor with the spluttering]

$15,000 Brad Moss - Whats-his-name-again

$12,435 Steve Weinstein- Bobby Levin

(Weinstein and Levin only out of sympathy as they seemed to have aged 30 years between them since they last won it )

Would like to put money on Zia, but he too much of a loose cannon. Anyway, he 'borrowed' my lighter about 2 years ago to light the cigarette of a 'female friend' (yeah right and my name is Santa Claus) of his and never got it back so that forebodes bad karma.

Good Luck anyroad Fred. (If you play a hand like hand 16 in Series C of MasterBridge you bound to win )

Alex

PS if you talk to Zia can you ask him if i can have my lighter back?

[aisha759]

It would be interesting to see how many females will participate in this betting process.....

I know a few of the players (not personally) and would like to see the Egyptians win it (but I won't bet on it!) I'd rather spend my BBO$ on MasterBridge and shoes...

This is a tough crowd.. I'm off

[fred]

I haven't really tried to explain how the betting works
at the Cavendish. Here goes:

- There are 2 separate pools of prize money, the "players
pool" and the "auction pool" (or "Calcutta pool")

- The money that goes into the players pool comes from
the $2500 (I think) entry fee that each pair has to pay to
play in the event. When the event is over, this money is
divided up among the top 8 or so finishers.

- The auction pool comes from an auction that takes place
the night before the Cavendish starts. Each of the 50 or so
pairs is "auctioned off".

- The betting for each pair starts at $10,000 (I think). If
nobody is willing to bet on a given pair, that pair is responsible
for "buying itself" for $10,000.

- The auctioneer (typically somone like Hamman or Zia) will
announce each pair, one at a time. Players and spectators can
then make bids (in increments of $500 I think). At some point
the bidding on each pair will stop (after "going, going, gone").
Whoever made the last bid then buys the pair in question for
whatever he bid.

- All of the money generated from the auction (typically close
to $1 million) is placed in a pool and, when the event ends, this
money is divided up among the people who purchased the leading
8 or so pairs.

- In almost all cases, when someone buys a pair he will attempt
to unload part of his investment to various people. So if, for
example, a given pair sells for $50,000 (about what the top pairs
typically sell for), other people might purchase the rights to 10%
of that pair for $5,000.

- There are some other minors rules too. For example, each pair
is required to purchase at least 10% of themselves from the
person who bought them. I think they have the right to buy up
to 40% of themselves if they want.

- The organizers try very hard to make sure that players who
have financial interests in each other meet at the table early in
the event. This is done to avoid the possibility of a pair that is
out of contention "dumping" (ie deliberately getting bad results)
in order to try to help the pairs that they own (and make money
as a result).

The auction itself is pretty exciting (at least it is the first time you
see it). Lots of wealthy and drunk bridge players spending absurd
sums of money in a very short period of time. Definitely worth
dropping in to watch if you happen to be in Vegas when the
Cavendish is being run.

Conventional wisdom is that it is almost never a smart bet to get
involved in the auction pool (unless you think that a given pair
was sold for considerably less than what they are worth relative
to the other pairs in the event).

Hope that helps. Let me know if anything is still unclear and I
will try to explain further.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[mishovnbg]

I like to have at least virtual money .

$26000 -> Anreas Buratti - Massimo Lanzarotti
$21000 -> Cezary Balicki - Adam Zmudzinski
$11000 -> Aleksander Petrunin - Andrei Gromov

Misho

Edited: Sorry I didn't understand we need to "buy" pair, though we will bet on them. Also, let use Fred's rules and start with a minimum of $10k.

[Rain]

Thanks Fred for explaining bidding process. Exciting. Why do you say that you and Brad are not a typical pair?

Virtual auction, I guess each successive bid must be higher than the one before. For now I bid (most unscientifically, anyone want to develop a model for valuing players?)

$25000 on Fred/Brad Moss
$15000 on Doub/ Wildalvsky
$22000 on Duboin/Bocchi

Hope devoutly Fred wins hehe. Can't help thinking that since its good for us all if Fred wins, we should hedge by betting on someone else. Umm, unscientific diversification...


Rain

[Patapon]

Allez Fred!
A strong wind will blow from Paris too..

[Gerben47]

Sorry Misho, I will have to take Petrunin - Gromov from you. It's a steal

$ 15000 for them.

[1eyedjack]

I doubt that anyone at that level would ever consider "dumping", but even so I feel that it is asking for trouble if active players are allowed to have a financial interest in the success of other competitors.

[fred]

I like to think you are right that players at this level would
never "dump", but there is a LOT of money involved and
money can make people do strange things.

Agree it would be ideal if the players did not participate in
the auction, but the current formula has worked fine for
30+ years and, to the best of my knowledge, there has
never been a dumping scandal.

Besides that, it would be hard to raise the kind of money
that is generated in the auction pool (which is the main
reason the Cavendish is such a strong and prestigious
event) without the particapation of the players in the
auction (especially the wealthy sponsors - there is an
unwritten rule that they are only allowed to play in this event
if they are willing to invest heavily in the betting).

Best possible solution would be to have a major corporation
put up the $1 million in prize money and not have any kind
of auction at all. Unfortunately the organizers of bridge
tournaments have been unable to attract sponsors that are
willing to spend money like this on our game.

I think the current format and rules makes for the best
possible big money event given the practical limitions that
currently exist.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[mrdct]

A "vugraph" of the Cavendish auction would be sensational. Presumably it would possible to open a dummy vugraph table in BBO and have the operator provide a running commentary of the auction as each pair gets auctioned off, perhaps with some other commentators involved giving some background on the pairs as they come up for auction.

[fred]

I will see if I can arrange this. What will be required:

1) A phone line set up in the room where the auction takes place

2) A person to type in the bids as they are made

We did this once before, but used a chat room instead of a table.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com