[the hog]

Slothy, could you please tell me why you need a sleeping bag on a desert island?

Ron

[whereagles]

Inquiry:

Quote

You made a couple mistakes, but let's just deal with the this first statement. The question was not "what would you recommend to a bridge player", but what would you take with you.

What's up with this? I made no "mistake" whatsoever. You misunderstood my post: it wasn't a reply to the original question, I was merely a comment on a particular book.

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Now, I will deal with your comments which might turn some people off to this most awe-inspiring book. So I will counter your comments about this book with the thoughts of some others, and what they they think about it. We will start with people who post here on the BBF....

I don't care what other people think. I read the book and I have formed my own opinion on it. That opinion will not change due to other people's comments.

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I did note in another threat, that I (inquiry) said “And stay away from "Adventures in Card Play" until you THINK you are an expert. Then use this book will show you why you are probably wrong...”

Point is, that book is mostly of academic interest only. As I said before, it contains a couple of things a tournament player would do well to know, but most of it simply never happens at the table. To win at bridge (or any other sport for that matter) you need to be pragmatic, and that means not to lose time and energy studying useless card combinations. Actually, I am willing to bet that if you put 10 hands randomly taken out of the book and mix them into a Bermuda Bowl session, only one, at most two, of them would be completely solved! If you're on the lookout for curiosities, by all means read it. It doesn't get better than that. But that's how I would recommend a player to read it: as a curiosity, not trying to memorize any of the coups. If you are an academic and/or have an analitic-oriented mind, you're of course welcome dissect it to every milimeter, lol

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In a survey of players at the World Bridge Championships in Albuquerque, tournament players were asked to name their favorite bridge book, with no breakdown by categorym Adventures in Card Play came in first.

What makes this book so fantastic, and makes it such a hot favourite among experts, isn't its technical merit. It's its ability to open up your imagination. Its complexity and elegance makes you day-dream and see things you wouldn't think of otherwise. Of course, this reflects at table because you start looking for unusual solutions and one time out of a hundred eventually do come up with a nice way out of a difficult problem and feel very happy about it. That is perhaps the book's only practical relevance for the tournament player.

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And you might be surprized how often these endings do creep up if you study them. They are rare, but not so rare as you might suspect, because almost of them when they occure go completely unnoticed.

Not really. After having read it, the only unusual thing it made me see, was a variation of an entry-shifting squeeze. But even then I didn't apply the book coup.. it was a 5D sacrifice and I could either try and make it with the exotic squeeze risking two down, or just play down the middle and settle for 1 down. Since the wierd squeeze required a bunch of cards to be right, I played for 1 down. It was the right move, as the cards layed.

[OSH]

Trpltrbl, on Jun 29 2004, 05:18 PM, said:

Forget the bridgebooks, what about the 3 female bridgeplayers you want to take to desert Island.

Well, someone should open a thread on this.
Of course, another for male bridgeplayer, to be politically correct...

[JRG]

hrothgar, on Jun 29 2004, 05:42 AM, said:

Well personally, I'd look for really, really long ones.
With very soft pages...

ROFL. Reminds me of my volunteer time in Israel in 1967. Our favourite newspaper was an air-mail copy of a thick British paper someone got (it was printed on tissue paper).

[Trpltrbl]

slothy, on Jun 29 2004, 06:57 PM, said:

Trpltrbl, on Jun 29 2004, 05:18 PM, said:

And I am sooo happy Slothy saw my psychiatrist. I heard the 7 sessions a day are finally starting to pay off.

He broke professional confidentiality when he said he had to cut down sessions wiz me as there was a client (named Mike) who needed more urgent attention

Alex

I need so much help there aren't enough hours in the day.
That's why I post on BBF, makes me relax a little....

Mike

The voices, not again............

I see bad brigeplayers...............

[slothy]

I'll start with Anna Kournikova. Although she knows nothing about bridge would love teaching her how to squeeze: not much chance of an 'elopement' on a desert island though

On second thoughts, she might even improve my back-hand. Could even instruct her on how to put the tennis-balls in those invisible pockets they have in their skirt more effectively...

PS Those voices get me every time too Mike the problem with the voices i hear is that the person who says them has a stutter, so i never understand them

[slothy]

The_Hog, on Jun 29 2004, 10:34 PM, said:

Slothy, could you please tell me why you need a sleeping bag on a desert island?

Ron

Well Ron, with a bit of luck she wont be sleeping all the time

Alex

[Free]

Hmmm, I won't repeat my opinion about Anna K, otherwise Ben will have some work again

[Trpltrbl]

Free, on Jul 2 2004, 06:30 AM, said:

Hmmm, I won't repeat my opinion about Anna K, otherwise Ben will have some work again

Write it in Dutch, as far as i know Ben hasn't mastered that yet

Mike

[slothy]

You wanna give him an incentive????

[Trpltrbl]

slothy, on Jul 2 2004, 07:26 AM, said:

You wanna give him an incentive????

Think about it, if he would be studying Dutch, he won't have as much time to keep track of us

Mike

[Rain]

Moderators try to ensure discussion remains relevant, among other things.

Ben bears the brunt of your joke simply because he bothers to read everything a lot more than the rest of us do, and take the relevant action. He is, quite frankly, the best moderator I've ever come across.


Rain

[inquiry]

ok boys, I finally stepped in and deleted a few post. The last one about the women bridge players went a touch to far for me, so I deleted it and all the ones referring to them. If yours got deleted, it probably was in response to the ones further down the line, but each poster was taking a little more liberties each time. I left the Anna K jokes in, since she is such a public person, and I let the first few about famous and not so famous bridge players alone, but clearly, that was a mistake as it escalated.

Try to stick to bridge and to the topic of the thread.

Ben