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Glenna Shannahan – Madison Bridge Club
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You’ve found
Authentic Business Adventures,
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the business program that brings you
the struggle stories and trying some
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successes of business
owners across the land.
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We’re locally underwritten
by the bank of Sun Praire.
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Downloadable audio episodes can be found
at the podcast link found a drop
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in custom.com. And today we’re welcoming,
preparing to learn from Glenna Shanahan.
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And this is interesting here,
world class bridge player,
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what it says here, and the owner
of the Bridge Club of Madison.
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And before Glenn gets talking here,
I just want to point out we are
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in a building that has a bunch of tables
for people to learn how to play bridge
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and to actually play bridge,
which I had no idea that existed.
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Really, I had no idea.
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No idea.
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When I had the address and I’m driving
up here, I didn’t know what to expect.
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It was just back room somewhere.
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But this is a building,
standalone only thing.
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So if you’re in the bridge, great.
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If you’re not quite in the bridge,
you will be soon.
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Glenna, how are you doing today?
Great, thank you.
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And you?
I’m doing very well.
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I’m excited for a couple of reasons.
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One, I’ve heard people talk about bridge,
but I guess I have never played bridge,
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so I’m probably one
of the people that do that.
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Well, come on in and prepare
to be a student here.
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I would like that.
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I like you students.
Yeah, right.
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How long have you had this?
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We’ve had it well,
three of us bought it 29 years ago.
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Okay.
29.
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In a couple of months.
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Wow.
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We ran it for 27 years,
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but one of the partners had cancer
and needed to get out of the the
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the bold business book over, because
bridge is really my passion.
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All right.
How did you get into bridge?
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Well, that sounds very interesting story,
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but I used to play tennis and golf
if I could, five days a week.
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But my third pregnancy was very toxic
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and I had to give that up and implementing
how lonely and bored I was going to be.
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And a girlfriend said, oh, come to my
house and I’ll teach you to play bridge.
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And I said, a card game.
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She said, yeah, you might like it.
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I said, I don’t think so.
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She said, Just come try it.
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So we went over and sent her kitchen
and she taught us how to play bridge.
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And as soon as the baby was born,
I was back playing tennis and golf.
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But then a girl I really liked
and respected called me up and said,
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glenn, I’d really like you to learn to
play bridge and become my bridge partner.
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And I was so flattered that she would ask.
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I called up a bridge teacher and she said,
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well, if you can find me eight
people, I’ll teach a class.
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But I found her 24.
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24 people.
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Holy cow.
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And it was really interesting.
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She said to me one day,
I kind of feel sorry for you,
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blend it because you’re going
to become addicted to the game.
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And I said, oh, no.
Never.
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And I did.
Here we are.
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Here we are.
Dang.
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All right, so toxic
pregnancy led to all this?
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Yes.
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You never know what’s
going to be good, right?
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Well, for many years I
did all three things.
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Wow.
All right, I was busy.
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Okay.
Never bored.
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Right.
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All right, so what do we
have on the table here?
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Well, I’d like to explain how this card
game is different than most others.
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Yeah.
Most other card games you’re playing
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with your friends and it’s three or
four people sitting around the table.
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I guess in some card games
there are seven or eight.
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Like we play hearts,
we have a whole crowd.
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But in bridge,
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there’s four people at a table and you
come to bridge with a partner.
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And it’s not by me, it’s all by compass.
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North, south are partners
and Eastwester partners, all right?
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And we have like 17 vocabulary words.
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We have four numbers, seven numbers
and four suits if you’re playing in a suit
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contract and if you’re
playing in no trucks.
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So I need to explain the difference
in those two, if you don’t mind.
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No, you spoke a different
language to me just there.
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Bridge is like a foreign language.
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That’s the first thing people should know.
Okay.
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All the games we played today basically
stemmed from China 2000 years ago.
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And they didn’t have cards,
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but they used coins and metal
and bones and sticks and whatever.
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And in the 9th century, in the King 90,
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they actually played a game
similar to what we played today.
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And in the 1350s, the Egyptian Vagabonds
took it to England.
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And that’s why the names of some
of these things are European names.
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So it really takes a few weeks
for people to get comfortable enough.
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And when I teach bridge,
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I tell them it’s like peeling
an onion to learn to play bridge.
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Your mind can only absorb so
many new things at a given time.
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So what I do is the first week introduce
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the game and all the mechanics of it,
bidding boxes, boards,
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table guide cards and explain
to them what these are used for.
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And then the next week we tackle no trump.
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And no trump means that if you’re playing,
the highest card played on the table wins
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the trick, and you win that trick,
you lead to the next trick.
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And so there’s no triumphant.
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Just sometimes the two
of clubs take a trick.
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And in social bridge,
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they’ll often have a prize
for whoever takes a trick that day
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to a club just gets the lowest
cardinate that contract, all right?
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In suit contracts when
you run out of a suit.
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And if you have trump,
you can win the trick by playing a trump.
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All right?
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So that’s the difference
between no trump and suits.
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Got you.
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We play boards.
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This is a duplicate board.
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And I teach with duplicate boards because
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all it is is a means for me
to carry hands around it.
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Different tables can play the same hands.
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So it’s a means of communication.
Got you.
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I suppose it’s easier to teach instead
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of just the students end up with random
cards and you have to right.
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For a two hour class.
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The first hour, I introduce the topic.
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We go through some
exercises so they see it.
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And in the last hour,
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we actually play four hands that deal
just with the topic that we learned.
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All right.
And so what I tell people,
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it’s kind of hard to ask them to trust me
at week one because they don’t know me.
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But learning to play bridge is like
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planning a European vacation because it
takes months to put it all together.
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That’s one aspect.
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The second aspect is the joy of it.
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And the third aspect is coming home
and enjoying it and rethinking about it.
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The bridge is sort of the same way.
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The first four weeks,
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you just have to take me at face value
and learn what I ask you to learn.
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And then at the end, we put it together.
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So there’s three aspects
to learning bridge.
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There’s the bidding, the play of the hand,
and then the defense of the hand.
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Oh, okay.
Defense.
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Okay.
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And they’re all simple.
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They are very simple to learn.
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But the problem becomes that you have
to have a partner and you and your partner
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have to have the same thought
process and the same skill level.
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Okay.
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And then you enter in with two opponents
and they’re trying to do you in.
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So putting it all together and dealing
with three other people, it’s difficult.
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All right.
So is there no tabletop?
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I have clean hands.
You can talk.
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But if you and I were playing rich and I
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wanted to open the bidding,
I would reach in the spinning box,
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put my thumb on what I want,
my fingers at the back,
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and I pull it out and I put it like
this so the whole table can see it.
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Got you.
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So there’s no asking.
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There’s no idea how many speeds you got.
Right.
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None of that.
All right.
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And so we do that and people say
that we’re too serious at bridge.
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They do.
All right.
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I have to tell you, there are days
that we laugh and have such a good time.
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I bet.
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But we are serious when
we’re playing the game.
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Sure.
Okay.
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But let’s say you have
three boards per round.
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You and your partner come here
and we play our three boards.
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And when that’s over,
we start chatting and we can talk about
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the hands we played or what you did last
night or what you’re going to go there.
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Yeah, whatever.
It’s very social.
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And then when the time is called,
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I have a timer in the corner that gives
people an idea of how much time they have
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left and if they need
to hurry up or slow down.
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It’s just something
that helps them keep going.
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As a test is a time game.
Oh, it is?
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Yes.
Okay.
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How long do you get for hand or board?
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Okay, well, hand,
we have to talk about it.
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All right.
Seven minutes.
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Seven minutes.
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Playing with three boards
at my table for 21 minutes.
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And when the time is up,
I take these boards to a different table
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and get new boards, and you go
to the next table and play those people.
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And the reason is the most popular port
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of a bridge is because you take
these boards in a whole room place.
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I’ll put out 27 boards,
and they play all of them well.
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When you have that many people playing
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the same hands, you’ve taken
out an element of luck.
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There’s still a little luck in the mouth,
but not like regular card games.
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All right.
Interesting.
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There’s some skills.
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So the people that are better
at the game will advance.
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Yes.
All right.
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Yes.
They win master points.
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And that’s what that word back
there says for LifeMasters.
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And then on the right side,
it says on the past.
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All right.
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These first columns are people who are
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LifeMasters in the years
they became LifeMasters.
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It takes 500 points today
to become a lifemaster.
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And then are those decades?
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Beg pardon?
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Those are decades.
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Do you have people from the 1960s?
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He started playing.
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He was a chemistry professor,
and he started playing.
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And his wife is down there,
just a few beneath him.
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They’ve been playing together
since 1967 or something.
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Wow.
And they have 14,000 of them.
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How do they keep track of it?
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Well, we have a home office.
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It’s called American Contract.
Richly.
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And it’s in Memphis.
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And we pay them as a club owner,
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I pay them half games, they’re sanctions,
and then I pay them so much per game.
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And then I pay them so much per table.
Wow.
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Okay.
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And in return for that, they keep track of
everyone’s master points in the picnic.
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To become a lifemaster, you have
to have certain colors of points.
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Colors of points.
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We have black points,
which you win at club games.
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We have red points, which you can
win at club games, are sectionals.
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You have silver points that you
win only at sectionals.
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You have gold points that you win
at nationals and at regionals,
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and then you have platinum points
that you can only win at the nationals.
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Well, we have four national
tournaments a year.
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No, it’s not right.
We have three street in the country.
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Wow.
Okay.
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For instance, we just had one last
month in Providence, Rhode Island.
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All right?
In November, it’ll be in Phoenix,
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and next March, it’ll be in New Orleans,
and in the summer, it will be in Chicago.
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So a different town every time.
All right.
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We had them in Canada at both
direct on Vancouver and Montreal.
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All right.
So do they just set up hundreds of tables
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and people play bridge until they
can’t hold cards anymore?
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Oh.
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When I was younger, we first started,
they would sometimes have three sessions
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a day, and we’d all play
three sessions a day.
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Wow.
All right.
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It is addictive.
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I have no idea.
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It’s so interesting how there’s
a national organization for anything.
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Anything.
Bridge, plastic plants, anything.
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Well, the thing about bridge is that
you can play it however you want.
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You could have three buddies over
and sit and have beers and play bridge.
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You could invite three other couples over
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and have dinner and then
have a bridge party.
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You could come here and play
competitive bridge.
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All right.
And the reason we get addicted
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to competitive bridge, I think,
is that first of all, it’s social
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because we’re here having a good time,
eating and drinking.
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There we are.
But it’s also problem solving.
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Each individual hand is like a puzzle,
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and you’re trying to figure out who has
the ace of diamonds, and if he has the ace
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of diamonds, he must have queen
of clubs, that kind of thing.
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And so after playing 27, 28 work,
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I am actually going to retire because
I’m keeping track of all those things.
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And thinking about things.
I bet.
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But our vocabulary can we talk about that?
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Yeah.
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This is called hand cards is my hand.
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And you have a hand.
All right.
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But what’s confusing at the end,
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we’ve played this and we say, oh,
on hand one, the whole board is a hand.
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So our vocabulary words are sometimes
like statemen and copy transfers.
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Those were named after the people
who first invented them.
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All right.
We have something called casino count,
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which was invented by a
Hungarian casino count.
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All right.
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It’s kind of interesting.
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Just learn all of this stuff.
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There’s a lot going on.
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It is very challenging, I think.
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So when people play bridge at home,
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are they using this plastic thing
or they’re just dealing cards?
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So this is just to help organize?
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It’s to organize, and it’s to allow us
to compare scores on the same hands.
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Right.
So let’s say you and I did to a game
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contract of four hearts,
and we don’t get a very good board.
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We can look at it after
the game is online.
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It’s posted.
It’s called Acbo Life.
[00:14:03]
You see?
[00:14:04]
Well, we have a dealing
machine, all right?
[00:14:06]
We make Japan put them
on a dealing machine.
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They make the boards for us, we play them,
and then that hit record goes out online.
[00:14:15]
And we played beforeheart, and we didn’t
get a very good score, but why not?
[00:14:19]
Well, we can look at it.
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Unfortunately, we got the best
lead in the room for them.
[00:14:25]
So other people made five
and we only made four.
[00:14:28]
All right, so you are able it’s almost
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like self education,
because you can see what you might have
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done better or what you didn’t
think to do at the time.
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So I think I have people here who,
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in my opinion, have more fun going
home and going over the boards.
[00:14:45]
And they actually do it plays really okay.
[00:14:48]
They’re trying to figure
out how to get better.
[00:14:50]
All right.
[00:14:51]
Coaching themselves, kind of looking
at past plays, so to speak.
[00:14:55]
All right.
Interesting.
[00:14:57]
So the shuffle machine,
dealing machine loads these things.
[00:15:02]
Yeah.
Wow.
[00:15:03]
And that’s online.
[00:15:05]
The results are online.
The results are online.
[00:15:07]
Okay.
With a copy of a hand.
[00:15:09]
It’s called a PBN file.
Okay.
[00:15:11]
And we put that do you want
to see the dealing machine?
[00:15:16]
I can sure.
Yeah.
[00:15:17]
All right.
[00:15:19]
This is the dealer machine.
Whoa.
[00:15:22]
What is that?
[00:15:23]
I put my flash drive right here.
All right.
[00:15:26]
I turn it on.
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I click it on the dates
that I have prepared.
[00:15:33]
I can’t really put all these in.
[00:15:36]
I’ll put these in because these are
already made up for my game Friday.
[00:15:40]
Okay, but you put in a deck of cards.
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Actually put the card at a time.
[00:15:47]
All right.
[00:15:49]
Right over here.
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Then another deck of cards.
[00:15:53]
And you turn it on, and it opens,
and you insert it in here.
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Push the button, and the cards
are dealt with these boards.
[00:16:04]
So this machine keeps track of what
cards are going in what pile.
[00:16:09]
Wow.
[00:16:10]
So then when you go online later,
you can see what Chan was, and.
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You see what everybody did.
[00:16:20]
How come we got a top board?
[00:16:22]
Well, we did three trump
instead of three clubs.
[00:16:25]
All right, so it’s really a nice way
to keep track of your of your experience.
[00:16:31]
Yeah.
[00:16:32]
So you tell the machine, hey, I’m
teaching these people, so I can do that.
[00:16:38]
Okay.
[00:16:38]
I bought another program
called the Old Master Pro.
[00:16:41]
All right?
[00:16:41]
And let’s say I wanted
to teach you no trucks.
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I go into the Old Master Pro,
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and I download eight hands,
and I print them out for you.
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And I say, we’re going to play
these eight hands, and we do.
[00:16:54]
All right?
[00:16:55]
And then you have a record of them to say,
oh, that’s what she meant.
[00:16:59]
All right.
[00:17:01]
Because, see, everybody learns secretly.
[00:17:03]
We have visual words, audio words.
[00:17:06]
I can only learn something
if I write it down.
[00:17:09]
Okay.
[00:17:10]
So when I teach bridge, I try to
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teach it in those three manners so
that no one is really left out.
[00:17:18]
Got it.
It’s covered all the bases.
[00:17:20]
I tried to.
All right.
[00:17:22]
That is crazy.
[00:17:23]
So the cards that you use with this
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machine, are they
specific to this machine?
[00:17:28]
Proprietary?
No, I ordered them.
[00:17:30]
There’s a huge company called October,
but that’s Baron Rich Products.
[00:17:40]
They sell cards and machines
and all that international.
[00:17:43]
So these are cards
specifically for bridge?
[00:17:46]
Well, or you can use them you
can use them for other games.
[00:17:49]
I don’t play that many other games.
All right.
[00:17:52]
No other game.
[00:17:53]
You need to know,
but I bought something like 60 decks
[00:17:58]
of new cards when we came back from the
Pandemic, and we wanted to do cards.
[00:18:03]
That is cool.
[00:18:06]
It’s surreal because I see this
must be a little camera there.
[00:18:09]
So it’s reading the face of the.
[00:18:11]
Card, and sometimes
[00:18:13]
a card will get stuck and it’ll splash
up error and tell me what’s wrong.
[00:18:19]
Did it not read the card correctly?
[00:18:21]
And so you can push cancel and see the
hand and put the card in the right place.
[00:18:27]
Got it.
[00:18:29]
When I first started,
it took me like 40 minutes to make a dick,
[00:18:32]
I bet, because we make
28 words for each game.
[00:18:35]
Yeah.
But now I’m down to like 18 minutes.
[00:18:38]
All right.
[00:18:40]
So you get much faster getting these
[00:18:42]
things open and putting them
in and being ready to go.
[00:18:45]
Wow, that is slick.
[00:18:47]
That’s impressive.
[00:18:49]
It really is.
[00:18:50]
I think most of my people
are baby boomers.
[00:18:56]
It’s kind of interesting.
[00:18:58]
Not that many younger people play.
[00:19:00]
I have an 8th grader oh, really?
[00:19:02]
Whose mother drove him to Philadelphia so
[00:19:05]
that he could play in the youth
championship at the summer regional.
[00:19:09]
Wow.
National.
[00:19:10]
And then I had two young
men come here from Epic.
[00:19:16]
Well, now they bring for seven of them.
[00:19:19]
So it’s interesting how bridge grows.
[00:19:23]
I think floor by word of mouth than
[00:19:24]
anything somebody says,
oh, did you see that?
[00:19:27]
They have bridge there.
[00:19:29]
Some people didn’t want to and stop me.
[00:19:31]
I was pulling flowers in the garden.
[00:19:34]
She said, do you have to play euchre?
And I said no.
[00:19:36]
I’m sorry.
[00:19:40]
Funny.
That is cool.
[00:19:42]
So when you first got into bridge,
I guess when you first got with your
[00:19:48]
partners to start this, was there any
other business that was doing this?
[00:19:53]
Well, actually,
[00:19:53]
the first duplicate in Madison was held
out at the airport in the World War II.
[00:20:00]
The officer’s wives were lonely and born,
so some of them knew how to play bridge.
[00:20:06]
And they started a bridge game
airport for the officers wives.
[00:20:11]
And then it wasn’t big enough for them,
[00:20:14]
so they started inviting other
people that they might meet.
[00:20:17]
All right.
[00:20:18]
And so Ridge has been going
on here since the 1940s.
[00:20:22]
Holy hell.
[00:20:26]
Was actually Ridge Overall.
Heyday.
[00:20:29]
Was during the Depression because people
[00:20:31]
didn’t work, didn’t have jobs,
they were going crazy.
[00:20:36]
A lot of people learned to play bridge.
[00:20:39]
Interesting.
[00:20:40]
So when you went to well,
let me back up a step here.
[00:20:44]
You get your business partners.
[00:20:45]
How did you figure out what business
partners you were going to have?
[00:20:48]
Oh, that’s easy.
[00:20:50]
I was not a bridge, and one of them was a
lifemaster already and very experienced.
[00:20:56]
And I think the other one was also
[00:20:57]
a lifemaster, but probably
not as experienced.
[00:21:00]
We just had fun together.
All right.
[00:21:02]
And about twelve of us would go out after
[00:21:05]
a rich game at night to have a drink,
and our minds could recall all the hens.
[00:21:12]
Wow.
[00:21:13]
And we would sit around
and we would say, oh, I’m 47.
[00:21:16]
What did they lead against you?
Did they lead?
[00:21:18]
And we would talk bridge.
[00:21:22]
All right.
Ford cell phones.
[00:21:23]
Did you know about 30 phone numbers?
No.
[00:21:27]
Wait, yeah, before cell phones.
[00:21:29]
And now
[00:21:31]
I just speed that on my kids because I
can’t even remember their phone numbers.
[00:21:35]
Yeah, it’s the same with bridge.
[00:21:37]
If you didn’t have hand records and all
[00:21:39]
this computer stuff,
you would just remember the hands.
[00:21:41]
Anyway, the three of us
enjoyed each other.
[00:21:44]
One of them was in charge of being
some program at the UWS.
[00:21:51]
He was a department chair.
[00:21:53]
The other one was just a handyman.
[00:21:56]
And then I kind of like making
things nice and red colors.
[00:22:02]
And so we were kicked out of this
building, and we found a place to rent.
[00:22:06]
And so the guy said to me,
you pick out the paint and the carpeting.
[00:22:10]
We’ll do the work.
[00:22:11]
And we worked well together.
[00:22:13]
So the next time we got kicked out
[00:22:15]
of the building, I said to them, let’s
find a small building and just buy it.
[00:22:21]
And they said, oh, how would we do that?
[00:22:23]
And I said, I don’t know, borrow money.
[00:22:27]
So they said, all right, find this one.
[00:22:29]
So I got in the car and I drove around
Madison for two weeks, I think.
[00:22:32]
And we used to live in Arbor Hills.
[00:22:35]
And I drove by there one day,
[00:22:36]
and it was for sale,
and we had to repair the back wall.
[00:22:41]
It was a store that cleaned
[00:22:44]
motors and engines, so the whole place
was just filled with oil and grease.
[00:22:49]
Oh, sure.
[00:22:49]
I had to have someone come
in and clean all the vents.
[00:22:52]
We scraped everything down.
[00:22:54]
We repaired that wall and made it whole,
[00:22:56]
and we bought it in the first
two or three years we owned it.
[00:22:59]
We had to pay taxes out of.
[00:23:01]
Our own pockets because not
enough of them coming in.
[00:23:04]
All right.
[00:23:06]
Even though it’s been 30 years, almost
sure it was still pricey back then,
[00:23:11]
because we used to charge
$3 to put bridge.
[00:23:13]
All right.
It’s never been a big money.
[00:23:15]
You did all right.
[00:23:17]
But anyway, that’s how we moved
in here and got it started.
[00:23:22]
And then when we knew that we were tired
of being hit out,
[00:23:26]
the three of us went together and bought
pay taxes out of our own pocket.
[00:23:30]
All three ran rich games here.
Wow.
[00:23:33]
So were the three of you
working in other day jobs?
[00:23:37]
Well, I wasn’t, but they both okay.
[00:23:39]
All right.
Got you.
[00:23:40]
Just to be able to sustain
this or keep it going.
[00:23:43]
All right.
And then we hired other directors.
[00:23:47]
We had one guy who directed
on Wednesday night for, like, 15 years.
[00:23:52]
Wow, that’s impressive.
[00:23:53]
He was here rain or shine,
he never missed.
[00:23:56]
People are really loyal to bridge.
[00:23:58]
All right, that’s cool.
It is.
[00:24:01]
That’s really cool.
[00:24:02]
I call it the community?
[00:24:04]
I would think so.
[00:24:05]
Yeah, definitely.
[00:24:07]
And that teamwork makes the dream work.
[00:24:10]
It’s perfect for me because I could not
possibly run this club and all the games
[00:24:16]
and all the teaching and all
the things that people do here.
[00:24:20]
So everybody, I think, should always
thank the director when they leave.
[00:24:25]
The director sits at that desk.
[00:24:27]
He’s made the boards,
he brings streets, he runs the game.
[00:24:30]
He makes rulings at the table,
[00:24:31]
and there’s an infraction
and he sits there and works.
[00:24:35]
He doesn’t have any fun.
[00:24:36]
We’d all ever be directing.
All right.
[00:24:39]
But I have people who do things for me.
[00:24:44]
If I buy a trunk full of sodas,
leave the trunk.
[00:24:48]
I’ve got three guys who are
out there bringing it soda.
[00:24:51]
Oh, really?
Before I get the car.
[00:24:53]
Oh, nice.
Yeah, it’s little things like that.
[00:24:56]
It’s a cool room.
It is.
[00:24:58]
So do you have employees?
[00:25:01]
Well, I don’t call them employees.
Okay.
[00:25:04]
But the directors beyond just you?
Yes.
[00:25:07]
Okay.
[00:25:08]
I have games here six days a week
and still three games online.
[00:25:13]
So I can’t like how that is.
[00:25:15]
A lot of bridge.
It is.
[00:25:19]
Wow.
[00:25:20]
So have you found, I guess,
what is the ideal time for a bridge?
[00:25:25]
Any time, anytime.
[00:25:28]
Stupid question, James.
Thanks.
[00:25:30]
Come on, Jim.
Bridge.
[00:25:31]
Oh, it’s funny.
[00:25:32]
We have to get you into bridge because
you would be such a nice asset to that.
[00:25:38]
I played cards before, and I’m not
the greatest, but you know what?
[00:25:42]
I’m not a great card player.
[00:25:43]
My friend invited me to poker
just to take my money.
[00:25:47]
I don’t know.
[00:25:48]
Well, I’ll invite you
to bridge like a jack.
[00:25:52]
That’s totally fair.
[00:25:53]
So how do you get the word out?
[00:25:55]
Because you said
I guess this word of mouth is best.
[00:25:59]
Let’s go start somewhere.
[00:26:00]
I have to tell you, my team,
I call us the bridge club of Madison’s.
[00:26:06]
Better bridge team.
[00:26:08]
And I call us that because people
[00:26:11]
with expertise in certain
fields have contacted me.
[00:26:14]
So about five years ago, this woman said,
[00:26:17]
glenn, I’m retired, and I think
you need to have a website.
[00:26:22]
So she did the website five years ago.
[00:26:25]
Five or six years ago that’s the.
[00:26:27]
Internet has been around for a while.
[00:26:30]
But I didn’t need it.
[00:26:32]
Well, I didn’t even know about it.
[00:26:34]
I didn’t think about it.
[00:26:35]
All right, if you’re not into techy
things, not techie at all.
[00:26:39]
I just wouldn’t know we were here.
[00:26:41]
We had to sign up front.
[00:26:43]
But anyway, she called
and offered to do this.
[00:26:46]
So she got together the website.
[00:26:49]
Then she collected I used to make
[00:26:51]
individual little telephone books
with people’s name and phone numbers
[00:26:54]
and addresses so that when it’s your
birthday, I can send you a card.
[00:26:57]
All right, well, she said,
let’s do that online.
[00:27:01]
That way when somebody moves,
[00:27:02]
instead of the book being out
of date is the day it’s printed.
[00:27:05]
We can keep it up to date.
All right.
[00:27:07]
So she put all of us online.
[00:27:10]
There’s a place that you
can go on our website.
[00:27:12]
Just like, if you wanted a game with me,
[00:27:14]
you can go with my phone
number up and calls on call.
[00:27:16]
Right.
And she’s kept that up to date.
[00:27:19]
Wow.
And then about three or four months ago,
[00:27:23]
a woman contacted me and said,
I really like to do something nice
[00:27:28]
for the bridge club because
I’m so enjoying playing there.
[00:27:32]
And she said, Could I
help with the website?
[00:27:34]
And I said, well, thank you.
[00:27:35]
It’s very nice of you, but Mary does that,
and I wouldn’t want to step on her toes.
[00:27:40]
And she said, Well, I’ll call Mary.
[00:27:42]
So she called me back and she said,
we’ve worked it out.
[00:27:44]
I’m going to help Mary, but I’m going
to start a Facebook page for you.
[00:27:48]
You really need a Facebook page?
[00:27:49]
It’s okay.
[00:27:54]
Wow.
[00:27:55]
So it’s things like that.
[00:27:58]
We realize that it takes a whole village.
[00:28:01]
The team is getting going.
That is cool.
[00:28:04]
That’s what makes us functional.
[00:28:06]
All right, so tell me about the equipment,
because I see a sink as a calculator.
[00:28:12]
No.
[00:28:13]
This is called the bridge made.
All right?
[00:28:16]
And if we were having a game,
I would set the game up on the computer.
[00:28:21]
I would start these, and then I put one
on each table, and I put it by north.
[00:28:26]
And it’s North’s responsibility
to make sure that all the names are
[00:28:31]
entered, because once your name is
entered, each time you go to a table,
[00:28:34]
it shows that you’re there
until the airponents know who’s coming.
[00:28:41]
When the hand has been placed,
like we’ve played hand one,
[00:28:44]
I would go here and go to board one,
and I would say what the contract was, in,
[00:28:49]
which direction played it,
and then if they’re successful or not.
[00:28:54]
And that goes to the computer.
All right.
[00:28:57]
So those communicate to some big database
somewhere in the net, and then I.
[00:29:02]
Can turn on this screen
near the end of the game.
[00:29:06]
And when most of the boards have been
posted, I can flash the results up
[00:29:10]
on the screen and they can
see where they’ve come in.
[00:29:13]
And I always say, there’s a late player,
[00:29:15]
there’s two boards
scored I’m going to fix.
[00:29:18]
And they’ll usually wait for me to correct
[00:29:20]
it, because even though they’ll have
the results in a computer,
[00:29:23]
by the time they get home,
they still like to know what they’re here
[00:29:28]
so they can say to their
partner, that was fun.
[00:29:30]
Wow.
We did better than I thought we did.
[00:29:32]
That kind of thing.
Very cool.
[00:29:34]
It’s camaraderie.
Yeah.
[00:29:37]
We can get people together.
[00:29:38]
That was very cool.
Tell me about it.
[00:29:40]
So, 29 years, almost 30 years.
[00:29:43]
We had a pandemic recently.
[00:29:45]
How does that change the nature of the
game or the nature of just the business?
[00:29:49]
Well, we closed.
Closed up shop.
[00:29:51]
Yarn.
We were closed for a year and a half.
[00:29:53]
I.
Think what happened.
[00:29:56]
It hit in late February or early March,
[00:30:00]
and the first thing I did was I had
to buy a new first air conditioner.
[00:30:05]
Anyway, I made sure that I got a really
[00:30:07]
super duper filter system on it,
and I thought people would come back,
[00:30:12]
but they didn’t want
to come back for a while.
[00:30:15]
And even teaching I had to teach on Zoom.
[00:30:18]
Oh, that’d be tough.
[00:30:20]
Well, some classes you can teach on Zoom
and kind of get away with it,
[00:30:24]
but you cannot teach, like,
brand new people something on Zoo.
[00:30:27]
They have to have cards in their hands,
and we have to have that.
[00:30:31]
So I thought the thing about teaching
[00:30:33]
on Zoo was I had 21 people
from Vancouver in one class.
[00:30:38]
Oh, wow.
All right.
[00:30:40]
And then I had to do that locally.
[00:30:42]
Here I taught at three different
countries closer to California.
[00:30:46]
I used to live in California six
months a year in the winter.
[00:30:49]
Oh, really?
[00:30:50]
And I taught at three
country clubs out there.
[00:30:52]
Some of those people took
Zoom classes from me.
[00:30:55]
All right.
[00:30:55]
And then I had a few Madison
classes that I did on Zoom.
[00:30:59]
All right, so do you still do those?
[00:31:02]
Well, I let my zoom expire because
I teach for Madison College.
[00:31:07]
Madison School for Recreation.
[00:31:10]
And here I don’t need to teach unsunit.
All right.
[00:31:14]
Do you teach four medicine college?
[00:31:16]
Like, medicine college is a class on.
[00:31:18]
Bridge where classes I
just have one a semester.
[00:31:22]
Okay.
[00:31:23]
When we finished today,
I’m stopping there because my fall class
[00:31:27]
is starting soon, and I need
to know how many students I have.
[00:31:30]
That’s funny.
[00:31:31]
So is that extra class, or is it
adult enriching adult enrichment.
[00:31:36]
Okay.
[00:31:36]
I was just going to ask, are they
going for a diploma in bridge or no.
[00:31:41]
Okay.
That is pretty cool.
[00:31:43]
But I suppose that teaching a class,
[00:31:45]
that’s also a feature
for the business here, right?
[00:31:47]
Well, it is.
[00:31:49]
I just taught my class ended Thursday
at Madison Public Schools,
[00:31:54]
and we have a bridge workshop here
on Friday morning for people.
[00:31:58]
I think five of them from that class came.
That’s cool.
[00:32:04]
And this morning I got an email
from somebody who knew one of those people
[00:32:07]
and wanted to know if he could
come to the class Friday.
[00:32:10]
So that’s why I think word of mouth
is a big part of this business.
[00:32:14]
Man.
That’s cool.
[00:32:15]
So the people that come here that are ten,
[00:32:17]
are they typically coming once a week,
or are they coming more.
[00:32:20]
Than very few people only come once.
[00:32:22]
A week or they come in more than half.
Yeah.
[00:32:25]
All right.
[00:32:26]
We’re talking two or
three times or holy cow.
[00:32:29]
I have a man who’s here yesterday,
not healthy at all, but he was telling me
[00:32:36]
in his heyday, he played
here six days a week.
[00:32:38]
Six days a week?
[00:32:40]
Well, that’s a healthy
addiction that works in brain.
[00:32:43]
Well, it is a good brain yeah.
That is cool.
[00:32:46]
Yeah.
You’re telling me just before we start
[00:32:48]
recording that I like to play chess, and
the chess and bridge are pretty similar.
[00:32:54]
The mental in, the mental stimulation.
[00:32:58]
And I think the fact that I really do
[00:33:02]
believe that we never know everything
there is to know about bridge.
[00:33:06]
Yeah.
That is interesting.
[00:33:08]
Well, because bridge
has changed in itself.
[00:33:13]
People have changed.
[00:33:15]
And you’re keeping up, you’re constantly
changing, so you just can’t ever right.
[00:33:21]
So you tell me the rules of the game
over the course of time.
[00:33:26]
I don’t know when bridge
officially started.
[00:33:28]
Was it hundreds of years ago or well,
thousands, I guess, depending on how.
[00:33:31]
Far the 50s they called the of west.
Okay.
[00:33:35]
And then it became the Westbridge.
[00:33:37]
Now, today we have the game
of west and we have bridge.
[00:33:41]
Two separate games.
They’re two separate games.
[00:33:43]
So I used to teach a lot on cruise ships,
and so one day I had twelve tables,
[00:33:49]
and the people who had been there
the day before weren’t there.
[00:33:52]
And I asked their friends where they were,
[00:33:54]
and she said, oh, they decided they
better support the west game thing.
[00:33:58]
So I left the room and went down
to the Whist game, 22 things.
[00:34:03]
Oh, all right.
[00:34:08]
I’ve never played War, but I’ve
heard Whist is compared to war.
[00:34:12]
Okay, but you’re trying to take
the tricks with a partner.
[00:34:16]
All right, but it’s similar.
[00:34:19]
Well, in the 1930s, Vanderbilt, I mean,
[00:34:23]
the rich royalty of if you want to call
them the royalty of United States had
[00:34:30]
a lot of spare time, so they
were very much into bridge.
[00:34:34]
And Vanderbilt said at that time,
it was auction bridge.
[00:34:37]
You just played bridge and did
whatever Vanderbilt said.
[00:34:40]
Let’s make bridge more interesting.
[00:34:42]
Let’s have contract bridge.
[00:34:45]
So what contract bridge is that we are
[00:34:48]
partners and we lived together, and we
reach a contract of three no trump.
[00:34:54]
Well, three no trump.
[00:34:56]
First you have to have
a book of six, right?
[00:35:00]
Then if we had three no trump,
we have to take the book of six,
[00:35:04]
and then we have to take
the three additional tricks.
[00:35:06]
That’s nine tricks and no trump.
[00:35:08]
If we’re successful,
[00:35:10]
we normally get the score for that,
but we get a bonus for being accurate.
[00:35:14]
All right, but the next time we vince
I go down, we don’t get a bonus for that.
[00:35:22]
Our opponents get the bonus.
[00:35:23]
Oh, all right.
[00:35:25]
So at the end of the day,
you’re comparing all these scores and you
[00:35:29]
come up with who is first
or second or third.
[00:35:32]
All right, so let me think.
[00:35:36]
Each person has 13 cards.
[00:35:38]
So does that mean there’s
13 plays in each 13?
[00:35:42]
Actually, they’re called tricks.
Tricks.
[00:35:43]
Okay.
[00:35:44]
So when four cards are played,
that’s one trick.
[00:35:47]
Got it?
Okay.
[00:35:49]
And the person who won the trick
leads to the next trick, and it’s.
[00:35:53]
Essentially the highest
card based on okay.
[00:35:56]
And I’ll show you this.
[00:35:58]
You and I are playing bridge, and if we
win the trick, we put it down this way.
[00:36:04]
If they win the trick, it goes that way.
[00:36:06]
If they win that trick,
then we win this trick.
[00:36:08]
And then we win that trick.
[00:36:10]
At the end of 13 cards, you can look
down and say, oh, you made four.
[00:36:16]
All right.
[00:36:16]
Oh, you’re down to because
it’s right here.
[00:36:19]
In front of you, all right?
[00:36:20]
And then if we disagree,
[00:36:22]
somebody will say, oh, go back
to trick seven and see what was done.
[00:36:26]
And so you’ll go back and you’ll see
[00:36:28]
that somebody had accidentally turned
their card in the wrong direction or
[00:36:31]
something because they’re curious
about why it’s not the trick.
[00:36:34]
All right, how fast is a trick?
Are we talking?
[00:36:40]
Seconds.
People lay their cards down.
[00:36:42]
Let’s say I lead and you’re the declare.
[00:36:46]
So the person to the left is declare,
makes the opening lead.
[00:36:49]
Let’s say I leave this card
and you’re in a contract.
[00:36:52]
When you see this lead,
you’ve already looked at your dummy.
[00:36:56]
The hand that goes down is called
[00:36:58]
the dummy, but your partner
also becomes the dummy.
[00:37:01]
Another double meaning.
[00:37:04]
You will take a few minutes to analyze
the bidding and the opening lead,
[00:37:09]
and you’ll compare your hand
with that hand and see how they fit
[00:37:12]
together and where the strengths
and weaknesses lie.
[00:37:16]
And then you’ll call a card from dummy.
[00:37:18]
Dummy cannot touch a card until you
request it, and then that person falls,
[00:37:23]
and then you decide to win it or not,
either in dummy or in your handy.
[00:37:28]
So each trick could take minutes.
Oh, yeah.
[00:37:30]
Oh, really?
Okay.
[00:37:32]
I’m used to playing with
fast, fast older people that they’re
[00:37:37]
trying to teach me and they’re just like a
high card and they throw a card so fast.
[00:37:42]
But I don’t know what just happened.
[00:37:44]
I know I lost, but that’s fine.
[00:37:48]
As I said to you, part of the pleasure
to bridge is that it’s problem solving.
[00:37:54]
All right?
So your brain won’t go that fast.
[00:37:57]
You have to think through things.
[00:37:59]
Okay, like, why would I leave this card?
[00:38:02]
I wouldn’t just pick
a card up and leave it.
[00:38:05]
I have to have a reason for it.
[00:38:07]
All right,
and so you’re trying to figure out
[00:38:10]
my thought process, which good luck with
that my partner is trying to figure out.
[00:38:16]
All right, that’s funny.
[00:38:18]
That is cool.
[00:38:20]
So how has the business itself changed
[00:38:22]
over the past almost 30
years in the same building?
[00:38:26]
Same building are not games.
[00:38:30]
We used to have games on Monday
and Wednesday nights and on Saturday
[00:38:35]
nights and Sunday afternoons because
people who worked needed those games.
[00:38:42]
Now our population has aged and we’d have
maybe ten people besides the young guys
[00:38:48]
from Epic, maybe ten
people who still work.
[00:38:51]
Okay, so it’s changed our night games
[00:38:53]
that I’ve put them online because nobody
wants to get in their car and drive out
[00:38:58]
in the rain or the snow
or the freezing cold.
[00:39:01]
And last night we had only five tables,
but sometimes we’ll have six or seven
[00:39:07]
tables, and sometimes we’ll
have only three tables.
[00:39:10]
All right.
[00:39:10]
I just never know who’s
going to show up to play.
[00:39:13]
When you say six or seven tables,
you mean four people at a table?
[00:39:16]
Yes.
So it’s still a healthy amount of people.
[00:39:18]
Oh, it is.
All right.
[00:39:20]
Five tables, you get 20.
[00:39:21]
It’s still not as big,
though, as it used to be.
[00:39:23]
Sure.
Okay.
[00:39:24]
And virtual games weren’t
popular back then.
[00:39:28]
Right.
I mean, it’s called Bridge Base Online,
[00:39:33]
and they started it in, I think,
2004 because I remember
[00:39:39]
but during a pandemic, this sounds
impossible, but it’s worldwide.
[00:39:46]
You would click on because
you wanted to go play.
[00:39:49]
And it would say, 52,000 people
are now playing bridge online.
[00:39:53]
Holy cow.
[00:39:55]
Wow.
[00:39:56]
At that moment,
[00:39:58]
at that time,
and at one point in the morning,
[00:40:01]
they have games that there aren’t
that many people in there.
[00:40:03]
I’ve never been on it.
[00:40:08]
But I just loved it.
[00:40:10]
People said they hated it because
[00:40:12]
there was cheating that was
going on and online.
[00:40:16]
Oh, people cheat.
[00:40:17]
How do you cheat online?
[00:40:18]
Because you’re essentially fighting
against the computer with a computer.
[00:40:22]
But if you’re married,
your spouse is in the other room.
[00:40:26]
Got you.
Okay.
[00:40:27]
All right.
[00:40:28]
So there was cheating, and they
said it wasn’t social enough.
[00:40:32]
But what I found is that I loved playing
[00:40:35]
against people from India, Egypt, lots
of people playing from England, Bermuda.
[00:40:41]
One day I was playing and I don’t even
[00:40:44]
know how it happened, but for some reason,
the name just hit me is like a bell.
[00:40:51]
And I asked the young man where he
was from, and he said, as it was on.
[00:40:55]
And I said, oh, I was there eleven
months ago, and I loved your country.
[00:41:00]
Oh my gosh.
[00:41:00]
He started writing me
all these stupid chat.
[00:41:04]
He said, what is your ethnic background?
Where do you live?
[00:41:07]
What do you do?
[00:41:09]
So we became friends sort of online.
[00:41:12]
And who would ever think
that could happen?
[00:41:14]
Yeah, that’s cool.
[00:41:15]
So now in our online games,
we have people who played from Milwaukee.
[00:41:20]
We have two guys who play
every week from lacrosse.
[00:41:23]
Wow.
We have people who live in Florida
[00:41:26]
in the winter, and some of them
have stayed down there.
[00:41:29]
They join us sometimes.
All right.
[00:41:31]
I have a father who lives in Dam.
[00:41:36]
His son is a physician in California.
[00:41:39]
They get together online to play.
[00:41:42]
These are things you wouldn’t
be able to do in the past.
[00:41:45]
That’s cool.
[00:41:46]
So I guess even bad things
have good things come out.
[00:41:50]
Typically, that’s how they work.
[00:41:51]
Yeah.
[00:41:52]
I think Warren Buffett’s a big bridge guy.
[00:41:57]
Have you really?
[00:41:58]
How did you do a big one?
[00:42:01]
Okay.
[00:42:02]
Well, when they started,
they were not very good.
[00:42:04]
Okay.
They had hired a coach.
[00:42:06]
And it takes time, too.
[00:42:09]
Yeah, it sounds like it.
[00:42:10]
But I have to tell you what
was interesting about it.
[00:42:13]
I just saw two guys sitting there,
and I didn’t even think that.
[00:42:16]
I don’t even look at them.
[00:42:17]
I just say hi when I sit
down and check my cards.
[00:42:19]
Let’s go to work.
[00:42:20]
But right.
[00:42:22]
Maybe 7ft away from us were these two men
who had arms like this,
[00:42:28]
and they were standing in the doorway
doing this, and they had on white shirts,
[00:42:33]
very crisp and black pants,
and they just kept looking at our table.
[00:42:37]
And so I started paying
more attention to it.
[00:42:41]
And I looked at these guys, and I
didn’t recognize Warren Buffett at all.
[00:42:45]
But Bill Ginks was online.
[00:42:48]
Oh, funny.
[00:42:49]
I’ve seen them enough on TV,
[00:42:51]
and I knew who it was, but their
bodyguards are watching them.
[00:42:54]
That’s funny.
I probably couldn’t beat him today, but.
[00:42:56]
I did years ago, back then.
[00:42:59]
Yeah, that’s funny.
[00:43:03]
A bridge.
[00:43:06]
It was so obvious.
[00:43:08]
You’re going to hire
bodyguards when you have them.
[00:43:10]
Not be quite so obvious, I suppose.
Yeah.
[00:43:13]
Arguments either way, right.
[00:43:15]
I don’t need a bodyguard,
[00:43:17]
but I have to tell you, oh, probably 25
or 30 years ago, I don’t even remember.
[00:43:23]
We went to a tournament,
and long rows, maybe 15 tables long.
[00:43:29]
I could see down at the end of this row,
[00:43:32]
people are sitting there watching,
and they’re called Pipppezers.
[00:43:35]
And there must have been eight or
ten chairs surrounding this table.
[00:43:40]
Pivoting.
[00:43:41]
And I thought, who on earth
could be that important?
[00:43:45]
I got down there.
[00:43:46]
It was Omar Sharif.
[00:43:48]
And when he looked up at me and smiled,
my heart just melted.
[00:43:52]
I mean, he was a heart throbbing of the
moon, but here he was, plain bridge.
[00:43:59]
And he had so much Groovement.
[00:44:00]
It was incredible.
Nice.
[00:44:02]
And then I don’t know if you’ve
ever heard of Barry Crane.
[00:44:05]
Yes.
You’re probably too young,
[00:44:07]
but he had three or four TV shows,
and the most popular one was Get Smart.
[00:44:12]
Okay.
[00:44:13]
He produced those, and he was
fletching to death by anxiel over.
[00:44:19]
But I did play against him.
[00:44:21]
Oh, really?
[00:44:22]
He’s been around.
[00:44:24]
Well.
[00:44:27]
Playing bridge for a connected
like that, that’s pretty cool.
[00:44:31]
Well, I told somebody, I don’t know who,
[00:44:34]
but I really think bridge is almost
an international language, all right?
[00:44:40]
Because I’ve played bridge in so many
different countries,
[00:44:44]
and friends, they were nice,
they were kind, they were helpful.
[00:44:49]
And I hope that when they come
to this country, we’re the same.
[00:44:53]
Yeah.
[00:44:54]
So is bridge as big in other
places around the world?
[00:44:58]
Oh, it’s bigger in China
than it is in the States.
[00:45:00]
In China?
[00:45:01]
Well, everything they do is big,
but all right, we have three nationals.
[00:45:07]
Yeah.
[00:45:08]
And the last time it was in Chicago,
I was in charge of one of the programs.
[00:45:13]
I was amazed.
[00:45:15]
China and I don’t remember the number
[00:45:17]
of the plane, but those the big planes
that have hole 500 people or something,
[00:45:24]
they sent a plane load of Chinese children
to Chicago for five days to plain bridge.
[00:45:31]
Wow.
How young have children?
[00:45:33]
The youngest life master
Everest, I think eight.
[00:45:37]
But no, most of those kids were
like junior high schoolers.
[00:45:40]
They’re still young.
[00:45:42]
Well, China wants to win
everything, all right?
[00:45:45]
So they’re preparing them
to become British champion.
[00:45:48]
Wow.
[00:45:49]
But that’s the only country I know
[00:45:51]
of that’s ever harder to play
just to transport kids there.
[00:45:56]
That’s pretty interesting.
[00:45:57]
That’s pretty bold.
[00:45:59]
The
[00:46:01]
organization that you’re talking about
in Memphis,
[00:46:03]
does that keep track of worldwide or is
that just keeping track of national?
[00:46:07]
There’s a different organization
called the World Bridge Federation.
[00:46:12]
All right, of course.
[00:46:14]
And they make rules that all countries
[00:46:19]
they make rules that all
countries should follow.
[00:46:22]
Okay?
[00:46:22]
Now, the United States is the only
country, though,
[00:46:26]
in the World Rich Federation that allows
us at one time, like we’re playing four
[00:46:31]
hearts, and you show
out on the third heart.
[00:46:33]
I can see you.
You have no more heart, partner.
[00:46:36]
And that saves revoke.
[00:46:38]
So revoke is when you have a card you
should have played, and you didn’t.
[00:46:41]
There’s still weeks for that.
[00:46:43]
So the World Reach Federation,
[00:46:45]
I’ve been played in one in Montreal,
25 years ago, a friend asked me to go
[00:46:50]
play, and the first day,
they cut the fields in half.
[00:46:56]
The next day, they cut
the fields in half again.
[00:46:59]
And finally, he and I made it to the
finals of the World Bridge competition.
[00:47:04]
Impressive.
[00:47:05]
All right, well,
I’ve never played the screens before,
[00:47:08]
and screens are maybe two and a half,
3ft wide and probably 4ft tall.
[00:47:17]
And the screen goes across
the table this way.
[00:47:20]
Okay, so I can’t see my partner and you
can’t see your partner,
[00:47:23]
but you take your bids out of the bidding
box and you put them under the screen.
[00:47:27]
All right?
[00:47:29]
And then you can ask me what his bid meant
because you didn’t ask out loud,
[00:47:36]
because you don’t want your partner to
know that you have a question about it.
[00:47:39]
All right?
So anyway, playing with screens
[00:47:42]
in highlevel competition
is a very common thing.
[00:47:45]
Oh, interesting, because most people
have little signals or whatever they do.
[00:47:55]
Two people just recently
[00:47:58]
admitted to cheating, and she has
a past president, Basy Bailey.
[00:48:04]
She’s beautiful, wealthy, a fantastic
bridge player, and Gordon Cook.
[00:48:10]
All right.
[00:48:11]
And she was being inductive,
and she admitted she cheated, for one.
[00:48:17]
She just lost everything.
[00:48:19]
Oh, no.
[00:48:20]
Well, I mean, it’s a big deal.
Yeah.
[00:48:23]
So were they just blinking or
moving their hands on the table?
[00:48:27]
I don’t know.
Husband and wife and he wasn’t good enough
[00:48:30]
for her, so they started
cheating so they could win more.
[00:48:32]
Got you.
[00:48:33]
Okay, no, I don’t think
this room is cheating.
[00:48:37]
This is a game.
Right?
[00:48:39]
And you want to win
the game on your skills.
[00:48:42]
So hold on a second.
[00:48:44]
When you’re playing bridge,
[00:48:46]
I guess I always assumed it was just an
individual, and you got put on the table.
[00:48:50]
A few other people like it’s.
[00:48:51]
You and a partner and you
and that partner.
[00:48:55]
Oh, okay.
[00:48:57]
So if you sign up to play rich with me,
[00:48:59]
it’s for three and a half hours,
and it’s 27 boards, usually.
[00:49:02]
All right?
So you and me were hitting the table.
[00:49:05]
All right?
Got it.
[00:49:06]
Okay, so it’s not so much individual.
[00:49:08]
So I imagine at one point you just
[00:49:11]
subconsciously pick up on nuances
of your bridge partner.
[00:49:17]
I think married couples do that more
probably than single people because they
[00:49:22]
know each other so well,
they should help but pick up on things.
[00:49:26]
But one of the rules at Bridge is when I
[00:49:29]
make a bid, I’m not supposed
to be looking at you.
[00:49:35]
Sometimes personally put down a bit,
[00:49:37]
and their partner goes,
all right, I’ve done it myself,
[00:49:43]
because you just think, oh,
my gosh, what’s going on?
[00:49:46]
You’re not really supposed
to show any of those.
[00:49:49]
You’re supposed to be just poker face.
[00:49:51]
All right, look away.
[00:49:53]
Interesting.
[00:49:54]
And you’re not supposed
to stare at the opponent.
[00:49:57]
You’re sitting here looking at your hand,
and I’m not supposed to sit here.
[00:50:00]
At you just intimidate them
into sitting low or something.
[00:50:03]
Okay.
Interesting.
[00:50:06]
It’s the same sort of a gentleman’s
game as golf or tennis rules.
[00:50:12]
We’re expected to follow them.
All right.
[00:50:15]
Makes sense.
[00:50:17]
So with bridge, I guess,
and all the people,
[00:50:21]
where do you see bridge going
in the next 10, 20, 30 years?
[00:50:24]
Do you think it’ll get bigger or
do you think it’ll just maintain?
[00:50:30]
Well, it’s kind of a two sided question
[00:50:33]
because more and more young
people are not playing.
[00:50:39]
All right,
throw School offered me to come in and do
[00:50:44]
a lunar threat class for 8th grade math
students or 7th grade students for bridge.
[00:50:50]
And the reason I told her that I would do
[00:50:53]
it is because for children,
it teaches them concentration skills,
[00:50:58]
it teaches them hangup doesn’t do that,
and it teaches them that negative
[00:51:04]
inferences sometimes are
more powerful than positive.
[00:51:07]
So she doesn’t look at both sides.
[00:51:10]
So I told her that it would
greatly improve that.
[00:51:13]
Well, she promoted it.
[00:51:15]
She talked it up, and only three
students signed up, so she canceled it.
[00:51:20]
But what we decided was if you had
[00:51:23]
somebody in your family,
a grandparent or an aunt or somebody
[00:51:26]
who played, you might be
interested in learning.
[00:51:29]
But if you’ve never heard of Rich,
[00:51:31]
who wants to take a Rich
with a class in a card game?
[00:51:35]
So I think that as we continue to grow,
[00:51:39]
it’s always going to be more
senior citizen type people.
[00:51:42]
Are the newly retired?
Okay.
[00:51:44]
I had a class of newly retired,
and they were hilarious.
[00:51:48]
I don’t mean talk about having
worked too hard with her whole life.
[00:51:51]
She was taking art lessons in the morning,
and then she was coming here for a class,
[00:51:55]
and then she was going to one of the golf
courses for a putting lesson.
[00:51:59]
It was like that was her day, every day.
[00:52:02]
She just was doing everything she could.
[00:52:04]
Pick that never bored.
[00:52:05]
All right, well, I think when she works,
[00:52:08]
she must have thought,
someday I’m going to do this and that she
[00:52:11]
was trying everything out
to see what she wanted to do.
[00:52:14]
All right.
[00:52:16]
I just don’t know what the future holds.
Okay.
[00:52:20]
What are the plans for you
with the business?
[00:52:23]
Well, I’m going to continue
running it as long as I can.
[00:52:27]
Obviously, as I age,
I need more and more help.
[00:52:31]
Sure.
[00:52:31]
Because I can’t do some of the physical
things I used to be able to do.
[00:52:34]
Okay.
[00:52:36]
But I’m going to keep it
until there is no more meeting.
[00:52:41]
I love it here.
[00:52:42]
I wake up in the morning and I’m making
[00:52:45]
treats to bring if I’m directing or this
morning I answered four or five emails.
[00:52:50]
People wanting to know more about Bridge.
[00:52:53]
It gives me I mean,
[00:52:55]
I love my children and my family dearly,
but I used to have golf and tennis.
[00:53:01]
Now I have my grandchildren in Bridge.
[00:53:03]
That’s awesome.
[00:53:05]
I’m still garden old.
[00:53:07]
You used to have a newspaper
called tell me about that.
[00:53:10]
Oh, I wish I could think of the man scene.
[00:53:13]
He was the person who wrote about
[00:53:16]
the operas and the plays, and someday
I’ll have to I may have it every month.
[00:53:23]
Anyway, he called me up one day and he
[00:53:25]
said, Blanc, this is so and so, and I hear
that you’re a very good, rich player.
[00:53:31]
I was wondering if I could
interest you in writing a column.
[00:53:34]
I said, writing a column.
[00:53:35]
I mean, I’m not a writer.
[00:53:37]
And I told him that and he said,
well, come in and talk with me.
[00:53:40]
So I went over there and I
agreed I would try it.
[00:53:44]
And so I did it for a year.
All right.
[00:53:46]
Every day or week?
Every week.
[00:53:49]
Once a week.
[00:53:50]
But we have three children in a dizzy life
and all the other things I was doing,
[00:53:56]
and I’m a big volunteer at England
School for all my kids.
[00:54:02]
I just didn’t have time.
[00:54:05]
I use too many words for everything I do.
[00:54:08]
So I would write the column and let it sit
[00:54:11]
there, and then I’d go back and rewrite
it practically, but take out 30 words.
[00:54:15]
And then the next day or two, I’d reread
it and take out twelve more words.
[00:54:19]
And it’s very time consuming to write one
[00:54:21]
article this big
to spend that much time on it.
[00:54:25]
So I enjoyed it.
[00:54:27]
And I had people writing
me and calling me.
[00:54:29]
They were interested in bridge.
Oh, fun.
[00:54:31]
But you need somebody who likes it.
[00:54:34]
Right there’s, that yeah, that’s fair.
[00:54:38]
So I know that I talk too much.
[00:54:44]
We had a podcast, so that’s ideal.
Well, I don’t know.
[00:54:48]
It seems like I do something often.
[00:54:51]
Imagine when it’s something
social like this.
[00:54:54]
I can’t imagine an introverted
person running a show like this.
[00:54:58]
Oh, really?
No, because I would think that a big
[00:55:03]
portion of the reason people come here is
to meet, likeminded people that are
[00:55:08]
there has to be a certain level of
intellect to play the game alone at all.
[00:55:13]
So right there you’re like, okay,
[00:55:15]
everyone that’s in this room
is at least this smart.
[00:55:18]
Whether it’s paper to justify it
or prove it or not doesn’t matter.
[00:55:23]
They have the ability and that alone,
[00:55:25]
you’re like, okay, well,
these are cool people because of that.
[00:55:27]
That’s true.
And then you play the game.
[00:55:30]
It’s fun.
But yeah, there’s got to be camaraderie.
[00:55:32]
I would imagine that the person running
[00:55:34]
that has to have something to,
I suppose, help extract at other people
[00:55:40]
because there’s probably some
introverts that walk through the door.
[00:55:42]
Oh, yes.
[00:55:44]
And then after a few hands,
maybe they open up a little bit.
[00:55:47]
They do.
[00:55:48]
I have to say I am genuinely happy
to see people walking that door.
[00:55:53]
I bet.
[00:55:54]
And I think when you’re genuinely happy,
they realize that.
[00:55:58]
So I have people who walk in this club and
walk up to me and hug me or something.
[00:56:03]
They do.
They walk out and they say thank you.
[00:56:07]
They’ll bring treats and say, here,
I want to share this with you.
[00:56:10]
Well, that’s awesome.
[00:56:12]
It’s really a family or community and I
[00:56:16]
hope everybody who comes
here feels that way.
[00:56:19]
Yeah, I think that I don’t know,
[00:56:22]
I see stuff like this and the reason
that I got into Chest is because I needed
[00:56:26]
to exercise my brain in different
ways than I do with a typical job.
[00:56:31]
You just want to I feel like your brain
[00:56:33]
and your body is it use
it as a kind of thing.
[00:56:35]
Oh.
[00:56:36]
But most people don’t realize
that about their brain.
[00:56:39]
I am just fascinated with people.
[00:56:42]
I have a lady who comes here
and she’s always bored.
[00:56:47]
She never had anything plus and are happy
[00:56:49]
to say she’s just very down and I really
have worked on her trying to get her
[00:56:55]
to come around and she actually
paid me a compliment last week.
[00:56:59]
She didn’t mean to accident.
[00:57:02]
I didn’t mean to say that.
[00:57:05]
But I think we’re all going through life
[00:57:08]
the very best we can and it takes
nothing to be kind, so why not try it?
[00:57:14]
Right.
Yeah.
[00:57:15]
There’s no instruction
manual or anything, but no.
[00:57:17]
Interesting.
[00:57:18]
But she’s still playing bridge and is she
having a good time with your partner?
[00:57:23]
No.
[00:57:25]
Maybe it might be worth their partner.
[00:57:29]
No worries.
[00:57:31]
I imagine that there’s definitely a social
[00:57:34]
dynamic with any gamers sitting at a
table, especially for people like that.
[00:57:39]
Well, we play against
them three times a week.
[00:57:41]
You kind of know where they’re going
on vacation and how great her grandkids
[00:57:45]
are and her daughter just had twins
and I mean, you just know fun stuff.
[00:57:49]
Yeah, that is cool.
[00:57:51]
And I have to even take it a step farther.
[00:57:53]
I’m sure you live in some parry won’t know
[00:57:56]
this, but this is not
a desirable neighborhood.
[00:57:58]
It used to be.
[00:58:00]
I was going to ask you about that because
[00:58:02]
30 years that building wasn’t there,
these huge power lines weren’t there.
[00:58:07]
It’s a different world.
[00:58:09]
Well, when we first moved to Madison,
[00:58:11]
we lived in our hills and it was a nice
neighborhood and I think it still lives,
[00:58:15]
but all of this area back
here is no longer nice.
[00:58:18]
You have four families living in one
[00:58:21]
apartment building over there
in the corner, and lots of drug deals.
[00:58:26]
I would be here during the pandemic
to come over and run water and do things,
[00:58:30]
and you could see the drug deals
going on over at the Laundromat.
[00:58:34]
Oh, no.
I would have a furnace guy say they were
[00:58:37]
selling drugs at 630 this morning,
that kind of thing.
[00:58:41]
So I was very sad
[00:58:45]
when I came here one day,
and there was like a dozen eggs broken
[00:58:48]
on the parking lot and a
dozen bottles of beer.
[00:58:51]
I came over here Sunday to work,
[00:58:52]
and there were two beer bottles out
on the parking lot I had to clean up.
[00:58:56]
So what I’ve done, and I’m out there
pulling weeds, and people walk by.
[00:59:03]
I talk to them and I say hi to them.
[00:59:06]
And I’ve got about four people
now who really like this club.
[00:59:12]
They come over, I’ve told them all they
[00:59:14]
have my permission to cut
all the flowers they want.
[00:59:17]
And a lady stopped, and they told me she
lost her son two months ago at age 27.
[00:59:23]
And she said, I come up here
and just look at these flowers.
[00:59:26]
And I said, well, please cut some.
[00:59:27]
And she said, I’ll buy a customer.
[00:59:33]
I don’t know.
[00:59:34]
I’m not going to sell this building.
[00:59:36]
It’s too close to the belt line.
[00:59:38]
Yeah, you are.
Right there.
[00:59:40]
I have people who drive here
every week from Sun Prairie.
[00:59:44]
All right.
Okay.
[00:59:45]
I have people who come in from Verona,
from Mount Horb.
[00:59:50]
I have a guy who started coming
from Plantedville, also.
[00:59:54]
Hike, are you?
Yeah.
[00:59:55]
But you’re coming?
[00:59:58]
Yeah, that’s the name again.
[00:59:59]
And if you can feel
[01:00:02]
I don’t know what word to use maybe, but
you feel like you’re having a positive.
[01:00:06]
Influence, make the world
a little bit better place.
[01:00:11]
Yeah, that is cool.
[01:00:12]
That’s why we keep it.
[01:00:13]
All right.
[01:00:14]
Yeah.
[01:00:16]
It’s interesting because I guess when I
was in the parking lot,
[01:00:18]
you look down there and it’s completely
opposite of looking north, I suppose.
[01:00:27]
Interesting.
Yeah.
[01:00:28]
Good or bad, I mean, cities evolve
or neighborhoods evolve, I guess.
[01:00:33]
Well, and I complained of three people.
[01:00:37]
Were they talking?
[01:00:38]
This guy, and he finally told me
he’s a plain closed policeman.
[01:00:43]
Okay.
[01:00:45]
He said, there’s so many drug
deals going on around my place.
[01:00:48]
What do I do about that as
a private citizen?
[01:00:50]
He said, I’ll take care of it.
[01:00:52]
So I occasionally will drive by or come
over here, and there’s an unmarked car
[01:00:57]
just parked in my parking lot,
and they’re watching my neighborhood.
[01:01:01]
All right.
[01:01:03]
That’s a big job.
It is.
[01:01:05]
But I figure they probably have a pretty
[01:01:07]
good handle on what’s going
on in the neighborhood now.
[01:01:10]
Yeah, I imagine you hope so.
[01:01:11]
Anyways, it gives me
a little piece of mind.
[01:01:14]
Right.
[01:01:15]
Everybody’s got their routine
so even to our dealers.
[01:01:19]
True.
Yeah.
[01:01:20]
Interesting.
[01:01:21]
So you have a cool place here.
[01:01:23]
I’m impressed.
[01:01:25]
And I feel like you’re making the world a
better place, which is cool with bridge.
[01:01:30]
And anytime I hear about
[01:01:31]
the Warren Buffett’s or the Bill Gates of
the world, I remember Warren Buffett’s.
[01:01:36]
I don’t know if it was
biography or autobiography.
[01:01:39]
Bridge sticks out because it was
[01:01:40]
mentioned, I want to say, almost as
much as stock picking in that approach.
[01:01:46]
I told you it’s addicting.
[01:01:48]
People don’t realize that.
[01:01:50]
They say, oh, it’s a game, but people
are addicted to gambling, food.
[01:01:55]
Oh, yeah.
[01:01:56]
They keep putting them up.
Yeah.
[01:01:59]
That’s cool.
[01:02:00]
And I think the thing about
bridges is the same way with golf.
[01:02:04]
You have a bad shot or a bad little golf,
[01:02:06]
you think, well, tomorrow when
I play, I’ll do better here.
[01:02:10]
Well, it’s the same thing with Rich.
Yeah.
[01:02:12]
Oh, today I was average,
[01:02:13]
but if we’d just done two boards
better, we could have won.
[01:02:16]
That kind of thing.
And you get into that.
[01:02:18]
What did you learn?
What did you learn?
[01:02:21]
Always be improving.
That’s cool.
[01:02:23]
Is your name on the board there?
Yes.
[01:02:25]
Yes.
Okay.
[01:02:27]
Where are you at?
[01:02:29]
Well, I became a lot Master in the 80s.
[01:02:33]
That’s awesome.
[01:02:35]
Oh, yeah, I’m up there.
That’s awesome.
[01:02:37]
I have 7000 master points.
[01:02:40]
Is that relatively speaking?
[01:02:41]
That seems like a lot to me.
[01:02:43]
Okay.
That’s cool.
[01:02:46]
Do you play bridge every
day when you’re here?
[01:02:49]
No.
Sunday side direct.
[01:02:50]
Okay.
All right.
[01:02:52]
And if someone comes without a partner,
I will play with them if I need to.
[01:02:57]
All right.
[01:02:58]
But most people come with partners, but
there’s been, like, three or four.
[01:03:03]
Like, the guy who came in from
Benjaminville came by himself.
[01:03:06]
He said, I used to play
bridge, and I’m retired.
[01:03:09]
And we welcomed him with open arm.
[01:03:13]
Nice.
[01:03:14]
I feel like I would want to come here
alone just so you can be my partner.
[01:03:24]
Wrong.
[01:03:27]
Didn’t work out so much.
[01:03:30]
Somebody else came out of partner.
[01:03:31]
Oh, got you.
[01:03:36]
But I have to be honest.
[01:03:38]
I have maybe three partners
I play with the most often.
[01:03:42]
Okay.
[01:03:43]
And then those are the people
I go to tournaments with.
[01:03:46]
You see, there’s club games,
then there’s sectionals, which are like,
[01:03:50]
we’re having a sectional here in December
in this building.
[01:03:54]
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
[01:03:55]
Nice.
Congrats.
[01:03:56]
And then there’s regionals,
which are a step higher,
[01:04:00]
and then the nationals, so
you can do any of those things.
[01:04:05]
But when you go to tournaments and compete
[01:04:07]
and pay $36 for the day to play grants,
you want to play with somebody who you’re
[01:04:11]
in tune with and can be good
competition for the field.
[01:04:16]
So somebody who has not very many points
asked me to go with him to play and attend
[01:04:20]
it, and I let them down
as nicely as I could.
[01:04:24]
I said it would be a waste of your
money because you would have to play.
[01:04:28]
A flight A.
[01:04:29]
With me, you have three flights A, B,
and C, and you play in those flights
[01:04:32]
according to how many
Master points you have.
[01:04:34]
Got you.
[01:04:35]
So he has 30 Master points, and he’d
have to play with me in flight A.
[01:04:39]
Right.
And in flight A,
[01:04:40]
you have Ridge Pros in there and people
who are a lot better than I am.
[01:04:44]
Seriously?
[01:04:45]
And so I tried to explain that to him,
and he just sort of shook his head yes.
[01:04:50]
I don’t think he believed me, all right?
[01:04:52]
But I was being honest with him.
Got you.
[01:04:55]
People with 50 Masterpoints think,
oh, boy, I’m winning at Rich.
[01:04:59]
I’m pretty good.
No, because the world is figured out.
[01:05:02]
But then when they get to about 300, they
realize they still don’t know it all.
[01:05:06]
So there’s that learning curve.
All right.
[01:05:09]
You have to have a certain
amount of self confidence.
[01:05:14]
You wouldn’t come here and expose yourself
to likely be coming in in the first place.
[01:05:19]
All right.
[01:05:20]
I suppose you don’t want to let go of your
[01:05:21]
partner, especially the person that you
maybe just met that night a day, right?
[01:05:26]
No.
[01:05:27]
It’s competitive, and you want to feel
like you have a chance to win.
[01:05:32]
I like it.
Cool.
[01:05:34]
Well, Glenn, thank you so much.
[01:05:37]
I can hardly wait to see
what you do with this.
[01:05:39]
hodgepod.
[01:05:44]
You gave me a lot to work with here at
the school place, so this is impressive.
[01:05:48]
I have no idea what to expect.
[01:05:50]
It’s interesting.
[01:05:53]
It’s cool because this is bridge facility.
[01:05:56]
Bridge only.
[01:05:57]
You don’t see that with chess.
[01:05:59]
You don’t see that with poker.
[01:06:02]
Think of all the card games,
board games, everything.
[01:06:05]
You don’t see individual
buildings with those.
[01:06:07]
We have them with a bridge here,
so I think that alone speaks volumes.
