Brief summary of the past 9 months since my last entry: Stepped down as president of Warwick’s Bridge Society, Dissertation, Exams, post-exam fun/travelling, graduation, more travelling with family, returning to Singapore, job applications, grad school applications. My other blog has some snippets.

I didn’t really play much more bridge in the UK, save for a few club games and in the West Midlands Bridge Congress which I was also helping to direct. Back home, I stopped SCBA from returning a whole set of Bridgemate IIs barely in the nick of time (more on that in a separate entry). I also managed to attend the Asean Bridge Championships in Bali in December, which was my second last outing as a junior sadly. Also, I attended the first APBF TD Seminar before that. In between I’ve been directing and playing (mostly the former) as well. It’s heartening to see that junior bridge is still well and alive in Singapore. Five years ago, ACJC was quite active in bridge, but sadly they seem to have fallen off the radar. The good news is NUS High has started a bridge club of sorts. Along with the usual suspects RJ and HC, there’s still a steady of stream of JC players to be had.

However, it is quite clear that there’s no real direction in terms of training. This is perhaps not surprising – there are a handful of bridge coaches in the whole of Singapore, compared to say, chess coaches. Why am I comparing to chess? I came across my former chess coach John Wong’s blog, and as I previously mentioned, he’s probably one of the most impactful coaches I ever had. In particular, this entry has made me draw some parallels to bridge. Some thoughts:

1. Bidding systems are somewhat like chess openings, and like the Sicilian, complex systems like Precision and the Polish Club require memory work. So, maybe we should call this the Strong Club Labyrinth? I freely confess to going down the labyrinth before, but I went down with some knowledge of the traps in the labyrinth (getting a 1S overcall on the 1-level) and in the end, the memory work on dealing with this was just too much and I gave up.

2. Style of the bidding system is important. Darren likes aggressive openers and a strong NT so we played 4 card majors Acol style with a strong NT. If you can’t stomach the occasional -800s (like Darren), then don’t play a system where the weak NT is central to the system philosophy. This is similar to positional closed/tactical open openings in chess.

3. Far better to play “standard” and learn general concepts rather than to get bogged down in esoteric bidding theory. For example, if you’ve been playing for a year and are still getting your responses to a strong 1NT mixed up, then there’s not much point trying to learn a new system badly and knowing neither well enough to play consistently. This is akin to knowing your opening repertoire well in chess.

And here are some of my observations in past few months:

1. We have a HC pair playing Polish Club and NUS High Pairs playing Precision. The RJ pairs have not succumbed thus far. I got away with a really bad bid (don’t ask) a couple of weeks against the NUS High Pair in a competitive auction because I knew I would not be doubled, reason being I knew they would be unsure of the meaning of the doubles in the situation and hence pass it out.

2. I played in the U25 teams in Bali. The field was mostly Indonesian – the foreign teams were 3 teams from Singapore, 1 from Thailand and 1 from the Phillipines. Most of the local teams played Precision, and we managed to gain from the bidding several times due to them not being able to cope in the competitive auction. At least I didn’t see anything spectacular like opponents opening 1D with 6 clubs and not finding their club fit (this actually happened in the Inter-University Bridge Festival a couple of years ago!).

3. Perhaps more worryingly, is the attitude of these group of players. I’ve seen high-fiving across the table (gloating?), arguments with the centre-hand opponent instead of starting the next board, even in time trouble. On the issue of gloating, I even had an opponent asking me almost outright if I knew how to play bridge after I had played badly in a 3NT contract and went down finessing instead of playing for the drop. I didn’t say anything – we won that match 20-0 despite my bad set.

The National trials will be taking place over the next 2 weekends. I will be directing part of it and we shall see how it goes, perhaps I am being pessimistic.

Sadly, this is my second and last day in Veldhoven but it has been interesting thus far. I’m currently in he vugraph theatre watching Italy vs China in the Quarter-finals now. Hoping to get an autogepah later!

http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/48130-world-team-championships-prediction-thread/

It’s that time of the year again.

Following the good work of Paul and Gerben in previous years, here is this year’s edition. (I’ve not seen anyone else starting the thread for this year’s if there is, apologies!)

Information about teams, draws can be found at http://www.ecatsbrid…nds/default.asp

As per the previous years:

BERMUDA BOWL
4 losing quarter-finalists (3 points each)
2 losing semifinalists (6 points each)
Runner-up (12 points)
The winner (24 points)

VENICE CUP
4 losing quarter-finalists (3 points each)
2 losing semifinalists (6 points each)
Runner-up (12 points)
The winner (24 points)

SENIORS BOWL
4 losing quarter-finalists (2 points each)
2 losing semifinalists (4 points each)
Runner-up (8 points)
The winner (16 points)

for a maximum of 160 points.

Entry Deadline: 2359 UTC, Friday 30 September 2011

Each entry should contain 8 teams for each of the three competitions, namely the four losing quarter-finalists, two losing semifinalists, runner up and winners. You can only have a single entry, but you may change your choice at any time before the entry deadline.

Each team will score the minimum of your placing for them and their final position, for example:
if you pick a team as a losing quarter-finalist but they win the competition, then you get the points for a losing quarter-finalist
if you pick a team as the winner but they lose in the final, then you get the points for the runner-up.

Entries will be accepted in this thread, through PM or comments on my blog. ‘Anonymous’ entries will be rejected. All accepted entries will published on Google Docs.

First Prize wins…er…bragging rights for the next 2 years

Good luck!

Tao Li splits from coach Barry Prime
Background: Tao Li (or Li Tao written the western way) is Singapore’s top national female swimmer. This is the second time that she has changed her coach in a year, leading to speculation to reasons why. The above is an interview of both her and her outgoing coach.

Some food for thought: The coach felt that she’s talented, but not disciplined enough, whereas she felt the programme as not challenging enough. There might be some parallels here worth looking at!

Without the hard work of everyone in the team/society, we would not have been able to:
- Have such a successful Inter-University Bridge Festival, although a huge thanks goes out to Darren as well!
- Reach the semis of the Portland Bowl
- Win the League Handicap Cup
- Retain First Division Status for the A Team, B team getting promoted back to Third Division

The sad thing is always having to say goodbye to people everyone as they graduate. So to Shanaal, thanks for the past 3 years!