EPISODE 24: Tom Carmichael

In August of 2012, Tom Carmichael and I spent 12 days together in Taicang, China. Tom as the non-playing captain (NPC) of the USA1 Under 21 team, and me as the executive producer of a documentary film with the working title Lost in the Shuffle. We decided to focus on Tom’s team owing to the appeal of the players on it and their chance to win the first ever medal for the US in the Youngsters (Under 21) Series. This conversation is eight years in the making.

As an outside documenter, it’s fascinating to hear Tom talk about the dynamics between his fellow NPC’s and how they discussed and learned about which teams and players were good. Tom earned silver medals as both a player and NPC in junior bridge and has represented the US in The World Mind Sport Games.

For all of the junior bridge players out there, Tom and Joel Wooldridge’s partnership started when they met at the junior reception at a Summer NABC. You never know where you might find your world class partner!

Link to Episode

Episode highlights:

1:35- How Tom got into bridge

3:55- Parents met at a bridge club

12:15- How Tom met Joel Wooldridge

14:20 - System development with Joel Wooldridge by mail. Joel became ACBL youngest Life Master in 1990 at the age of 11 years 4 months and 13 days.

18:20- Bridge spans across generations

21:30- Tom believes it is awesome how bridge allows you to compete even against the world best

25:40- Tom’s interesting relationships with ACBL Youngest Life Masters

26:50- Atlanta Junior Bridge, Atlanta Super Sectional hosted first ever Youth NABC in 2010

29:20- Tom’s memories of the 2012 World Youth Team Championships (the event covered by Double Dummy)

40:15- The competitive pressure and emotions of the game

47:10- Serious Pie Neapolitan pizza in downtown Seattle

48:05- Tom’s wife Jenni won the 2016 Reno NABC Mixed Pairs with Greg Humphreys.

50:05- Tom’s system with Joel Wooldridge

57:15- Tom’s attitude towards Joel’s success in bridge

1:00:40- Shireen Mohandes’ site http://www.barbu.co.uk/barbu.htm

1:06:45- Tom’s history with Atlanta Junior Bridge

1:10:00- Tom’s story of kibitzing his team as NPC and how he handles the non-bridge aspects of NPCing

1:20:00- Celebration of Justin Lall’s Life

1:25:30- You need to be able to move on from losses

1:31:00-Deal on which Tom won the IMP Pairs + other crazy hands

Link to listen to episode

John McAllister: Tom Carmichael, thank you for joining me on the Setting Trick  podcast. 

Tom Carmichael: Thank you, John. Happy to be here. 

John: Let's get into how you started playing bridge. Your parents met at a bridge  club. 

Tom: They did. It's true. They had a group that they played with pretty regularly in  college with their college buddies that they would meet once a week. I was exposed  to that from birth. I don't have a firm recollection of all of this. I do remember some of  the latest stuff. I was told that even from when I was two, I'd want to know, "What are you guys doing? Where are my parents." I'd sit on somebody's lap, they'd say,  "Okay, find this card." I'd pull out a card and play it, and stuff like that. Eventually, it  got to a point I said, "I want to play myself," so they let me play. 

I was starting to play when I was four. It was pretty young. I do have some vague  recollections. I probably only played a hand or two before I was off doing something  else. It's stuck with me. I remember getting into a conversation with my dad a few  years later. I was still pretty young, but I was like eight or nine. We were on a road  trip to somewhere or another, I don't really remember the details, but the  conversation got to bridge somehow. We went and talked about it and talked about  it, maybe about six months later. As it happens, my dad got a flyer from the ACBL  about a sectional, a local tournament that was near us. We decided we're going to  go. 

[00:03:00] My dad taught me Precision on the car ride up to the sectional. We went and played and the novice came and we scratched. I got masterpoints, my very first game, a very, very quick crash course on how Precision works. I was hooked. We started going pretty regularly to club games after that. I guess the ACBL, he hadn't been active for quite a while, but it must have popped on their radar that someone who hadn't been active showed up at a tournament. 

They sent to him a little booklet that it was like club directory, a list of all the different  clubs in the country. I don't know that the league does this anymore, but they sent it  to him. We found a couple of club games that were in the area. I started playing  every Friday and Saturday, days I didn't have school the next day. About six months  later or so, my sister started playing as well. The rest is, as they say, history. [laughs] 

John: Well, there's a lot in there. It sounds like your parents met in college? 

Tom: Yes, they didn't go to the same school, but they lived in the same area. They  went to different schools. They met at a bridge club. My mom is not really a club  player. She's much more of a social bridge player when she does play. They met at  a bridge club. Bridge was one of the activities that they shared. They met, both when they were-- When my dad was in college, I guess my mom was in college at the  same time. I'm fuzzy on some of the timeline details, but I know that even after  college was done, they would still be meeting with their friends on a regular basis,  going over and playing bridge. 

John: You do have your own version of how exactly it was that they met at this  bridge club? I'm sorry, I knew that. I should have remembered that, that they met at  the bridge club, and I said-- [crosstalk] 

Tom: I don't really have more details beyond that. I think it was one of the very few  times that my mom has ever set foot in a bridge club. I think she tried it and decided  it wasn't for her, but my mom and dad hit it off. They continued playing bridge even  outside the club, despite my mom decided that club bridge was not for her. 

John: It sounds like they're still together. 

Tom: No, no, actually, no. [chuckles] They separated back when I was in college.  This is going back 30 years ago, something like that, 20, 25 years ago, 25-30 years  ago. They've separated a long, long time ago. They're both alive. They're both still  around, but not together. My dad's remarried. My mom is now retired. I don't know  that bridge is at all even really part of her life anymore. My dad still plays. He still  goes to a club game. At least he was going about, I would say, once a week or so  before the COVID lockdown stuff happened. I don't know how that's changed things. 

John: When you talk to your dad, will you guys talk about the game? 

Tom: He'll try. [laughs] I usually let him do a little bit of that, but it gets to a point  where there's just-- Most of the time talking with my dad, when he wants to talk about bridge, it's something he wants to brag about that-- [crosstalk] 

[laughter] 

Tom: It's not really that he has a question, or [crosstalk] I have done. It's more, "Look at this great thing I did." This is certainly not always true, but there's certainly times  where the great thing that he did was wrong on so many levels but worked out. It's  hard to let him down gently. This is not exactly what we do-- [crosstalk] 

John: The last time that happened, how did you-- 

Tom: I don't remember the last time, but I remember one time he was talking about  some experience of playing online where-- I have to put this into context here. My  dad, when he tells a story, he is a fisherman at heart. The fish gets bigger with each  tell [crosstalk]the one that got away. He was playing online, which nobody knew who  he was. He was, of course, playing against some of my friends like Joel Wooldridge  and things like that because of course, he was. He was talking about how he was in  seven notrump doubled because of course, he was. He made it on a Devil's Coup,  which is a-- 

John: What? 

Tom: For those who don't know what that is, it's a trump maneuver where you  managed to avoid a trump loser, but my dad managed to do this in seven notrump. 

[laughter] 

Tom: I had to explain that perhaps he doesn't have all of his facts quite right. 

[laughter] 

Tom: Definitely, the fish gets bigger every time he tells a story. The way he ends that particular story is he talks about how afterwards, people are saying, "Who is this  person?" He's like, "I'm Tom's dad," all hyper-- 

[laughter] 

Tom: My dad can be very entertaining, but you definitely have to take his stories with a grain of salt or an entire salt shaker. 

John: Your sister, Chris, is she younger than you are? 

Tom: She is. She's almost four years younger. 

John: When you said she started playing after, she wasn't involved in the family  games when you would play until after you had started going to the bridge club? 

[00:08:05] Tom: That's correct. We had talked about this before a little bit before we started recording. We would play every once in a while at home. That was after both my sister and I had been pretty regularly playing club games. This was maybe three,  four years after I had started playing bridge. I was a teenager, and my sister was not  

quite a teenager. My mom and my dad, every once in a while, we'd pull out a card. 

My mom, as I said before, she's more of a social player, and that reflected in the  game as well. We would have a good time and play. I recall one incident in  particular, which I'll reiterate here. She was very possessive of her good hands.  She's not really what most competitive bridge players would do, used to be dealing  with competition and preempt. A lot of bridge players, if you have an opening hand,  you bid it and if you don't have an opening hand, you don't bid. That's the way it  works, period, flat, end of story. 

She had her 23 count, 24 count, whatever, and I opened two hearts in front of her, a weak two. She just slammed her cards on the table, got up, and left the room.  [laughs] That's the stuff that she's just not used to and didn't want to deal with. You  had to be a little bit careful around her. Many of us take the game very seriously even if she really wasn't the competitive-type players that we were. It would just ruin the enjoyment for her that it was her good hand. It was her time to shine. We just took away her two club opener. Not fair. I couldn't imagine her trying to survive a club game. 

John: When you're going to the clubs on these Fridays and Saturdays, are you  playing pretty much with your dad every time when you were 10 years old? 

Tom: Right. I was 10, almost 11 when I went to that first tournament or a couple of  months later when we got the club directory. By then, I think I had turned 11. I was  playing with my dad Friday night and Saturday night, eventually got to the point  where it was even more times a week than that. For the first six months or so, I was  more or less just playing with my dad, maybe even just strictly just playing with my  dad. When my sister started playing, I then mostly played with her. It was the two  kids playing together. 

I was 11 and she was 7. There was even a little bit of pushback of that when we first  started playing in the club. I know my dad, people came up to him and were saying,  "This is not a babysitting service." It didn't last too long once we got to the point  where we were good enough that we were starting to win, that they realized that,  "Okay, these kids are pretty serious about this. They're not just here just because  there's nothing else to do." 

We were the ones dragging my dad out more than anything else. We definitely got to the point where we're playing pretty regularly on other days of the week as well  despite being school days. That didn't always mesh perfectly with grades but you  know, hey, [chuckles] it was what it was. Certainly, in the summers, we would play  many, many, many days a week. 

John: Where in the world was it? 

Tom: This is in New Jersey. I grew up on the east coast of New Jersey. Most people  say they're north or south. I was actually pretty much central of that axis, halfway  between the north and the south ends of New Jersey, but all the way on the coast. A  little bit further north than what most people think of as the Jersey coast where the  beaches are and so forth, that are common for visitors and things like that but I was  on the coast, I was near beaches but not the commonly visited ones. Coastal Jersey  that's where I was, a good 30 years until I had had enough and moved away. 

John: Take us to the 1999 World Junior tournament, you're now 

Tom: I was 24. That was actually my third World Junior Championship. My first one  was in 1995 in Bali, Indonesia. 

John: That's a good place to travel to. 

Tom: Pretty exotic location to be your first foray out of the country. What had  happened is-- I'll take you back a little bit further than that. I had played in the trials in Toronto back, I think it was 1991-92, something like that. I think '92 and I'd met Joel  Wooldridge there. He was just really a little kid. 

John: You played in the trials? 

Tom: The junior trials. 

John: They were in Toronto. 

Tom: That was were the Summer NABC was that year. They were concurrent with  the summer nationals each time back then. 

John: Got you. 

Tom: It was actually a pairs event, I was playing with a friend of mine, who drives me crazy, that event was no exception. We did make it to the day three, just didn't make into qualifying position. Joel was there, he was really a little kid. He had broken his  arm, so he had his arm in a sling, wearing a cast or both or whatever. He doesn't  really remember this, but I did. Then fast forward a couple of years, the person I'd  played with had aged out, that was his last time being eligible to play which is why I played with him, just to give him a chance. I didn't have a partner. Joel and I went to the junior reception at the summer nationals in Washington DC. This is in 1993. We happened to be sitting at the same table. 

We were chatting about as people want to do, and talking about one thing or another and eventually decided, "Hey, we should give this a try." We actually found a morning game to go play in because we were already booked for things. We had some huge game, we really hit it off, and just decided we had to give this a try. We actually worked on system via postal mail, if you can imagine  something, it's like phone calls and postal mail. 

John: Oh, my God. 

Tom: To put things in context here, email wasn't that much of a thing back then. I  actually did have an email address, but Joel was 12, 13, [chuckles] something like  that, he did not. We would talk on the phone and send notes back and forth,  handwritten on paper, [laughs] but eventually prepared a system and went into the  next junior trials in San Diego in 1994. I was on the team with my sister and a friend  of ours. We're not expected to do well, there were teams who certainly were. We  actually ended up winning the round-robin. The format was that year they did a  round-robin through all the teams and the top four would go into a knockout phase.  We won the round-robin. 

[00:15:10] John: This is just under-25? They only have under-25 at this point. 

Tom: 25 and under, under-26, right, correct, which is the same as the junior  category is now. They added additional categories around 2010, sometime like that.  Anyway, we went, we surprised everybody by winning the round-robin. Then, we  went into the knockout match with, I think it was something like a four IMP deficit and played a 64-board match which was the length of a Spingold match that time, and  dropped four more IMPs on the day to lose the match on the last board. Had  something different happened on the last board, we would have actually won the  match, which actually did happen at the GNT A's finals which were happening  concurrently. 

They played the same boards as we did, and there was a swing on that board. It was a cash-out situation that was complicated, that you have to get it right. Declarer has  a stiff queen in one of the suits and queen doubleton in the other. They're going to play the queens under both the aces and you have to figure out which one cashes or which one doesn't or it goes away. In my match, both tables got it right. The other  junior match that was going on, both tables got it wrong and allowed the game to  make. In the GNT A's, one table got it right, one table got it wrong and it swung the  match on the last board. 

Anyway, we just missed but everybody was teams of four. At the point, we were  doing the trials, it was not clear that there was going to be enough funds to send a  second junior team. It actually ended up that they were able to cobble it together to  send a second team. The team that we ended up losing to augmented Joel and I.  We had really impressed them in the course of this 64-board match, thought that we  were the future.

We ended up joining their team, becoming USA2, and heading out to Indonesia. Joel and I were pretty solidly the pair at this point. A lot of times, a lot of these junior  people play together, they'll get some practice in, but a lot of times, it's really more of a casual partnership, not really a long-term thing. Whereas, Joel and I were basically playing every board together at this point. We were on the team in 1997, we were on the team in 1999, so 1999 is what you asked about when we medaled. 

That particular year, we had as teammates, Eric Greco and Chris Willenken, the  primary squad. We had a secondary pair with-- There were some awkward things  that happened that I'm not going to get into, but the other pair, the third pair was my  sister and her now husband. My sister, unfortunately, the way it played out, didn't  actually get much playing time in the team events which actually caused a lot of strife [laughs] inside the team dynamics and out. It actually changed USBF policy on some stuff for a little while. 

The Italian team that we ended up playing in the finals was very, very strong. They  had won the round-robin. They were, I think, the pre-tournament favorites and they  did end up winning. I have no regrets coming in second to that team. Still have my  silver medal from that, I'm very proud of it. I would have liked to win because what  

bridge player doesn't like to win? In the end, I'm pretty content with the result that we got. 

John: It's amazing you and Joel, I think, you're probably six years older than he is. Tom: Five and a half, almost to the day. 

John: You're 17 years old and he's 12, that's a pretty wide gap for two kids to come  together. 

Tom: That's about the time we met. The time we started playing together, 1993, I  guess I would have been 19. Then, the trials that we played together in 1994, I would have been 20 and he would have-- His birthdays are always right around the  nationals or sometimes during the summer nationals. I'm born in January, he's born  in July. He either would have been 14 or 15, depending on that particular year. 

John: Bridge just brings people together. 

Tom: It really does. 

John: It spans generations, I think, this is a good example. 

Tom: I've played with people in their 90s, [chuckles] passed away now. One of my  partners that I played with on more than one occasion was Dave Treadwell, friend of  ours. He's known around the bridge community as well. He's actually in the Hall of  Fame, but he passed away a number of years ago. He and I would get together with  Jenny and others and play barbu on a fairly regular basis. He was quite an  interesting character too. He's the only 90-year old I know that gotten kicked out of  casinos for counting cards in blackjacks. He was quite an unusual person himself. 

John: Was he a good bridge player then? 

Tom: He's a great bridge player.

[00:19:50] John: Oh, he's in the Hall of Fame bridge player? 

Tom: He's in the Hall of Fame for the Blackwood Award, it has to do a little bit with  service and what not than with playing. He's still quite a good bridge player. In fact,  he actually is involved in my Life Master story, as one of my opponents. I made Life  

Master back in 1991, when I was 17. It was actually the summer between high  school and college for me. I made Life Master, at the time, you only needed 300  masterpoints, the color requirements were still there. 

I made Life Master by going over 300 and getting my last bit of gold by winning the  finals of a open bracket knockout against a world champion. It was against Bobby  Goldman was on the opposing team and Dave Treadwell, actually was as well.  That's actually how I met him. A lot of times these days it feels many people who are  making Life Master have an easy path and they're really afraid to go play against  different players. 

That was not my approach honestly. [laughs] I played against the best that I could  find and take on who I could. I played with very good players too. My teammates, I  had actually impressed them because I played against some of them in a pair game,  one time, and I executed a squeeze against them. They had no idea who this kid  was. [laughs] They're just like, "What?" One of them was just hanging around like, "I  just got squeezed." I was like, "Yes, I saw." [laughs] They came up to me later, and  said- 

[laughter] 

Tom: "Hey, we need somebody for our team, there's stuff coming through. Want to  play?" 

John: That's a good way to do it. 

Tom: It is. No, I'm very proud of them, made life faster actually. I wish more people  would embrace playing better players. It's actually the best way to learn. All these  299er, 499er, gold rush this side or the other thing, I think so many people really do  themselves a disservice by isolating themselves away from better players that you  really get into bad habits, and don't really learn the game as well as you could. 

John: Yes. One of the cool things about bridge is that you can play against the best  in the world. If you enter a good event, you can play against the best players in the  world, and that's a thrill certainly for me. 

Tom: Absolutely. In no other sport, however you want to deem bridge, can you go  and play against the best players. You can't enter a tennis tournament and play  against Venus Williams, or you can't enter baseball and play-- I'm picking sports I  don't know well. [laughs]. I should probably go to other ones, but play against world renowned baseball players, Hall of Famers, and so forth. In bridge, you go to a  nationals or something like that which are open to everybody. It's not like these are  closed events, or at least with a one or two exceptions. The events are open to all.  You're going to play the best of the best, and that's exciting, and that's one of the  advantages bridge really has on many, many other sports. 

[00:23:07] John: Did you know Bobby Goldman? Did you know who Bobby Goldman was as a  17-year-old at this time? 

Tom: It was explained to me. [laughs]. I have a similar story. This was leading up to  this event. The person I was going to be playing with, we were practicing, and we  went to a local sectional to practice in New Jersey, northern Jersey. It wasn't super  local to me, but it was close enough. It was the round one of the Swiss, and we're  playing against people I don't know, and some auction happens like something like  they'd probably just have an auction like a spade, pass, three diamonds which got  alerted, pass, whatever, whatever, whatever. They get to four spades just like that. 

I'm just a kid, I'm just sitting here minding my own business. My partner speaks up  and says something to the effect of, "I assume Mr. Bergen and Mr. Cohen are  playing Bergen raises?" That's when I got scared. We ended up winning that match  by a very small margin, but this was the very first round that they ended up  dominating everybody else and winning the event. This was the Sunday Swiss at the sectional, they won it quite handily. We were the only people that beat them all day. 

It's one of the things about growing up in New York greater area is that there were  certainly a lot of good players available. You really got to learn a lot about what it  means to be a good player. You got a lot of exposure if you wanted it, to the best of  the best. I think that really helped me a lot growing up is there were a lot of  tournaments that were in the area where I was in one district, New York city was a  different district, western New Jersey was a different district. Not unit, district. There  were just abundance of regionals in the area, not even counting things like going up  to Connecticut, or going up to Delaware, or DC. Lots and lots of tournaments  available. 

In fact, one summer preparing for one of those youth things that Joel and I did, we  actually spent the whole summer hopping from one tournament to tournament. We  took trains, we took buses. Ended up eventually back to his house up in Buffalo New York, crashed with his parents, and we went to their regional there on the Grand  Island. We just literally were just hopping from one tournament to another as these  couple of kids. That was our summer in Europe. [chuckles] I think he was just getting close to graduating from high school around then, so it was our getaway from it all  kind of thing. 

John: Wasn't Joel the youngest Life Master at one point? 

Tom: Yes, he was. I believe either it had already happened when I met him or was  about to happen. I think he was already a Life Master at the point I had met him, but  he actually was part of a nice tradition there. The previous youngest life master was  Sam Hirschman who helped Joel take the new youngest Life Master title, and then  later on, Joel helped Sam's younger brother, Dan, take the title away from Joel. Dan  Hirschman then also became the youngest Life Master, and then Joel helped him on  his way. There was a nice little payback there. I was never in the running for any of  that. I was ancient at 17 when I made Life Master. Gotten down to eight something.  [chuckles] I think I read that the recent-- 

8

John: Yes, Andrew Chan is eight years old. Yes, he's eight years old. He might be  nine now. I think he actually just turned-- I want to say just turned, is turning. He's a  child. I saw him in San Francisco. He's very young. 

Tom: It's pretty amazing. It's really great. Myself, I worked with the youngest Life  Master. It was actually one of the ones, Double Dummy by Richard Jeng. Richard  and Andrew-- 

John: You mean you helped him-- 

Tom: We had mentioned we were going to get into Double Dummy a little bit, so let  me give you a little bit of background. Andrew and Richard were in Atlanta which is  where I was living as well at the time. There is a youth program there called Atlanta  

Junior Bridge run by Patty Tucker. She has all these classes aimed at fairly young kids, middle school, and sometimes even younger is really how she's trying to  get them at a very, very early age. Some of the best and the brightest coming out of  her group wanted to explore some other things. 

What happened is, with some effort on her part and from ours, we got the permission to create a youth NABC. They held the very first of those not during the Summer  NABC, but actually at the 4th of July supersectional in Atlanta. Partially because  that's where it came from, and partially because that's-- We were so instrumental in creating that. It was fairly short notice thing, but we got it created. One of the things  that happened was that there was scholarship money involved. It brought out one of the better pairs that already was established as a good pair who was playing Precision in this youth event. 

[00:28:15] Most of the people in it had never even heard of Precision, let alone actually play it.  Some of the best and brightest went to Patty and said they want to learn more about  this Precision thing. She is not a Precision player, I am. She turned to me and said,  "Would you be willing to teach some of these kids?" I said sure. We were  meeting with them pretty regularly for a couple of years there. It started by teaching Precision, and it eventually just wandered into just being more of their teachers. This  is about, I guess, like 2008, 2009, some kind of timeframe like that. 

They actually put together a team to play in the Youth World Championships was in  Philadelphia in 2010. Group of kids that we have been working with were some of  those that put together a team. They weren't expected to do all that well, they did  okay, they held their own, but not close to medaling. Come a couple of years later,  for the event in the China that the movie covers, Andrew and Richard were still one  of the better pairs that was floating. Adam Kaplan, Zach Driscoll as well as the  brothers Adam and Zach, yes, I have two sets of Adam and Zach's on a single team. Don't ask me how that can possibly happen, but it did. 

They were like already very established, and very serious competitors who wanted to really try to put together a team that have very good chance of medaling. They knew  they needed a third pair. They wanted a third pair that was solid. They knew they weren't going to find a pair that was as good as they were, but the Jengs were  certainly in the running of what was some of the best that was out there which is how they got added to that team. 

I had already been working with them closely, and I already knew Adam Kaplan  pretty well from other events, and had been friendly with him for years. When they  suggested that I be the NPC, I had been their NPC back in 2010. The Jengs  suggested that I be their NPC. Adam Kaplan supported that, and that's how it  happened. The others, I didn't know as well, but I got to know them over the course  of leading up to the event, and then during China itself. It's a good bunch of kids, and I really was very happy to get their vote of confidence and be out there for them. 

John: It was actually Andrew and Richard that suggested you be the NPC for the  team? 

Tom: Yes. Like I said, at this point, I had already worked with them for about four,  five years, and had also been their NPC the previous event back in 2010. I guess the 2010 may not-- It was during the Open World Championships that were held in  Philadelphia. 

John: Was it the World Youth Teams that took place there, or was it another? 

Tom: That's what I'm trying to remember. I want to say it was the World Youth  Teams that happened there as well, concurrent with the world championship that  was happening there. The one that had happened last year, the year before in  Orlando, similar kind of thing where they have the Rosenbloom, and the Open World  Pairs championship and so forth. They held the junior team events concurrent with  that in Philadelphia. I'd already been working with the Jengs, they suggested that I  believe Adam Kaplan heard that suggestion and said, "That's a great idea. Let's go  ahead." I think the others said, "Well, we don't know him, but sure if you think that's a good idea." They went with it. 

John: I had the impression and this is colored by my knowing Adam much better  than anybody on the team, but Adam was like the leader of the team but I didn't  know Zack and Zack and Adam Grossack at all at the time, so I don't really know  how those guys had they decided to play together as a foursome. 

[00:32:15] Tom: I think that's an accurate assessment, Adam Kaplan had been the most active of them for the longest, at least at the top of the circle. He was in many ways a de facto captain before they had a captain. He's also been incredibly mature for his age for a long, long time. Adam, the age of 13, you're talking with him, you think you were talking to adult. He is a very, very independent soul and has been for quite a long time. Really, really mature. I agree that he was definitely their leader so to speak. 

I believe he had approached the Grossacks to play quite a while, before the event  had started, before the trials or any of that stuff had started with the intent of trying to put together the best team they could to try and take down the gold. In the end, they didn't quite get there. The team that they ended up losing to in the finals was also one of the pre-tournament favorites and had an existing world champion on the team that they lost to. 

Again, a similar story to what I went through in '99, where it was a very, very strong  team but probably not the pre-tournament favorites, and ended up playing against  the tournament favorites in the finals and coming in second to them. There's just not  a lot that you can feel bad about when that's the way it goes. 

10

John: Well, certainly having a film crew in China for the event and having you guys  have the comeback that you did against Israel in the semifinals is still is an incredible thrill. 

Tom: It really was. I still have chills even thinking about it to this day. One of the  things just to give your audience the idea of what it was like for me during the time in  China. I spent the first couple of matches in the open room watching my teams. The  captains are allowed to do that. They have to tell the other team's captain and  normally, they're going to be there too. I wanted to get a sense of the very first match how people were handling themselves somewhat, physically. 

Were they getting intimidated by screens? Were they nervous? Were they shaky?  Any of that kind of stuff. I wanted to try and be there in case I needed to talk to them  about calming down or any of that kind of stuff. As it happened, none of that actually  transpired, which is what I expected. For all their matches past that point, I was  spending all of my time in the VuGraph room where they had many, many different  monitors in this room, almost think like if you see like those war room pictures of  NASA kind of things. 

You have rows of monitors and things like that, it almost felt like that. There's four or  five giant screens with all this information all around us of all the different events  going on. I also had my own laptop more focused on exactly what was happening  with my team as the results were coming in. I wasn't watching any of this in-person. I was a member of the viewgraph audience so to speak, but I was keeping tabs as  quickly as I could on what was going on. 

We had been stuck a pretty large margin going into the last [unintelligible 00:33:53] and just watching these results come again, one after the other, after the other and  all of a sudden, the lead had dwindled to nothing. They took the lead. They've just  got this tear of IMPs just flying is just jaw-dropping. They really pulled it together  when they needed to, the stuff of legends. It really felt like the US-Russia match for  the 1980 Olympics kind of thing, the massive comeback upsets kind of thing, take it  down. Like them, the famous match was actually the semifinals, and then they just  go on to the finals. 

[00:35:54] John: I get chills when hearing you recount it. The name of the movie Double Dummy actually comes from your interview afterwards in the hallway when you say  double-dummy twice. You say they were double dummy at both tables, everybody was into the hand, that's where the title comes from, that interview with you in the hallway right after we came back and won that match. 

Tom: Well, thank you, [laughs] sorry. 

[laughter] 

Tom: The hand I'm sure you're talking about was the very famous slam hand that  Adam Kaplan played and the Grossacks defended. The way that Kaplans play, I  think was, at least of the original cut of the movie was definitely explained in some  detail, but the Grossacks actually had a big part to do with his hand too. At one point, the declarer at the other room led a low card away from dummies, I forget exactly, but it was something like ace-jack fifth. Whoever was next to play, I forget which of the brothers it was at this point, knew what was going on 

John: Zach. 

Tom: -and flew from their queen third or something like that to lead like the killing  card through. It was the only defense to the way their declarer played it. Adam Kaplan actually found 100% legitimate line that there is no defense to, and it involved being amazingly precise with absolutely every single card, drawing exactly one round of trumps and then this loser on loser play to be able to score this rough safely. It was just incredible. 

There was a very good chance that if there had not been expert defense at the other  table that that actually might have ended up a push despite nobody in any of the  other events playing that board made slam. It actually was very close to making the  other table. The young Israeli had played it, I believe it was a female of their team,  she actually played it pretty reasonably well. The only defense was to fly on that  back queen third. I want to say it was Zach Grossack who flew, but-- 

John: I was just actually going through the bridge winners article before we talked  and it was Zach. Zach played the queen. 

Tom: You have to understand, my recollections for this point are 10 years old or 8  years old, or whatever. Bear with me if I have some of the details wrong, but that  was essentially the gist of it is that he had to guess to fly at this unsupported honor to put a keycard through. They were both into the hand. They both basically knew what  was going on and well, they were double-dummy. 

John: I know. Well, I've been immersed in this. I've been immersed in this one, two  weeks of tournament that you were the NPC of, so it stands to reason that I would  potentially know more or have outside recollection or knowledge of what took place. 

Tom: Absolutely, yes, you couldn't know. This was definitely an important part of my  life, and definitely something I'm going to remember for all time. [crosstalk] not quite  as easy to recall every little thing, some things stick with you. 

John: I'll tell you a story about-- I went to Tel Aviv for the 50th Tel Aviv Bridge  Festival. I'm at the tournament site one day and Hila Levi was on the Israeli team  that you all came back and beat. I never met her in Taicang. I recognized her from the footage and I went up and introduced myself and I told her that we were making a movie about this event. [laughs] She was not very excited  about that. 

[laughter] 

Tom: Well, that's understandable. They're made to be the villains in the movie, not  that the kids did anything wrong. I'm sure that as elated as we were, I'm sure that  they were equally disappointed. Here they were [crosstalk] just to have everything  unravel like that. It's just got to be heartbreaking for kids to deal with. I don't call, did  they come back to win the bronze or not? I don't remember. Who won the bronze? 

John: I don't know. It's a good question. 

Tom: It is a good question. 

John: That I do not know. (ed. France beat Israel for the bronze medal)

Tom: Because as heartbroken as they were, it would be very easy to picture falling  apart the next day in the bronze medal match and not having your hearts into it. You  don't think so necessarily if you're not playing in high-level competition, but so much  of this is emotionally driven. It's a game of logic, it's a game of reason, and yet, there 

are things like momentum and emotions. It's amazing how much these elements,  these very human elements to this game that you might think would be mechanical,  come to light. It's very easy to get deflated and just not be on your game. We're  talking about kids. We're talking about this is the under-20 events. 

We're talking literally teenagers. How well are they going to handle a letdown like  that? I don't recall whether Israel won the bronze medal match or not. If they did not,  it certainly wouldn't be that surprising, to me, in retrospect as an adult having gone  through these type of things myself over the years, that it's hard. It's hard to pull  yourself together sometimes. Kids just don't have the background or experience. The pressure is real at that level. It's not easy undertaking playing for a world  championship. 

John: I think people would be surprised at how competitive bridge players are, like  how frustrating it is. I'm just thinking about times when I've misdefended on a hand  and how gut-wrenching it is to realize, "Oh, my gosh, I could have taken the setting  trick on a hand," or something like that. I've played sports, I played lacrosse at  

Virginia for a semester, it's as intense as any physical athletic competition as I've  played in. 

Tom: I believe that. Not much of a physical athlete myself, but I certainly understand  the level of intensity comes with it. It seems to me, having witnessed bridge players  for many decades now, that by and large, most of the people who are attracted to  the game are competitive in nature. That's just goes with the territory. I actually have  a student now that I play with fairly regularly. She's a pretty new player, she's only  been playing a few years and still has a lot to learn. When she misses something,  she beats herself up over it much more than I think is really fair. 

[00:43:00] I point it out to her like, "Here's your train of logic of how you could have reasoned out what you're supposed to do." It's this very non-intuitive thing like shifting to an ace-queen third or something like that, things that don't necessarily come with the basic rules that we're taught, fourth best, the leading honors and this, that, and the other thing. There are logical paths to get there and that's going to differentiate the people who have lots of experience versus the ones who don't. She is as competitive as anybody I know. She will just eat herself up over these things like, "I should have  done that, I should have--" I said, "Know for next time." [laughs] You can't know what you don't know. 

It's pretty amazing how the competitive spirit is very much alive in bridge. I would say that that is very prevalent among all the better players and even among many of the  masses who just go to their local tournaments and local club games. These are  people who-- They want to win. They want to win. I guess it's part of the attraction of  the game. It draws that out in people. 

John: If you had seen me here playing in some of the online events that I've been  playing in the last couple of months, I've lost it on a couple of cases just in a rage  because when I realized that I made a mistake or somebody swindled me, I'm like, "I have neighbors and I don't care." 

Tom: I'm in a house so I don't really have to worry about anybody except in my  house. It's true how much the computer isolates you. I know I've had times when I  just start yelling at the computer. I've talked about this with some of my friends. Dan  Korbel was just telling me that he does that like two times a day. He just starts yelling at the computer. 

[laughter] 

Tom: It's so easy to let that out when you're not in a social setting. It's a different  experience playing online than it is playing at a club. You're hidden by the anonymity  of the internet, not that you're anonymous, but you're behind this wall that nobody  can see you. You can really just let your emotions show. I'm sure my wife, Jenny,  hears me rant and rave multiple times a week too, perhaps nonsense going on.  [laughs] At the table, I'm like, "Why would you do that? How could you do that? No,  don't do that." 

[laughter] 

John: How did the student find you? 

Tom: This particular student is one I was playing with in the club before COVID  started. She met me through one of the classes that I teach at our local club. I've  taught several classes there before all this was going on. She attended one of my  classes and really liked how I taught things and approached me to play with her in  the club. I have actually a few different students that I was playing with live in the  club. 

It was getting to the point where I was playing more or less every day there pretty  close to it before COVID came down. Once everything moved to online, some of my  students were not computer-savvy and not really ready to try and take the plunge of  playing online bridge, but that's not her. She was already on BBO, she already would play on there. It was a very easy transition for her. We've been playing a few times a  week, pretty regularly during this nonsense. She found me originally through one of  my classes at the local club. 

John: Have you ever been to a pizza place in Seattle? I think I've asked you this  before, have you been to Serious Pie? 

Tom: No. I've never heard of it. 

John: Oh, my God. 

Tom: Serious Pie? 

John: It's a place that I fell in love with Neapolitan pizza because of Serious Pie. 

Tom: I see. 

14

John: We came out there and interviewed Phil Gordon for Double Dummy and we  were there for two nights and I ate a Serious Pie two times. 

Tom: Got you. 

John: It's nice. The director who's from -- Isn't there a director from Seattle? Tom: There's several. 

John: Gosh, what's his name? 

Tom: You're thinking probably Matt Koltnow? 

John: Yes, exactly. Matt recommended it to me. 

Tom: Now that we're out here, my wife is also a director in Seattle. She comes too.  For those who don't know, my wife is a tournament director as well. Those of you  who do play at the nationals and so forth would certainly know her and recognize  her. 

John: Are you jealous of her partnership with Greg Humphreys? 

Tom: No. Greg is a very, very, very funny guy. He is smart as a whip. He's actually  one of the smartest people that you'll ever talk to which if you just look at how he  carries himself, he's such a clown, and he dresses like a clown that you would never  actually get to know that, but this man is brilliant. I like Greg a lot, but the two of  them, they have their thing, and I'm happy to be in the background supporting. 

John: Do you and Jenny play as partners? 

Tom: We do when we can. Jenny, unfortunately, because she's a tournament  director, she doesn't get nearly as much opportunity to play as she would like. That's  probably her biggest regrets with being a director. We do play, we have played, we  actually were scheduled to play in the North American pairs in Columbus this year  before COVID happened. We absolutely do play together when we can. We do quite  well. We're not generally one of those husband-wife pairs that gets really very testy  at the table. By and large, we usually can just sit there and just play our game. I do  enjoy playing with her for sure. 

John: Is Precision your preferred system? I think Jenny and Greg play Precision? 

Tom: They play my Precision system that I came up with for Jenny and I. They  basically play the same thing. They might have some small modifications. It's also  what I play with. I would say yes, I would in general prefer forcing club strong Precision, whatever you want to call. I'm a systems geek. I like playing systems and coming up with systems and thinking about things. That's been true whatever framework I play. Joel and I, when we were playing, we played a two  over one system but it was very much our own two over one system, not anybody else's. 

[00:50:10] We were doing stuff back then that I know of one or two other pairs that do similar  things now, but no one to my knowledge was doing anything like that back then. For  

example, we played basically a transfer response system to our two club opening.  It's not exactly something that's very commonplace but something that we developed together and made it happen. 

John: How did that work? 

Tom: Oh, it worked very well. Even the last time we played, Joel and I still try to play  every once in a while when we're free. We still both remembered it years later and  still played it. Roy and Sabine actually play something that's very, very similar with  their two club structure. 

John: When I asked how it worked quite literally how granularly how does that work? I've never heard of a two-club transfer system. 

Tom: The first thing we did is we dealt with the Kokish problem of the two notrump  strikes and so forth a little bit differently than most pairs do. We actually made our  2NT to be 22, 23, and had both the 20, 21, and the game forcing notrumps in the two club structure. The reason we did that reversal was because it was a little bit easier having the gap in between as opposed to being in this gray zone, just  structurally. Our two-club opener came up a little bit more often. The way it works  just general, something like two clubs pass two diamonds was our multi-way bid. 

One of the things it included was a transfer to heart. If we bid two hearts over that,  we were actually showing 20 to 21 balance. Accepting the transfer was the minimum notrump rage. Rebidding to notrump there is the game forcing balance over which  partner can retransfer or what have you. In a lot of ways, it's a similar idea to what a  lot of people do playing transfers over a one club now, where they have notrump  rage or their 17 to 19 rage depending on whether they accept the transfer or bid.  This is something that Joel and I came up with, I think it was primarily me. 

I did most of the system stuff, and he did most of the card play stuff just as a  dynamic of our partnership. We were both good players, but we had different  strengths. I think I taught him a lot about slam bidding and thinking about bidding in  ways he hadn't thought of before. He helped me a lot on card play mechanics and,  improved my declarer play, things like that. We really elevated each other. We really  played off each other really well, which is one of the reasons we had such a great  partnership back in the day. 

John: Did you guys stop playing together because you were older, and he was  playing juniors with other like you, that was his primary partnership? 

Tom: That was precisely it. We actually still tried to play together some after I had  aged out of the juniors. We still played a few national events. He wanted to try and  keep it going, but it was just too hard. He had too many commitments to try and  practice with John Hurd to be able to get their partnership going in an order. 2005 is  a special year for me, just giving you a little bit. 

That particular summer, the NABC was in Atlanta. I had been on a GNT team for my  area. Joel also had a GNT team for his area. We went up to each other and said, "Hey, I'm looking for a Spingold team." He was  too. He had Johnny, and I had a local partner from Atlanta of mine, Michael White, he's not a grand Life Master, but he's come close. He's 40,000, 50,000 player 

John: They're still closed? 

Tom: Yes, closed to the president of the particular events, which is where I'm  leading up to. I have this guy who I've been played with locally who is a 10,000 plus  master play player and Joel had Johnny. Joel was playing with this guy, Dan  Gerstman, who was also from Buffalo. Then he asked Joel and said, "Well, I'd  already talked with Tommy." He is the only one in the world who still calls me  Tommy." 

[laughter] 

Tom: Bryan Maksymetz, who is actually from about this way, he lives in Vancouver,  British Columbia, so he's actually in my district now. He was also there for the GNTs. Dan and Bryan had ever played together before, but we put them together as a  partnership, and we formed a team. We had some success. We were the 29th seed.  Ranked clearly not the top, top group, and we lost in the finals. That was pretty  exciting. It was quite the run that we had. 

I think that in many ways, it's what puts Joel and Johnny on the map, so to speak, as people wanted to hire them. It was very shortly after that, that they started getting  hired for teams. They went on from after the Spingold match to flying to Sydney, I  think it was, to play at the World Junior Championships. I seem to remember that  Johnny had to keep worrying about changing his flight because we kept getting later  and later and later into the Spingold. 

I seem to remember that that was part of what was going on that he had  conventionally planned to go out there early because of a lot of time in Australia.  We've made it so far in the Spingold that he ended up having to keep pushing it  back. That day, he went on to win the gold medal in the World Junior Championship.  Those two things happened right back to back. That I think really put them on the  map of a pair that was wanted and, started getting them hired for some of the big  teams. 

John: That story gives me hope. Obviously, these accomplished players on the  team but that you could be at the tournament and not have a Spingold team while  the GNTs are going on, and the next thing you know, you're in the finals of the  Spingold. That's a pretty cool story for someone who-- 

Tom: It is. So often these days people have their teams planned out for years in  advance. At least it feels that way to me. For me, if I know what I'm doing in the next  tournament, sometimes that feels like a lot of advanced planning. [chuckles] We  were just all there. I've known Joel, he's a dear, dear friend of mine, and has been  for a long, long time. He was there for the GNTs, I was there. It's natural if we're both looking to say, "Hey, what are you doing?" There's no way I would ever be able to do that to him ever again. [chuckles] I think that was my one last chance that I am free  for that particular event. I'm going to treasure it along with many other things that's  happened because of bridge over the years. 

John: What's it like for you to see Joel reaching the heights? He's lost in the finals of the Bermuda Bowl. Like you said, him and Johnny had a long run on the Fireman  team. Not that you said Fireman team, but just getting hired and being really a hot  pair. What's it been like for you as Joel's primary partner for a number of years? 

[00:57:25] Tom: I have no regrets, if that's where you're going. I'm thrilled for him. I want to see him do well. I was so happy when he won Player of the Year that one year where he got the most Platinum points for the year for any player. They won four national events that year or something, just whatever it was. I am absolutely thrilled to see Joel do the best he could. I made a life choice a long time ago to actually go and try and be in the real world, not the bridge world for a while, more than a while. At this point, for one reason or another, I'm just really doing bridge teaching and so forth. I had a successful IT career. 

For me, bridge was a very, very serious hobby, but it was still a hobby. Whereas for  Joel, it's been his job for a long, long time. There is very much something to be said  for difference for that. I've, for a long time, I would say I was a pretty successful  amateur, but I wasn't a pro. Maybe that position has changed for me now, these  days I'm teaching more bridge classes and playing with students and whatnot. 

At the time, I very much did not want to go down the bridge professional route. I  really wanted to be much more in the mainstream world and not to get caught up  with a lot of what I saw some bridge pros having to deal with in terms of wondering  when their next paycheck is coming in or where are they going to live. I just wanted  to set a nine to five. I just wanted to be a little bit more on my feet. Now that I'm a  little bit older and I'm more or less retired from my IT career, now I can turn my  attention back to bridge. That's where I am these days and that's perfectly fine and I  have no regrets with that. 

In light of that, Joel taking the very serious routes and doing the full-time bridge  thing, and he's gotten better than I am and better than pretty much most people in  the world, that, I can't feel jealous of that. I made this my own conscious choice and  if anything I just love to see him have success. I want to be the first person to buy  him a drink anytime he wins a national event. I'm rooting for him as much as I root for me. That's really the God-honest truth. 

John: You guys won the Im Pairs in 1997? 

Tom: We did. We won it a couple of days before we had to leave to go play in the  team championships. The event was I think that was Thursday, Friday and our flight  out was Sunday [chuckles] to go play the world juniors. After winning that we took  Saturday off and just sat around, having a good time in playing barbu. 

John: Do you ever play on Shireen's barbu site? 

Tom: I actually never have. I'm well aware of it. I was actually one of the very first  people to be invited to it way, way, way back in the day, and I just never gotten  around to looking at it. Every once in a while someone mentions it to me, I'm like,  "Oh, yes, I should check that out at some point," and then I don't think about it and  it's gone. [laughs] I guess I have a little bit of reluctance of place. For me, barbu is so much of a social thing giving people a hard time. Unlike bridge, it's not a partnership  game. It's more people playing cutthroat. There's lots of opportunities to give people. 

I'm not going to say the bad word but I was thinking, to give people a hard time for  things that don't go their way, just piling on, rubbing it in. It's social, you can be  drinking and you can be just having a good time. The idea of playing on a site, it just  doesn't have the same appeal to me. Part of what barbu appeals to me is this nice,  something to unwind with, I don't know. 

John: You gamble when you guys play? 

Tom: Not typically, no. It's typically just all about bragging rights, how bad did people do. [chuckles] 

John: Do you play Israeli rules that you have to give the barbu at the first chance if  you have equal business? 

Tom: Typically no. There's a number of different variations on the game. The ones  you're referencing are primarily for gambling-type rules and they make a lot of sense  from that context when you're really trying to rub it into people. 

[laughter] 

We look at the score as already, fairly having equal digits 

John: That makes sense. 

Tom: -of targeting the person who's in second, I suppose, to the person who's in  fourth when you're the leader. 

John: Sure, sure, sure. 

Tom: You may not be doable with anybody but it's so to your advantage to try John: [chuckles] 

Tom: -and do something. We take a much more casual approach to the rules. Those rules are written with the idea of a money game involved. That's absolutely fine and I think that there's good reasons why the rules are what they are, but we tend to be a  little bit more lax about a lot of stuff. 

John: Who's in your game? 

Tom: I don't play regularly these days. The last game I remember playing in actually  was with Adam Grossack, was in Palm Springs Regional, I want to say, down in  California towards the end of the year, December. 

John: Oh, the week after the NABC, I think it is. 

Tom: No, this wasn't NABC, this was a regional just from a-- 

John: I think it's the week after the NABC, the Palm Springs. 

Tom: There was one year where it was, where it was actually really close because it  was San Diego was the NABC. Then there was a week in-between and then there  was a week down in Palm Springs. It was back and forth in California, a [chuckles]  couple of times, right in a row for us. I actually want to say that it was last time I was  down there but I'm not confident of that, but anyway it was just at night, one of the  times in the bar after the game. It was one of the nights later in the tournament. I  think it was myself and Jenny and Adam. I'm trying to picture who else was there. 

I think people kept floating in and out. I don't remember fully who all was playing.  Just like I said, it was more about winding down and having a good time. We're  playing in the bar [laughs] that by itself probably explains a lot about my attitude  towards the game. I don't play very regularly these days. I haven't played in quite a  while. That's something, if you have the time, it's a great thing to do but it's a long  game. I will say-- 

John: Yes, it's like an hour, I can remember that. 

Tom: Oh, more than that, oftentimes when you're playing in person, two to three. John: Oh, right. Yes, yes. 

Tom: I've done other NPC things as well, not just the China trip. One of the trips I  took was to Istanbul for one of the junior events that they have there. This was the  congress where they had team game and then a board-a-match game and then a  pair game. I was going as NPC/adult chaperone. 

[chuckling] 

[01:05:30] I'm sorry, I've got my locations, except that Istanbul was one of the two  championships, so I take it back. Anyway, that trip, I think I taught my team barbu  when we were there before the event had started, we were there a day or two early.  It was the opening ceremony is that night or something like that. We had the  afternoon to ourselves. I taught them barbu and I remember that ended up  happening quite a lot that particular week. 

John: [laughs] 

Tom: Very dangerous to teach these kids, card games. 

John: [laughs] In the early days of COVID, I was playing a lot of barbu. Tom: I could see that. 

John: A lot, a lot. 

Tom: I actually, prior to this year, almost never played at BBO. The other day, I was  talking about this, I think I've had my BBO account since March of 2005. I think I had, prior to this year, something like 500 logins. [chuckles] I'm up to 700 now. 

John: Wow. 

Tom: I just was never on BBO 

John: [laughs] 

Tom: -like never, ever, ever and now I'm on all the time. It's just the world we live in.  I'm ready for live bridge to come back. 

John: Were you working with Atlanta Junior Bridge? It sounds like you were already  doing stuff with Patty and Atlanta Junior Bridge before that you started mentoring  the Jengs? 

Tom: Yes and no. I wasn't really directly involved with Atlanta Junior Bridge per se,  but when she had a lot of local teachers that were running the classes. I was not  involved with that at any point, but I was aware of what she was doing. We'd talk about it with her. Patty was one of my frequent teammates at a lot of the local events and so forth. I spent lots of time with her and she's a good player as well. She's definitely a solid player, one of the better players in the Atlanta area. Indirectly, when she asked for help with this other thing, when the discussion of the NABC came up, I don't remember exactly how but I was asked for my opinion on how to make this  happen and so forth. 

What I ended up doing was my idea and I ran with it and made it happen was I put  the kids on VuGraph. I broadcasted out to the world and we actually had at the  location where the section was, actually had this little auditorium, this little, tiny  theater which was just perfect for me to actually display at the site itself, where a lot  of the parents who didn't necessarily know bridge. Which is actually one of the  amazing things about what Paddy's done is she's actually gotten all these kids who  don't come from a family of bridge-playing parents but have gotten it through the  school programs and so forth, and gotten all these kids who might never have heard  of the game without her intervention. 

Anyway, I had an audience. We actually had a theater room where we could actually show the kids and we had a Vugraph operator in the playing area and he was adding in all the kid's ages as they came out next to their names and lots of discussion. It  was a lot of fun. That was probably my first real interaction with Atlanta Junior Bridge. Then the teaching part really came after that but pretty shortly after, when some of her best and brightest approached her, and then she approached me about teaching them precision which is how it started. 

Truth be told, that actually didn't last very long. The Jengs decided very quickly,  precision was not for them. One of the other pairs actually decided it was and they  stuck with it. The way we worked, these kids were really bright, so I didn't really have to hold back anything. We were just going either shuffle and play or actually more  commonly just grab boards that were used in some club game previously, where  none of the kids had played and we hadn't played either but then there would be  some hand records around. Whatever came up, came up. If there's a squeeze on the board, I'd show them. 

These are kids who are-- Richard at the time was six [laughs] or something like that  but they got it. 

John: Wow. 

Tom: It's amazing how much these kids retain, it really is. They just absorb all this  stuff so well. I still remember very, very vividly, just to go back to China now, that one match where I did kibitzer. I sat behind Richard because he was the one I was a little bit most fearful of, of being a little bit afraid because while he was the youngest  participant in the tournament of anybody. He was young. This was pretty remarkable. He and Andrew were having some auction. I think it was somewhat competitive and  Andrew, at the other side of the screen, had just been four diamonds and Richard  went into the tank. I was looking at his hand. 

He had a hand where he didn't have a lot of highs relative to this action but it  sounded like to me that his hand was very, very fitting and I thought actually, slam  was probably going to be a good bargain. I was wondering what he was thinking  about. I wasn't sure exactly what conclusions he was going to make, whether he's  thinking about passing, raising, this, that, and the other thing. Eventually, he  emerged with six diamonds. They went all pass and they played a few cards and  claimed six. 

There was another kibitzer who's there, there's some old guy, presumably from  China who I didn't know but he turned to me. He was on my side of the screen when  the hand was all over and he just smiled and nodded like, "Wow. The kid can play." 

[laughter] 

Tom: This kid has come to play. He reevaluated his hand very well and I thought  that the six diamond bid was actually quite practical, although it was not, truth be told, what I was actually expecting from him, because I was-- I thought a really expert level analysis to come to the conclusion that six diamonds was probably a good bet. It was and they made it. This was from one of the very, very first matches. I knew then that it felt like this tournament was going to be a good tournament. 

[01:11:30] That was actually one of the hands that stuck with me to putting me to relax a little bit. Only a little. Being an NPC is tough work. [chuckles] I swear that I have more nervous breakdowns the kids do. I've got to try and hide it from them. I don't want them feeding off me being nervous, but oh, man, I live and die with every card they play. It's really something. It's quite nefarious. 

John: Do you remember the comparison for the six diamonds hand? 

Tom: Do I remember it? No, not off the top of my head, but I want to say that the  other table did not get the slam. I'm not 100% sure. 

John: That just seems like the kind of thing that I'm curious how like the rest of the  team found out about the hand. If you told the other pairs or if you talked to Richard  about it or you just were like, "That was really--" you'd never said anything to  anybody about it? 

Tom: I never said anything to the kids for sure. I probably said something to Jenny  about it at one point, but this is something I didn't really feel comfortable sharing with  them about my own nervousness about this, that, or the other thing. I may have said  something to the effect to Richard afterwards that that was a very good six diamond  bid but just left it at that, not going to get into it. 

John: Wow, yes. 

Tom: I don't want to burn them out. I don't want them to. One of the things about  being an NPC, you not only have to look at the bridge side of things, but you have to  really look at the personalities and the players, the people. You have to make sure  that what's good for one person might not be good for another. Does this person  actually need a break? They're kids. They think they're indestructible. They'll always  say, "No, I'm ready to play." Do you believe them? You know, sometimes you  actually have to say, "Well, maybe you should take a break. Now's a good time.  You've been playing a lot. This is a good match for you to take off. We'll probably do  fine anyway." 

I remember Adam at one point. I told him to go take a break, so he went swimming  and he was thrilled. He came back revitalized and this is Adam Kaplan. I don't know  that he himself realized how much he needed to re-energize but I could see it. 

There's a lot of those subtleties that are not necessarily obvious. I'm pretty good at  reading people. I think I've worked well with all the kids and try to quash some of the  fights that were ominous, especially between brothers, the Grossacks. When  something went awry, I just had to get between them because otherwise, this could  really be bad. [chuckles] Just one was not seeing the other of what they were saying  at all. They were both right in their own way. 

John: [chuckles] 

Tom: Zach, the other one said why he did XY and Z, was all he had very sound  technical reasons that he was 100% right, and Adam, not seeing that and say, "Well, what about these other things?" What he was saying was true as well, but they were  just not communicating. They were just getting ready to start yelling at each other. I  got to step in, say, "Okay, guys, I'm going to talk with Zach [unintelligible 01:13:43],"  like, "Zach, you're right. Don’t worry about it. I got it. I'll go talk with Adam," and then  he calmed down. At the time, I think he's got a little bit better. At the time, he was a  little bit of a hothead, so if he got riled, that was not necessarily-- 

John: Wait, which one was the hothead? 

Tom: Zach [unintelligible 01:13:59]. 

John: Oh, yes. 

Tom: He was right and he knew he was right and he wasn't getting that  acknowledgment. I knew what was the best way to deal with it was to go talk with  him alone and say, "You're right. I know you're right. You're absolutely right." Then  he calmed down but that's managing the person. That's understanding the dynamics  of what's going on in their head. I'm just trying to get the best out of them. I want  them to have a good time. I want them to take it seriously. It's obviously a very  serious competition. 

What are the things that I think people lose sight of when we're talking about all  these youngster competitions is that these kids are having an amazing opportunity to travel the world and get to see other places and other things? That has to be part of the experience. It can't all just be bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge. You have to take a step back and appreciate the gift that you've been given. I definitely do my  best to try to make sure that they see that aspect of things too and really enjoy  themselves as much as I want them to do well, but I feel that if they are enjoying  themselves, they're going to play their best too. I think they go hand in hand. 

John: Yes, it's amazing that these kids get to travel the world playing bridge. 

Tom: Yes. I've got a whole bunch of advice. I don't do it so much anymore but not  just China, but I went to Croatia. I went to Turkey. I went to-- it's really amazing.  That's as a coach. As a player, I've done my own traveling. I've gone to France, I've  gone to Belgium. I've gone to-- where else? I've played bridge in Australia. I've  played [chuckles] bridge in China. I was on the USBF team back in 2013, 2014 that  played in the World Mind Sports Games in China, in Beijing. I've gotten my  opportunities both as a player and a coach, and I'm very, very grateful. Bridge has  been such a big part of my life for forever. 

John: Yes, since the beginning. 

Tom: Since the day I was born. 

John: Since a three-day-old. 

Tom: Honestly, [chuckles] it shaped my life. Part of the reason I do what I do and try  to give back is because I feel I owe a debt. That’s one that can never truly be repaid  but I do my best. 

John: Did Klukowski in the match versus Poland during the round-robin, did he  catch your eye during the World Youth Teams in 2012? 

Tom: I knew about him. I knew that he was on their winning team for the previous  time around. I knew-- and talked with other-- 

John: I think it was actually another guy that was on the winning team, not  Klukowski. 

[01:18:00] Tom: I'm pretty sure it was Klukowski, but I could be wrong, but I'm virtually certain or was on something or another. I'd already heard that he was either being considered or had been added to their Polish national team. I knew that he was the real deal. That was a team that was going to be extremely difficult to beat and talking with other coaches. The other thing about the sitting in the Vugraph from all the time  is-- I'm hardly the only one. You actually-- you're spending the whole week in there. You get to know the panelists who are doing the speaking. You get to know some of  the other NPCs. You get to reach out and learn a lot about what's going on in the world out there. [chuckles] 

My radar certainly had heard about him and knew that he was a force to be reckoned with but that he, even at his young age, was already being, like I said, either considered or was part of the Polish national team. He was on my radar, yes. The long and the short of it is yes. I don't think I spoke with him personally, but yes, I was well aware of some of the other players and I also knew some of the others from  either previous competitions, like some of the ones from Norway. I knew both from the 2010 tournament and also some of them frequent our NABCs, so I'd had  conversations with them and whatnot as well. 

Definitely, plenty of people I have either met in the past or were aware of that that I  was keeping an eye on for one reason or another. But going into an event like that,  you have a good sense of who the good teams are and not even really before things  get too deep. 

John: Did you go to the service for Justin Lall on Sunday? 

Tom: No, I actually didn't hear about it. I didn't know that this was a thing. This is  online somewhere? 

John: Yes, they had a memorial service and Bob Hamman told this amazing story  that he said he first met Justin when Justin was 10 years old and he could tell that he was really into bridge and he was a hotshot young kid. Bob said, "I've seen a bunch of hotshot kids. Let's see what happens with him." Then three years later, he came across Justin again and he said that he never believed in reincarnation but when he saw Justin and how good of a games player he was, not just with bridge, but all these other games that it made him think of Oswald Jacoby. 

Tom: Oh, interesting. I didn't really know Oswald so I can't really make that  comparison. Justin, I didn't realize he was as sick as he was. I know that he's had a  number of issues over the years but the news of him passing was quite surprising to  me. I’ve played a little bit on occasion with his mom, his dad over the years. There  was actually one point in time a long time ago, this is actually kind of a regret I have,  but Justin had actually asked me to play one of the national events but I was already  booked. I wasn’t available. I never got the opportunity to do so. He was always a  gentleman at the table, he was always fun to be around and one of the truly great  guys and he’s just going to be missed. Sad to hear that he died at such a young age. 

John: Yes. If he had been in the juniors-- He was still a junior, but he didn’t play in  2012. If he had been in the junior event, we might not have made-- It might have  been about their team and not ya’ll’s team. [chuckles] 

Tom: Could have been or he might have been part of [chuckles] our team. 

John: No, I’m saying that if he had played in the juniors, if he’d played on the Under 26 team, I’m not sure we would have-- I don’t know that we would have-- You guys  were the best American team at the event in terms of-- you guys had the best  chance for a medal and obviously, we’re the only team medal, but had Justin been on the junior team, it might have been a whole different thing. 

Tom: Yes. It’s quite possible. Second-guessing ourselves and who knows how  things would have played out? I know that the way you were recording things at the  time, it wasn’t clear at the time necessarily what the story was going to be. You were  trying to get a lot of footage of a lot of different things. No one could predict what was going to happen by the end of the tournament, so that’s very natural that you would try to get as broad a spectrum of things as you could. 

Our team ended up being a little bit of a Cinderella story with the comeback against  Israel. It made a perfect high into the movie world. It really feels very Hollywood, the  fight of the underdog to come back and rally and then to actually do it, that’s-- 

John: Imagine coming over there with a film crew, Tom, and you guys are down 56.  We have the footage of Joel saying they're coming back at half-time. That was so--  You couldn’t ask for it to be any better than that. 

Tom: Yes. It’s almost like it was scripted, but it wasn’t. 

John: Totally. 

Tom: [chuckles] It was all live. You know, it was funny-- 

John: Even finishing second is kind of cool, because it’s like you had this amazing  comeback and both you and Adam Grossack, both are like, “You know what?  Second’s okay.” 

Tom: Yes. That’s because it was okay. We’re playing the best team in the event in  the finals. If they win, that’s fantastic, and if they don’t win, it’s okay. It’s very much  like what was going on in my single match. I was the underdog [chuckles] for five  straight days. By the time we got to the finals, we were playing against  [unintelligible 01:22:57] and it was [unintelligible 01:23:00]-- We’d been playing  like one good team after another, after another, after another for days and we ended  up second. We ended up losing. 

We rallied, we were stuck whole bunch of the half, not that we had played badly. It  was really on a couple of slam decisions that were basically 50/50 that they got right  and we got wrong. That was the difference of the match. We rallied some in the third  quarter, including me psyching a Vugraph, which is something that if you know me, I  don’t psyche [chuckles] very often. There I was, psyching out Vugraph and it worked  perfectly and we won 10 IMPs. 

The third quarter we rallied, we actually ended up stuck only 29 going into our last  segment. We actually even put a show of it ourselves. I seem to remember, they had a little bit of that to some degree in the final segment against Poland. It didn’t actually work out in the end, but there were some moments where it looked like, “Maybe, they’ve got some chances.” 

Then Poland started doing certain things and the chances went away. It’s okay.  There’s no shame in where you’re not the stronger team, to not win. At the end of the day, you got to go in with that kind of attitude, that, “I want to win. I’m going to try my  best to win, but I can’t be crushed that I don’t win.” You’re just not going to play well  going forward then. You have to be able to move beyond these things. 

I think it’s been said, you were mentioning about Hamman that one of this greatest  talents I think that he would say this, is his ability to forget per chance. Expanding on  that concept is that he doesn’t dwell on things that have already happened. He  doesn’t let it eat at him and distract him from what’s in the now. He thinks that that’s  one of his greatest strengths, so if you ask him that, I’m sure he’ll reiterate it. There’s 

a lot of truth to that, just moving past the emotional side of things could be tough  sometimes. 

John: I’m nodding. 

Tom: [chuckles] 

John: Anything else-- Okay, I got a question for you. If you could only have one spin  gold or in pairs, which was second in the spin gold or which do you cherish more?  Winning the entire of seconds? 

Tom: Second or the spin gold? I’m very happy that we won the in pairs the way we  won the in pairs. I can’t believe I haven’t spoken about this yet. [chuckles] This is an  amazing story too. 

John: [chuckles] 

Tom: At the in pairs in ‘97, and then I had to continue on to ‘98 because it gets  amusing. The in pairs has this reputation for being this very random event that you  can’t do consistently well in. It’s all luck and it’s just pointless. I respect people who  think that way, but that has been the opposite of my experience. 

To put things in context, the three years-- ‘97, I want to say was the first year Joel  and I had played in the IMP-pairs. I don’t know, but three consecutive years with Joel.  The lowest we had been ranked, the lowest we had been ranked going into the final  session was second. We were so amazingly consistent in that event that 

John: [chuckles] 

Tom: -it’s just beyond belief. The one we won was the most random results were  happening. Day 1 goes by and we’re doing fine and things are going well and we go  into day 2 in the top 10. We’re like 7 through 8 or something like that. 

We’re certainly doing fine in the events. It’s the summer, it’s in Albuquerque, New  Mexico I think. It’s either at Albuquerque or Phoenix, someplace like that. Some  really hot, really dry place in the summer. Joel and I are going out for breakfast. I  

remember to this day, he ordered some chicken dish that ended up being very, very  greasy. Greasy chicken was the theme. We go into the session and I swear, his  brain turned off. You would have no idea the things that were happening at the table. 

I went to dinner, not with Joel after the session, leading the events by a lot because  we had this amazing set. We were like plus 110 or something like that. Most of it was just on random nonsense. The amount of times that things that were happening  should never happen were just beyond belief. I remember going to dinner, I don’t  know that anybody else spoke the entire time during dinner. All I did was go through  every single one of our boards in order 

John: [chuckles] 

Tom: -about the stuff that was happening. I’ll give you a small subset of things that  were happening. Joel missaw the [unintelligible 01:28:02] on the board which was  relevant because we're playing variable notrumps. I was in the third seat when our  

File name: The Setting Trick - Tom Carmicheal - Edited.wav 

27

[unintelligible 01:28:11] opened a 10 to 13 notrump which he announces 15 to 17,  which he bid 2 spades over, which we're playing a system at the time that we had  just adopted and hadn’t actually talked about changing it in the third seat at all. By an unpassed hand, two spades would have been game-forcing with spades. Don’t ask, but that is in fact what our agreement was. 

John: [laughs] 

Tom: I’m just going, “What? How in--?” I know that the rails are off. I know that he  has a club transfer. 

John: Right. 

Tom: I know that he thinks I have a strong notrump, but I-- I feel committed to doing  ethical things, so I raise to three spades, and he bid four spades. 

John: [laughs] He bid four spades? 

Tom: Here we are in a four-three spade fit. He’s declaring and I send Joel away from the table and I tell my opponents before they make an opening lead what had  happened. That this was actually a 10 to 13 notrump, I’m sure he was transferring  the clubs, but this is what it would mean, so I had to do this, and this, that, the other  thing. Armed with all this information, my opponent decided now is the brilliant time  to underlead an ace to trick one. Which I had queen 4th of, so one small, the king 10  4th is stuck in the 10 and Joel won his stiff jack. 

John: [laughs] 

Tom: He happened to be 4-6 in the blacks, he found trumps 3, 3, blah, blah, blah,  blah, blah, 4-20. 4-20 real wide. That’s the kind of thing that was happening. There’s  some other auction we had, the one that ended up on the bulletin, but the bulletin  explanations, it’s unreadable what the auction You're going to think that there was  typos and things like that. The rails would just completely float away. 

I was trying to bid some fourth suit type thing in clubs, which Joel thought was  natural. He was trying to raise. I was trying to side off in four diamonds. He took that  as keycard for clubs. 

[chuckling] 

[01:31:40] The next thing I know were six diamonds five to fit. Joel needed in order to make  this, there had been one fade over call. In order to make this, Joel needed to find  diamonds 3-3, hearts 3-3 to pitch a spade loser, to ruff the spade so that left even  stripped to their spades. We do that, was spades were 5-2 but then he had to play  ace 3rd opposite Jack 3rd of clubs for one loser. After all this elimination, blah, blah,  blah, blah, blah, the hand that was auto-playing lead had to have the king queen of  clubs, both of them and the three-card headache or the four-card headache,  whatever, he was leading a low club towards the jack that had had nothing but clubs  left. That was 9-20. 

John: Oh, my God. 

Tom: There's another hand-- 

John: That hand, by the way, I read about that hand in The New York Times before  we started recording earlier tonight. 

Tom: Oh, nice. 

John: That hand is in the The New York Times. Unfortunately, the layout's not in  there, but the description of the hand is there. We'll put that in the show notes. 

Tom: Sure. [chuckles] I heard that some hands I had played, it just appeared in The Seattle Times like last week. I didn't get a copy, but my student mentioned it to me  that I [chuckles] appeared in the newspaper. I couldn't find it online though which  was sad. [crosstalk] 

John: You guys still have a bridge column in The Seattle Times? 

Tom: I guess so. I don't have a subscription and I couldn't find it online on their  website. Other random things were happening too. The opponents kept losing their  minds as much as Dalton. There was another one where the auction was something  like a diamond pass a heart, and Joel bid three clubs and the next person doubled.  They meant it as support and then that one thought it was penalty and it went all pass.  Joel had gotten in there on three clubs on some really sketchy hand and thought he  was about to be killed. He was like, "Oh, what did I do?" 

I put out the best hand at the table having taken no calls because I had the wrong  shape for a takeout double. He made five. [chuckles] Three clubs doubled making five. The very next board, either that or on the previous board, the auction I got, it was against different opponents, but the boards were back-to-back. The auction we got, something like a club pass a spade to me. I had like a good 18 count with a hundred honors in spades, five cards, only spade suit and good clubs and five, four, something like that. I didn't really have a great bid, but I decided to bid two spades natural over the one spade bid because I didn't really have anything else to do. 

The person to my left very reasonably said double with their four-card support for their partner. 

John: [chuckles] 

Tom: Here I was in two spades doubled as Joel put out his five, four, four, three  count with a spade void and just watched me rattle off eight tricks because I had this  massive hand. I just wrote 670 on the scorecard or whatever. Remember this is IMPs. Your partners are just like, "What just happened?" [laughs] They didn't even really do anything. They had their opening bid with four-card support for their partner's four card suit so they hit me. Wouldn’t you? 

John: [laughs] 

Tom: Just the number of boards where random stuff was happening. We won  double-digit IMPs. It was just amazing. Sometimes it was them. Sometimes it was  Joel. Sometimes it was a combination, but it was just every time something stupid  happened, we won a double-digit number event. 

John: You won the event by a small margin. Didn't you? 

Tom: It was like 13, something like that. Yes. The evening we were plus four, to give you an idea of how big a lead we had, plus four. 

John: What average in--? 

Tom: Zero. 

John: Oh, the average is zero. Okay. 

Tom: You're either plus or minus, so average is zero. 

John: That makes sense. 

Tom: Four is not a very big number and 110 or whatever it was, was astronomical. John: Wow. 

Tom: But to put things in context, the following year, the very first session I told you  before, we've been very consistent this event, Joel and I played again, and it was the opposite of our crazy set. Nothing much was happening. We were making good  decisions. We were just sitting there and doing the right thing. There were a couple of interesting things like there was a board where at IMPs you're supposed to take a  safety play and it mattered today. 

We're in three, no making three, when a lot of people were going down and stuff like  that. When it was all said and done, we only had two or three minus scores on our  entire card. We just sat there and played solid bridge. The way it IMPed out is we  were plus 93 and we were in the lead. The fifth session, the first session of the  following year, we were in the lead again. That year we ended up, I want to say in  the teens, we actually didn't do that well in the final session. Then the following year after that, we ended up third, something like that in the event. 

Joel and I had a pretty amazing run in that event over the years. The year we won  was the greasy chicken did him in, he was taking a nap at the table, and it didn't  matter. We could do no wrong that day. We walked on water. It was [chuckles] just  beyond belief. I'm just sitting there watching all these things going and happening  and just becoming more and more, just-- distraught is not the right word for it, but I  just beside myself in disbelief. One of my best friends up Blair side there, came up to me, right as the session was ending, we were done. He was coming in. 

[01:37:37] He was like, "Do you know?" I'm like, "I know. 

[laughter] 

I know. I know we're leading." I have no doubt because I just saw what had  happened. I was shaky just standing up. It was just ridiculous. It was just so beyond  ridiculous. As part of the reason why we picked that hand was that Blair's urging, the  one that ended up with the both of them is because that was the feel of the sessions. Something ridiculous would happen. Something else ridiculous would happen, then  

this third ridiculous thing would happen. Then Joel said, "Well, I need this to work. I  need this 1% light of play to work," and it did. 

That was the way the whole thing worked. You asked what I-- I feel that second in the Spingold is my best accomplishment. I think that that's far more prestigious than  winning the IMP pairs. If I was forced to pick one, I probably would pick second this Spingold, even if it would mean that I’m no longer a Grand Life Master, but I do have a soft spot  for the IMP pairs, I will say. I've been very good at it over the years that I really enjoyed the events. I'm a little bit sad that most people sit it out. 

John: Such is life. The IMP pairs is the first NABC event I played in. It has a special place in my heart as well. 

Tom: I think that's actually probably true. I think a lot of people choose that for one  reason or another. I'm not exactly sure why that is whether it's timing or whether it's  just perceived to be easier or anybody could wait. I don't know exactly why, but I  think a lot of people, that is true for them. I know for a fact. 

John: The reason I did this because it was the first event at the first NABC that I  went to. 

Tom: Sure. 

John: It was a matter of convenience. I played with Greg Humphreys. Tom: There you go. You know Greg too. He's definitely a-- 

John: He lives in Charlottesville. We live in the [crosstalk]. We're in the same city. Tom: I remember. You lived out there. You're a Denver it out. Is that right? John: No, no, no. I live in Charlottesville still. 

Tom: Oh, you still live in Charlottesville, okay. Greg. Yes. He lives there. He has his  house. I don't think he's thought, "I got moving at any time soon." 

John: He introduced me to Adam Kaplan at that tournament in Memphis. That's how Double Dummy happened 

Tom: Oh, nice. 

John: -because of Adam. I knew Adam from Bridgewinners, reading his posts on  Bridgewinners. 

Tom: Impressive young man always has been. Like I said, talking with him-- 

John: Well, he started-- I talked to-- we were in Greg's-- I met him like at the playing  site, but then they were rooming together so we went back to their room one day and we're talking about the hands, and here's 16-year-old Adam making fun of Greg  about how Greg's thinking about this bridge hand. I was like, "Greg, this is hilarious.  [chuckling] This guy's great." 

Tom: I'd known Adam since before he was even a teenager. He was pretty tall and  pretty adult-looking even when he was a fairly young teenager. He could pass for  much, much older, even at a very early age. Hard to believe that we have to-- 

John: They're 20 years apart in age and they're rooming together at NABC. That's  pretty-- 

[01:41:06] Tom: Well, kids frequently don't have much money. Letting a kid crash with you,  that's a longstanding tradition. I crashed with random people when I was young and people crashed with me. Got to pay it forward. 

John: Is there anything else you want to say before we wrap things up? 

Tom: No, I don't have anything in particular. I've just been stream of consciousness  here, whatever, I've been thinking of, but thanks for having me. This has been great.  It's been a lot of fun. 

John: Yes, we haven't really talked about Jenny much. She's just been briefly  mentioned. 

Tom: Yes, my wife is a national champion as well, playing with Greg Humphreys,  names that we've batted around here. She's also a full-time ACBL tournament  director. She is frequently going to be seen back when life gets back to normal, both  at tournaments of all sizes. She's fairly experienced now. She has run regionals, as  well as sectionals. She is one of the very few players-- well, one of the very few  directors that's on the National Appeals portion of the directors' staff. 

Just yesterday, I was hearing another of her colleagues, McKenzie Myers, refer to  her as generally acknowledged as the best player among the directors' staff. She's a  good player in her own right. She enjoys directing. She thinks it's the right career for  her, but I know that she definitely misses playing. [chuckles] She'd like to play more  than she gets to. 

John: Your sister Chris is a director too, isn't she? 

Tom: My sister is a director as well. She actually, of late at least, has decided she  does not enjoy playing. I don't know the cause of it exactly, but apparently, she gets  pretty bad headaches when she's playing for too long. She enjoys directing far more  than playing these days. She's the opposite of Jenny in that regard. She was happy  to leave playing behind but is still involved with the bridge world. 

She is the one, at least up until the COVID stuff, for about a year or so, had been  running the services team at the nationals. They're the ones that are responsible for  a lot of the logistics, making sure that tables are set up and boards get to the right  places, and the directors have what they need, keys to the cabinets, this, that, and  the other thing, and any other kind of functions to make the tournaments run  smoothly. That all falls on that team and she's been put in charge of that. 

McKenzie had been doing that, before I just mentioned as well, for quite a long time.  Chris has taken that over. I do know one thing, if we're going to talk about Jenny just 

very briefly that if you ever decide you want to talk about things from a director  perspective on here, she expressed that she would willing to come out and talk with  you as well. If you decide that that's of interest to your audience, we can make that  happen. 

John: Well, that's-- thank you. I appreciate it. I was thinking recently about doing a  series of talking to sponsors. I hadn't considered having a director on yet, so that's a  good idea. 

Tom: Glad I passed it along, then. 

John: There you go. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. Tom: It has. This has been really a lot of fun. 

[END OF AUDIO]