EPISODE 25: Walt Schafer

On March 13th Walt Schafer began organizing bridge games on BridgeBase in response to the global shutdown. Walt continues to organize what has become known as “The Schafer Game,” selflessly out of his love for bridge. I got to play with the legendary for Bob Hamman for the first time in Walt’s game and we went on to win. Beating Episode 23 guests Finn Kolesnik and Jacob Freeman among others.

A friendship has developed between the two of us thanks to this podcast conversation and I am delighted to share this conversation with a fine player and fellow bridge lover.

Link to Episode

Episode highlights:

2:55- Previously organized bridge games at the exchange

8 player
7 week schedule
$5 per imp

7:35- How Walt’s directed tournament came to be what it is now

14:45- Walt’s Bob Hamman story of a great declarer play which to this day, Walt still does not understand why it was necessary

Written up in the bulletin
Took a double dummy software two and a half days to make the same play

19:55- Another Bob Hamman declarer play story

Hand where Hamman finessed Chris Willenken out of J10xx of trumps

22:20- a Tom Fox story

Strong club system
New Orleans
Walt set up Greco and Hampson

28:40- Baby Levin

31:50- A Spingold story involving Kit Woolsey

Ed Manfield: “Those are the best 16 boards I’ve ever been involved in my life”

39:00- Sometimes getting knocked out on the first day of the Spingold is a blessing in disguise

43:45- D22 GNT Qualifiers story

45:55- Junior star Finn Kolesnik

47:45- How Walt learned bridge

51:40- Walt’s mentors: John and Bart Bramley

55:25- Bridge players succeed in trading options

1:13:05- Walt’s first compound squeeze and how Bart just deflated him

1:15:05- Walt’s greatest/favorite played hand where he uses the delayed duck squeeze

Redouble can be a great psychological weapon

1:26:05- Walt’s role in the history of the Helgemo hand

1:30:30- Walt’s physic abilities

1:35:50- Walt is a bridge player at heart

Bridge versus poker in terms of prize money

1:45:30- Walt’s invented conventions

Look out for the Shaferton

1:50:55- Hamman still got it in bridge

1:52:00- Junior bridge

1:59:55- Instant classics

Transcript:

John McAllister: I'm psyched to have you as my guest today, Walt.

Walt Schafer: All right. I'm psyched to be here. It's a pleasure and I'm honored.

John: Cool. I appreciate that. That's a nice thing to hear. I see you now. I didn't recognize you by name but I definitely-- Your face is familiar to me. I just appreciate what you're doing, hosting these nightly games on Bridge Base. Everybody that I know, we all call it the Schafer Game.

Walt: Yes, yes. I've heard people call it that. Well, I get a lot of thank-yous and I appreciate that, but it really is not that big a deal for me. I originally organized this for me, like I organized some games when I went down the Exchange and there's all these great players. I'm a player first. I had the desire and the ability to do it, so what the heck? Regarding the origin of the Star Game, there's a little bit involved with my psychic abilities. I have these weird psychic feelings every once a time a little less as I get older. A couple years ago, I saw that you could just apply to be a director in BBO and I had a feeling I would use it someday.

I became a director on BBO and years went by and then all of a sudden, COVID hits and now, I'm a director and I can run games on BBO. I think it was March 13th when the casino shut down here in Los Angeles that I started the game. Bart and Kit, and me, and a friend of mine, and Steve Garner, and I think maybe Gary Kohler, four pairs, we just played a two table team game. I called it, 'You send me your passes versus COVID-19'. We did that for two days and then more people wanted it in.

That's when I used my directorship and turned it into an entire game and three tables, four tables, five tables, and it went from there. I used to run games at the Exchange. When I had first went down at the Exchange, it was the same thing. There were all these great players down there and I'm like, "Man, we got to run some Bridge games." I organized Bridge games at the Exchange. Bart Bramley, Steve Garner, Howard Weinstein, Ralph Katz, Bobby Levin, Jeff Wolfson, Ron Anderson. It's amazing the list of people that played in my afternoon Bridge game there.

The people in Los Angeles, they think I'm being a jerk when I say like, number 5678 in my afternoon Bridge game and at the CBOE, would be number 1234 In Los Angeles. They think I'm being a snob or a jerk. I mean, no, I'm really just saying that, that was just an incredible group of people. I didn't realize it at the time. [unintelligible 00:02:38] look back and it's like, "Holy cow." That was quite a group of players to have in an afternoon Bridge game or afternoon after the Exchange closed at three o'clock.

John: What was the deal and how often did you have the games?

Walt: We played once a week. I would get eight people to commit to a schedule of seven weeks and everybody would play with everybody. I think we played for five bucks an imp. There might have been like, I think there was a bonus for winning the match. Each week, it would be one team game and different people would play with different people, so you know who you're going to play with, so everybody would have a week to get their card up and going and then play the Money Bridge game one day.

John: What day of the week was it?

Walt: I don't remember.

John: You don't remember?

Walt: I don't think. No. John, It was 30 something years ago. [laughs] John: You probably wouldn't do it on a Friday I thought.

Walt: It wasn't a Friday. No, it wasn't a Friday. Yes, it was a weekday. It might have been like a Wednesday. It was probably in the middle of the week. At one point, I had a lot of the options here that sai Clark's helping them and so I wrote a program to generate random hands and I had Clark make up boards after a while, so we had boards and hand records. The first week I had an error in the program and the hands were all slanted. Somebody always had a long club suit.

[laughter]

Walt: Then I got that fixed and then it was [unintelligible 00:04:05]. [laughter]

John: How many boards did you play approximately?

Walt: We played like a session. Back then, 26 was the normal number. We probably played 26, 13, and 13, something like that. It wasn't pairs. It was a team game back then.

John: It was like the Boca game? They play like per imp. I know that. Have you played in the game down in Florida, the [unintelligible 00:04:26] game?

Walt: Yes. At Reuben's place or Mike Becker's place.

John: Yes. His Country Club?

Walt: Yes, yes. Well, it was at his house when I played in it. I went down there-- John: Okay. I played in the Country Club.

Walt: Barnet Shanken and I are friends from the Nationals a little bit. I went to visit him in Florida one time and a lot of those people I went golfing with, Berkowitz and Larry Cohen. Gary Kohler was a good friend of mine from Chicago. They all played

Bridge together. I got invited to that. We went over to that game one time. Also, Barnet and I went and played rubber Bridge with Garrozzo one day. That was really special. I had him autograph some stuff and to give to a friend of mine in Iowa. He runs Bridge games.

When I first started to play a Bridge in Dubuque, Iowa and he has a game every Wednesday that was originally at his house. He's now actually virtual. That game has been going for like 45 years or something. He's got a big scroll of all the results going back 40 something years.

John: Wow.

Walt: Anyway so down in his basement, he's got all these little memorabilia things so I got [unintelligible 00:05:25] to sign some form to put down in the basement with the rest of this stuff. That was cool.

John: With the games that are yours, you call it your Star Game. What do you have to do in order to make it the daily--

Walt: Originally, some people just wanted to play. ''Okay, we're quarantining. Everybody is stuck inside, let's play some Bridge.'' Like I said, it was just me and Bart and Steve Garner and Gary Kohler and just people that knew each other and wanted to play some Bridge. These are all my options traders in Chicago that were friends. Ron Smith is another one. He doesn't play as much. He's been doing some other stuff playing pro and stuff like that, but he plays in the game sometimes. Anyway, it's basically like the [unintelligible 00:06:11] crowd and Bart is playing with Kit Woolsey, and some people are playing with different people.

It was still that [unintelligible 00:06:18] crowd from before that started playing in the game. At the beginning, I did a lot of work sending out invites to people. Some foreign people showed up and it got bigger and bigger. Then, it got actually a little bit too big and started to get watery and some people complained, ''This, this, so and so doesn't belong here,'' and I had to thin the field a little bit. Boy, did I get some nasty comments from some people?

John: Oh my God.

Walt: I mean, I had one pair send three different people after me saying, ''Why aren't they in the game? What are you doing? Da, da, da.'' Most of the people, they don't mind [unintelligible 00:06:59]. If you have three tables, six pairs, and you play a Howell where you play five rounds, everybody plays everybody. That's a great moment. If one pair is Hamman and Weichsel, Bart, Kit and you get six three pairs. That's great. You don't need a bigger field. A big field is nice if you're talking about the Blue Ribbon pairs and stuff, but if you're talking about, like the Cavendish is 40 pairs. That's prestigious. Same thing. It doesn't have to be big.

At the beginning, there were a lot of people complaining and they said, "We want less forwards. We want this, we want that." I said, "Look, if you want a meaningless event, they got those speedball starting every hour. This is supposed to be better players playing a full session a Bridge." Kid Woolsey did, he typed in, "I'm with Walter on this one." I moved the start time up an hour. It originally started as 32 boards.

I was thinking, "Well, people are used to play in three hours and change. Let's play 30. You can get 32 boards in the time that it was 26 in a club game,'' but it was starting late and people said, "That's too many." I cut it down and it pretty much became 25. Some people used to whine about if it was more than 25 but now, if it's a small number four tables, five tables, and after on 27, or 28 boards to make a good Howell, it's fine. That was the only thing to slow play so I have come up with a good solution.

At first, it used to freak a couple people out. I think you may have been surprised when I claim for you. That's so I can see the table and I know what the results are. I usually finish very clearly, so if there's a table that's slow, I wait and then if there's nothing left to play, I claim for them and catch the slower tables [unintelligible 00:08:41] so that speeds things up. That was the only thing that people really complained about was slow play. Like Sal could be really slow sometimes, couple other players. Bart and Kit have the long option sometimes so it slows him down.

John: You're actually involved in running the game every night like you have to be physically on your computer on Bridge Base in order to for the game to happen?

Walt: Yes. BBO is bad software. In fact, just this weekend, I found out that what they told me is not true. They told me something about, if you're going to-- I had to get permission to run Howells by the way and BBO wouldn't respond to me, but Uday Ivatury, who used to be the big shot at BBO, I sent an invite to him and he reached out to me and he went to BBO and got them to give me permission to run Howells and he told me how to do it.

If you're running a four-table Howell and you've got seven rounds, I set it up for four boards around and it's 28 boards. Well, then, another pair joins in and now there's nine pairs and it's going to go up to 10 when I put a fill in, so now you got to run nine rounds of three boards. Well, you have to physically change that in the software BBO, you can't set it up to run a Howell with approximately these boards. It just does its own thing. I have to change it. People like to talk to me a lot, right beforehand, every once in a blue moon, it used to happen a lot before, but not too much now. If the new players getting in a tournament, I get to add them to the list. Sometimes they wouldn't go through right away. BBO was really overwhelmed there like March to April, maybe even into May and the software would react really slowly, but now pretty much, I can put them in and they'll get into the tournament right away.

Once in a while I have to add someone, people talk to me, but then setting up the tournament then once it runs, it runs, I don't have to do anything once in a while. A score change somebody claims five and they should have been four, that type of stuff or somebody loses their internet connection. You sub someone in, really not too much. It runs automatically. I did a lot of work setting up the invites, sending out invites, and getting some interest in the game. Now, it's dwindled down a little bit. There's a group of pit players that like to play with each other and play a good game. It's a little bit of a ball and chain, but it's a labor of love so I don't mind.

John: Did you invite Hamman?

Walt: Yes, he works with Bart. Bart said to me, sometimes, ''Hamman would like to play.'' It was actually, he called me up and after I deleted the voicemail, I'm like, ''Man, I should have kept that.'' He calls me up, ''Walter, this is Bob Hamman, I want to play in your game, I think I should throw a little money in the pot though,'' and blah, blah, blah, ''Give me a call.'' About Hamman calling you up, "Hey, can I play your game?" That's nice. Yes. They played a lot for awhile every other day. They were practicing up for the nationals or something and now, they haven't been around that much. Everybody's going back to work a little bit now.

John: I played rubber-Bridge against Bob. I don't think I ever played with him as my partner, or sometimes I'll go to New York to play in the Regency game dollar point. I remember the first time I played against Bob, he was in three now and I was just sitting there and all I'm just like, ''He's going to make this defending and he's going to make this''. I had Ace King of diamonds with some length and he played a diamond off the dummy and I ducked and he played the queen and that was his ninth trick. I don't know if he could have made it if I had risen. I don't--

Walt: If you hopped up and didn't give him the tempo. Yes.

John: Yes. The thing is I'm saying this because I've never played with Bob and my partner until in one of your games the other night, I got to play with him the first time.

Walt: I've never played with him. I've never played with him. I might play with him sometime. Here's my little Bob Hamman story. I told him this story when I was in Dallas at his company bar, I told you Bart works for him?

John: Yes.

Walt: I went to Dallas for a little while, hang out with Bart and, another good friend of mine and I was down there and I told him this story. I played against Meckstroth and Rodwell and Hamman and Wolff twice. I lost both times and I always played against Meckstroth and Rodwell. We had some good matches. I don't think I ever played against him face to face other than a pair game, but in the Reisinger,I always thought Meckstroth and Rodwell were a little bit of my heroes.

I played Fox and I played a strong club system that was, we had their notes. We played their system, basically changed it around a little bit, but I always thought Hamman and Wolf were old school. Yes. Bob was a great player, but even back a long time ago, I didn't understand how great a player he was. Meckstroth and Rodwell were the bigger names on the team. We played against them in the Reisinger at one time. Hamman and I were in the same contract four of a minor. I went down and he made it.

At some point in the hand, he led a loser from his hand and pitched a loser from the dummy and they wrote this up in the daily bulletin and it was an early day of the Reisinger or so it didn't really matter. They didn't mention me so I wasn't slandered or felt bad that I hadn't made it or anything like that, but I'm looking at this and I didn't even understand what the point of the play was. It's like, they're given this cloud credit for some nonsense play. ''What kind of dance sense is this?' It's just they're writing a story about the great Bob Hamman and he didn't do anything great here.''

Fred Gittleman had written his Bridge Base software. Bridge base online wasn't out yet, but he wrote this double-dummy software was, he was a player. It was a tool for him. A friend of mine in Chicago bought this software for $200, which was a lot of money back in the '90s. It has this manual, that's like three inches thick. The manual is it's typewritten, not like no pictures or graphics or anything like that.

John: Oh my God.

Walt: It's just not a typewriter and you have to be like a computer programmer to understand how to do it. It was Fred's, BBO was a little bit idiosyncratic, but it was Fred's personal way of doing things. He couldn't make heads or tails out of this software. He just gave it to me.

John: Your friend, okay, got you.

Walt: Yes, so now I get this software and I'm looking through the manual. I figure out how to do a couple of little things. I'm a math geek computer guy. It was really hard to work, but I was able to figure out how to do some things. One of them was like play a hand. I put this Bob Hamman hand into the Bridge Bay software when I get home from the nationals and I've got this little Toshiba laptop and I set it go on. I had the laptop plugged in and my counter for like two and a half days.

Finally, because that's how long they were so slow to do this double-dummy thing, finally, after two and a half days, the laptop comes back to life and it leads the loser from its hand and pitches a loser from dummy. I'm like, ''What the heck? I still don't

even understand what the heck was so great about their play.'' Yes, he deserves all the credit he gets, Bob is really great and he has a--

John: You never asked Bob about this play?

Walt: I told him. He vaguely remembered it. I told him about, no, I never asked him personally. I didn't know him. I've only become slightly friends with them this year or acquaintance with him.

John: You still don't know why the loser [unintelligible 00:16:27] situation. [laughs]

Walt: No. No. No.

John: Oh my God.

Walt: I mean, which is maybe embarrassing.

John: [shouts]

Walt: I'm pretty good with double-dummy situations and stuff.

John: [laughs]

Walt: I never got the point of it at all.

John: Oh my God.

Walt: [unintelligible 00:16:42] embarrassing to Bob, like I'm thinking, ''They're giving you this credit for no reason and how good your play was, I still don't and understand what the hell you were doing,'' but yes.

John: Oh my gosh. Do you have the hand, do you know the cards?

Walt: No, no, no. I mean, you could look up the bulletins. It would be from the, I was playing with Fox. It would be in the '90s somewhere about '92, '93, you could go, it was during the Reisinger, I'm pretty sure it was the first day because I remember sitting in the room, how big the room was, the Reisinger was small field the second day, you know you're in the second day and the final day, you know you're in the final day. I'm pretty sure it was the first day of the Reisinger.

John: Yes. Wow. That's amazing, man. [laughs] What did Bob say when you--? When did you bring it up with him?

Walt: This year when I was in Dallas and he said he vaguely remembered that hand. You know. It was just this, I was just telling him the story that, ''I'm thinking you're getting this credit for nothing. Here, it takes this computer two and a half days and I still don't even know what the hell your great play was about, way to go Bob.'' He did an amazing thing in my game too, which is hard, a feel thing. I think in-person, Bob's a really great field player and an at-the-table player, but oh, no, it wasn't in my game. It was in my game or was it in the one of those other team games?

He had 9874 of trump and the Dummy and Ace King Queen in his hand. He took a first-round finesse and picked up the Jack 10, fourth onside. He couldn't afford to cash, look at it. He could cash the Ace first and see their four O and then finesse it, but he didn't have the entries to do that. He divined that the guy had four trumps on his right, and took the first-round finesse and floated the nine and made this contract, made us four Hearts.

John: Wow.

Walt: That was a pretty impressive play. That was just recently a month or two ago. John: Do you know how?

Walt: I think he did because the guy tanks along in trick one, the guy takes so long in trick one, and he had a chance to like give him a rough slot or do something that he didn't do like a normal defense. I don't know. I didn't ask Bob. I discussed it with Bart a little bit. Bart said, '''Did you see this hand?'' Then I went and looked up the hand.

John: You think you still have record of the actual like the day that the hand was because we could put it in the show notes if--

Walt: Well, we could get it for sure. We could get it for sure. You could. Yes, I'm pretty sure it was from my game, but we could double-check with Bart, but you could just on BBO you can do a search for Hamman and see all his hands and go back about a month or something and scroll through the hands. Bart would remember pretty good about exactly where it is. I'm not good with that kind of stuff, he has a weird memory like that.

John: [chuckles] Well, Bob, I haven't seen this, well, in the Dallas and NBC, I think it was 2014, I played against Bob and a Swiss and there was a issue with like a board. They came to him and asked him and he gave like, I remember he gave his hand down to the spots, but I don't remember if he gave like other hands down to the

spots but he's renowned as being like one of the best at remembering hands. I'm almost surprised that he doesn’t remember the loser and the loser played better.

Walt: Well, 30 some years ago.

John: No, I'm just saying like that. I don't know. This is just--

Walt: It probably wasn't that big a deal to him. Hands that are a big deal to you, you remember. There was a hand like I couldn't believe Mike Becker couldn’t remember this one. Fox and I, this is the hand that--

John: Good talk. I don't recognize.

Walt: Tom Fox.

John: Tom Fox.

Walt: Tom Fox was my regular partner in the ‘90s. I did play a little bit with Roy Fox, he was a good buddy of mine, but Tom Fox was my regular partner in the ‘90s and we played our strong club system that was almost the same as Mack Wells in New Orleans. I really wanted to go to the nationals and Tom was like, “Well we don't have a team and blah, blah, blah.” There's a guy in Chicago named Jack Oest, and one is, well, and he represented the United States in Bridge and he's a very good Bridge player, but before he represented the United States in Bridge, sort of one of his claims to fame to me was he had hooked up, Jeff Meckstroth and Eric Rodwell.

John: Oh.

Walt: He met them independently and he said, “Wow, you're a superstar, you're a superstar and you guys got to meet and play together.” This particular summer, I had met Eric Greco and Jeff Hampson in different places and I knew about Jack Oest and I thought, “Wow, this is that situation again.'' Tom and I needed teammates to play in New Orleans, I call up Hampson, I call up Greco, “Why don't you guys play together? They're going to the Nationals anyway, you guys need to play together play with Fox and I.” Tom and I get, I think like a Friday or Saturday night of the tournament starting, we got a plane ticket and flew down to New Orleans and the Spingold starts on Monday.

We play with Hampson and Greco in the Spingold. We got to several interesting things happened besides Hampson and Greco being hooked up for the first time. We played Reuben and Becker, Levin and Weischel, and [unintelligible 00:22:07] in the round of 32 before there were screens. This is when I was at Mike Becker's house, he and I were never buddies or anything, but when I was at his house for the money game down there visiting, Barnet, I asked him about this hand, he didn't remember.

I had always said this was my proudest moment playing with Fox. It was the second quarter, it was like the second or third board, I opened two clubs, I don't know my hand exactly John, but I was three, three, one, six with a stiff jack of diamonds, King Queen 10 sticks to clubs and 10 count. I opened two clubs at favorable decision, two clubs showing six or more clubs. Really borderline. Now it goes past two diamonds, and we play all our artificial stuff, past two hearts, past two spades, et cetera.

After I showed my hand and I showed a minimum with a singleton diamond, no four card major, and a minimum with a singleton diamond, my partner bid four clubs which forced me to bid four diamonds, and now the next bid he would make would be invitational of the slam and went pass and he bid five diamonds and immediately, I'm like, “Wait a minute.”

We had a way to show a one suit. If he had a slam try opposite of minimum with a single thin diamond, he would never we started with two diamonds. Immediately some funny stuff and now Mike Becker goes, “Can you explain the auction please?”

John: No screen. [laughs]

Walt: No screen. Tom and I usually, I would be the one to just explain the whole auction rather than because there's so many alerts, we're like Bart and Kit with these 10 bids and stuff rather than Tom explain my bids and I explain his bids, we just one guy we do it. On this particular time, Tom does all the talk. I don't know why but he’s--

John: You passed out five diamonds?

Walt: No, it's a live auction. Five diamonds he says, “I want to know what the bidding means.”

John: Oh my God.

Walt: Because obviously he's thinking of doubling us and I know something funny is going on because of my hand. Tom explains to them that I showed four diamonds and a void in hearts and a maximum. Now, while I'm sitting there going, “Oh I know exactly, he missed up one step, I know exactly what he did to make you think that that's what I had.” Mike Becker is sitting there with the Ace King of hearts.

He thinks the dummy showed a void in hearts so now he's making a slam trying diamonds because we just hit this perfecto, Fox has got nothing in hearts and so he passes, he goes all pass and I go, “Well, there's some misinformation here. This is what I actually showed. Director.” The director comes over, pulls Mike back away from the table, comes back to the table, says, “Okay, play it out,” and Tom plays without and he goes down five, and the director says, “The contract was five diamonds doubled. Scored up as five diamonds doubled.”

John: Even though it wasn't doubled at the table.

Walt: Even though it wasn't doubled, right. He's letting Mike Becker double after the fact which is fine, but I immediately thought, “I'm not going to do anything now because we're playing a big match and we just had a disaster, we're going to do everything professionally but we're going to talk about this later because, ''Why don't we get to know we're doubled while we're declaring it?''

We should know that we're doubled. That could affect how you play the hand. That didn't seem right to me so anyway, end of the sorry, I knew I was right, I knew Tom was wrong, I didn't say a word to him, he didn't say a word to me, we went on and played the rest of the quarter. The score of that quarter was like 30 to 18, and they scored like 17 imps on that board.

John: Wow.

Walt: Neither one and then we beat them too. We beat them every quarter and ended up winning by 50 something. To me, that was the proudest moment, that Tom and I had. This complete disaster minus 1100 against a part score and just took our lumps and didn't say a word and played tough and beat them that quarter and beat them the match and--

John: Did you ever say anything to the director about the doubling thing or you just dropped it?

Walt: No, because, as usual, we finished before our teammates. As soon as I walked out the door, I said to Fox, “Hey, would it have mattered if you knew you were doubled?” He said, “No, I thought that didn't make any difference, I'm down five.” That was the end of that.

John: Wow.

Walt: “That’s 1100 and don't worry about it.”

John: Dude, that’s a great story.

Walt: We had a really interesting one in that match too. Bobby Levin's a good friend of mine but everybody knows how much he likes to call the director on people and he outright accused me and Royce of cheating and one time which I came in on blame on.

[laughter]

Walt: We're playing in the Reisinger or finals in a way pass pass and in my usual way, I don't like the pass in the third seat. It just never seems like a good idea to me [unintelligible 00:27:05] nothing, and it was pass, like Weischel passed, and now Royce bid with nothing, and now they've been around for a while. It basically went like [unintelligible 00:27:18] from his point of view. He thought, “Well they must have known what they're doing,” but if you were in this match, Bobby if you're listening I apologize, but this is where I gave him the nickname Baby Levin, instead of Bobby Levin because we beat them by playing great, and the next morning when I'm going to play, Bobby and I are getting in the elevator together, and he was whining about how lucky Hampson and Greco were.

I didn't think that was exactly right and then he goes, “Then that hand you and Fox got the four spades instead of four hearts.” There were some hand where because of the system that Tom and I play I think I opened a spade and we both had four hearts, but he showed some game force with three spades immediately or something so we missed our four-four heart fit, or no, actually they got to the four four hearts, we got to the five-three spade fit. Anyway, hearts go 5-0 and spades a three-two.

He went down at four hearts and I made four spades, but what happened when I was playing the hand, I like to trump and I let one heart or some-- I see the hearts or 5-0 so I played the hand out in four hearts while I'm declaring four spades because I thought they might get the four hearts. I see the hand and it's not going to make any

difference. Is the way it turns out, the guy with five hearts had three spades and you had all the heart spots. You had like, literally, Ace, King, Queen 10 opposite Jack nine, little-little.

You could cash three spades, and they live and then ruff a spade high and you had all the spots right. We're in the elevator and Bobby says, “You guys get the four spades we get the four hearts, you're so lucky the spades are three-two, the hearts are five-zero da, da, da,'' and now the elevator doors open. I go, “Bobby, you were cold,” and he goes, “What are you talking about”? I said, “Well, the guy with three spades or the guy with five hearts had three spades. If you just cast your three spades, you can rough the spades high and you’re cold.”

The elevator doors start closing and he goes, “I think he had me out spotted in trumps.” We had all the spots. I was the declarer, we had all the spots. That's a fact I thought, “Oh come on, Bobby we deserve. Pat us on the back, we beat you.”

John: He used to play with Weischel? Bobby used to play with Peter Weischel?

Walt: Yes. They were a regular partnership for years. They were in that team, it was a nothing situation in the sense that we beat him in a Spingold match and we played another couple days and then we lost. It's not in the paper or anything but they had won the Spingold in Vanderbilt before that team and we beat him by 50. To me, that was one of my first big wins, beating that team in a real match, that was a big deal with Fox and I played great. Hampson and Greco played great from day one right out of the get-go until we lost.

They literally had one bad result in the third quarter in the match we lost and then they lost their minds in the fourth quarter. I think they recovered from that quite nicely. They gave up their steaming, or whatever you want to call it, but in the third quarter, Fox and I played Ed Manfield and Kit Woolsey. They used to be a regular partnership. There was a hand where we're playing behind screens and Kit Woolsey's on my side of the screen and he goes like this all the time, ''You can see me, the people at home can't,'' but he rocks in his chair back and forth.

John: [laughs]

Walt: He goes two diamonds Flannery and Fox bids three clubs. I'm void in clubs and I've got King fifth of hearts. I think I had Queen ten fourth of spades and four little diamonds. Something like that. No clubs, so, "oh, oh, here comes a number." Two diamonds, three clubs, pass, pass, all right, two diamonds, three clubs, double, penalty, double, pass.

John: Your partner overcalled three clubs.

Walt: Called three clubs. I'm voiding clubs and we're vulnerable. Double-- John: Double as penalty after Flannery?

Walt: Yes. Two diamonds, three clubs double, so the tray goes over and now I notice the tray isn't coming back. I look over at the card and they're playing extra shape flannery. He's thinking of pulling it with extra shape. ''Come on, baby. Sure enough, three hearts pass.'' The tray comes back, now Kit is just violently rocking

[chuckles] in his seat. His partner can't see him. He bids three spades on his Ace King third and it goes all pass. Kid misguesses it and goes down one, plus 50.

He could have double-dummy guessed it to make it but he misguessed it and down one. Now I'm thinking, "What's going to happen at the other table?" One heart, they're not playing Flannery, one heart, two clubs, pass, pass, double, all pass. They're going to play two clubs double down one. I know for sure that's what's going to happen.

John: Win four.

Walt: No, win six, plus 200, plus 50.

John: Oh, doubled, right.

Walt: Yes, they were vulnerable. We're vulnerable. They were [unintelligible 00:32:43].

John: Okay, got it.

Walt: We're plus 50 but they're going to go [unintelligible 00:32:46]. At the other table, it goes one heart, two clubs, pass, pass, double. Now, what I didn't anticipate was the guy who overcalled two clubs had a really good hand. Fox doesn't screw around much. He's three clubs. He was going for 500 but he had a real solid [unintelligible 00:33:02] so the guy redoubled two clubs and they all pass.

This is the hand where Hampson and Greco lost their mind. Eric Greco had Ace Queen, jack ten, six of hearts behind the King fourth or King fifth, whatever I had, so Hampson leads the ace of spades from his Ace King third. Hampson had Kit Woolsey's hand on my right and then he doesn't switch to a heart. Eric Greco throws the Queen of hearts away like, "Partner, I got all the hearts. Lead a heart." Well, he didn't lead one because he didn't have one, Eric.

Then, Eric ended up throwing another high heart away, then he got and endplayed in hearts and the guy like with King nine fourth of hearts, he got in front of the Ace Queen jack 10, he got a heart trick or something. Instead of two clubs redoubled down one, it was two clubs re-double making. This was one of the last boards of the third quarter. That was like a 20 imp swing and I think we were down five or ten or something like that.

The match was still a photo, but they just lost their minds in the fourth quarter and I don't say this like with malice or anything. They had a huge disaster and maybe each one thought it was the other one's fault or whatever. They were trying to win in the fourth quarter, but they were trying to win in way too aggressive crazy way. I remember that we played Boyd and Robinson in the fourth quarter and I opened two hearts on a hand where the other table they opened three hearts, I think it was.

It went two hearts, two no, pass, three spades pass, three no, and the guy swished it with six-five. The other table in three hearts, three no, so the guy pulled the four spades or something like that. I don't remember exactly, but the guy in our table, he had a chance to bid his two suits and he didn't. I think their two suits are spades and

diamonds, so they played three no going down when six diamonds is excellent. Six diamonds is on either a finesse or a three-three break.

Hampson and Greco bid seven diamonds needing a finesse and a three-three break. They were down in six diamonds and they were down in three-no. That was just one of the hands but it was that type of fourth quarter and we ended up losing. Ed Manfield, many years later, he came up to me and he said, "Those are the best 16 boards I've ever been involved in in my life." The 16 boards that Fox and I played against he and Kit Woolsey.

Other than the three spades down one, it was almost like everybody played perfectly on every hand in all 15 hands. It was really like it was a close match and everybody was fighting hard. It wasn't like there were amazing plays on any hands or something, but I was surprised to hear that later. I remember that being a significant set of boards. That whole match was, really.

John: What round of the Spingold was this?

Walt: That was the round to eight and it was Richie Schwartz's team. John: How old were--

Walt: Richie Schwartz, I forget who he was playing with, but he had Woolsey and Manfield and Boyd and Robinson.

John: Was Kit still living in Washington at that time?

Walt: Yes. That would have been in the '90s. Yes, Kit and Manfield, they were from the Washington DC area still, yes.

John: How old were Jeff and Eric at this juncture?

Walt: Like 20. 20 to 25. Probably not 20, but early 20s because I was only thirty something. In '96, I was 32. It wasn't '96. Fox and I won in San Diego in '94. It was before that, so it was like '92, say. You could look it up whether summer New Orleans was '92 or '93, but somewhere right in there. '92, I would have been 28. Yes, so they were younger than me.

John: Where you guys win in '94?

Walt: In pairs in San Diego. That was my first win, Fox's first win. The three nationals, I won and the BS World Championship I won, they're all really interesting stories. A couple of them involved Bart. This one does, so the mutual friend that introduced me to Bart was on my team one time in a Spingold. He and his partner played like absolute shit. We got knocked out the first day. Thank you very much because we entered the in pairs the next day and won it. I'd rather be stuck in that lousy Spingold.

We played the first day, we had two good sessions and we played well. We're somewhere up there high, but you got to carry over. The third session, we have a big game and we're second. Second overall with one session to go. Bart's playing in the

Spingold and he's out the fourth quarter because it's the second day of the Spingold. They're probably winning by 100 or something.

He usually plays the fourth quarter, but he's out in this state. I remember he finishes, they get done with the third quarter, they compare, and now he comes looking for me. He wants to see how I'm doing and stuff. I'm out in the hallway going to the bathroom. He's, "Walter, how's it going?" I go, "It's over." He goes, "What do you mean it's over?" I said, "It's over. We won." He says, "You're claiming victory halfway through the session?"

I'm like, "Yes. It's over, Bart." He says, "I got to see this." He came in kibitz the rest of the session. We just kept beating them, and beating them, beating them, and beating them. I think we had 150 and second had 100, something like that.

John: You played the first day?

Walt: Yes, we played the first day and we had two good sessions, so we're up there 10th, 20th. Somewhere in good shape. We're going to get some carryover. That's all that really matters. I don't really remember, but the third session, the first final, we had a big game and now we're in second. Going into the last session we're in second. That's when I see Bart in the hallway when he gets done with his third quarter and, "Walter, how's it going?" and I said, "It's over." He's, "What do you mean it's over?" I said, "We won." He said, "You're claiming victory halfway through the session?"

"Yes. It's over, Bart. We won." He says, "I got to see this," and he came in kibitz, then watched the rest of the session. We didn't add a ton more imps, but we just kept adding more imps the whole time. We ended up winning like 150 for us, 100 per second down the road from there. Yes, the headline said, "Chicago area traders run away within pairs," so it was good that it was a blowout. That felt good.

John: But you knew it. You knew it even though you were in second going into the final session?

Walt: Yes. Halfway through the final session, we're plus 40 or 50. The other pair could be having a monster game too, but you can't control the other field. It's going to be pretty hard to catch us. I had, not too long ago, I was talking to a woman in BBO that played against us in that event. She says, “Do you remember playing against me?” She goes, “I remember playing against you in that event.'' I go, ''You do?” She goes, “Yes, you bastard. You had seven solid hearts and your partner opened two no trump.” I said, “No, and I bet three no.” She goes, “Yes, you bid three no. It's the only game that makes.” We just said just we couldn't do anything wrong. We bid a slam it would make. The opponents would bid the wrong game or we defend right and being just everything. Bid everything game that made. We're just thrashing them.

John: Is Fox still around? I don't know.

Walt: Yes. We played through the '90s in 1999. He quit trading and moved back to Fargo, North Dakota, take care of his mom. He still plays some Bridge up there but he went back to do some work. He said he might play some tournament Bridge when he retires in a couple of years. I'm 56, he's 66. He's going to be retiring anytime soon. I actually spoke to him a little bit to see if he wanted to come out and play during the COVID thing, but he's actually still working and stuff, so he's not in a timeline Bridge.

He plays a little locally, that's it, he'll come back. He was a great player. One time, he attempted this play and he's one in all life. I think he’s the only person I've ever seen. He had King ninth fourth and a dummy 10/5th in his hand, he led to 10, they covered, he docked and went stiff ace, and then we hooked him out of it. He only tried it once as my partner and he was one and o. That was a good play. I always want to have that one.

John: [laughs] Michael Xu says that you've been playing with Finn Kolesnik a little bit.

Walt: Yes. Finn and I played in that disastrous GNT final in California. The District 22 where they stole $1,000 and the chance to go the Nationals come as first time in ACBL history. A team wins both halves of a three-way final and they lose. Not only that, we win and we're there and the director says, “Wait a minute, you might not have won.” I said, “We won both halves, how can we not win?”

He goes and he's a complete effing jerk, “It's called conditions to contest. If you don't like it, too bad.” He says, “This is scored is victory points.” Now they scored is victory points and we win and then we leave and a couple hours later, they found a victory point scale where we lose, so they change to a different victory points scale, and we lose, and we were denied any rights to appeal results that we didn't appeal because we had won.

The team that ended up winning at six recorder forms filed against it that weekend and we had things we were brought against a team that we weren't allowed to but they did unethical things. The score was it's a joke. Absolute joke. Finn and I played in that. That's at least practiced up to but we're both in District 22. I left at District 22 now.

John: You mean you don't live in District 22 anymore or you just--

Walt: Right. I don't live in District 22 and I'm not a member of District 22 anymore. They can have the district to themselves. It's kind of weird anyway, Los Angeles, North of Los Angeles and South of Los Angeles is District 22. Los Angeles is District 23. Plus 23 is my lucky number. I never should have left District 23 in the first place.

John: Should I ask you about Finn? About Finn’s game.

Walt: Finn is a great player. He's good already or great, one or the other but he's definitely going to be a great player. What people complained about Finn a couple of people said, “Oh, well, he's got to work on his attitude or something.” The kid's 14, when I played with him in the Grand National Teams, he was 14. He's 16 now. He was 14. One of the things that happen was our opponents claim that we didn't redouble two hearts, that we were two hearts double not two hearts redoubled.

They should have beaten us but they didn't. After we make it, they claimed we weren't redoubled, we were just doubled. ''Well, I saw you pass out two hearts redoubled. I saw you.'' The guy on my left, Ray Osborne, I know him from the local club. He always pulls out the final pass card. I just pick up my cards to signify it's over. I watched it. I pulled out his final pass card. ''These are friends of mine.'' They tell them, ''And they're denying it,'' and what did Finn say? It was really mild.

Something like, ''You couldn't remember this just like you didn't remember the redouble of two hearts.'' Then they're like, “Hey, watch it.” He apologized immediately. I'm like, “Oh, my God, if I played Bridge when I was 14, the way I acted with my friends when we played cards, it was you give everybody the needle.'' When I first went to a Bridge club, I had to learn that right away. You don't needle your opponents and stuff. That's the way we played cards as a kid. Finn's behavior, to me, is like I give him an A-plus but some other people-- But Jesus, he’s 14. No, Finn's great. He's going to be great. He's really really good.

John: All right. I'm going to move back to your learning Bridge. When and where?

Walt: My best friend and I played cards and games, especially the cards all the time. My dad played gin rummy, I played with him. My best friend, I taught him how to play. We play gin rummy, chess, all those types of games. Then when we got a little older, another friend of ours, the three of us played cards. We ended up playing hearts almost all the time the three of us.

Sometimes we played spades. His mom played hearts and spades. It was a lot of times we played four-handed peanut, gold, spades, hearts, at his kitchen table. Then one day, we’re 13 years old. She taught us how to play Bridge. We had a little placemats, one nos 16 to 18, two nos 22 to 24, and we're doubling and redoubling like crazy. We loved it instantly. Then, at the end of that summer, I moved from Chicago suburbs to Northwest Illinois and I went to high school out in farm country.

I was already hooked on Bridge but I haven't come back to Chicago, maybe once a year, twice a year or something, play Bridge a couple of times a year with my buddies. There was no internet, of course. I tried to convince a couple of farm kids to play cards. Euchre was about the extent of their card playing. I've basically [unintelligible 00:47:07].

John: He’s shaking his head, by the way. He's shaking his head as you say that. You can't see [unintelligible 00:47:10].

Walt: Yes, Euchre was kind of nothing game, but anyway. I was hooked on Bridge already in high school, but I played once a year for four years. When my Bridge career started when my best friend and I who are a week apart graduated high school, the woman that taught us how to play Bridge, our other friend's mom. She gave us both a copy of Gordon's Bridge Complete. Rod was one year older than us. He had graduated high school the year before.

Tom and I graduate high school. She gets he’s Goren’s Bridge Complete. That summer, I was a lifeguard at a pool and I read Goren’s Bridge Complete that summer, went away to college, find a Duplicate Bridge Club and off I go. My first Duplicate Bridge Club was really funny. I go, everybody telling, “Walter, don't throw

your college education away playing Bridge all the time. All they do at college is play Bridge. Make sure you study. Don't throw it away playing Bridge.'' I go to the Student Union looking for a Bridge game. There's that fucking Euchre all over the place. There's no Bridge game.

John: That was the end, I thought there more to the story coming, sorry.

Walt: These people don't play cards. They haven't heard a Bridge. One girl says to me, “Oh, I think my mom plays Bridge.” I’m like, “Well, can I have her number, call and see if there's some Bridge gamer out there?'' They’re laughing at me. I called up somebody and as luck has it, they're starting a Duplicate Bridge Club in Freeport, Illinois, where I'm going to college. My first year, I went to Community College because I was trying to get into the Air Force Academy and I missed the last cut. Just being an idiot, I had no contingency plan. I went to Community College for the first year. This is still in farm country.

Freeport, Illinois has, I don't know, 20,000-30,000 people or something but it's a little city surrounded by farm country. It's still farm country. At the Student Union, some girl gives me some phone number and I find a guy who's starting a Duplicate Bridge Club in like November, or October, or something. I call him up and I tell them base, ''I've never played duplicate Bridge before, but don't worry I'm going to be good. I read Goren's Bridge Complete and I played lots of cards.''

I'm sure he's thinking, ''Who's this idiot?'' I show up at the game. There's four singles, me, the director, a guy in a three-piece suit smoking a pipe, and then this old guy wearing a crumpled two-piece suit smoking camels and the shirt's all dirty and everything. The director, of course, picks the guy in the three-piece suit with his partner and picks me with the old guy in the camels. I'll never forget. It was a four and a half table game and our sit-out was the second round. Maybe the third round, but we played a little tiny bit of Bridge, takes a big swig of gin and offers it to me, "You want some gin?" "Oh, no. Thanks a lot, man." He had moved back to Freeport, Illinois. He was out in California. He had been a director. He had 3,000 masterpoints. He was a good Bridge player. He immediately became my first mentor. We started playing Bridge a couple of times a week for that year and it was great.

It was really lucky to have someone like that, my very first time and he showed me a book from Squeezes. I had Gorenn's Bridge Complete. It had a little precision section in there. We switched over to play strong club and he showed me about squeezes and stuff like that. I had a great Bridge partner right from the start and he told me, "Don't worry. You'll be a Life Master by 21," which he was off by nine months but he was close.

There's a really weird coincidence that happened. His name was John [unintelligible 00:51:07]. Years later, because I only went there for one year so we didn't really keep in touch or anything, years later, the ACBL sent out a mailer from Holiday Inn and they sent everybody a plastic card where you got a 15% discount or something like that at Holiday Inn. It was a couple of pages. Mine's addressed to me. When I opened it up, the plastic card says John [unintelligible 00:51:30] Do you understand what I'm saying, John? Hey look, that is the strangest coincidence. How could that happen? Do you know what I mean?

That it was addressed to me. Everything says to me, but his card was glued to my piece of paper that says, "Well, [unintelligible 00:51:45] and has his name on it. Then I went to contact him and he had died. That was really weird, but he was my first mentor. Then I went to Northern Illinois University and then I was recruited by Bridge players to go trade options at the Exchange. Specifically, I went to work for

Bart Bramley and Howard Weinstein. That's when Bart and I became such great friends. Bart was my second mentor. He was an even better mentor and for a much longer period of time.

That was just an incredible experience to have Bart as your mentor. Like I said before, had just incredible stable of world-class players all at the Exchange. People love, especially when you're young and up and coming, you love talking about Bridge, any aspect of Bridge and, "Hey, Bobby", you know Bobby Levin, "here's the situation. What do you think--'' He'll just stop and talk to you and tell you about what he does after reverses or what you do here. That just stuff happened all the time. They were young guys then.

Bart was born in '48. When I met him, he was 39. That's still pretty young. He was still already a great player, but that's a long ago. These guys are still in the prime of their career and it was a different age because Bart and Steve Garner, and Bobby, they'd go out to the club games and play sometime. You don't see people doing that anymore. That has died out but Friday night, Bart would be in a club game playing David Layman, Ralph Katz, people don't do that anymore.

John: How did you end up getting recruited? You said you went to Northern Illinois and got recruited by Bridge players as trade options.

Walt: Yes. An attorney that I played a little Bridge with, he was good friends with Ralph Katz and he knew all the options traders. He understood that one guy brought another guy in. They backed them. They put up the money for him to trade. They taught him like an apprenticeship and then they took a piece of what you made on the floor. Actually, Mike Becker, who we previously mentioned, he's the guy that started it all. He started trading in New York and he brought in a Bridge player who was successful. He brought in another Bridge player and for whatever reason, good Bridge players make good options traders.

The backgammon people tried the same thing, it didn't work so good. The chess people tried the same thing, didn't work so good. Some chess players were successful traders, but not that many. Some really good backgammon players were successful traders, but not that many but in Bridge for whatever reason, the Bridge players were just highly successful at trading options.

It started in New York, spread to Chicago, spread to San Francisco, and I don't know, somewhere in the '90s, at least 80% of the top 100 Bridge players in the United States were options traders. This guy saw me as a young up and coming math guy and he's in an Upper County Bridge player and he's like, "Oh, you need to be done at the Exchange with all these other guys making a lot of money."

He knew Bart, Bart had started training a couple years beforehand and he introduced us. Bart and Howard backed me and I went down to the Exchange in August of '87. Instead of going back to my second year of grad school, I was going to

get a PhD in math, I love math but really, I was going to get a PhD in math because being a math professor's a cushy job. You get Summers off, you get to play a lot of Bridge. That was really part of my plan.

I didn't go back to my second year of grad school, went down to the Exchange and worked for Bart. It was a horrible time to start. I was standing next to Bart the day of the crash and Bart was one of the few guys that wasn't very affected by it. A lot of people had huge swings, Bart didn't have a huge swing either way. I started trading a couple of months later and it was just a terrible time to start trading right after the Exchange. Gary Kohler started trading the same time I did, in the spring of '88.

John: Was he also doing a similar, like working under Bart?

Walt: No. Well, he was doing a similar thing, but it wasn't Bart. I'm not sure who brought Gary down to the Exchange. Probably Ralph Katz backed Gary, but I'm not really sure who backed Gary the first time down there.

John: How did it start? You got there in August and what was the first thing they saw?

Walt: They had a series of tapes. You would go watch these tapes every day and it was just all about the mechanics of options, the mathematics of options, how calls and puts work, and that kind of stuff. They had a series of, it was some guy from-- The CVOE invented options trading. It came out of corporate America where they gave some guy stock options, but it would be like, "You have a right to buy three shares at $36.22." Every single stock option for executives was always written in some weird way. Well, they standardize them. They made them all $5, $10, $15, and they were all for 100 shares and then they made these standardized options and they started training them.

Well, at the very beginning being such a new product, they had a guy just giving seminars. Some guy would just, maybe he was a bean trader or maybe he was just an attorney, and he went out to give a shot at trading, he just puts the money in the account and you go stand on the floor and you do your thing. In the very early days, they didn't know what they were doing. Then somebody came by Black Scholes invented a model. Anyway, they had this game, Marty O'Connell, who would give these lectures to like, he was at first options where most of the Bridge players were.

It was a clearinghouse like Bank of America. You could the first options or Merrill Lynch or Morgan Stanley, or whoever's your clearinghouse, a lot of the options traders, the Bridge players were first options and Marty O'Connell was just some guy who would just give free seminars put on by first options for their customers so that they can learn some things about how options work. They had kept these hours and hours of tapes is in the tapes. They would talk about like IBM being at $70 when it was trading like 180. You do know how all the tapes work.

John: [laughs] Were you good at trading options?

Walt: I was an okay trader. I never had passion for it. To me, it was just a job. I don't want to make this sound derogatory at all, but the Bridge players that brought me in, their mentality was like, ''If an option is worth $1.15, you buy it for $1.12, you sell it

for $1.18, you just manage your game pieces and the money's going to come in the long run.'' You want to make sure like Bart, like the day of the crash, huge movement. He had very little change in his position. He had a really safe position. I don't know. I don't really think that's the best way to go.

That probably was 100% great mentality from 1980 to 1987, there is so much money to be made. ''Don't risk anything. Don't risk your livelihood at all. Don't ever go bankrupt. Just make sure you make a bunch of money. This is the golden goose. Keep yourself in line.'' Since I left trading, I read a couple of books, Market Wizards, New Market Wizards, The Complete Turtle Trader. The Complete Turtle Trader is about two guys from Chicago. He had the exact opposite mentality of buy low, sell high.

Like everybody, they tell you buy low, sell high. This is what the general public does. They buy IBM at $90 a share and it goes down to 85. They don't say to themselves, "I was wrong." They say, "Oh my God, I was so smart to buy IBM at 90. Now it's even cheaper," and they buy more of 85. They average down. Then it goes down to 80 and they buy some more. Then it goes down to 75 and they sell it and they take the big loss. He does the exact opposite. He buys IBM at 90,

but he only buys a little bit. Let's say he wanted to buy 10,000 shares eventually. He'll buy like 500 shares at $90. If it goes down to $87.75 or $88.75, he sells it immediately and he says, "I was wrong. I bought the stock because I think it's going to go up and it went down. Obviously, I was wrong. I need to stop right now and rethink."

Then IBM will go down to $85 and he'll buy it at $85 and it goes down to $84.5. He goes, I was wrong again, and he gets out again, and then he does the same thing. He might lose a little bit 10 times.

John: I understand. I'm familiar with the turtles because I used to work for a hedge fund also.

Walt: His mentality was the exact opposite. You buy a little, it goes up. You say I was right, you buy more. It goes up, you buy more, and then at some point, you go all in, which is the exact opposite of what the general public does. If I had read that kind of stuff, when I had originally gone down there, I definitely would have had more of a gambling mentality as far as trading goes or more of a trend trading type of mentality, but they had the exact opposite mentality of just lock it in and just take your free money and don't take any risk.

Then you saw different guys on the floor. There was a guy next to me, Ray Hurley. I swear he had basically no math skills at all that I could tell, but he was a great trader. He was a great trader because he could tell when shit was going up and it was going down and he put his money where his mouth was.

I remember one time we traded Upjohn, and it's a drug company. There were always rumors about the drug company getting taken over. It would jump up $1 and the volatility would explode, the price or the options, but all jump up real high and stuff. I remember this one time Upjohn was getting your $40, was maybe $37, $37.5, and we had these October 40s.

This one day, the stock bounced up, the volatility on a takeover rumor has jumped real high and the October 40s got up to $1, and some traded at $1 and a 16th. That was just a tiny bit traded at $1 and a 16th of $1. Most of them traded at 15th, 16th, and $1. Ray Hurley bought like a thousand of them at 15th, 16ths, and he made money. He oversold them at $1 and then I'm sitting there watching them count them.

Then Hurley, an hour later, now they're back down to like 13th, 16th of $1, and holy cow, he oversold like 1,200 of them and he needs to buy like another 300 of them.

We're talking about, if you trade a 1,000 of these, if you buy a 1,000 at $1 at 15th, 16th, and you sell them at $1, that's $6,000. You make $6 a contract, a 16th of $1 is 6.25¢. He traded over a thousand of these contract during this tiny window where he was almost the only guy to sell them at $1 and it was all pure momentum on what the situation was, and he was right. I was never like that though.

One time in my career, one time, Morgan Stanley came into the Upjohn pit, and I'd seen them be wired over and over and over. Especially, I knew that there was this guy, Tommy Wood, TSW that worked for Morgan Stanley. When they had one of those important orders, one of those special orders, they sent Tommy over. Not just any broker. Tommy comes over to the pit and Upjohn is training and he wants to buy these deep calls, calls that are like $4 or $5 in the money.

If you're going to gamble, you're going to buy the little tiny dollar calls. He's there buying these big calls because they know the stock is going up for whatever reason. I sold Tommy worth 100 calls and I bought 20,000 shares of stock. 10,000 shares of stock would be a complete lock hedge that I could only lose money in one direction against selling those 100 calls.

I knew the stock was going to go up because Tommy's in there buying calls, so I bought 20,000 shares of stock and 15th minutes later, something I sold at $0.5 higher, $0.75 higher, or whatever. That was just purely on this guy is wired, I'm going to do what he's doing type of deal. That was one time. I had tons of feelings like that in my career, and I never pulled the trigger. I just never had that mentality to gamble ever.

Here's another big one. On my death bed, I'll be thinking about this one. I'm trading an AOL, and it's like, September, October, something like that. This is during the internet bubble where like 2000, 1999, where everything's going skyrocket high, all the internet stocks. They announced that Yahoo is going in the S&P 500, and some other companies going to come out of the S&P 500, because Yahoo is capitalization has gotten big enough that it deserves to be in the S&P 500.

Well, we know what's going to happen. All the fund managers on December 31st or December 30th, whatever the last trading day is, they have to buy Yahoo and they have to dump the other stock because their portfolio has to match the S&P 500. What happens is they do market and close orders.

When they come in to buy two million shares of Yahoo and sell at 1.7 million shares of company, PQZ, Yahoo jumps up a bunch, and the other company prints way down a bunch, then the next morning, it just comes back into line. The hedge funds get screwed out of a bunch of money, but their customers like never see it. The

hedge fund matches what the market does, and nobody feels like they got screwed or whatever.

To some extent, it's not like an intentional screwing. If you come in to buy two million shares in one block, of course, you got to pay more for it. They got to go looking around for sellers. They have to move the price up to find more sellers.

As soon as they announced it, there's a guy in my pit, DLL. He goes over to the Yahoo pit. He comes back, we got paper cards. He took the card, he shows everybody. He bought 200 of the January $2.50 calls for $2.50, $50,000 he spends. You look on your sheets, they're worth like 4¢. He just paid $2.5 for it.

In all likelihood, they're going to expire worthless. Yahoo is trading like $2.10. This is a couple months away and the stock needs to go up $40 or $50 or something. We all know, of course, the stock's going to go up. They're going to run the stock up before the end of the year for this big print. Then the very last print, they're going to print it

up $10 or $20 just on that one print.

He started selling the stock at $2.90. Stock's started $2.70. He started selling the stock at $2.90. He had 200 of these calls. He made $1 million or $900,000 or something, I estimated, on one trade. He came back from the pit. We all knew that was the right thing to do. We all knew what was good. They told you what's going to happen. We've all seen this movie before, but he had the balls to go over there buy 200 calls and boom, $1 million in your pocket.

John: He sold it for $2.90, you're saying he bought them for $2.50 and he's--

Walt: It was the $2.50 call. He had the right to buy Yahoo at $2.50. He paid $2.50 a share for the right to buy Yahoo at $2.50 when it's trading like a $2.10 or $2.20. Then insurance policy should be worth very little, but these internet companies they'll whip

around so much. Everybody saw these companies go from 700 to 200 and back down again.

Typical black swan event for people that are familiar with that lingo, but it isn't a black Swan event because we all knew what was going to happen. It was a not predictable, it's even worse than predictable it was premeditated events. People knew exactly what was going to happen.

I had another one with AOL. This one was another when I was training in AOL. I go upstairs all so busy. I go upstairs and I have to put my trades into the computer. I can't keep track of them. AOL just mad house there for a while. I just happened to be upstairs, and Janet Reno comes on television. This is when the government was going after Microsoft real bad for not collusion, but-- What do you call that?

John: A monopoly?

Walt: Yes, like monopolistic practices and stuff, forcing Windows onto the PC and the Microsoft money and all those things. Antitrust that's that. Anyway, I knew a little bit about what was going on with Microsoft. I knew the government was after him and Microsoft had some shady practices, so who knows what's going to go on? Well, I'm out there doing my position, and Janet Reno comes on the television.

As soon as she starts talking. I knew it was bad news for Microsoft. "Microsoft's going to get slammed." I type in MSFT, which is the symbol for Microsoft, and I'm looking and I think it was maybe like $80 a share, something like that. It's just nothing's happening. Nothing's happening, nothing's happening. Then all of a sudden, whoosh, Microsoft goes down $10 in about a minute, and that's when it hit me. What the hell were you doing? Why didn't I just pick up the phone, sell 100,000 Microsoft short at the market?

John: Oh my God.

Walt: I saw it on TV. I was right there. I had the couple seconds jump on everybody else. If I got 10,000 shares off, that would have been $100,000 in my pocket, I would have got some off, and I just never thought that Microsoft wasn't my deal. I wasn't to gamble on Microsoft, but all the great stories from the exchange were stuff like that, where some special thing happened and you're in the right place at the right time, some miracle little trade. I had my opportunities, I just never pulled the trigger.

John: I feel like I've heard that talking to both Bart and Michael Rosenberg that they traded options but it wasn't really something that they love to do.

Walt: Yes, and never was for me. My brother, the market is a real passion for him. For me, no passion whatsoever. It was just a means to an end. I thought it was great, I told everybody trading options was the greatest job in the world, I get to play a game for a living.

I'm around a bunch of smart MIT guys, I’m around a bunch of incredibly bright talented bridge players. That part was great, but I never had the addiction to money, nor the desire to be wealthy so I did find down there but didn't break any records. I had my travels a couple of times like some people.

John: Let's go back to bridge. You said in the email that you want to tell me about your first compound squeeze.

Walt: Well, this is a funny story. I read--

John: Adventures in Card Play?

Walt: No. Bridge Squeezes Complete by Clyde Love.

John: Yes.

Walt: I think Bridge Squeezes Complete by Clyde Love and he goes through the book and in the end of the book he's got a couple of weird squeezes so he had compound squeezes in there.

I'm playing in a little club game in Dubuque, Iowa, and boom, here's this perfect compound squeeze. It's like a five-table game or something and I make six, everybody else makes five. Now I get to complete though.

I go down to the exchange in August of '87, and I write the hand down on a trading card my best friend thing. [unintelligible 01:11:44] seriously. I'm going to impress Bart Bramley. I hand him the card, I go, "I get a play problem for you."

This is like at 7:30 in the morning before the market opens, we get down there early we get a couple of minutes, and I give him the thing and he looks at it for maybe five seconds. He hands the card back to me and he goes, "It's a compound squeeze."

I hand the card back to him, and then go, "Yes, yes, how are they going to pitch, or whatever?" He hands it back to me and like rolls [unintelligible 01:12:28]. Well, I’m not going to go down with the compound, or some comment.

Like, "Please." I’m like, "Oh," I was just completely deflated. Then later, he said to me, "Did you really make six no on a compound squeeze?" I'm like, "Yes," and he goes, "That's pretty good or something like that." He gave me my little pat on the back and I'm no great after that but that was really funny.

Then the other amazing hand that also involves Bart Bramley, but he was the dummy at the other table so that's why it was a swing in our favor. I told, "This is the greatest hand I ever played. Five hearts we double. This is the same thing Clyde Love’s book." He goes through simple squeezes, double squeezes, get I think a little section on like roughing squeezes and the compound squeeze, and then at the back of the book, there was one page on each of a couple of different weirdo squeezes.

One of the squeezes was called a delayed duck squeeze and he had one example of a delayed duck squeeze. I have this hand. Now you people at home you're going to want to write this down, or if you have you want to put this like on, you said you can put something up on the podcast.

John: Well, yes. We'll put it on the website but it's also good because most people just be listening and not in front of a computer like a lot of people listen to podcasts not in front of a computer, so it’s good that you're going slow.

Walt: This is my hand. Three little spades: king, queen, jack; 10, 9, eight of hearts; ace, king of diamonds; and no clubs. I opened the bidding of heart, nobody was vulnerable and this was in a Swiss match in a Chicago sectional. It was a Sunday sectional and this is like the fifth or the sixth match and we're doing well.

This is when they always played eight matches back before the ACBL truncated everything but we're playing eight matches, but this is one of the later matches and we're playing Bart's team. At my table, I got Gary Kohler on my left, and I got Judy on my right. Bart’s wife now. She was Judy Wadas, they weren't married.

Gary Koehler over calls three hearts which shows a big one suitor looking for three null. Obviously, he's got clubs and he's looking for a hard stuff. I was playing with my girlfriend Candace Fowler, she's also a national champion now. She doubled three hearts and our agreement was that show the ace or king of hearts. Specifically, over this convention, that showed the ace or king of hearts. I know she's got the ace hearts.

John: Nice agreement to have here in this situation.

Walt: Judy was on my right bids three spades. I bid four hearts. Gary Kohler bid five clubs, pass, pass to me. What would you bid, John? The open heart, three

hearts on your left, double by partner, three spades by Judy, you bid four hearts, five clubs, pass, pass. Would you bid five hearts or double or something else?

John: I don't like the fact that my right hand of bid spades, and my left hand that doesn't look so good for me but what are the colors?

Walt: White, white. You got 10 tricks in your hand for sure.

John: [crosstalk] I think I would probably chance five hearts. I think I would probably chance it.

Walt: Okay. Well, I certainly wanted to bid five hearts but--

John: You bid five diamonds.

Walt: What? Suppose they bid six clubs, what do you think your partner's going to lead against six clubs do?

John: Yes, I hear you.

Walt: They're going to lead the ace of hearts, and if they rough that and drug trump and run spades, that's going to be a disaster. Yes, you need to bid five diamonds to get a lead director. Now fortunately, Candy and I also had an agreement that you could not look for a new trump suit at the four-level or higher.

All bids at the four-level or higher they had to be cue bids or lead directing something that couldn't be a place to play. I bid five diamonds to get the lead and she lost her mind temporarily and she passed. I went five diamonds, pass, pass and now Judy saved her. Judy said double. I bid five hearts, pass, pass, and Judy said double. I know I have 10 tricks in my own hands and most I'm going to go down one. After they rescued me from five diamonds, there's no way I cannot redouble five hearts.

Just for the extra value, if I happen to make it, but also one thing I learned from Bart Bramley is, we discussed everything about bridge and redouble gains most when you're not vulnerable.

John: You're talking me through the redoubling. You said the most is going to go down one.

Walt: Yes. I'm only going to go down one, which is good for redoubling, you don't want to redouble and go down two. After they rescued me from five diamonds, then the value of redoubling and make it, they posted just going to lose their mind after this.

It's only a Swiss match but certainly like in a long match, that makes a big difference, but the MPOV Bart calls the maximum piss off value if I redouble and make five hearts, then that’s work a lot.

I redoubled and when all pass, and Gary led the ace of clubs as expected. The dummy comes down with queen, jack third, ace seven of hearts, your hearts in your

hand are king, queen, jack, 10, 9, 8, so you have everything except the eighth of hearts, five diamonds to the jack and three little clubs.

Now you're in five hearts three doubled, and Gary leads the ace of clubs. Very few people have make this and when given it to them as a double-dummy problem. I'm so proud of it because I instantly saw the solution. I remembered the hand from Clyde Love’s book, The Delayed Duck Squeeze, I instantly saw the solution.

My partner who I told you was my girlfriend, she was a little pissed off because back when I was younger, like a lot of young up and coming players we're a little more exuberant with our comments after the hand, stuff like that so she's afraid I'm going to start yelling at her when I go down to five hearts, three doubles.

She mouths to me, "Fuck you," when she puts down the dummy. I winked at her and like, I saw the solution immediately. Gary Kohler leads the ace of clubs in the hand was over in about 10 seconds.

John: Wow.

Walt: I made five hearts, redoubled, and Gary starts screaming at Judy, and Judy starts screaming and Gary. Five hearts, redoubled is plus a thousand and at the other table Jack Oest, he was the guy that put Meckstroth and Rodwell together, he was playing with Bart. Bart was the dummy. Jack played five hearts doubled at the other table, and he went down one.

The most common play is to just lead the spade to the queen and a low spade to the jack. If one of the spades is on side you're going to make, but if you think about the bidding, you know the ace king of spades is offside. Gary's got us eight solid clubs, Judy bid three spades, and then she doubled. Oh, actually I said the dummy had five diamonds to the jack, and dummy at five diamonds to the 10th. Judy had queen jack fourth of diamonds and ace king fifth of spades.

It was immediately obvious to me that I could just run all the hearts and come down to three spades and two diamonds in both hands and I got Judy squeezed. If she keeps three spades and two diamonds, you catch the ace king of diamonds and lead a low spade to the queen. If she keeps only the ace king spades and three diamonds, then you just duck a spade, win the diamond, duck spade win the diamond, that's why it's called the delayed duck squeeze.

She has two high spades. I need two high diamonds. If I cash one diamond, she can set me. Come down to three spades and two diamonds in both hands. In my brilliance, I didn't see that I needed to strip Judy ever second club. You're just ice cold. You just rough the club, ace the hearts, rough the club run all your trump, and it's over. I just ran all my trump. Judy could have sat me by keeping her club, but she threw her club away and then she was squeezed.

Gary is screaming at Judy to tell her, "Why didn't you keep your club?" Judy is screaming at Gary, "Why didn't you leave a spade?" He couldn't let his doubled in spade and it would just go on spade, spade, spade, rough off the top, and they weren't set. I know this hand occurred in 1987 because I was clerking for Bart but I

wasn't on the floor yet. This was a Sunday Swiss thing and Bart's my boss, and he's the dummy at the other table. [unintelligible 01:21:52]

We went on to win the event, by the way, the [unintelligible 01:21:54] squeeze, not that it's a big deal, but it matters to the story. That the hand was part of winning the event.

John: Yes, sure, man.

Walt: Like the Helgemo Hand. When he got the Bol's prize [crosstalk] he got the ball straight. It just makes it better. We ended up to win the event. The next morning I go into the exchange, as soon as I walked through the door, "Walter." I come over. "Walter, when did Judy pitch a club?" I start thinking and I go, "Oh, Bart, it was her first pitch," and he put his hands in his head and shakes his head a little bit. There's quite a great story around that hand, but it's a great play for Helgemo anyway.

John: Oh, man.

Walt: You can put it up on the website and give people as a problem and they can-- See a lot of people try to play for three, three diamonds and hook the seven hearts. They think you got to hope the seven of hearts and then ruff the diamonds good or something, but you're actually just stone cold.

The two inferences you need to make is, one, Gary has eight clubs, and which should be true, because if he had seven solid clubs now, he would not bid five clubs over four hearts. He had an eighth club.

Then the ace king of spades are offside. That's clear from Judy's bidding and from Judy's double. If you just take those two pieces of information, if you put those together, then you actually have 100% play by roughing the club and running all the trump.

John: If they come down to two diamonds in three spades, I can cash my diamonds and play spade?

Walt: A spade to the queen and they’re endplayed. If they keep three diamonds and two spades, you just duck a spade, win the diamond, duck a spade, win the diamond and your spades [unintelligible 01:23:41]. As it turns out, you can even play all your high spades. Gary only had two spades on the left. Your deuces spade would even be good if you-- Yes, and that's called the delayed ducks squeeze from Clyde Love's book. That's my favorite hand of all time.

John: Oh my gosh.

Walt: The other great hand that I mentioned, the Helgemo hand, Bart and I were teammates of Helgemo, when he had his great hand. I know Bart discussed it a little bit in the podcast. That was a really special event to Edgar Kaplan's last national win. Helgemo's first national win. He got the Bol's prize.

Bart and I played amazingly well in that event. It was especially special for me because I'm sitting in the bar in Dallas on Friday night at one in the morning and Bart comes up to me, "Hey, Walter, what's going on?" "Oh, not much." "Who are you and Fox playing with tomorrow?" I said, "I'm not playing. I couldn't find a team. Fox is going home." Bart says, "Do you want to play with me?" "What?"

One in the morning, Bart comes, I said, "Of course I want to play with you. What are you talking about?" "Oh, yes, well, we got this strange collection, I need a partner. We got Helgemo, [unintelligible 01:25:03] and me playing with Kaplan and K. If I played with you, we'd have three pairs, it'd work out better." "Oh, I'm doing you a favor? Sign me up." That was like the most amazing thing. Then just the whole events, everything just happened great.

Bart and I had a bunch of amazing hands in that event and it was just great from start to finish. Then Helgemo had the Boll's brilliancy prize on one of the hands and--

John: How old was Helgemo at this time?

Walt: He had already been a phenom in Norway, so I would guess he wasn't that young. He was maybe 25 to 30. I would say probably 30. I don't really know.

John: It was his first national win?

Walt: That was '97. It was his first US national win, yes, 97. You could look and see what his birthday was, but I would guess he was probably only about 30. Yes, I was only 33 so maybe it was less than that. Maybe it was 25.

John: You were at the other table when he did this?

Walt: Yes. Bart and I were playing against Kit Woolsey and Geoff Hampson. John: Kit was playing with Geoff?

Walt: Yes. Kit's a super great player and no offense to him, but in those seven boards, Kit and Helgemo played I think five of the contracts were identical, and then all the hands, Kit Woolsey had the same information as Helgemo or more. Bart and I were a little more active on a couple of the hands. The imp score was something like 30 or 40 to Helgemo, zero to Woolsey. Just in that particular set of hands. One of them was the slam hand.

John: Do you remember the comparison?

Walt: You mean what people were saying at the time?

John: No. When you compared the boards, how did you find out about Helgemo making this double interference?

Walt: Oh, well we knew what the hand was. Kit Woolsey went down when he just played spade, spade, spade right away. There's this boom over right away. He didn't think much about it or he thought about it. He made his play. He's playing for three, three spades and that was the end of that. They told us how he made it. He told us how he made it, and I wasn't as blown away as much as other people were. Because there's a bunch of these great players. You've seen the plays in the book. You can pull it off.

Like the play I mentioned to Hamman, people do some spectacular plays. If you talk to Helgemo and why did you do it or whatever. We were in the middle of playing, he needed to quit and that was his last match. He needed to leave immediately and go get on a plane. He wasn't my buddy, anyway. It wasn't like, "Hey, buddy," pat him on the back, "how'd you do that? How'd you figure out that one or anything?"

We were in the middle of playing and it was just like, "Okay, another good win. Let's go. Let's get our business done." After the break, people were talking about it. That happened in the first half of the last day. After the break, that hand had already gone around and people were talking about, "Oh, did you hear what Helgemo did? Did you hear what Helgemo did?" That kind of thing.

For us it was, I don't know, Helgemo's gone, and for us, it was just a result. I don't know. It didn't seem that spectacular. It was just later, it meant a lot more.

The last match we played the poles and we were winning and we could lose by a couple imps and still win the events. I think we could lose by four, if my memory serves right. I mentioned earlier that I have some of these psychic feelings sometimes. When we went to play the last match, I knew we won the event already. Bart didn't.

I knew that all I had to do was sit there and not have a disaster we were going to win. That's what my second feeling was telling me. I was just making sure we weren't having a disaster anyway. We played that round and we won and everybody else is so excited. I was a little calm because I had won the event like an hour earlier in my mind. It was over already, which is kind of weird and stupid but after the event was over in the years to come, I always told people how great Bart and I played.

There were a number of hands where I personally did some interesting things that worked out, especially well and stuff. The one hand that Bart really didn't like, and I always said the worst board Bart and I had was five diamonds doubled making five. I was five, three, three, two with some piece of crap. I opened a spade, Bart had two diamonds. I raised the three diamonds and he thought I was showing more shape or more hiker to some. He picked five diamonds instead of 3N, They had three cashing trucks, but they didn't take, they slipped and let us make five diamonds doubled.

We should've gone down and lost the swing 3N making at the other table but we escaped with a win four. That really was like our worst sport of the day because we're in danger of losing a swing. All the other boards, we were just solid. The last match against the Poles, I wasn't really being my normal self. I was in like the prevent defense mode. In my mind, all I had to do was not go for 1400 and we were going to win. I knew like my feelings are telling me.

I was sitting there just calm and just making sure no disaster happened. When I told that story twice in the last 33 years around Bart. Twice, Bart told me, "No, Walter, you let them make a part score in the last match." I never knew what he was talking about. John, when you had me dig up that scorecard?

John: Yes.

Walt: Okay. With the hot pink writing?

John: Yes.

Walt: Okay. I looked at match number eight, I don't see any part score where we're minus four. Well, we let him make a part score. Then I asked Bart afterwards and he goes, "I don't remember that, Walter. I don't remember saying you let him make a part score."

John: Well, could it have been that they made the park or at the other table too?

Walt: No. Well, no, that wouldn't change the fact that I screwed up and didn't defend right on some hand and--

John: What are you drinking?

Walt: Diet Coke. Bart wasn't saying it like meanly, it was just like, "These are the last seven boards, man. We don't give them a part score. That could have cost us the event or whatever." To me, I knew it wasn't going to cost the event, but yes. I know it's weird everybody thinks I'm probably an idiot, but I actually just accept it now. Every once in a while I get a certain feeling. It's not like, is it a feeling or something like that? Like 20 years ago, 30 years ago.

Now I just go in, like, I'll tell you a weird one. I opened my closet. I'm going back to Chicago. This was like 10 years ago. I'm flipping through the things in the closet. Okay, I'm going to take this shirt. I'm going to take this one, no, pass, pass. Okay, I'm going to take this one.

I pull the hangers to the side and there's my black suit. I stopped and I'm having a conversation with myself. My subconscious says, "Take your black suit." Why would I take my suit to Chicago? "Take your suit." I don't need a suit in Chicago. I'm just going-- Take your suit. I took my suit. I didn't know why, but it was just one of those feelings. Then the day I was going there or the day before or Sunday at one of my friends decided to commit suicide and stepped in front of a train, Richard Halpern, he was a bridge player. I had my black suit to go to his funeral.

Maybe it was the day after I got there. Because I didn't hear about it before I left. It's just weird stuff like that.

John: Yes, I hear you.

Walt: When it comes to bridge, and a lot of times I get these words, psychic feelings and it's not like, "Okay, I think the trump are 4-0," and then I'm just going to assume that the trump are 4-0, but I'll get a sneaking feeling that there's something up on the sand. Then I start thinking, "Okay, well, how can I cater to 4-0," and blah, blah, blah. I do by normal logical things and then sure enough, it turns out the guy had for trump or something.

It just seems like a lot of times, it's time to think about 4-0 trump or 3-0 trump, I get this weird feeling like, "Oh, you need to think about it on this hand." Other times I'm lazier or something like that.

John: I think we've gone through all of the lists.

Walt: All right. Well, hopefully then I'd make a good podcast for you.

John: It's been a lot of fun, man. You have a lot of enthusiasm for your stories. It's fun to hear them, definitely.

Walt: Yes. I'm a bridge player at heart. I didn't get that mentality. That bridge was a profession you'll never-- It's been a little bit of a profession for me recently, but I always wanted to go beat my brains out against the best bridge players in the world and try and be the best, and beat the best and the beauty of the game, and all that kind of stuff. I never really started out to be like a bridge pro.

Professional bridge is a weird thing. I wish it was different. I wish bridge had just prize money for tournaments and people play with people because they wanted to play with them. I often thought, "Hey, Mr. Gates, if you're out there, why don't you take a couple of million bucks and just put it out, and have people play for. Make bridge a real sport." Bridge isn't considered a real sport because nobody plays for money. I'm a poker player, right, John.

A lot of people don't know that, but I played poker for a living since 2000. Just before the pandemic, I started working for hustler casino, playing poker, loved doing that but when I tell people I'll be at the bridge table or at the poker table and I'll say, "Oh, I'm going to Florida to play in a regional next week." "Oh, you're going to a bridge tournament? What's the prize money?" "There is no prize money." You know what the next thing they ask me every single time after you tell them there's no money? What do you think they say next, John?

John: No, I have no idea.

Walt: "Why do you play?" Every time. Why do you play? Because poker is the exact opposite of bridge. Nobody would play poker unless you're playing for money. People will spend thousands of dollars to go to someplace to play bridge for no money.

John: Oh my god.

Walt: [unintelligible 01:35:27] It's so funny. That's what they say every time. John: Why do you play?

Walt: "There's no prize money? Why do you play?"

John: Oh man. Oh, man.

Walt: That's where my enthusiasm comes from.

John: We didn't talk about your world champion. You've talked down your world championship. What'd you win?

Walt: My best friend that I grew up with, I played cards against all the time, Tom. He and I learned bridge at the same time. We got the Goren's bridge complete book together and he was involved more in sports. He did play some ACBL bridge, but he never became a life master.

He calls me up one day and he says, "Hey, Walt, I see that they're having a world championships in Albuquerque. Albuquerque is in my territory." He's a traveling salesman.

He says, "Just get a plane ticket out to Albuquerque. The company will pay for the hotel. The company will pay for all our food. It'll just be me taking clients out to lunch." He was always screwing with the company that way. He had the biggest expense report but he made a lot of money for the company so they didn't complain.

He had joysticks and all sorts of things that he charged at the company playing games on his computer, he's at home. Anyway, so we go out to the Albuquerque world championships and we look through the schedule and he's got two days that he can play bridge. He does actually do a little bit of workloads out there. He had to go visit one client or something so it's somewhat legitimate. We see these two days and they have a continuous fairs where you can just play as many sessions as you want and they take you to best games and that's how the continuous pairs work.

We go, we play a session of the continuous pairs. We have 60 some percent. We come back at night, we have 40 some percent. We come back the next day, we have 60 some percent. Then he says, "Well, we got to 60 some games. Let's go to the movies tonight." We were going to play four sessions. We don't need to because it's not going to help our game and he said, we'd go to the movies. We come home from Albuquerque and I was trading options with Bart and Steve Garner, David Layman, Ralph Katz, all those guys. They were real bridge players in the sense that they were playing the real events at the world championships.

I just went out there to play with [unintelligible 01:37:48], my childhood best friend. I come home and they don't come home from Albuquerque for another week or something. Well, they come back and everybody used to congregate at Steve Gardner's office at lunchtime. I come back and we would play like spades or Richard Halperin, the one that committed suicide. He invented this game, secret bid version of spade that we played forehand and stuff.

I come back and we're sitting there and Steve Garner goes, "Hey, Wally, you won something in Albuquerque, way to go." I go, "What are you talking about?" He goes, "Yeah, didn't you play with that young friend of yours?" I was a little insulted because Tom, my best friend, is my young friend. I was born in August 23rd. He was born on August 3rd, one week younger than me. "Yes, I was playing with my young friend." "Yes, you guys won. They called your name at the award table.

John: [laughs]

Walt: A couple of days later, we get a gold medal [unintelligible 01:38:52] It looks just like Rodwell’s. I've seen his.

[laughter]

John: [unintelligible 01:39:00]

Walt: It was a completely [inaudible 01:39:03] event but we won the continuous pairs.

John: Is Tom's mom still alive?

Walt: Tom's mom is gone. It was our other friend's mom that taught us how to play bridge. Not Tom's mom. Tom mom's didn't get [crosstalk]

John: Okay. Oh my god.

Walt: No, all of our parents are gone now though. The ones that taught us how to play bridge and gin and stuff like that.

John: Why did you guys play spades at lunch?

Walt: Well, bridge was too complicated. We played a gambling game. What he did was he invented this game where each player gets 15 cards and you discard two and then you bid secretly. Okay. I call it, you and I are playing heads up. We each get 15 cards and we will throw two away and I call spades trump hearts, I call whatever suit I want trump. Then we play it out but a lot of the cards aren't there. If you have a jack and a seven, those might both be winners.

John: Yes.

Walt: Anyways, you both make your bids and then you get to call trump on a hand and whoever scores the more points gets to call trump on the third hand, the bonus hands. You can play it two ways. You can play it three ways. You can play it four ways. We gambled on at lunchtime. It was just a fast game that we came up to play with. We also used to play acquire a lot. That wasn't my game but a lot of the other guys played that game. The board game acquire.

Ralph Katz, Dan Cole, Steve Garner, Dave Layman, George Jacobs. He used to come down. He didn't work at the exchange but George used to come down and play acquire with the guys sometimes. I learned how to play acquire a little bit to play with them but that wasn't my game. Just time killers at lunch time.

John: I'm curious about Ron Andersen.

Walt: Ron Andersen, boy, do I have some stories about him. He was my teammate in the grand national teams one year. Bart came to me and he was never really a strong club guy. He's a strong club guy now with Kate Woolsey but Fox and I played assistant very close to Meckwell’s.

I went to Tom Fox and said, "Hey, do you want to form a partnership?" He said yes. Then we took a week to decide whether we would play standard or precision because I said, "Bart has a copy of Meckwell’s notes and he'll give them to us. Do you want to play precision?" I actually thought that was a good idea because Tom

and I don't really think that alike. I thought if we played standard he would have prearranged ideas and we might not gel that well but if we played a foreign system, it's new to both of us.

We both thought that was a good idea. We got [unintelligible 01:42:16] notes. He took the one club section and simplified it, changed a little bit. I took the one diamond section and we had our version of their system that we played.

Years later, right after I stopped playing with Tom, Tom quit playing and moved back to Fargo. I wanted to go more in the direction of relays. Relays are really powerful and memory-wise, they're easy. I wanted to go more in the direction of relays but Tom wanted to go towards the end of our partnership, he wanted to go a little more in the simplification area.

After he quit playing, I rewrote the club section and I started out with this big relay stuff. Bart comes to me and he says, "Hey, Walter, I'd like to try your club system on time you to play in the grand national team?" I'm like, "Sure." I gave him the whole system and I named it BS Precision, next [unintelligible 01:43:10]. I called it BS for Brambly Schaefer but really for bullshit was like a perfect way to go because in the Mech Wells' style, you bid on nothing. You're always bidding on no points and stuff. BS Precision was a great name.

Anyway to Bart's credit, I give him like these couple 100 pages of notes and he memorized it for one event. He got a couple of little things wrong but he got the flavor of the system and we played it and we lost extra and rattle in the semifinals of the grand national teams. He came to me, that's when he first started playing precision and the relays and finished third and national. It was there something else that where we were going with that story?

John: Well, how did it start? I forget how it started. Strong club.

Walt: I don't remember now. We'll both remember when we listened to the audio.

John: You play something you call the Schaefer 10 over 1, now you 3 have a major shows worth double torn?

Walt: A client of mine gave it, that name have invented a bunch of stuff and I was never self-promoting one to name things after myself or whatever. The biggest thing I ever invented was Spock's raises, it's like Bergen raises on steroids. It's named for Roy Fox and Tom Fox. Roy Fox gave me the seed idea and I called the Fox Raises and then I started playing it with Tom when he and I started playing, I showed him the Fox Raises and we played it.

He had a change that made it better but it was a significant change and it caused a little cascade of changes. Now I call it Fox Squared Raises. Roy Fox was the original guy and then Tom Fox gave me another idea. It's like version two and they were both Foxes that helped me with the idea.

Anyway, there's one thing I invented a number of years ago when I started playing with the clients. If you play the old fashion style after one, no two clubs, a stain and hearts and diamonds are Jacoby. Two spades is my under suit statement to his clubs, three clubs as a transfer to diamonds. People usually played three diamonds, three hearts, and three spades for triple four, one hand game forces.

If you were triple for one with clubs, you could just start with strain. Wall style used to have a way to show some of the triple four, one hands in there. Well, triple four one is a really low percentage shape and it basically just never comes up. One of the things that does come up once in a while, and I find annoying is when it goes one no pass three no, and they run five of a suit.

I came up with the idea of playing one no pad instead of three diamonds, three hearts, three spays being these triple four ones that don't really have much value. "Why don't you play three diamonds? He says. I'm bidding three no but one of my minors is unstopped. Three hearts says I'm bidding three no but I have nothing in spades. If I bid three spades, I have nothing in hearts. The definition for me is a workless, double thinner Singleton, Jack X, or worse.

With queen doubleton, you can go either way. You can not show a worthless doubleton and you can show a worthless doubleton your choice. Actually, it doesn't come up very much. It does come up more than the triple four-one hands and a number of times that has come up it's gotten really great results.

I was playing with this client one time, Carmella, where I showed no stopper. We stopped in four of a miner. I played it with Ron Smith. One time we had no stopper. We ran to five of a minor. Those were both great results. I had this other real weird one when I was playing with Steve Love, another client of mine. In my personal weirdness, I bid one no three hearts with six spades and one heart.

I wanted to just raise the three no but I showed my heart Shaferton my worthless thing in hearts and he ran to four clubs. The reason why I had bid 3NT, this is an idea that that's well known some people sort of ignore it. I've had the conversation with Ron Smith and there are times where it works out badly but if your partner opens a NoTrump, and you have like 13, 14 balanced, and you're not going to try for slam when you have almost a slam try, it's usually right to just play 3NT.

Once in a while, your diamond stopper will be ace and one opposite too small. They lead the king of diamonds and they get in with their other one card and they run by and instead it's a disaster. Usually, especially for match points, you're going to take the same number of tricks in three no, as you do for the major. We're usually playing match points. I did one no, three no, it's even in my notes. I don't bid Stayman. I don't use Jacoby. I just bid one no, three no.

I had one of those hands where I wanted to play three no with my 13 points. I didn't quite have enough for a slam tri and spades. When I bid three spades saying I've got nothing in hearts.

[crossstalk]

John: [laughs]

Walt: Now, I just know--

John: [laughs]

Walt: Now I knew he had nothing at hearts. It was just the perfecto and we made our six spades that way. It doesn't come up very much, but it comes up once in a while and it does get you a bingo. That's one of the things I've invented yet. My client insists that I call it a Shaferton. That's the one thing I have named after me.

John: Now, you've got the tournament too. You got the--

Walt: Well, yes, I got the of Shafer game now. I should just call it a Shafer game. That's what everybody else calls it. Even in Sylvia, she's punishment, the thing online where it lists her--

John: Transgression.

Walt: --when she was self kibitzing, I said, "I did it in this game. I did it in the Shafer game one time." I didn't really like reading the that though.

John: You didn't like reading that, you said?

Walt: No, of course, not. You don't want to hear that somebody was doing something funny in your game.

John: Did she win? You don't have a list of winners, do you?

Walt: I don't think so. No. She only played once or twice. The records are on BBO. No, no, no, I don't keep a list but they're on BBO, you can look them all up.

John: Hamman and I won, that was pretty cool, man. I don't know if I told you that already. I know I told you we played.

Walt: I'll tell you the first two times Hamman and [unintelligible 01:49:27] played, they didn't do that great and they had a couple stinker results. I had a couple of people saying to me, "Oh, they're all washed up." Then after that, they started winning all the time. I kept stats for a long time. Hamman and [unintelligible 01:49:43] were right up there.

I forget what they were averaging. Maybe like 13 imps a session. They were one of the top pairs, top two or three pairs. They still got it and I've seen them over and over. Peter's a great player. They did a couple little system glitches here and there, but they've also had some real nice system wins. They play a Club Pass Two Diamonds, I think is just a game force with five diamonds. They play a couple of little fancy things after that. They've had a couple real good things with their system. They do some weird system stuff now, but they're still super superstars. If anybody thinks that they're past their prime. They may be past their prime, but they're wau ahead of everybody else's prime still.

John: It's pretty amazing how that team for the NAOBC came together. Finn and Jacob actually reached out to Bob, and said, "Hey, do you want to play in this event?" Then they reached out to Bart afterwards. It's pretty cool, these teenagers.

Walt: Yes. A lot of the time, if you look at the description of my game now it says, "Superstars of Bridge, Junior Stars to be, and a few friends of mine." Almost all the

top players are really junior friendly, and they volunteer their time to the juniors. Finn and Jacob, it's weird because they are juniors, but they're players in their own right.

Maybe Hamman and Bart wouldn't pick them as their first pick for teammates, but they're certainly in the realm of quality. I played with Finn in the Grand National teams, he had a couple things he could have done differently, everybody on our team could have done a couple of things differently to win by enough amps that they let us win. If we'd won by more amps, they couldn't have stolen it from us. We all could have done a little better, but Finn played great. He's a real player already.

John: Yes. He showed up in San Francisco. [laughs]

Walt: Yes. Third in the Blue Ribbons, and he wasn't playing with the superstar. No offense to John Ramos. John Ramos is a very good player, but it’s not like Finn was playing with Hamman, Zia, or somebody that you think carried him a little bit. He finished third with an equal in the Blue Ribbons pairs, that's better than I’ve ever finished in the Blue Ribbons pairs, I think I was fifth. That's pretty impressive.

John: Yes. Definitely, especially after doing so well in the Life Master Pairs. He did well in the Life Master Pairs, and I was like, "Well, that event, the solo is going on. It's not the same thing as it was," then he played in the Blue Ribbon pairs, and finished third. I’m excited for him, cool kid.

Walt: Yes. If he had won the Blue Ribbon pairs or a third, maybe it's a slight fluke in the sense that his skill level isn't quite there yet, but he's a great player. I had some great results early, everybody has some great results early. Maybe he's not the player now that he will be in 10 years, but he's already plenty good enough to put himself in the hunt every time.

John: Yes. He bid three no without a stopper in the suit against us. I, unfortunately, did not lead the stopperless suit, he got a very good score for that one. [laughs]

Walt: Yes. You’re fearless when you're young.

John: Yes. Totally.

Walt: Although, Hamman is fearless too. Hamman has that rule, if three no is a possible contract, bid it. Boy, he takes his own advice. I saw this hand where his right-hand opponent had overcalled spades, and his partner opened the bidding like he had a game-forcing hand. At some point, they bid ray spades, he had two little spades, he bid three no hoping his partner had a stopper. Like the guy bid three spades, his partner couldn't know that he had a game force. He just bid three no, his partner came down with the king ten third of spades, and scored up.

John: [laughs] Man, who are you playing with at four? A client?

Walt: At five o'clock tonight.

John: Yes.

Walt: Five o'clock my time, I don't have a partner. At four o'clock, I play with a friend at Blue Box. We play once a week online.

John: In a speedball?

Walt: Then, at five o'clock, I have my regular game. Yes, just a speedball. At five o'clock I have my regular game, I don't have a partner for tonight yet. I don't know if I’m going to play, or just take it off tonight.

John: We should play sometime.

Walt: Yes. Absolutely.

John: Yes. I’d like that. Tonight might be a rush job though if you

Walt: Yes. Not tonight because we're doing this, and I got another hour coming up. We'll definitely for sure do it in another time, John, I’ll enjoy that.

John: All right, cool.

Walt: All right.

John: All right, thanks a lot.

Walt: Thank you, John, appreciate it.

John: This has been a lot of fun. Actually, I have one last-- Do you play golf?

Walt: I do. I was good for a while, I haven't played in a while now. I started in high school playing, and I eventually get down to shooting in the low 80s, never broke 80. I golfed on and off for years and years. I moved out to California where you can golf 362 days a year, literally. I started golfing with some guys that I met playing poker, I had a hole in one, and I really got the golf bug.

I started golfing again, and I found a course here that had an unlimited golf membership for $3,000 a year. It wasn't a country club where you had to pay a fee or anything, it was $3,600, unlimited golf seven days a week. You show up, they give you a car key, just play as much golf as you want.

I went and I played a ton of golf. I got down to under a six handicap, I was really good for a while. That was really fun.

Howard saw some of my good games. Howard Weinstein used to come to California, and we'd golf together. He was dating a girl here, he'd come once in a while. When she was working, we'd go play golf and stuff. Howard saw me when I was really good. I think I played one or two rounds with Bart when I was really good. Now, I’m back to shooting in the 90s. There's no other thing like golf.

John: It's amazing.

Walt: When you stop doing it, your game just goes downhill immediately. Even Tiger Woods takes a little time off, goes to the sex addict class, and his game was way down.

John: You said Phil would hit his two iron or something, as far as Bart would hit his driver. That's why I asked.

Walt: Five iron. Yes, five iron, 200 yards for a driver. Bart’s a little skinny guy, he's not a power hitter. For whatever reason, when I started playing golf, I golf once or twice before high school, then they had a high school golf team, so I go to play. The high school golf coach, he told me, "You wind up, and you old school, you out of the corner of your eye you see the head of your club, out of your left." I’m a right-handed golfer, I wind up out of the corner of my left eye, you see the head of your golf club go all the way back. Then, you just pull as hard as possible, put as much power into it. That's the way I always golfed.

People would joke, "Walt, do you ever have back problems?" "No," "Don't worry you will." "You know why he swings so hard? Just in case he hits the ball." Ernie Els, The Big Easy, he takes a swing, it looks like he's barely hitting the ball, and the ball goes a mile. I look like I’m trying to kill the ball, and the ball goes a half of mile.

[laughter]

Walt: I was actually a pretty big hitter, it looked like I was swinging hard, but that was my style, that's the way I was taught golf. You wind it all the way up and just swing as hard as you can. Now, the Tiger approach, you bring the club up like 45 degrees or something, you stand more a wreck, and you don't have as much body movement stuff. I love golf.

John: Yes. It's an amazing game.

Walt: I suck at it now, it's no fun when you get to a certain level, and you can't play at that level anymore. That happens in golf all the time, but other stuff it doesn't. You can stop playing bridge for years, go back, and you're still good, not golf.

John: All right, man, this has been a lot of fun.

Walt: All right, I got to get going.

John: All right, man, have a good day.

Walt: Thank you, John.

John: Thank you very much, I’ll be in touch.

Walt: Don't make me bug, you make sure we get a game in sometime. John: All right, cool. Thanks.

Walt: All right, thanks.

[01:57:27] [END OF AUDIO]

Walt: Everybody has their group of like our hands or what I call instant classics, 503 classic, but that's a different kind of one, that's a serious bridge hand, but at the hands that are fun are like the ones in the old time regionals after the game was over, everything went up to a hospitality suite and swap stories and stuff like that.

[01:58:53]my most recent instant classic out here in California, I'm playing with a client and a pro, in a club game. And, he opens three diamonds and it goes double and I cite three. No, and it went pass, pass, pass, and they make the opening lead and he very proudly puts down. Three little spades, three little hearts, King queen Jack, ten seventh of diamond in avoidant clubs, classic three diamond opener, the pro bid three now. So I think about it for a little while and I put my cards back in the board and I go down nine and the guy on my right, I can't say it exactly. but he's like down nine. He said it like I was trying to cheat him or something, I said, sir, I'm giving you all the tricks. Do you object? And then it's I got three deers in the headlights.

[01:59:43]what the hell is going on here? And then remember my hands back in the board, my partner goes, Walter, don't give them all the tricks. Okay, Steve, back out of the board. I turn on my three little spades. They have at least four spade tricks. I turned on my three little hearts. They have at least four, our tricks, and I don't have a club stopper.

[02:00:06]I did I claim no tricks. Number one, cause I couldn't take any. And number two, it wasn't going to matter. Anyway, if I was actually making a bad claim that they were going to screw it up and give me a trick. somehow that their diamonds are one, one, my hand was three little, three little ACE, four, three little, no chance of taking a Trek unless they screwed up.

[02:00:29] And each had a diamond, a trick 13, and but it was white, white, and, as a good player I actually considered, Is there, could it matter 400 or four 50? No, minus four. There's no scores going to be between minus 400 minus 450. So it can't cost anything. Anyway, so is there enough? We opened this, we still had travelers.

[02:00:52] We opened up the traveler four 84, 84, 89, 89, 84, 89, 84, 59, 84. We got a complete top for down nine. Their diamonds were one, one. So in hearts, they had to give us a trick. We can just catch these environments. Some people bid six, that Mandy's comprising only. so that was the most recent one.

[02:01:13] Most of the ones are old ones. A lot of them involve preempting stories, that are great. One of them, I was playing with my good buddy Royce, and this is just a real quick, funny one. We're playing in a regional at the nationals and I opened two spades. And it goes to pass and he pulls his glasses down a little bit, leans forward and real life, four spades, what the hell are you doing?

[02:01:36]pass, pass. And the dummy comes down. He had six solid. He thought for sure, I had psyched and he wanted me to pass four spades, even if I had sight, which was really strange because I've never psyched the week too. But in my life, I psych more than anybody just about, but I've never liked the week to bid.

[02:01:51] And also we don't raise our voice. To mean something. It was just like, it was just so bizarre, but I caught huge support there. Another funny one, I always would tell, start the

[02:02:04] John: Wait, did you not have bidding boxes with Royce?

[02:02:06]Walt: not in this one. No, this was, some of these stories are from the eighties or nineties. Yeah. but so the other ones about catching big support, this, this is two of these stories actually, are from the same turnover, section of Dubuque Iowa a long time ago before bidding boxes also.

[02:02:22]And I got my start in to be a guy in my we're playing against these two little old ladies that I know, from the club and I'm playing with a young guy. He was a. Foreign exchange student from Thailand. He was, he was going to school over here. He's still here now in San Francisco. I still know him.

[02:02:36] Anyway. I opened three clubs with, the way I tell the story is I opened three clubs. My partner had seven card support and I lost the Trump trick, but it was the age. Yes.

[02:02:46]I opened three play. It wasn't really that. And I had three Kingsley, Jack fifth at favorable. The bad part was I had queen third, a hearts on the side. It would have been better if I didn't have the Quaker. So I opened three clubs and she's just like shaking, counting her points, or 20 points, 30 points, whatever it is.

[02:03:04] And she doubles it up. Turn double on my right. So we called the director. So now her partners barred and my partner has seven little clubs and out. So it goes three clubs pass. He's three hearts on a single, then she doubles pass, pass four clubs. So she sits there for a while. She didn't know what to do.

[02:03:21] She double all pads down one, some people, we're in seven hearts going down, doc, the queen, third to Trump, they had, everything except the queen of Trump. Go ahead. The other funny one about catching a support. I'm playing with my girlfriend and it goes to space, double forest Bates double, and they leave a card and she says, if you go down, I'm never playing with you again.

[02:03:45]And she puts down ACE King, queen Jack fifth of spades and ACE, fifth of diamonds, and they quickly scoop in three tricks. And she's glaring at me. And bill came down to a Trump finesse. Of sorts. I had, I had nine, eight, fifth of spades in my hand, and I had a stiff diamond opposite. The ACE fifth, I played ACE of diamonds, rough, the diamond trumped of the dummy, the tendon drop.

[02:04:10] I roughed the diamond with the nine and the guy couldn't over rough. needed the guy with five diamonds, had the 10 doubles in a state. So I was able to rough all my diamonds make my worst base leveled. That was a funny hand. So one of the other, I had a bunch of funny bats in my life, but as far as an instant classic, there's a woman in Chicago who, her father made bunches of money. She was always very generous and she was adopted and, eventually she inherited tons and tons of money, but.

[02:04:41]She was a trivia expert and she would love it. If you said something about, who was president of this year, that year? No, no, no, no. I'll bet you a nickel. Okay. And it went and if you made a bet, she would collect the physical nickel and she would pay you a physical nickel. Meaningless amount of money too, buddy, but it was the principle of the thing we're playing bridge early on in my career.

[02:05:02] I'm not playing pro we're just friends. And she was a decent player and we're playing at some tournament or something and she plays the hand over. And after the hand, I'm sitting there like stunned, her cards are all sitting on the table, maybe she's got one card or whatever. She's claiming down one, And I'm like, why didn't you catch the nine at diamonds when you were in your hand? She said, I didn't have the nine of diamonds. I said, yes, she did. She says, I'll bet you a hundred dollars. What not? Hell I'm a starving college kid. I couldn't reach over there and grab the nine of diamonds and turn his face up.

[02:05:34] Fast enough. Boom. Okay. Click. And she paid me. I've had a bunch of really crazy bats at the bridge table. I have one horrible one at the poker table. that still haunts me. It still haunts me, but I've had a bunch of weird bets at the bridge table. One guy we're sitting there and I'm a math kid talking about something.

[02:05:52] And I said, two to break is 40.7%. He goes, no, it isn't it's blah, blah, blah. And I go. I'll give you 40.68 the 40 point or IBB 40.69 to 40.71. You could have every other number you want to bet share. I'll bet you 10 bucks or 20 bucks or something. After the session. Boom, collect. I had one guy at the bike.

[02:06:09]He bet me on how old I was. bike is a casino in Los Angeles. I told him I was under 40. No, you're not. He goes I'll bet you $5. Okay, let me, let me see your driver's license. I said on my driver's license, he sent it back with a $5 chip. Okay. Here's the horrible one. That's haunted me when I was a little kid and this is a good lesson for people.

[02:06:31] When I was a little kid, we went to Edison's home and they had this story. He goes to sell the ticker tape in New York and he goes, and sky's got a big desk and everything. The guy very dramatically pushes a check across the table and Edison looks at the check and, he accepts the, the offer. And after they signed the papers, Edison says.

[02:06:49] yeah, I hope this doesn't offend you, but I had no idea. I would get so much money for my ticker tape and the guy says, Oh, don't worry about that, mr. Edison, if you had turned down that offer, I had two more checks in the drawer for you he took the first offer and the guy was ready to triple it and he thought it was so the lesson is never take the first offer. No matter what, just never take the first offer. That's a common thing. And I know that, right? So here, I'm sitting at a poker table and the guy down at the other end of the table says, Hey, C3, I'll bet you a big blind, which is $25. That I'm five years older than you. So I look at the guy and I know he's one of these people that look, good for his age and styles. It turns out he's taken like hundreds of dollars worth of vitamins every month, but people generally guess my age wrong. I look younger than I am.

[02:07:35]And I thought I got them like an idiot. Okay. I'll add to the, any counter would have been fine. So it was, what year are you born? 64. He's born in 59. I go, it's a tie. He goes, no. What month were you born? He was just like five years and two months older than me.

[02:07:48] That's haunted me. Is this stupid? Five-year old. How about five and a quarter years.

[02:07:55]John: What did he say? What did, what was the bad

[02:07:57] Walt: So I'm five years older than you. He was five years and two months older than me or three months or whatever we were, he was born. I was born in August of 64. He was born in June of 69 or something.

[02:08:08] John: So what was your, what did, in order for you to win

[02:08:11] Walt: lost. He was, he, I needed to be less than five years older than him. So he said he was five years in a couple months. Any counter-offer I'd win the bet instead of lose the bet. Even if he offered me five years, he would've gone up to six years, seven years, eight years. He had some leeway, like an idiot. I took the first bet. Here's another lesson in bedding, too, that I learned now this one, this doesn't really, really haunt me, but this is a mistake in bedding.

[02:08:35]I'm in Steve Garner's office down at the exchange. You guys know the famous bridge player, Steve garner, right?

[02:08:40]John: Yeah.

[02:08:41] Walt: And we're talking about, the old Twilight zone show. And he says, it's rod Sterling, which is very common for people to say, it's rod Sterling. And I very exuberantly told him no it's rod Serling, or maybe I just told him he was wrong and he, okay.

[02:08:56] I'll bet you a hundred bucks. And yeah. I want to bet you a hundred bucks and then he goes, no, no, no, no. You're too confident, Wally. I'm not going to bet you 300 bucks right down the drain. Just being too exert. You gotta act a little. Yeah, I think blah, blah, blah. that was a, that was a big bedding mistake.

[02:09:14]John: But I was confused by the Edison because you said, you said that he sold his ticker tape and I don't

[02:09:20] Walt: It Edison invented the ticker tape and took it to New York to selfie. This is in the, when everybody's the stock market was huge during the twenties, right before the crash, everybody has Margaret and the money in the market and is falling the ticker tape. There's no internet and TV. So the ticker tape was a huge invention where you could poke a ticker tape somewhere and people see the stock price is coming out during the day.

[02:09:40] That was a huge thing to us. Now it does

[02:09:43] John: Yeah. I just thought of Edison is having, having invented like the light bulb or something.

[02:09:48]Walt: I think he has more patents than anybody he's he invented hundreds of things he was involved in. Yeah. Way more than just the light bulb, but yeah. Yeah. He amended the ticker tape, The other, instant classic that, that I always loved. I just said like I psych a lot, was the psych against the Hackett's Jason and Justin Hackett's, brother's son of, sons of Paul Hackett, international players, and, my regular partner from the nationals and the enemies, Tom Fox.

[02:10:12] And I were playing in Japan. In this invitational thing. And there was some prize money. We were playing with Ralph Katz and Howard Weinstein and, Dick Bruno and, Jeff Shu. It, we were, all team from Chicago. So we're playing against the heck. Hackett's behind screens and Tom and I played 10 to 12, no trumpet favorable.

[02:10:30]And he opened a heart and he went past and we were at favorable. So it was, I had a weird, I had heart support, but I had a six count or maybe a five count. So if he had a balanced pen, he had 13 to 15. So it doesn't really make sense. The psych in that, why would you expect the big game with their 22 points or, but, I had a stiff spade and I just had this overwhelming feeling I should psych, so I bit a spade overheard and would pass and one time in her whole career.

[02:10:57]One of us raised on three cards support in this situation. Tom did it here. He raised the two spades on three, which annoyed me a little bit, because if he had made the system bit of a no, Trump, I was going to rebid two spades, but he raised the two spades and

[02:11:10] John: You are going to rebid to space.

[02:11:13] Walt: that was, that was the plan once made two spades

[02:11:15] John: You're really follow it through.

[02:11:18] Walt: Yeah. you can't pass one. No. And let them back in there. The guy's gonna bounce with two spades or something. and these are the Hackett's thing, But so when I rebid or when it goes one space, two spades, now they both had spade. Their spades were five, four. So nothing seemed that way normal to either one of them, they both had an opening bid or near opening bid with their five for space.

[02:11:37] And so it went swish and he leads a spade. And so I just put my hand on the table and said, how many do I get? And they look at my hand and he goes to. And I go to, I'm annoyed that they're not cold for six spades, which is jerky. But I wasn't, and he and I are friends, and he gives me this look and he needled me.

[02:11:56] I need for years and years about liking against them, But yeah, so they made, it was, it was a nice AIDAP psych. Our teammates made six 50, we went down six for minus 300.

[02:12:06]John: I love that you're annoyed that you couldn't revert to space.

[02:12:10] Walt: I wanted to complete the psych myself. I didn't want to assist, all the credit down it.

[02:12:19] John: Oh my gosh.

[02:12:21] Walt: One other funny one. This is just a super, so from the, the one, the other one from the same Dubuque sectional, I'm playing with my girlfriend at the time and we're just steaming at each other. I don't know why I pull my cards out of the board.

[02:12:33] Only time in my life. I start over my hand and I see a bunch of high cards and stuff. I don't start my hand or anything. I don't count my points. I just open a note. Trump. Goes past, she'd been three. Now I look at my hand and I've got 25 little clubs. So I've been six of past seven. Now be opposed.

[02:12:52] Nobody says anything, raises the, but they lead a card and it's a great contract. ACE King Jack fit the clubs opposite the 10th, fifth it's queen third, offside down one. It had an amazingly calming effect, because know I was an idiot, she was an idiot. We got through a good contract, but we got punished, rightfully And so she didn't say anything about my bidding. I didn't say it did. We just went on and everything was back to normal.

[02:13:24] But it was funny at the time. One number three, no, six Oh seven. Oh. And I'm thinking, good bidding is its own reward.

[02:13:29]John: Your opponents, they're just nonplussed by the whole thing.

[02:13:33] Walt: Yeah, just Bob and Mary. I don't know. Yeah. It always amazes me that, people don't react, I think in general people, a lot of people go through life, holding their emotions in and.

[02:13:45]John: Oh my God. It's just, there's one more here. It says, are you just trying to lose Royce?

[02:13:50] Walt: Oh, the Royce that are playing at a regional at the nationals again. And this is before bidding boxes and, we had a kibitzer with us. just a friend of ours canvassing and we're crushing the event. We had a good first session and we're just destroying the event. And we come to the last table and Royce gets a zero, a literal zero for absolutely no reason.

[02:14:14] And I said to him, Royce, Are you just trying to lose Royce? Maybe we'll come in second. If you get another zero, why don't you get another zero? And the opponents go, you have a lock on the event. And I said, maybe not. If we get another zero and he goes, Oh, I thought we were gonna win. So it turns out we're playing the pair that comes in second place, the last round.

[02:14:32] And we just gave him a top. And then we played the next board and I don't remember what happened, but we won bracingly so we could have given him two zeros and we still would have won. But the look on the guy's face, you have a lock on the event. I thought we were going to win. And two pairs in a room.

[02:14:49] This is at a regional at the nationals. there's hundreds of pairs. They have first place being, playing second place. The last two boards, that's coincidentally.

[02:14:58]John: But it was a regional event. It wasn't in an ABC.

[02:15:00]Walt: at the nationals. Yeah. So it was one of those big down in the basement, huge field type of deals, from a long time ago when the nineties, when Royce used to play at the nationals.

[02:15:09] John: I can't believe that you played in an era when there were no bidding boxes.

[02:15:14]Walt: Oh, my girlfriend from a long time ago, Candace, Fowler's deaf in one ear. Literally deaf in one ear. So you would, if, if you were she's, her left ear, I'm pretty sure it is, is if you were on her left side, she'd go like this. And she turned her head, so she would just always make sure that the people that she was listening to around her right side, and it was no problem.

[02:15:34] So bidding box has come out. So this is like the early nineties, late eighties, early nineties. I don't remember exactly when. No era had to be early nineties. The bidding boxes were probably out in the late eighties, but they still weren't really implemented or anything. number one, bidding boxes are fantastic.

[02:15:48] I was a huge advocate, right from the start. There was actually a lot of pushback against bidding boxes when they first came out. Okay. We bought a set of bidding boxes. We had the one club cards laminated, And the past cards laminated, then they stay, the thing stays really nice. We came to the table, we would get a North South, we would sit down.

[02:16:09] And I think we had the, have a legitimate reason to have bidding boxes.

[02:16:14] John: You would bring your own bidding boxes to the game.

[02:16:18] Walt: Yeah. she couldn't hear the person on her fricking laugh with your, she had the Turner table, her head all the time.

[02:16:25] John: So you bring a whole set of bidding boxes.

[02:16:27]Walt: for the table four for Benny box, it's not a set for the whole room.

[02:16:31]And they were laminate. So wait a minute, we got accused the cheating that somehow this was some form of us cheating. not you guys are, that's like the whole crowd standing up, you guys are cheating, but it was like rumblings in the background, the director coming to us, telling us, we got these objections, people think this is cheating and yeah.

[02:16:47] It was insane. It was insane.

[02:16:49] John: funny.

[02:16:50] Walt: It's just, it's a technophobe type of deal, any, new technology gives some people the heebie-jeebies for some reason. And bidding boxes to me, it was just so obvious that this is fantastic, Cause you don't, you don't ever remember playing before bidding boxes.

[02:17:06] There's no such a thing.

[02:17:07]John: I played duplicate, no, I don't think I've ever played in a sanctioned game that didn't have bending boxes.

[02:17:14] Walt: Okay. someday not too far in the distant future, you're going to run into a kid that's never heard of an opening lead out of turn. Because at all, Cambridge is going to be computerized. You're going to meet in person and it just doesn't make sense for bridge to be played with physical cards and boards.

[02:17:33]there's so many disasters that happen, Pre bidding by the bidding goes for around for a while. Do you know how many times you got to ask for a review when somebody got has to give her a review? if you were to talk to Bart about his skill as a review giver, that's something we would discuss, like one person would give the review to give the review.

[02:17:52] And, if you ever, can I ever review the bidding, please? why don't you just look at your screen idiots? Why don't you look down at the table? You idiot. but that used to happen all the time. So bitty boxes, that was a huge event. Can you imagine playing against Barton kit with their club system when the bidding goes eight rounds? Can I review that when I was playing with Tom? I seriously. That would have been a serious issue. Okay. Because everything we played and it would be with Barton kit too, not everybody. if you're playing regular precision and it goes to club pass the heart, and that shows hearts pass the spade show spades, you're going to give her, you can give a review of the auction because.

[02:18:34]when your partner shows spades, it was the one spade, boom, your partner shows hearts. It's a one heartbeat, right? Tom and I would get done playing. I couldn't tell you how the bidding went on for 22 where we got the three. No, I know it went one club pass, two diamonds show in eight to 10 balanced, and then I started relaying and he, I can tell you what his shape was.

[02:18:52] But I don't know how the bidding went. I'd have to go rethink that. I'd have to go reconstruct the whole bidding. There's no, the bids don't mean anything. They, they they're, they mean something at the time, step wise, so same thing. It would just be a disaster playing that type of system. And it wouldn't not for the players so much, but for people playing against it asking review, how did it go?

[02:19:14] What did all the bidding mean? it would just be a disaster. So yeah, bidding boxes. They're not a given in my world, computerized, no tournaments. right before I got into bridge tournaments are scored by hand. when they put up, after round 12 or the next last round, they put up that sheet with the, with a one round to go scores.

[02:19:38] What's that called? John? Maybe you would even know what it's called. It's called the burner. You've heard that,

[02:19:44] John: gotten that. I would've gotten that.

[02:19:45] Walt: Okay. that's a real old term. I thought maybe you'd never heard of it. the reason why it's called the bird is the tournaments. When they originally skull and scored by a director, the little ticket would come in.

[02:19:57]Round three pair seven versus pair for two spades making one 40. And he would write down on a big giant sheet, one 40 in that column. And then when you got done with board 13, like a traveler, it would have all the scores there and he would physically match point them. He they'd write the scores, I think in black.

[02:20:17] And then the match points would go with a red pen. He had a carbon copy when 11 of the rounds were up. He took off the burner. Cause it looked like it was Berg. It was a carbon copy and they hung the carbon copy. So everybody could look at the scores with one round to go, but you were physically looking at all the scores on the board and that's where the name came from.

[02:20:37] But yeah, bridges have all the fair amount, it still has a way to go.

[END OF 02:20:41]