EPISODE 32: Greg Hinze
Meet Greg Hinze: Three time North American Bridge Champion, world champion and he also has a world class sense of humor! After first hearing there was such a thing as a professional bridge player, Greg made it his five year goal. He played a lot, read lots of books, practically went broke and now is a highly desired pro.
Episode Highlights:
1:35- How Greg first decided to pursue his goal of becoming a professional
3:15- How Greg got hooked onto bridge
6:10- Greg and his poker job
7:55- How Greg quickly improved into an expert
9:40- Live bridge and RealBridge
12:50- Greg’s favorite event
15:20- Reject those who rejected you
18:50- Strong club vs natural system
21:45- Greg’s 2D opening system
24:10- Winning a world championship on a team formed the night before the event
26:50- Greg, his wife, and fun midnight knockout deal
29:30- Broke North American champion
31:35- An interesting strategy to pick between two close calls and a happy accident
35:20- His prediction on the future of live bridge
40:50- “Swiss Master” ~ Justin Lall
43:55- Bridge connects
48:30- Greg’s biggest bridge tip
Transcript
John McAllister: Hello. My name is John McAllister and welcome to The Setting
Trick podcast. One of the reasons I started this podcast is because I wanted to share
Bridge with a wider audience. One of the absolute pleasures of my eight-plus year
foray into the world of Bridge, my deep dive, has been making new friends and I had
no idea that I would make so many great friends. I'm excited to have here with us
today, top professional Bridge player, Greg Hinze.
Greg is a world champion, a Grand Life Master, a three-time North American Bridge
champion, and I really wanted to have him on because he makes me laugh. The one
big takeaway, the new thing that I learned about Greg in this conversation is that
when he first heard about the possibility of being a professional Bridge player, he
said, "I want that," and he gave himself the time, five years, to do it and now here he
is. Greg Hinze.
Greg Hinze: How are we doing?
John: Bridge player, Grand Life Master, world champion, and Setting Trick guest.
Now you can add that to your resume.
Greg: Thank you. I'm glad you had me here.
John: You're a professional Bridge player?
Greg: Yes.
John: When did you make the decision?
Greg: I started playing Bridge about 1996, maybe a year later that I actually found
out there were professional Bridge players. At that point, I had already fallen in love
with the game. The game, to me, is the best game in the world. When I found out
that people were making their living playing Bridge, I set that as a goal to myself and
I decided that I would study and try to become one of the best players and gave
myself five years. If I can't do it within five years then I'm going to have to go do
something else.
While I was doing that, I was actually dealing poker for a guy who ran home games.
He was understanding of my passion, he was a Bridge player himself, and making
money dealing poker to support myself while I was learning the game of Bridge. It
was just under five years, maybe four years, early in four years, that I got my first gig
and I was excited and then it just exploded from there. With the help of a national
win, I got a few more gigs and it's been-- That was probably in 2003, I guess, maybe
that I really started getting moving and ever since then, that's just been full time. I
quit the poker thing and all that.
John: What were the circumstances in 1996 whereby you learned that people made
a living playing playing--?
Greg: Oh, no, '96 I didn't really quite know yet, '96 is when I first started playing
Bridge. It was in the middle or late close to 1998 that I actually found out. The
circumstances that got me playing Bridge was interesting. My mother, we played like
kitchen Bridge maybe five times and they didn't play Stayman, they didn't play
transfers and not even artificial strong 2 clubs, there was nothing. I played with my
mother and my grandfather. They knew how to take tricks so we'd play lots of hearts
and spades. I was good at taking tricks, but we did not understand the bidding at all.
Anyway, she had a Goren Bridge book that she was getting rid of in a garage sale.
She worked in selling wholesale to retail and have odd rid-offs so she would twice a
year have this huge garage sale. One day she just decided to get rid of some old
books and the book was in there. Some guy came and saw the Goren book and
asked to come play at the local Bridge club and she said, "Oh, I don't know if I'm
interested, but maybe my son might be interested." It turns out she did go and take
lessons at the Bridge club herself and on the seventh lesson, she went to Hawaii and
she said, "I have one lesson left. I've already talked to the teacher why don't you go
and see what it's all about?"
They were teaching out of the Audrey Grant books. I read the book and went to the
class and the teacher was basically just teaching out of the book. I'd already learned
everything from the book that she was teaching and she, I guess was impressed with
me so she asked me to play one day after that lesson. We went and played in the
club, that was my very first game that I ever played and we won. From there, I was
just instantly hooked.
Then the guy who bought the book from my mother was also-- he was a local pro
he'd played locally, so then he asked me to play and we won. I won my first two
duplicate games and from there, it was-- I found a young Russian guy I started
playing with, exchange student Alexi [unintelligible 00:04:49]. I don't even know
what's happened to him now, but we started playing quite a bit. We were winning a
lot and then I found one of my longtime partners, Negi Campbell and we just went
from there. That was all before I actually became professional myself.
John: Did your mom have the Audrey Grant book as part of being in the club?
Greg: Yes. The class gave her the books. It was four books, I guess, the Club
Series, Diamond Series, Heart Series.
John: You read it before you went to have the-- You were reading it while she was
studying it?
Greg: It was a quick read for me so no. I had read it when she told me to go to the
class. I'd read it in one night, the book that they were teaching out of, which was just
the Club Series, but she had bought all the books, the clubs, diamonds, hearts and
spades. I ended up reading all of those and then 100 or 200 more books after that.
John: Was this in San Antonio? You live in San Antonio now is that where you--
Greg: No, at the time I lived in Dallas, Arlington. Arlington, Texas, between Dallas
and Fort Worth, that's where I grew up. I was going to college-- I think I'd just
finishing dropping out of college. I never really graduated and so my mom was just
probably looking for something for me to do.
John: How did you get the job as the poker dealer?
Greg: I got the job because the poker dealer, the guy who actually bought the Bridge
book, is the same guy. He ran his own poker club. I was waiting tables at the time
and he's like, "Stop doing that. Why don't you come deal poker for me every now and
then?" Then I played a lot with his wife actually, as one of my first partners.
John: Was that a legal game, or was it an illegal game?
Greg: I don't know that it was in the up and up or not, but I made all my money from
tips. He didn't pay me anything. All my money came from tips, but it was fun. I did
that for about four and a half years. It was about the same timespan that I was
learning Bridge and then once I made the transfer over to professional Bridge player,
I stopped dealing the poker.
The games started drying up too because in poker, you really need to have some
people to support the game because otherwise, if you don't have the players that
keep coming, that are willing to lose the money day in and day out, then the game
will fall apart. You can't just have a whole bunch of really expert players because
nobody can do well except for the house.
John: What were the circumstances whereby you learned about Bridges as a
profession?
Greg: One of my partners I think clued me in on it. Another good player we were
playing and I think at one point he just said like, those professionals always doing
whatever and I was like, "What are you talking about professionals Bridge players or
whatever? People are professionals? I thought we were just playing for fun." I don't
know. That attracted me. I was like, Well, then if people-- and he's like, "Yes, they go
to regionals and regionals and that's all they do is play Bridge." I was like, "It sounds
like a life for me."
John: What sort of steps did you take to get yourself to that level?
Greg: I read a ton and ton, ton of books. I was wanting to become a Bridge player
professional, but I had no idea where to go. I never even asked for my first gig. I
think Billy Miller gave me my first gig as a side pair me and my partner, Negi. We
had played on his team. From there, Bruce Ferguson was helping me out quite a bit
too and I played a lot on his teams and just grew from there. Once you start getting
in and start doing well, it perpetuates itself.
John: You started out playing-- you weren't playing with clients initially?
Greg: Right.
John: You're under filling at a team you were not [crosstalk].
Greg: Yes, I was filling at a team. I didn't ever have a regular partner yet either early
on. Nowadays, I mostly play with clients. I don't do so much partner anymore, but I
still do that occasionally. Currently, I'll be playing with Josh Donn if it ever gets back
to live Bridge which hopefully won't be too long.
John: Do you guys have a deal?
Greg: We're supposed to play on the Philly's Fireman's team for the next cycle.
Other than that, I don't have any deals for regionals or say anything, but that's our
cycle team. Which has Summer with a [unintelligible 00:08:58] then the Fall, all the
Fall and the Spring for that. We had them for this last year too, but there was no live
Bridge. Right when we were about to play in our first one was the Summer Nationals
got canceled. Even the Spring Nationals got canceled, but I was on another team
playing with David Grainger. That tournament got canceled. We basically decided to
do the same cycle because we had never really played.
John: You think the Summer Nationals are going to happen like live in-person?
Greg: I'm hoping so. I wouldn't bet on it yet, but I sure hope they will. I miss live
Bridge. I like holding the cards in my hands. I like being at the table with the people.
You can pull in a lot more like sometimes you know that they were actually thinking
opponents as opposed to like, "Oh, did the cat come in and you turn around and pet
the cat or did the doorbell ring?" You don't really know what's going on when you're
on the computer. Although have you played on RealBridge yet?
John: Yes.
Greg: The RealBridge platform is really nice because there you at least have being
face-to-face because they're there always, and it's also nice if you play a team game
on one of those. Recently they held the USBF JLall online on RealBridge, and it's
pretty fun because in between the matches-- when you start off, you're sitting with
your teammates. You can chat with your team and all four of you are there like a
team, and then when it's time to play then boom, it just changes, and you're at the
table with your opponents. Then it's even great because when you get a hand, then
North and East are together, South and West are together.
It simulates the screens and you can't no longer see your opponent or your partner
until the hand is over. Then you have a brief 10-second window where you can-
should we be playing this over this or whatever? You could hit the pause button to do
it, but I like the RealBridge quite a bit. It really adds that extra element, and you don't
have to Zoom. I've also played some other games we're Zooming on the side, but it's
not the same as the RealBridge. RealBridge is really great. It's brand new relatively,
but I'm sure they're doing updates to it all the time and improving the software and
functionality and features and all that.
John: Do they IMP the scores in Real Bridge or do you actually compare with your
teammates?
Greg: No, they IMP it for you. In fact, it's great because as soon as you finish, you
can see all the IMPs from what your team has done and you see the board as it, but
you can't go and actually kibitz them but you see the scores. Real good for review
because you can go back and see how they played it and all that stuff. That is the
one good thing about online Bridge versus live Bridge is the hand record and record-
keeping of the plays and all that stuff which you don't really have in live Bridge. A lot
of times you go in over a hand in live Bridge and maybe somebody doesn't quite
remember exactly how it went or a day later or two days later, it starts to lose it.
I play so many hands at Bridge, it's hard to really remember hands these days. They
all blend together. I don't know [laughs], but having the online record is really nice.
That part is nice about online Bridge.
John: I agree. I played in the premier pairs in the Fall Online NABC. Geoff Hampson
sat in my seat for example. I could look at every deal, see the cards he played.
That's really cool.
Greg: That's really good too. I do that all the time in between, I play a ton of these to
BL things and all the regional two session events and I play fair amount regularly on
just the regular small tournaments, but in between, you have five minutes and you go
and see all the results and, "Oh, that was a weird result, what happened?" You can
go and look and again if everybody's making five and you see like they are getting
different leads or played something wrong or incorrectly or whatever, and you can
compare and check it out. It's nice.
John: Yes, you anticipated one of my questions. I was going to ask you if you had a
favorite event and while you haven't said you have a favorite event of this since the
COVID, but it sounds like RealBridge has been really positive for you.
Greg: Yes, I do like RealBridge. My favorite events are obviously the Spingold or the
Vanderbilt. Those events. I've been playing a lot also of the OCBL and the Alt. It's
really nice because we get to play against a lot of Europeans and there's a lot of
strong Europeans and their systems are way different than what we're used to here
in America and it's fun to compete against new styles and new treatments.
John: Have you had any good wins in the online era?
Greg: The online era, I haven't had any wins. I've made the quarter-finals once and
the semifinals once and those event. They're very tough, some of those events,
really tough teams, world-class players all-around. Great events though. I like
playing stronger competitions. I don't like playing when people don't know what
they're doing, not because they're going to get me or anything like that, but it's not
the same. You can't take as much inferences and it's no fun when you win to beat
bad players. It's more fun to beat the good players. It means more. It means
something when you do. Yes, they're very tough. They're very tough. Top players in
those events.
John: What's it like seeing your former sponsor, Mike Levine doing so well?
Greg: Oh, I'm happy for him. He's got a great team now. They're playing with the
Meckwell, they have the Norwegians. Yes, Hellness and Helgemo.
John: Hellness and Helgemo.
Greg: He has a great team right now and they deserve to do well, so I'm happy for
him.
John: Are you and Kay playing in the Christina's event that starts tomorrow? The
Mixed Pairs.
Greg: No. Kay and I are in the Alt league, the Alt Open league, and it's like the last
week of most months, it's 10 months long, anyway.
John: 10 months long?
Greg: Something like that. You don't have to play in all of them, but it's 10 weeks
total. It's a long event. I think they're playing for different types of leagues where you
move up and down. That's like a more European style. They have these leagues
where once they break you into leagues, the top 10 teams will be on whatever they
call bracket one or whatever. Next 10 teams in the second bracket. Then after a
season is over, they move the bottom one or two pairs down from top league to the
next league and they'd move the first and second pair from the second league up to
the top league. Therefore you can change leagues.
John: Going back to your start in the game. You won the 2003 North American with
Nagy and you came second twice in 2005, 2006. How did you two start?
Greg: It was interesting. I asked him to play one day-- we had played against them
and he had a lot of talent taking tricks and stuff. He was a very, I would say wild,
aggressive, bitter, but it paid off for him very well. He could take his tricks and he
knew what was happening, defended quite well. I asked him to play and he actually
said no at first, and then later he asked me to play so I said no. Then we ended up
playing after that, and we played for quite a long time. We played several years
together.
John: You said no just out of quid pro quo?
Greg: Yes, it wasn't too much longer after that we started playing, but anyway, I was
moving onto professional Bridge. That wasn't really his life. He had a family and he
had his own company and stuff like that that he had to run. He wasn't really looking
to be a full-time Bridge player like I was. I moved on because of that. It had nothing
to do with anything other than that.
John: You and Granger were playing strong club, I think.
Greg: Yes, played a lot with David and I played several years in a played strong
club. Actually, I was on a team. Chris Compton added me for one event as a fill in
and I got to play with the Geoff Hampson. Geoff Hampson filled me on in precision. I
had never played it. I played [unintelligible 00:16:45] so it wasn't too bad, but he
walked me through the basics and taught [unintelligible 00:16:49] in about three
hours in an afternoon, we played an event together.
I played a whole week with Geoff Hampson. I played one event with Bobby Levin.
That was the one that Compton had got me to play for one knockout. I got to play
with Bobby Levin. We did not play precision there, but Hampson taught me the
precision and that was fun to get to play with Hampson for a week. That was really a
pleasure. One of my great experiences. Play with Bobby Levin also was fun too.
John: You played with Geoff as a pro pair on a regional team.
Greg: Right. Yes, for one week. That was the end of my-- It wasn't like we were
forming a partnership or whatever. Chris just put together this team and put us
together.
John: Circumstances whereby, "Geoff, you want to play?" Or you said, "What
system do you want to play?"
Greg: I think he asked me, and I was like, "I would like to learn the precision. I've
been wanting to do that." He said, "Okay, I'll go over the card and tell you what we
play over one club and one diamond opener, and then you tell me what we play over
one major and one [unintelligible 00:17:48] opener." That was a give and take.
That way he wouldn't totally overload. We didn't do a lot of-- I'm sure our system
wasn't anywhere near what him and Greco play or anything like that, but it was a
very good intro to the system.
From there then, like anything else, I like the deal system, but I take bits and pieces
from everybody. I don't really just copy anybody's systems. I wouldn't say that I make
up the majority of my stuff, but I do have my own ideas as well. I usually just take
pieces from here and there and mix and match a mesh of what you learn. I always
think it's great to learn to play different things from everybody, and then you can
decide what you like and take the things that you like and the things that you don't
care for as much, you can replace them.
John: Are you in Josh playing strong club.
Greg: We also play strong club, very similar to the same system that David and I
played. Although we are making a few changes.
John: What do you like about strong club over a natural system?
Greg: I don't know that I really prefer it a lot over one or the other. I think that you
can do just as well with either. The best part about precision to me is when you don't
open a club. A diamond opener can be a little bit messy too, but when you open a
major, that's when you really cleanup because your partner knows you're limited and
you get lots of good options for like one heart pass four hearts and they don't know
whether they should come in or not because where everybody else they can't just do
that with four tripple three, because they're fearing that you may miss a slam
because their partner could have a big moose over there, but you don't have that.
I like that part of it. The preemption part is a little bit nasty when you open a club.
There's downsides to that and that the two club opener can be bad because you
often sometimes miss four-four fits when you don't have game. When you have
game values, it's not so bad, but when you don't have game values, a lot of times it
might go one club, one spade, two spades, and there you are.
When we open two clubs we're like, we don't know if we can bid in the six one club
fit. When we had a five, four spade fit that's not fun sometimes, but I don't know. Like
anything, it creates swings and you got to be able to deal with sometimes that a
swing costs you board, but it also swings gain you boards as well. I don't think the
system really matters. What matters is what you play, that your system covers all the
bases. Your system covers how to invite, how to game fours, how to sign off, and
that kind of thing, and the various different things like in what suits you're going to
play in the strains. As long as you have all those, you can combine them, it doesn't
really matter, in my opinion, what you play.
John: When you and Josh started playing together, how did it go in terms of did you
send him notes? Did you sit down and create a new set?
Greg: I just sent him the notes that I had with David and asked him look it over and if
he wanted to change anything, just feel free to tell me. I think it was good to start
with something and then go from there as opposed to just-- I wasn't sending him the
notes saying, "This is what we're playing." I'm saying this is what we'll start with.
John: How many pages [unintelligible 00:20:45]
Greg: Surprisingly, my system notes are very small. Even with David, we had 23
pages of notes, I think, that's it. I have a lot of plug and play, I call them plug and play
where I use same techniques in a lot of places. You write the technique once and
then you plug it in. For example, it's named different things, but people call it woody
or mulberry or four club, four diamond RKC or whatever. That's all the same thing.
We play a relay structure where we pattern out, and so I use the woody in that
sequence. It's in the to diamond opener, it's in a lot of places. Once you have the
woody notes, which is like half a page, then you can plug it in. I'll have one page
where it says woody like 25 times. If I were to expand all those notes out, that makes
it quite a bit.
John: Right. What's your two diamond opener?
Greg: For precision, it is short diamonds. I always say it's 4-4, 1-5, which is 14 cards
minus any card. The woody is really good when you know-- The relay structure, a lot
of times I play one of a major then we play two clubs relay. To me it doesn't work as
well to in a standard system.
That's another part that I like about precision. Since we're limited, we can basically
pattern out the opener just defined as distribution and since our range is very narrow,
then we can just make a sign off or a slam try or a key card auction [unintelligible
00:22:10] known as pattern. The woody just says which one of those you're doing.
You start all your slam tries with four clubs.
Four clubs is a puppet four diamonds, and we make a natural slam try, inviting
partner to bid again if they'd like, but not forcing them to, then you have your in signal
which is four diamonds, which is a relay four hearts saying like, "I've heard enough.
I'm going to sign off somewhere" and then we keycard, keycard, keycard in any of
the three suits. The relay is just to pattern out the partner and then decide on the
strain and level.
It doesn't always work. Sometimes, it's harder for us to find some nice two fits
because it's easier if we know our partner has an opposite or a three little, then we
might be able to find a five two fit, but it's harder to find some five two fits when they
don't have a stopper in a suit. We don't know that. We know the partner has two
diamonds and I have a jack third, and I don't know-- is it diamonds, king queen or
ace king or what?
All in all in the end, I think a lot of good boards by knowing the exact distribution of
partners' hands where a lot of people have no idea where their shortness is like one
spade, two hearts, three hearts. Now I cue bid, and now you cue bid four clubs. Was
that a single 10 club or is that the ace of clubs? It really would make a difference. For
us, we'll know because we wouldn't even start with one spade, two hearts. We would
start with one spade, two clubs and pattern out, and then we would know about the
stiff club if we had one every time.
John: I should interfere over your one major, two clubs auctions or one spade
[unintelligible 00:23:42].
Greg: You got to be careful because we played penalty doubles over those. We turn
the relay off. It can be weird though, because we're bidding two clubs with six hearts.
One spade, two clubs with six hearts and you're like, "Oh, throw in my king jack fit
the hearts." check, check, double. Okay. You would have never bid two hearts had I
known you had six hearts to the ace queen to nine.
John: In 2010, you won the mixed team World Championship team. I think you told
me it was formed basically the night before the event.
Greg: It was formed the night before. I had gone to the World Championships not to
play in this event. I went to go play in the World Open Pairs. The World Open Pairs
is five sessions of qualifying, five sessions of semi-qualifying and then five sessions
of finals. We got knocked out after the semifinals. What are we supposed to do? My
partner went home and I had nothing but I was still going to be there, and so I
wanted to play in any kind of world event I had.
I asked Betty and Kennedy. She has passed now, unfortunately, but she was a good
friend of mine. I played on teams with her a few times. I had told her that I would be
looking for the mixed teams if she knew of anybody. She said she couldn't play. We
hadn't finished getting knocked out, but we were pretty sure we we're getting
knocked out of the semifinals My partner was going to be leaving.
We would have had to have a 70% game to qualify. Now, JoAnn Sprung comes
along and drops a note off at my table saying, hear you're looking for a game or
whatever. We had never played before. I didn't even know JoAnn Sprung. We
teamed up, and we didn't even fill a card that night. We filled a card in the morning.
We had a married couple, the Johannessen's from California.
That was the only established pair we had, and I think Daniel Lavee and Connie
Goldberg were a new partnership also formed. They also agreed to play the night
before. Here we are, two brand new partnerships playing in the World Swiss Mixed
Teams, and the team was just running really, really well. We almost led all the way
from front to finish. I think we lost the lead going near the end stretch, which was the
worst time to lose it, but we got back up and won the last match to pull ahead to win.
I think we won by like seven VPs. We pretty much almost lead from start to finish.
John: I guess it was a transnational team, and Daniel is Canadian. Did you get the
national anthem?
Greg: No, we didn't have any national anthem.
John: Do you have a gold medal?
Greg: I have a gold medal. It's not made out of gold, but it's a gold medal.
John: I know, Greg. We've played together. We've played a couple tournaments
together. I'm just telling the audience. I would say you're a pretty unassuming guy.
You're not out there puffing your chest. How many times do you think you've told
people that you're a world champion in Bridge?
Greg: Not often at all. I think my wife told some of her work people who I hang out
with. They're non-Bridge players, and they're the most impressed anybody. I don't
think I really tell people, particularly Bridge players, but I've told some non-Bridge
players that I won a World Championship, but I really don't do that that much.
John: You mentioned your wife, Patty. Were you and Patty married in 2010 when
you won the event?
Greg: Yes. We got married in '07.
John: Did you meet at a Bridge table or at a Bridge tournament?
Greg: Yes, we met at a Bridge tournament. I remember the first time-- we had met
and maybe we had been dating for just a little bit. I played a midnight game with
some of her friends and that was the first time we had ever played. We had this
curious auction where a club, a diamond, a heart, and I bid a spade. This is only us
bidding. I thought we were playing 4C/4C in the game-- Something, I don't
remember. Maybe a no-trump.
I bid two hearts, I'm planning on her bidding again and it went all pass. It was a funny
hand because I was trying for slam. She made six hearts, four three. I had delayed
raised with three hearts only, just trying to get some more information, but she was
all flustered and everything, we had missed a slam. I said, "Don't worry about it
because they're going to be in six no-trump and six no-trump has no play."
Sure enough, they were six no-trump, they went down one. We probably would have
been on six also, I don't think I was going to find the four three heart fit. I was just
fooling around to see if she had some more information to give me. Anyway, that's
my first memory of the hand that I played with my wife.
John: Was she in Philadelphia when you won?
Greg: No. She doesn't come with me that often at all when I'm playing Bridge. She
plays locally. She herself was in Collegiate Championships in 1996 beating Darren
Wolpert, who has played for Stanford. She played for A&M, and I think it was 1996.
Before we had met, they won the Collegiate Championship, her team.
John: I didn't realize that Darren went to Stanford.
Greg: I could be wrong on that. Don't quote me. I can tell you that I'm not 100%, but
she said it was Darren Wolpert. It was one of the Wolpert's she beat. I'm pretty sure
it was Darren and I'm pretty sure she said it, Stanford.
John: [unintelligible 00:28:28] left school on September 11, University of Toronto,
as he said here on the Setting Trick. Did Patty know that you were in contention? I
guess, because the event was multiple days and we were winning most days
[unintelligible 00:28:39].
Greg: Okay. She really kibitz, sort of watching, and that was very interesting. They
had the Bridge [unintelligible 00:28:46] in the World Championships, and you could
put in the contract and the opening lead. You could almost watch live because that
being fed online, and then they would have access to the hand records after the
hands are done. She could like-- What was happening the scores, so she could see,
Oh, yeah, on the hand, they led the this against your that.
She didn't know the auction or anything, but she knew the contract and the opening
lead and was able to-- Most of us can almost imagine how they'll go a lot of the time.
Sometimes may be different based off the auction, a lot of times it really defines itself
just by the play. It was was fun for her I'm sure, exciting for me.
John: Did you call your mom?
Greg: Yes, I did. I did call my mom. Actually, the other thing, Patty was at the
Nationals when I won. This is funny. 2003, when I won the Swiss Teams, the North
American Swiss, she was there for the whole time, but she had to leave at the end.
There, she was kibitzing, but I think that she left for the last two. She maybe saw the
first day or whatever. When we won, she left, and I was like, "We won. We won." I
had called her.
It is a funny thing because that was in New Orleans, and at the time I had no money.
I was dead broke. We were staying at a cheap place across, we had to take a ferry.
We were taking the ferry back and forth. We didn't stay at New Orleans. We were
taking a ferry and I won that last night and we were running for the ferry to try to
make the last ferry after winning and doing the pitcher and all that stuff for the
bulletin.
I remember the night before I had actually host hotel with some friends and so I had
my suitcase and then I'm trying-- I'm running with this trying to catch the ferry
because if you don't catch the ferry, it was going to be like an hour and a half taxi or
something around the water, but I barely made the ferry.
John: That was just a team of friends. That wasn't professional.
Greg: Right. That was before I had my first gig. That was the one that probably got
me my first gig because we won that four-handed. We played every board.
John: Oh, so you didn't get your first thing with Billy Miller until after you won both.
Greg: It was four, I think maybe at the first gig, something like that. It may have been
a little bit later when I first found out about the Bridge player. I'm not very good with
dates, but I do know that my first game was like midway through in 1996 and my first
game was 04 ish. It probably took me about two years to find out about Bridge as a
professional.
John: Is your mom a life master?
Greg: Don't know if she is or not, but she'd play for very long. She played and then
she got tired of it and she may be a played like two years, three years. She probably
maybe she isn't a live master. I don't think so. She probably is not, she definitely
didn't do very many regionals, so I don't think she had her gold points.
John: You told me a great story once about Ira [unintelligible 00:31:29] and
preempting. Will you tell about how he lets the hand decide?
Greg: Sometimes you have these decisions where it's very close. You're like it's not
a hundred percent which way to go. Should I open this hand three or four spades or
two or pass or whatever it is and it's the closest session and so he told me that he
often lets the hand aside. Meaning he starts reaching towards the bidding box, not a
hundred percent sure which one he's going to do and then at the last minute, the
hand just goes for one of them. Then that's the one he'll do. There's another great
story from Ira.
His vision isn't the best and so there was one time. This is the greatest thing. So his
right-hand opponent had opened, I think a heart and Ira had overcalled tween 10 six
of clubs, and then they're defending some heart, whatever it was, and so now Ira
decided to lead his stiff hearts. I think it was four hearts. He leads the stiff spade and
at this moment after the hits table, he realizes now that he did not ace queen 10 fifth
of clubs, and he had ace in one spade.
He, effectively, instead of leading [unintelligible 00:32:42], he under led his ace on
one spade and had over-called two clubs with the queen-high suit. The dummy hit
with King Jack of spades, played the Jack and then the [crosstalk] and now his
partner underlet in one club that Claire had King Jack of that suit. So Jack to his
queen fifth, and now he cashes ace of spades and played a club to his partner who
gave him a spade rough and then he gave his partner a club rough.
[laughter]
John: Oh, man.
Greg: The things that happened in Bridge.
John: Do you have any more Ira?
Greg: Not at the moment. There's some more-- Ira is a great guy. Ira reminds me of
the guy for Back To The Future, the science. If you don't know Ira and you see this
guy, he's like a splitting image and he's brilliant. He's a PhD professor and a very
good Bridge player too and a funny guy and one of the nicest people you'll meet.
John: Have you played an event today?
Greg: I played in the two-session regional this morning.
John: Yes. How many consecutive days have you played in a Bridge event? Is it
every day for you?
Greg: No, it's not every day. I play about half the time, every other day. My longest
streak though ever, one time when I was on the regionals, I played five consecutive
regionals in a row where they had a day off and it was only because of the holiday
and it was travel day or whatever, but other than that, I was traveling and playing on
the same day, like play Sunday, travel Sunday night, play Monday, and did that five
weeks in a row. It does start to get a little tiring, but I caught a second wind, and then
like after you start playing so much, I feel isn't it rhythm.
File name: Greg Hinze.mp3
12
When COVID started and they canceled the tournaments in March, I don't even think
I played online for months. I sat at home doing nothing, basically, for two months and
then started playing online and I was horrible at first. You get in the groove and it's a
different environment. You're clicking instead of playing cards. To me, I played much
better in person than online. Online, there's just distractions around the house and
it's harder for me to focus.
Although I've gotten used to it now, July, August, I started playing quite a bit. Since
August, I've been playing quite a bit but at the beginning, I was like, what are you
doing? You're watching the spots and stuff like that. It's hard to play that way, but
once you get used to it clicking instead of pulling a card, it's easier.
John: Do you think that the format that Bridge has been for the last however many
years pre-COVID-- do you think that's going to come back with regionals and
everything?
Greg: I think that a lot of people want that. Maybe not everybody. I just hope that--
I'm worried a little bit of those. I'm not worried about the future of Bridge, Bridge is
such a grand game. I don't think that it will die. I would rather see it go to in-person
for several reasons versus cheaters. That's been a big topic of these days, but
Bridge itself won't die. It's too good of a game. There's no better game than Bridge,
but as far as going to regionals or having the club games, I haven't even played it.
Maybe like once a year or something playing a game. I really didn't do club games
anymore. I pretty much just played regionals and nationals, but I do hope that it
comes back.
I think it will. Almost everybody I talked to says they miss going out to the game. Just
a matter of whether the general public, which is older population, are they going to
fear catching COVID and that may be the reason that they don't want to go. We'll
see.
John: How often do you play with Patty?
Greg: Not too often. We play local sectionals when I'm off. When I'm not being hired,
we'll play together at local sectionals. It usually ends up being about a year. I haven't
played with her-- I played a couple of times online recently, like when I play with Kay
and Kay can't do a session and we're in a long event or whatever. So she'll play.
When I was traveling a lot, I would basically play with her about five weekends a
year, I would guess. Maybe 15 days a year.
John: I'm dating a Bridge player now. We played in the event last night where we
played against you and Kay. You said hello in the private chat and it took me a while.
I don't know if you noticed, but it took me a while to respond because I was so bad.
Do you get frustrated with Patty for what you think are poor plays?
Greg: Depends on my mood. Like sometimes-- if they've been adding up, adding up,
I'll get more frustrated, but I am not so frustrated, particularly in real life when you're
face to face, but being behind the computer where nobody can see you, I often find
myself yelling at the screen or whatever, but in person, no, I really don't. Of course, I
always understand, I don't play perfectly. Nobody does. My partners understand my
mistakes. So, therefore, I try understanding their mistakes.
John: It says here that your favorite Bridge memory is winning the Swiss teams.
Greg: Yes, at the time that I wrote that, that probably was. Because I wrote the
Bridge winners profile is probably where you found that at the time, since then, I may
have had some more fun memories. I've never been in finals of a Vanderbilt or
Spingold. Recently with the Levine team, we played. It wasn't the same Levine team
that I'd always been on, but he wasn't going to go actually, instead of Eddie Wold,
who was on another team, Orin Kriegel played with Levine and we had a good run
where we got the third, fourth losing to Nickel in the semifinal, but making it that far
on that team was really good because our team was like 25th or something in that.
We really weren't even supposed to be that far, and that was a pretty exciting run for
me because that was the first time that I really tasted for a moment that I can almost
taste that we were going to really do something good, but Nickel decided, they told
us-- with their cards and their bids that we were really going to be doing it. I think we
withdrew after being down like 80 or 90 or something. So anyway in their front four
was about to be playing.
John: This was Memphis.
Greg: I think maybe, maybe it was recently maybe like three years ago or two or
three years ago. I [crosstalk] the Colonel [unintelligible 00:38:53].
John: Do you remember, we played the Washington and ABC together. We played
as partners and there was a hand we played that when we opened the bidding and
they overcalled a heart, one spade denied four spades?
Greg: I played that before. You were trying to tell me this story, I think a while back,
and you said that I bid in spades and I bid one speed without spades. I don't
remember the final details or where we got, but you were trying to tell me the story. I
really, honestly, the only thing that I remember about this is that you told me about a
month ago, when you just told me we were going to do this interview and I don't
remember it actually happened. I don't know how high we got.
John: We did get to a slam.
Greg: Six spades?
John: [unintelligible 00:39:39]
Greg: I probably thought you were like 7/5 you bid spades so many times.
John: Oh my gosh. Would you say that making four spades in the last deal of the
mixed team, would you say that's your best? Is that your best played?
Greg: I don't know. I briefly remember that's the article they wrote up, I guess, in the
New York Times I briefly remember [crosstalk]
John: The squeeze and play.
Greg: Yes, I think that they could have actually beaten me earlier in the hand but
then they didn't.
John: Do you have a best-played hand?
Greg: No. First time I consciously did a double squeeze but turned out it didn't
matter, but it was one of my favorite hands because I knew I was going to do it but
the queen and one diamond popped up on-site, so it didn't even matter what I did. I
don't think I have any favorite all-time best plays. I actually don't remember a lot of
my hands. After about a week or so, they disappear.
John: I want to ask about Justin Lall but I understand if it's too soon.
Greg: No, you can ask me about Justin.
John: He called you the Swiss Master in our research.
Greg: Yes, he dubbed me the Swiss master because all my wins were in Swisses,
the Jacoby Open Swiss, North American Swiss, I've been second in the Roth Swiss,
the North American Swiss twice, I won the Roth's Swiss Teams, I have another
second, the Levin Team in the Swiss, and I have lots of top 10 finishes and I've
always been in the round of eight and the Spingold like twice, so I guess that's why
he calls me Swiss Master. All my good results are from Swiss.
John: Do you remember meeting Justin?
Greg: Yes, I do remember meeting Justin. Justin was a friend of my wife before. He
lived in San Antonio which my wife had lived all her life and she played Bridge with
Justin for a couple of years and he was like 13, 14 years old, and she would go pick
him up from the hub and they would play. My wife learned how to play the Bridge
from Justin and she was in her late teens. Justin in the process of moving from San
Antonio to Dallas, maybe he had already moved and he was going to go-- at that
time my wife lived in San and I lived in Arlington and Justin was in Dallas having his
mother living in San Antonio.
Justin was going back to San Antonio, I played against him one time. I remember I
played against and beat a grand slam, that required a 3-2 Trump break, a finesse,
and then a squeeze and it all came to fruition, Justin, I remember, made a comment,
he said, "Nice bidding" a little sarcastically. That was pretty much my only interaction
with Justin.
Now I was dating Patty and I was going go up to San Antonio to visit her and Justin
needed to go back to San Antonio to visit his mother. She was already friends and
played with Justin, so she said Greg is coming down, he can take drive you down.
Justin came over to my house, we were going to leave early in the morning, so he
spent the night in my house and we had a lot in common. I liked to play video games
and he played video games and stuff like that, so we instantly hit it off and then we
drove down, he liked the music that I was driving around the car, and we instantly
became friends.
I played quite a bit of Bridge over years and then he moved. He really became
accomplished pro much sooner than I and played. Justin is one of the smartest
people that I have ever met. One of the greatest, fairy at giving, I miss him a lot. He
was one of my very very close friends. That was the first time we had met. Here we
are, we don't even know each other driving him to San Antonio.
John: That's a nice tribute, man. He is a great guy. Yes, he really is. I've never met
Patty, but I saw that her picture on Facebook was of her and Justin. I didn't realize
how they knew each other and that they knew each other so well.
Greg: Yes, she knew Justin two or three years before I ever met him, One time they
were probably best friends and that was what he was younger. When you get older,
things change, but they were still very good friends.
John: I think that's something that's cool about Bridge is that you could become best
friends with somebody who's twice your age. In that age, as a 14-year-old, and that's
something that I think that's pretty unique about the relationships that are forged in
Bridge.
Greg: Yes. You find all kinds of people in Bridge. We have Nobel Prize winners and
all kinds of people, all walks of life and we have a [unintelligible 00:44:09] we all
understand each other. It's really great, there's a connection. You talk to a Bridge
player and you never even met the guy before, you can talk the conversation and
everybody else around you is like, "What are these guys doing? What are they
talking about?" Ace four, three little, I don't get it. You're speaking English words but
none ever makes sense.
John: Yes, one of the challenges about having this podcast is like who do I want the
audience to be? There's been a couple of conversation where I've thought, "I wonder
if I should get Greg to go back a little bit so that people will understand who are
maybe not as familiar with Bridge as you and I are, not to do that" [laughs] each time,
so they might be listening on YouTube about 300 people on this conversation.
Greg: 300 people that don't play Bridge or 300 total audience?
John: One of the piece of feedback that I have had from friends and people that
don't play Bridge that have listened to the show is that they just don't understand.
Greg: Yes. It really is some kind of game it's like my friends who like Bridge? I was,
"Do you have a week?" Then you'll just know the very basics, you won't even be
anywhere-- You can teach the basics there like, okay, you have to bid higher than
wherever. You can teach the concept but to really learn Bridge takes years and even
then, I've been playing for 24, 25 years and I still find myself finding a way later like if
I saw something that I didn't-- it's a game that I always tell myself like when I ever
feel like I've mastered the game of Bridge, you will no longer see me anymore and
that will never happen because I don't feel anybody can ever master it completely
where you're just playing totally perfect.
I'm not talking about double-dummy perfect, I'm talking about even single dummy
perfect. To play it although we all strive to do it but that keeps coming back. Another
thing that I love about Bridge is all the actions I've ever had, every time I go to
regional, I see a new action that I've never seen before, so it's really exciting to know
you can play hundreds of thousands of hands and still have new things happening all
the time.
John: Have you taught anyone?
Greg: You mean from beginning? No, I haven't taught anybody. As a Bridge Pro, I
teach people Bridge but I've never taught anybody from the intro level. Normally, I
prefer to have somebody have some experience, the basics down and then you can
work from there, but I've never really taught anybody from the very very beginning.
John: Do you still play Hearts?
Greg: No, I haven't played Hearts or Spades in years. I haven't played Spades or
Hearts really since I played Bridge.
John: I played Hearts with my parents and I play Hearts with a group of friends here.
Greg: That's fun. My grandfather played a game we call Taroky, I think maybe some
other countries have some variants of it, but it uses its own deck, it's a very fun
game. It's a four-handed game like Bridge, and you have a partner like Bridge but
the weird part about this game is, first of all, they have a trumps suit, it's a Roman
numerals are trumps, one through 22, and then they have eight cards in each suit
past the 22 trumps.
As a deal rotates, the dealer changes and the partner of the dealer is whoever has
the 19 trumps. The person who own 19 trumps and those who are partners is but the
other people do not. Part of the game is trying to figure out who your partner is by
the way the tricks are going and it's not about taking tricks, it's about taking certain
parts [crosstalk] worth it, so the way it plays is you're leading choosing your tricks
into your partner or throwing points on their tricks and stuff like that. You figure out
who the partner is, so every deal if you have a 19 on your own or whatever.
John: You're the dealer?
Greg: Yes, you are the dealer or anyway there's a draw phase. It's a complicated
game but it works similar to Bridge, but you must trump when you can't follow suit.
There's some different rules but the fascinating part to me is the fact that you'd start
of a deal.
John: Hinze is from? Is it Czech or Slovak?
Greg: Hinze is a German. All four of my grandparents were born in following
countries, that's Switzerland, Norway, Czechoslovakia and Germany. My name
comes from the German which I speak zero of.
John: What's your bold step?
Greg: My bold steps, watch the spots. The spots in Bridge mean everything.
Knowing when a seven is low versus high and knowing when to play it like how
many cards are lower than the card player, higher than the percentage chance that
that is a low card or high card. The spots in Bridge is everything.
John: If you could change one thing in Bridge, what would it be?
Greg: I don't know, I like the game. Think of an improvement really. Although I've
played variants of Bridge like Pass Left and stuff like that but like [unintelligible
00:48:56] to what you're drinking or something like that. I think Bridge is a brain
testing incidence.
John: I'm going to be interviewing Andrew Robson on the show soon and he said
something which I'd never heard before. He suggested-- this was in an interview that
was like 25 years ago, but he suggested having the opening lead take place after the
dummy has come down.
Greg: Interesting. That will improve a lot of opening sure. It wouldn't be like firing out
the base King and Queen Jack fifth and the dummy.
John: [laughs] Think about it like at one point they didn't have the dummy, they used
to play double-dummy as a two-person [unintelligible 00:49:34] game. You could
see all four hands essentially, two hands were down and I think that's where the
concept of the dummy came from.
Greg: I think the dummy is a good concept actually, I like it's a unique feature that no
other game has. Have you ever played Pass Left?
John: No.
Greg: Pass left, you bid the hand and after then everybody passes a hand to the left,
so you don't want to be bidding too much when you have a lot of high points
because you're about to pass all your points to the opponents. That is played without
a dummy, and so everybody can show us a little hand that every card that you pass
to your LHO opponent so you know which finesse and stuff to take. The bidding is
really tough because if you have four-triple-three yarborough, you're opening two
notrumps because you know that left is going to have nothing.
John: It's literally Bridge.
Greg: Yes, and that systems for it, say you're notrump and you're two, three majors,
so that's a perfect time to stayman. [chuckles] Because it'll be passed in three, and
then so when you respond to stayman, then you respond shortness, like, "Okay, I
have two or three spades," they'll be like, "Aha, we have a fit," because you have
short space and I have short space, so then you're-
John: [unintelligible 00:50:44] contracting.
Greg: Yes. I remember I was playing with Dan Korbel once and we bid to six
spades. It's really hard to beat a slam and pass left, but we had a great, great
auction that bid to six spades. Then there was some great play that Dan or
something to make.
John: All right, I don't have anything. I'm fresh out.
Greg: I'm fresh out too. It's been fun. It's been fun.
John: Yes man, definitely. Yes, it's good to see you.
Greg: Good to see you too. I know you guys are only hearing us but we actually
have the video here, so it's not [unintelligible 00:51:19].
John: Yes, right. Yes, that's true. Do you do anything to get ready online? Do you do
look at like bidding problems or any sort of warm-up?
Greg: No, not these days. I pretty much just play two-precision system and I have a
standard precision that I play with some partners and I've played them so much now
and there's not much difference so I haven't been having to do much studying.
Normally, like I played recently-- I played with Dan Korbel recently, we played in the
online knockout that I barely lost, but we normally have some discussion, we talk
about an hour, we have two page notes. Those, I review, always, when I'm in a new
partnership, I always review my notes, which I tried to keep to a minimum, but I
definitely review those before I play an event.
John: Would you be willing to share your two pages of notes with me or even the--
Greg: I don't even know if it was like notes, it's just like-- I can maybe find them but
you would be shocked. I can try to send them to you but it's not much there, it's just
names of conventions and maybe little-- like Dan wrote these up and sent them to
me like when we were talking so he had some feelers, they're not notes like you
would think, they're more like reminders we talked about.
John: Yes. No, I would just be curious to see those notes but it would be interesting
just to see what that looks like, for me.
Greg: Yes, sure.
John: All right.
Greg: It's been fun.
John: I appreciate you doing this and I look forward to seeing you in person.
Greg: Yes. We will again, we will again. Oh and I still have the socks that you gave
me.
John: There you go.
[00:52:59] [END OF AUDIO]