EPISODE 38: Mike Levine
Our first ever sponsor to be featured on The Setting Trick is Mike Levine. As many bridge players know, a match up against the Levine Team should be dreaded, unless one enjoys being demolished. In tow with his ultimate dream team, which includes two partnerships considered by many to be the greatest pairs of all time, Mike recently won the first 3 North American Online Bridge Championships in a row, a feat of absolute dominance.
In life, Mike Levine has somehow managed to top his massive successes at the bridge table; he is one of the world’s most illustrious inventors, holding more than 60 patents. Through his shared insights on topics like population control, I got to see the creative force behind his many inventions. I am excited to share my conversation with this fascinating man.
Episode Highlights:
2:28- The progression to the inception of Mike Levine’s current team
8:34- Mike isn’t the weakest player on his team???
11:25- Mike’s approach to bridge is understanding concepts logically, rather than memorizing
15:50- Mike’s recipe analogy to bridge
18:10- Mike doesn’t fully subscribe to the common wisdom for pros that “Your job is not to win. Your job is to not lose.”
19:00- Why Mike is willing to spend so much money to hire top players
25:10- Why Mike’s physical disability does not hinder him
29:04- The Lake Trail that Mike brought to existence
34:30- Mike’s education
36:05- One of Mike’s joke patents
39:52- Mike’s solution to global warming: prevent overpopulation
44:05- More thoughts on population control
48:00- “All things complicated are not useful”
53:40- Is Stayman really a convention?
58:35- An example of Mike’s “wonder bids”
1:03:15- Take a glimpse into Mike’s mind as a bidding theoretician
Transcript:
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, we are here today with an inventor, and also the driving force behind the hottest team in bridge, Mike Levine. Mike, thank you for joining us.
MIKE LEVINE: Thank you for having me.
JOHN MCALLISTER: You have won all three of the North American Bridge Championships – I guess you tied for first in one of them, but you have won all three of the knockouts that we’ve had online.
MIKE LEVINE: That’s correct.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Will you tell us about that?
MIKE LEVINE: Well, for me, it’s a lifetime dream in that I had a choice in college between, what my mother would call it, being a bridge bum, or being a good engineer. And thankfully, I was able to do both. And then, so, when I retired at age 48, I had to do a couple of – my wife said, “Do two things – something for your body, and something for your mind.” So, bridge came about on my mind, and body was tennis. And I said if I want to learn bridge quickly and make up for all the years that I was basically not playing, I needed to find somebody good.
And I made some inquiries, and out pops Zeke Jabbour and Chuckie Berger as the two best Michigan players. And Zeke was available, and we started a 25-year partnership. And so, I’ve been playing on a serious level. I have students and studying the game. And we went so far, but unfortunately, Zeke became sick with his Parkinson’s, and still is a good player, but not the same player. Unfortunately, now, he’s in a nursing home. But anyhow, great guy. And so, I guess I’m off the topic a little bit.
So, after Zeke, I tried like, Dennis Magary and whatnot. And I began to find that with relatively poor teams, we would get some international and national high scratches, like twice at the Transnationals with a team of non-experts, we would get into the knockout phase and stuff like that. But of course, with Zeke and I, and Mary owned, we were all the senior events, all the senior nationals. At one time, I was defending with both the senior knockouts and the senior Swiss. And we threw in a North American. So, that’s what Zeke and I were able to do during that time.
So, from there on, it took a while to settle on Eddie, and for Eddie to settle on me.
JOHN MCALLISTER: This is Eddie Wold, your current partner, is – Hall of Famer Eddie Wold.
MIKE LEVINE: Yeah, and the magic was so different in that Zeke actually wrote an article on my wonder bids. Like, I wonder what this bid means. And Eddie said, “You know, you’ve got good instincts. Try them out.” See if I can field them. And once we tried it out, see if you can field them, then I realized that I could codify these bids. And Eddie and I started to do very well.
And then, I don’t know what Meck said, but getting back to your point, picked Eddie and I. We didn’t pick them. I think it may have started that we beat the Nickell team in the Senior Nationals about three years ago and – because soon after that, Meck and Eric became available. And we talked and talked, and we created a team that had the nucleus of Eddie and myself, and Meck and Rodwell. And then, all of a sudden, the Norwegians became available.
So, all of my teammates at this point says. “You have to take the Norwegians. We have to settle this argument once and forever: who’s the best pair in the world?” And it’s Helgamo and Tor, or Meckwell. And we put it all together, which put me in a terrible spot because I’m saying I don’t want to disappoint my team. You know what I mean? I mean, we have a chance at the best team in the world, but it’s only going to work if I can play and not drag them down. So, I put all my creative energy into bridge, went 24-7 into bridge. And there’s a lot of technical things I could talk about later, or something like that, but – oh, here’s the best thing I did. Oren Kriegel was in tears, actually, because he realized he hadn’t gone to law school because he was concerned that bridge – you know, he’s 25 years old. And –
JOHN MCALLISTER: This is your former partner. Oh, he’s your coach.
MIKE LEVINE: He’s my coach. Eddie said, “You need a coach.” And that was great because we could drill hand after hand after hand on the web, on Bridge Base. You could set up hands. We actually pioneered new ground too technical for this blog, and I got an intellectual understanding of what takes tricks and what doesn’t take tricks, and the theme because – the philosophy of bidding.
And I changed the words – this one’s strong, this one’s stronger, and this is strongest. That’s silly words. This is above a minimum. This has – with a maximum in your hand in a fit, we’d like to proceed with the auction. Or, the strongest bid is, if you’ve got the right control, we’re going to be a slam.
So, once you reorganize your thought thinking, then you can figure out, in all combinations, are you saying, “I’m casually interested?” Or “I’m interested if you’re interested.” And then, the other one is, “I’m interested if you have the exact things that I need.” So, once you think of it that way, it applies clearly to almost all two-over-one bidding and stuff like that. And people have other names. They have names they choose for the serious –
JOHN MCALLISTER: Serious three no-trump.
MIKE LEVINE: Serious three no-trump, or a cue bid in this spot is demanding. You know what I mean?
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: Or repeat three of the major is simply, “I’m proud of my opener.” OK? And then, let’s explore further.
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, are you – Mike, are you saying you’re not the weakest player on the team? Is that what you’re saying?
MIKE LEVINE: I’m a scary player.
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: I have [inaudible] of being 83.
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: I have a – what did Curtis used to call – a brain fart. I’ll define a brain fart. Brain fart is the bid you made today, OK, that you wouldn’t have made yesterday, and you wouldn’t make tomorrow. [Laughter]
JOHN MCALLISTER: OK.
MIKE LEVINE: And so, being elderly, I’m more subject to that. Occasionally, a little more forgetful.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: On the other hand, I intellectualize the “why’s” – I’m the guy if you have to find the right bid to solve the right problem and get past your partner in the process. I can be myself. That’s where I do the best. I declare a play reasonable, but not – I watch my teammates play cards. There’s got to be a possible way and including – you come up with plays that I just can’t think of in real time. In a declare play, just when you need it, they’ve got it. If it’s in my wheelhouse, I’ll get it. If it’s not in my wheelhouse, I won’t.
Eddie is so intense. I mean, he – we could have won the hand by 15 MPs, but we still talk about – excuse me – what a schmuck I was to make…
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: You know what I mean. But anyhow, we get along really well.
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, Mike, here we are. I’m nervous. Thank you for joining me. You are, as we said – you’ve won the last three North American Online Bridge Championships. You’ve got a great team with – you’re playing with Hall of Famer Eddie Wold. You’ve got Jeff Meckstroth and Eric Rodwell. And then, you’ve got Tor Helness and Geir Helgamo.
MIKE LEVINE: Right.
JOHN MCALLISTER: This is an amazing team. As someone who hires professional bridge players and likes to play in these big events, this is a dream team that you have.
MIKE LEVINE: That’s true.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Meckstroth and Rodwell, arguably the greatest bridge partnership of all time, reached out to you.
MIKE LEVINE: Right.
JOHN MCALLISTER: And your partner, Eddie Wold, about playing. What’s that like? What’s it like to have Jeff Meckstroth and Eric Rodwell want to play on your team?
MIKE LEVINE: Scary. [Laughter] Because I’m so nervous that I will do something so stupid as to put the winning out of reach. You know what I mean? So, I don’t want to embarrass myself and our partnership with coming back with some terrible results, which also forced me to hyper focus. I have ADHD, so hyper focusing – if you think about bridge 24-7 and how it’s put together in a way that most people won’t…
Let me give you a sample, and maybe this will be helpful. In my mind, both Jacoby transfers and Stayman are not conventions. And why do I say that? Assuming everybody knows that you want the no-trump bidder to always declare when he has a flat, balanced hand, that says that the partner of the no-trump bidder – strong no-trump bidder – must always be a liar. He’s not allowed to bid what he has.
And so, therefore, he’s got two duties to get to a five-card major – you know, show a five-card major if he has one – and/or show, ask the no-trump bidder whether he has a four-card major so he can get into a four forfeit. And all the other bids, more or less, are simply what level. I’ve got 10, and partner’s got an opening no-trump, then it gets the game somewhere. So, the question is, is a five-three major (which is usually better), or a four-four major (which is usually better than no-trump) in MPs – matchpoints’ a little different. And so, therefore, one guy’s a liar. And now – so that there’s no memorization of these conventions. It’s just logic.
And so, Eddie and I play a few pieces of a sort of a more complicated relay than most. I’m not going to get into a lot of details. So, what you do is, we have the following capability, which is simply this. We can open two of a – two diamonds – a weak two. And we have the ability to find out – my partner is six – weak-two bidder is 6-4 and find his four card. So, if I’m interested in that, we can show singletons in certain suits, singletons in the majors. We can show four-card majors. We can show hands that are immediately weak or immediately 8-plus. And we assume when it goes two diamonds past two no-trump the partner, a 17-point player – she doesn’t need 17 points if you’ve got the right cards.
And so, therefore, these are all the possibilities. So, we can play all sorts of fancy things – not fancy things, logical things, without the weight of memorizing everything. Because in the past, I remember going on the card with Zeke, and we wouldn’t – [inaudible] came with, this is what you can do with all possible bids or one no-trump, and responses, and we memorize it. So, I memorize very few bids and derive the other bids by pure logic. And that does wonders for your game, I’ll tell you that. Just wonders.
And then, you get to answer the real problems. And, you know, a hand that I screwed up – I always win by the bad ones. So, partner opens a weak two. I’ve got a flat 17 with five spades. And now, how the heck – if partner’s got a three-card spade fit, even with a bad hand, we have a play for four spades.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: And how do I get to do that? So now, I can bid two spades and not absolutely force it. But if partner has three spades – you know what I mean?
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: Or even two spades and a big hand, he can push the auction forward safely. Past two spades, he’s got a bad hand. If he got zero one-spade retreat to his original major – his original weak two suit. And with three and something reasonable, a three-card fit, go on and it lays down for four-suit.
You take the burn out of bidding. Everybody wants to give you a recipe. What’s the difference between a good cook and a chef? A good cook is a good cook. A chef is a creator as well as a good cook. So, everybody wants to teach you to bid – you know, if you have 15 points, you bid this. If you have 19 points, you bid that. If you’re 22 points, you bid this. And nobody wants to give you the “why’s.”
And if you have 22 points, what do you need from partner to make a game? And it turns out what you need from partner to make a game is not points, it’s an entry. So, if I open – let’s say, two clubs play – a hand that shows 22-plus, the question I really have for partner is, “Do you have a potential entry?” And guess what? Two queens turns out to be the entry you need. So, two queens, a king or an ace is what we started bidding on those kinds of hands.
And so, it’s all the logic aspects, and everybody else wants to give you a recipe. People will hate me, but I’m willing to say this in public: it tends to be women prefer recipes. And the reason you lose a lot of men is – you’re a former business executive maybe coming back in there, you give up recipes a long time. Everything you do is you take the available facts and your own logic, and you make your own decisions. So now, let’s get away from the recipe theory and get into the logic theory. And if we change that, I think we get a lot more people to play bridge and make it more interesting because if you want to get back to bridge and husband and spouse both get to enjoy it, a man’s approach is different. God help me if all the women in the world are going to hate me, but [laughter].
JOHN MCALLISTER: We don’t have that many listeners, so. [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: Hey, you know, if I say outrageous things enough, we could get some more. How’s about that?
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter] Maybe. Maybe.
MIKE LEVINE: So, it’s become a passion and a different way of thinking. And now, of course, I’d like to use a four-letter word, but I want to bid. Now, Eddie says, “Alright, Mike, you know, and the best team in the world. You’re a great player, and we need to know all your insight. But what we need more from you is to play straight down the middle. Or, as Mike Cappelletti says, “Board’s on the table. Your job is not to win. Your job is to not lose.”
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: So, I say, “Eddie, I’m trying. But I play to win.” And so, I have difficulty not coming up with insights. But guess what? They still love me because I have a good percentage. When I take a bid that’s out of the ordinary, I’m right more often than I’m wrong. So, it’s still acceptable, but I occasionally get a 1400. But I also get my 1430s when I’m right, so they tolerate me.
JOHN MCALLISTER: When I talk to a non-bridge player, they’ll say, “Do you play for money?” And I say, “No.” There’s really no money in tournaments for – I mean, people can earn money playing professionally. But even when I hire a professional team, and we do well, we don’t earn money. And I think that’s a foreign concept to people – like, how you start sponsoring a team when there’s no – when the goal is strictly the satisfaction of doing your best against the best in the world.
MIKE LEVINE: Well, my rationalizations are simply this, is bridge is so addictive. I want to find out that if I spent the time like the professional bridge players, [inaudible]. I guess Meck is over 100,000 these days and stuff like that. What would I really be? So, I want to prove something to myself. And then, especially as you get older, there’s very few things in your life where you’re in the zone. The sweat is pouring down. You know what I mean? There might be a whole bunch of kibitzers that’s watching the table, but you’re invisible to that. And just to get that feeling again into the zone, it’s addictive like sex. I mean, the feelings are different, but the goal is the same.
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: It’s true. Well, hey, great lines when they come out that way.
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: But the goal is the same, you know? And when I stop and say how much money it’s costing, it’s ridiculous. You know what I mean?
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: But guess what? [Inaudible] When you have a few bucks, you start and then, you have a whole bunch of problems. The world problems, sickness, illness, death, COVID. You’ve got a spendthrift child or something like that. So, if you give the child more money to be more of a spendthrift, and if you don’t give them enough money, they go hungry. I mean, you have these kinds of conflicts, and you realize – you know, I went into business not to make money. I studied most people like the Carnegies and Rockefellers – gave it all away. They didn’t even want it.
So, at the end of the day, I see wealth as Scrooge McDuck sitting in his money bin. And the money bin, he had jewels and pendants, with needles sticking at him. So, what is he going to do? Go sit on his pile of gold and – can’t do anything with it. So, you use it for your own personal, [inaudible] enjoyment, and truly give it away.
I’m being nominated as we speak – there’s a Presidential Medal for technology and innovation. And as a voluntary team, I didn’t start it. It was about 15 people trying to get the right people to nominate and endorse me, and the right things said. And it’d just be a privilege to be on the potential list because it’s quite a big deal. Your title after you get the medal is a Laureate. I don’t know what that means, but I think a Poet Laureate sounds good to me. I’ll take a Poet Laureate.
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: So, these are the kinds of things that make – my life is anything but quiet. Same thing with the Bridge Hall of Fame. You and I have done work in the past, too. Contributed to bridge and a decent enough player, and decent enough results is serious. And I’m running for the Blackwood Board. I’ve got stuff like that. So, at 83, life is not quite simple at all. It’s more complicated than you could possibly…
And the bridge things are – I mean, as you said, nobody has won three in a row. And Tor said it right. He said, “Eddie and I always left him with a lead.” So, instead of claiming how good a bridge player I am or not, with the client out and with a lead, no team could want any better.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: And guess what? Remember, we tied two of the three. Without that, we wouldn’t have won. So.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Oh, you tied two of the three?
MIKE LEVINE: Yeah. We played against –
JOHN MCALLISTER: I know you tied Finn.
MIKE LEVINE: Oh, no, no. Officially, we won. Let me tell you about the first one. The first one was simple. I forget the guy’s name. It was a kid. Played him with him and a good group.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Oh, yeah. Finn Kolesnik.
MIKE LEVINE: Yeah, yeah, right. And I was playing against him all the time. A very good player. And so, the first one, all 12 of us decided to not have a playoff. And the reason is, I was going to be the oldest one that ever won one of those events, and he was the youngest one to –
JOHN MCALLISTER: Oh, wow.
MIKE LEVINE: So, that’s why we didn’t do it. But come the second one, we tied again. And –
JOHN MCALLISTER: Oh, and then you did have a playoff.
MIKE LEVINE: Then, we did have a playoff and then, we beat him, which is – I mean, it was blood. Nobody on the second one was going to give him the edge. And then, the third one just – actually, we had a very easy route because our opponents lost in the top five.
JOHN MCALLISTER: The higher seed.
MIKE LEVINE: A lot of it, except for us, by the time the finals came around. So, that wasn’t so hard because we had a competent team, but not a top-five team to play in the finals. So, we won that easily.
And then, it’s more than that because there’s all these online events, and I think we win at, like, half of them or more. You know, a laughing thing, I don’t know. [Inaudible] one, two, three, four, stuff like that. We’re always first – way up there in every one of them. It’s pretty consistent.
Also, my fear is as I get a little older, my game recall isn’t what it was five years ago. There’s a whole bunch of – I can see some aging differences. And my eyesight’s getting really bad. So, soon, I’ll have to quit. But Bob Dylan said it right: “Rail against the dying of the light.” So I said, “They’re going to have to bury me.” [Laughter]
JOHN MCALLISTER: Tell me about your eyesight. What can you see when you play bridge?
MIKE LEVINE: What I – let’s see. I can – you watch me. If I put – the hand hands – if I put the hand like this and they’re all thwarted –
JOHN MCALLISTER: Right in front of your face.
MIKE LEVINE: With one eye, I can read my cards.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Wow.
MIKE LEVINE: At the table, under the bright lights, somebody has to read to me, card by card, every one play. Somebody has to read to me the dummy because I really can’t see it. And so, I have to memorize all that stuff. And it turns out it isn’t that hard because I can remember – and many of us could, even back in the 50’s – was it the 50s already? Holy mackerel. I graduated college in ’58, so we’re playing in high 50’s, 60’s. We didn’t have any hand records, so you had to memorize. So, I could memorize pretty much as much as I wanted to. Every bid, every hand, and every card. So, the handicap of memorizing the dummy is not bad. [Laughter] Except for funny things.
I had a nine card suit, and the director actually sorted the boards. And I had five suits [laughter]. Had hearts on this end and hearts on this end. Five hearts, couple of spades, couple of diamonds. I had four hearts.
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: The king of clubs and the queen of spades, together. You know what I mean?
JOHN MCALLISTER: Right.
MIKE LEVINE: And that was hilarious, too.
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: It just takes a little bit of pressure, a little bit slower. So, I’m constantly trying to plain as much as possible. To be honest with you, at the level we play, all reasonable plains are accepted in our [inaudible]. Somebody might ask, “How do you play it?” And then I’ll tell them. But other than that – because they don’t want the time pressure, either.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Is it easier for you to play on the computer than in – like, with holding real cards?
MIKE LEVINE: Yeah, and I’ll tell you why. If you take a look, I’m going to turn my laptop around and show you what I’m using.
JOHN MCALLISTER: OK. Oh, wow.
MIKE LEVINE: I have an 80-inch screen.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Wow, yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: You can see it.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: Against my hand, so you can see.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Right.
MIKE LEVINE: And so, the computer is better for me. Cards are okay – again, just a little – sorting is very important.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Nine-card suit.
MIKE LEVINE: Right, and reading a suit – people want to read a suit like ace, king, ace, king, and three more for no spot cards. Or ace, king, ten, nine, third with spot cards. So, if you read them that way, I guess some of these reading I realize that ace, king, ten, nine, deuce. So, that helps me a little.
JOHN MCALLISTER: You have somebody that sits with you when you play on the computer and helps you read?
MIKE LEVINE: Absolutely. I have – actually, Mike Cappelletti’s daughter. She’s always – Sky. She’s a novice, and she sits next to me. She actually flicks them out, you know what I mean, and reads me the cards.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Is this Mike Cappelletti, Jr.’s daughter that you’re talking about?
MIKE LEVINE: No, no. His dad’s child.
JOHN MCALLISTER: His sister.
MIKE LEVINE: Sky is 59 years old.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Oh, OK.
MIKE LEVINE: So, she’s taking care of me bridge-wise. I didn’t feel that I could have Mike sit at my side. You know, it’s not fair. I mean, I do, in propriety.
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: You know what I mean. Mike, I’m sorry.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah, yeah, I know. I get it. So, it sounds like you probably can’t drive a car.
MIKE LEVINE: Oh, not at all. My big thing today is – aside from these medals and stuff – is there’s a trail in Michigan called the Lake to Lake Trail that I organized about six years ago. It’s an old rail bed. I’ll send you a little video clip. I was a little bored when I started it. And my son said, “Dad, you can do a lot of these at all these inventions, but you can’t move a bureaucracy [inaudible].” I said, “Watch me.”
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: And I was just so determined. And we got that trail open just before COVID. I was leading it. I had to use an electric bike because I couldn’t really do the whole – but I rode the whole thing with an electric bike. You know, 50% me and 50% electric. And the trail was finished on the same day, so we rode over hot asphalt.
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: They got the asphalt down in the morning for the ride.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: I mean, it was that good. And the best part of that is, the D&R who just went to work helpless every day because everything was a bureaucratic nightmare – they’re out there to save trees and save animals, save wildlife, provide recreation areas. And bureaucracies, inadvertently, just by their nature, just are – you just can’t get anything done. All they do is makes you – one guy said, “All we do is make the paperwork correct. The fact that we have any miles of trails paved is incidental.”
JOHN MCALLISTER: How long is the trail?
MIKE LEVINE: Sixty miles.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Oh, wow.
MIKE LEVINE: It goes from Lake Huron, from Port Huron, overlooking Canada, all the way to South Haven, which overlooks Milwaukee. It picks up [inaudible]. Then, opposite Milwaukee and Lake Michigan.
JOHN MCALLISTER: And so, you’re able to guide your own bike. So, you can ride a bike –
MIKE LEVINE: I can ride a bike because I’m going slow enough to see a major obstacle. And that –
JOHN MCALLISTER: Do you ride a bike regularly?
MIKE LEVINE: Oh, yeah. I used to for years. I would ride – it’d be 4,000 miles a year. And I more or less stopped doing that. But if you’re going slow enough, you can avoid – unless it is a big branch fallen on the trail, I can avoid it and whatnot. I can see that well. But if I’m going 60 miles per hour, I can’t avoid anything. I can’t read street signs at all anymore.
JOHN MCALLISTER: When did you last drive a car?
MIKE LEVINE: Legally – wait a minute. About four years ago.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Four years ago.
MIKE LEVINE: And I just gave up. I should have stopped driving about seven years ago, but a combination of GPS, local knowledge – but I finally got into a fender bender, and I said, it’s time. It’s just time.
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter] What’s that like?
MIKE LEVINE: Uber came along, and I didn’t miss a beat.
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, you didn’t get a driver. You got Uber.
MIKE LEVINE: I got Uber. The driving got to be an issue because everybody wants to help you. You know what I mean? But, oh, you need to go to the barber shop. Let’s see, I have to stop here if this is on the way here. And this is on the way here. And when I drop you off, we’ll wave to each other. If I’m the first one, they’ll come right back. If not, I’ll go around here. So, it makes you feel – they don’t get it, but they make you feel helpless.
Uber is just when you want to go there now, I go there now. And without it –
JOHN MCALLISTER: Where are you talking to me from today?
MIKE LEVINE: I am talking – and I just sold my estate in Michigan last year. Michigan in the summers, Boca Raton in Florida in the winters. And I am now in the summers for business for rails and trails purposes in Michigan, but I live here in Florida.
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, you’re in Florida right now.
MIKE LEVINE: I’m in Florida right now, and I’ve designed this thing around – so, I put this addition, this two-story addition, and it’s just interesting because now that I have high elevation, it makes Florida – from flat, you can’t see anything, to give it some verticality and make it pretty, make it nice. So, I’m over in the golf course and in the back ponds, so it’s pretty nice.
JOHN MCALLISTER: I found your resume online.
MIKE LEVINE: OK.
JOHN MCALLISTER: It’s hard to believe that you retired at 48, given all the inventions that you have had your hand involved in.
MIKE LEVINE: Yeah. There was a real reason. Actually, 48 is where I commenced, really amplified – got me time to work on my inventions, and then time to license them. So, I never really retired in the sense of I’ve always had more than enough things to do. So, right after that, the on-screen programming, the VCR thing, coupled with the TV Guide that you have in your house – you know, “Give me sports,” “What’s on now,” stuff like that. Search “Law and Order,” you get it. That stuff, I did after I retired. So, I was busier in retirement.
I should define that I was not working for a salary. OK? Let’s put it that way.
JOHN MCALLISTER: I see. What were you doing? So, what was your – your mother talked you out of being a bridge bum.
MIKE LEVINE: Yeah.
JOHN MCALLISTER: What was your original profession?
MIKE LEVINE: I started college at 15, which was not abnormal for bright kids in New York City. I went to Stuyvesant High School, and NYU had a five-year program, and you got two degrees – a Bachelor of Arts, and a Bachelor of Engineering. And I played a lot of bridge in the first three years, and I didn’t actually know that I needed to be admitted to the College of Engineering. And I thought it was one of the funniest things that ever happened in my life – a professor out of the blue said, “We’re not letting you in.” And he said, “Mr. Levine, you’ll never be a good engineer. I think I’m doing you a favor.” [Laughter]
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: It’s the biggest chuckle ever because I’m a problem solver.
JOHN MCALLISTER: You have 60 patents to your name. Sixty patents to your name, and this guy says it’ll make it easier.
MIKE LEVINE: It’s sort of awful. My daughter picked up an article from Harvard saying, how do they find the Mike Levine’s? They don’t know how to do it. How do you pick people to get into Harvard? Some are legacies, right? Some are super GPAs from super schools and stuff like that. But then, they don’t get the creative ones. Maybe it takes hardship to be creative. It takes something. I don’t know, the stuff – this seems oddest to me – the patents that I have, some of them are jokes, but they’re crucially important.
JOHN MCALLISTER: What’s an example of a joke patent? [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: Doing this VCR – you want to take the VCR recording – I’m sorry, one step later. You want to record Law and Order. You know what I mean?
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: Not Channel 4, 2:00, Monday through Friday, you know what I mean? I don’t care what channel it’s on, where it is. I just want Law and Order. So – oh, yeah. Well, it’s not going to work because you have to tell the VCR what’s your channel lineup, that Channel 22 is TNT and Channel 64 is USA, and stuff like that. So, how do you get – you know, and they still have the same problem, you know. Left arrow, hit an A, and stuff like that is way too tedious. They’re never going to use the thing. So, therefore, you have a way to do it. And so, I thought for a while, and I said, “Zip code.” I’m sorry, the first one – area code [inaudible]. And then, of course, the area code started and drift around the phone with cell phones.
And then, I found the zip code, and the zip code gives you geographical location. So, if I know your geographical location, I know a lot. I know your time, so I know what channels you receive. And if I know the channels you receive, I can give you a lineup [inaudible] the air. Or, there’s only one or two cable companies that have a franchise in your area. Let’s just say one, for argument’s sake. So, if I know your zip code, I know what cable company provides you. Therefore, I know your channel lineup. It’s trivial. You know what I mean? But it’s absolutely necessary because nobody at home was able to set up their VCR when they got it.
And then, if you think about it – which I did patent it for the whole world – is all of the [inaudible] are wrong. In other words, if I ask you your address, you know how you should respond? Now, a few people are finally picking it up 25 years later. If I ask you your address, it should be zip code first because once you have the zip code, it can automatically enter the city and state that you’re in. Right?
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah, yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: And then, street name second, within the zip code. I type “M” and “A,” there’s only one Main Street, one street in the zip code that has an “M” and an “A” on it. Right?
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: And then, you put in the number last, and instead of answering – I don’t know how many digits – just entering five or six digits, you’ve got the whole thing prefilled in. And then, the other thing is sorting. There’s just so many things that I dwell on which is not patentable, but…[laughter].
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: In America, we have – our date is month, day, year.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: In Europe, it’s day, month, year.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: But the correct way is year being the biggest number, month being a subdivision of a year, day being the subdivision of a month, hour, minute, second, so you have a perfect sort, so you can sort things by time order. And when [inaudible] irretrievables, and we’re not going to change things like that. But these are some of the things I dwell on in a hot bathtub at 3:00 in the morning when I can’t sleep.
You know, the biggest thing to take care of global warming and whatnot is the reduced population. The problem with reducing population is who decides – I have these many – it’s called global war. Nobody’s going to go along with anything like that. So, they give up on it. So, if somebody’s going to tell me how many kids, I’m going to say no.
But if somebody said to me that all we have to do – now, my calculations are a little rough, but they’re decent. If the entire world just delayed having their first child by three months, we’d be in a population decline. Every group together. And they don’t all have to do it. Some will, some won’t. They just delay, then the population would decline, and decline fairly rapidly. So, it takes us about – oh, something like 80 years or so to double. You know what I mean? So, it’ll take 80 years to halve. So, if we halve it today, we’re only having 101 kids being born for 100 deaths, all we have to do is make a slight switch, where we have 101 deaths for 100 kids being born globally. Population declines.
Or a different thing is delay your first child till you’re 26 and have as many as you want after you’re 26, and it don’t make any difference. I’ll give you the bottom line – hey, maybe you want to publish it sometime. The bottom line is something like this: is if mankind had no children for 40 years – nobody gives the answer, but I’ll give it to you because I don’t want to waste your time here – you could probably figure it out if you want – we’d be extinct [inaudible]. Females are essentially very sterile.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Oh, wow.
MIKE LEVINE: You know what I mean. And maybe there’d be a few hundred thousand around – you know, pick any year. Maybe a million or two. But we’d lose the 99% of our population.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Wow.
MIKE LEVINE: So, that’s how fragile we really are. So, if we wait till we’re 26, it just can’t – so, anybody after 26 who wants to have as many children – it’s just too-late guarantees. If you take two kids at 15 versus two kids at 30, two different families – so, the 15 – two and 15 beget – so, when a person is 30, she has two plus four grandchildren. When she’s 60, she has two plus four plus eight. You can do the math yourself. It’s geometric. And so it’s as important when you have your children as the number of children.
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, Bill Gates is a bridge player. Have you talked to – and he’s a global warming –
MIKE LEVINE: Well, actually, I have feelers out to Bill. He and Bob Hamman. We have a lot of things in common. I don’t know Bill personally, that maybe you would be one of my sponsoring letters. And we haven’t heard back, but I don’t think we will because he’s going through a divorce.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Sure, yeah, yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: That’s the last thing he wants to do at this point.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Totally.
MIKE LEVINE: But we enjoy each other. I played against him many times in Omaha. But I respect somebody’s privacy. So, I haven’t gone over and introduced myself because – you know, since I had to play bridge.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: He gets very intense when he plays bridge. He sweats, he takes his [inaudible]. You know what I mean? You don’t want to ruin that for somebody.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Right.
MIKE LEVINE: So, we’ll see how that goes. So, we can easily do this stuff if there’s a political will because I’m not telling anybody to do anything.
The only problem I have is the last time people talked about population control, it was only heard the middle class. So, the middle class has substantially reduced their kids way below, and the other people just maintained, or way above, even in Africa. Even in my grandfather’s time in the South, in the 1900s – he was born in 1910, so 1920 or 1930. He’s one of eight kids, you know what I mean? But only four of which lived to reproductive age, and only three of which actually had any children. You know, that was the rules of engagement, even in America in the 1930s.
But now, we provide – let’s say in a poor town in Africa, we provide a well with clean water and PVC pipe. Well, the survival rate of the children just from that creates a disaster at the other end, and they overbreed because they’re just doing what their parents and grandparents did.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Sure, sure.
MIKE LEVINE: But now, they have too many survivors.
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: So, you’re screwed. The Aswan Dam is the best example in Egypt. The limitations to the food supply was the Nile running amok every year with the flooding. Once you control it with a dam, you double the food supply – double the water for irrigation, double the food supply, and double the population. And guess what? Haven’t got any place. I feel so sorry for both ends of the spectrum: the ones that fail to reproduce themselves, and the other ones that wind up with too many kids. Not enough technology and infrastructure to – they’re [inaudible], and the kids are here and real, and [inaudible] starvation, which doesn’t have to happen.
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, the question I was going to ask you earlier before you – I’m so glad I didn’t ask it to you because you spoke about the population thing. So, I have Hulu for my television. They’re my provider, and they always ask me for my location. And you have a patent for putting television channels – is Hulu something that you are a benefactor of from this patent that you have?
MIKE LEVINE: No, not really. The guys who created it couldn’t do everything, and that is – without some electronic tinkering and whatnot, automatically within the protocol of the internet, they don’t know where your physical location is.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: And I’m sure they want to target some information, so they want your location. Remember if I know your zip code, I know your demographics. I know you’re male…if I know your zip code, if I know your age, I’m a leg up on what kind of advertising you’d be interested in looking at.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: I’m not going to advertise Barbie dolls. You know what I mean.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Right.
MIKE LEVINE: So, that’s the backwards way of the zip code. The real zip code is, think about all the hotel reservations we make. Look at all the billions of keystrokes because they don’t start with the zip code first.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Mmm.
MIKE LEVINE: I mean, I can create an app in a half hour, whereas if I know your zip code, I can tell you a circle on a Google Map exactly where you live. You know what I mean?
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: So…
JOHN MCALLISTER: That’s so true, Mike. That’s so true.
MIKE LEVINE: You know, what I’m trying to say is, people think –
JOHN MCALLISTER: If you enter your zip code first.
MIKE LEVINE: Zip code first. When I talk at colleges, this Kalashnikov. I mean, I hate what he’s done, but he’s the epitome of what an inventor’s all about. And he says it himself. He says, “All things complicated are not useful.” You know, on a battlefield, if you have the gun that has to do ten things accurately at once and ignores what his gun does – his claim to fame is when you pull the trigger on his – if you pull the trigger on an American gun, it goes, click. Ahh! It’s jammed, right? His will always shoot.
So, people lose sight of the simplicity. Make it simple so it always – don’t worry about noise it makes or how high-end it is. Just keep it simple. And it turns out, there are more Kalashnikovs than all war production today, and more Kalashnikovs around the world than there is any other US/Soviet armies with guns. So, it’s simple stupid, and just worry about the simple stuff. And people just complicate their lives terribly by adding in factors that are irrelevant. But anyhow, enough of that stuff.
I’m not sure if I’m giving you anything worthwhile for a bridge blog.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Well, I think –
MIKE LEVINE: Are we doing any good?
JOHN MCALLISTER: I mean, I think you are – you’re a fascinating – I mean, this is fascinating what you’re talking about. And bridge is a fascinating game, and I think part of what makes bridge so cool is that you and I know each other because we both love bridge.
MIKE LEVINE: Right.
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, I actually thought at the beginning – I was hoping that this would be one of the least technical episodes we would do. And then, you were actually being possibly the most technical [laughter] talking about bridge things. And I was like, oh man, this totally didn’t go the way that I expected.
But I think this – part of the reason I’m interested is your prolific career prior to bridge, or that it’s now facilitating you having this super team. I mean, that’s really interesting to me. Like, there’s the company TiVo. I remember when TiVo came out.
MIKE LEVINE: Oh, yeah. I was very involved with most of the facets of TiVo. I didn’t invent the TiVo, per se, but I could tell you what is in it, my inventions.
JOHN MCALLISTER: OK.
MIKE LEVINE: You know, it’s one thing to record a bunch of shows on a hard drive. You know what I mean?
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: And that’s great. But now, you’re stuck with the same problem you have with live TV. How do you sort those shows into something that you can watch? I’ve got 300 channels coming into my house, and I know there’s lots of good stuff I love. I love various documentaries. But how do you find the good stuff? So, within TiVo, you have the same problem as when you recorded the stuff. How do you organize it and display back to people? It’s one thing to put a bunch of scattered papers in big piles in corners, but it’s another thing to find out of the scattered piles of papers the paper you want to use and watch right now.
So, I view TiVo as a different situation. It uses the same techniques of searching elements that I guess I’m not going to be [inaudible]. I mean, that’s OK. I just realized that I can’t – how do you keep it simple depends on if you want to make strong impressions on a few dedicated people, or good impressions on a group of less dedicated people.
I mean, that’s a blogger’s problem as well. Can you tell if somebody uses a word “Staymen” or “Jacoby transfers” how many people turn off when they hear technical things like that?
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter] No, I can’t. We’re not that sophisticated. I’m sure there’s a more sophisticated way to measure listenership. But as the host of this podcast, we’ve done like, 37 or 38 episodes that we’ve published, and the only statistic that I have is downloads through our hosting company. And so, I know that we’ve got like, 29,000 downloads, but I don’t have data for like, the type of data you’re talking about. There might be a way to get that, but at the moment, I have sort of – that’s the crude data.
And it’s frustrating because I think that I’ve become better as a listener, and better prepared, and having better-quality conversations with people like yourself. Bu the listener growth is flat, and one of the things that I’ve heard from people who are not bridge players who I’ve asked them to listen to the podcast or they’ve been interested in listening is that it doesn’t – it’s not really accessible for a non-bridge player.
So, our audience is limited potentially to even high-level bridge players because the average bridge player isn’t necessarily going to be able to understand some of the conversations that you and I were having at the beginning of the show about your two-diamonds structure.
MIKE LEVINE: And I knew that was going to be the case. But is there anything on the conceptual side – like, is it too technical that Stayman’s not a convention? Probably is.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Well, I don’t know. I don’t know that you’ve fully fleshed out how it was in a convention. You said that – you made this bold statement that Stayman is not a convention, but I’m not sure that I understand why it’s not a convention.
MIKE LEVINE: Oh, yeah. Oh, OK. I’m sorry. What I’m saying is, here’s why it’s not a convention. Number one is that the notrump bidder’s going to be the declarer, so you must be a liar. You cannot bid what’s in your hand.
JOHN MCALLISTER: OK.
MIKE LEVINE: Now, you have all these two-level bids available to you. And that’s logical to me. And then, you go back to one notrump bidder has a choice of playing notrump or some sort of suit. And major suits pay off big time because – you know what I mean. So, he needs to know about your major suit holdings. And so therefore, if you have to lie about your major suit holding, isn’t it just reasonable so if I have spades, I bid one under the spades, and if I have hearts, I bid diamonds?
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: Then, if I bid clubs, we don’t want to play diamonds. Right?
JOHN MCALLISTER: Right.
MIKE LEVINE: So, clubs has to have a different meaning. And the only meaning that’s possible for this five-card majors it covers is, ask me about four-card major. So, that’s what I mean. It’s logic and not a convention.
JOHN MCALLISTER: What’s a convention, then?
MIKE LEVINE: Well, a convention, now…opening bid, two notrump, is 20 to 21. OK?
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: It’s just a mere agreement. You know what I mean? You can make systems that can lower the range, or raise the range, or something like that that you have to have maybe a definition rather than a convention.
Another convention is – let’s say an obscure one, which is exclusion Blackwood.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: So, if you have an unusual thing to the 5-level, we bypass many, many levels. The only logical inference you can have for doing that is if I bid one spade, two diamonds, then [inaudible], so why do I bid five diamonds? A little obscure, but…and so, you reason it out. What’s left – one’s three diamonds, one’s four diamonds – split them, you know what I mean. Five diamonds. And then, when you go all the way to five diamonds, it must be a void. And then, it’s not a convention. What’s the response is the five diamonds, and there’s simply controls, like aces, excluding the diamond ace because an ace against the void, at best, reduces one trick.
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, exclusion is – we’re saying exclusion is a convention?
MIKE LEVINE: No, no.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Exclusion Blackwood.
MIKE LEVINE: Undiscussed, a great partnership should figure it out.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Mmm.
MIKE LEVINE: First of all, figure out the five diamonds is a void. And secondly, somebody with a void must also have a fifth of your suit. And so, logically, if we have a fifth, and he wants to show a void, what the hell is he asking for? Controls the number of aces – first round controls that you have in the [inaudible] suit. So, then play five diamonds undiscussed.
JOHN MCALLISTER: I get what you’re saying. So, you’re saying if you can figure it out logically, it’s not a convention.
MIKE LEVINE: Exactly.
JOHN MCALLISTER: OK.
MIKE LEVINE: For example, if two diamonds, two notrump, three hearts, and three spades, who want to declare? It’s the notrump player. So, if you have four hearts or four spades, you bid the one you don’t have. So, is that a convention, or just bridge logic?
JOHN MCALLISTER: I don’t know.
MIKE LEVINE: I don’t know. I mean, that’s a little more – oh, I know what a convention is. OK, 1430 is a convention.
JOHN MCALLISTER: OK.
MIKE LEVINE: OK? Because it’s not logical to – a key card Blackwood, why would you choose one, or four, or three, or zero. You know what I mean? That’s almost the definition. Although, maybe you could figure it out because in hearts, you can get the queen in without going past the level of safety. Show that – I’m sorry, in spades, you can using 1430.
JOHN MCALLISTER: I think you’re picking things that are sort of like – you’re speaking from a very experienced bridge player point of view.
MIKE LEVINE: Right.
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: Remember, I said Zeke called it the “wonder bids.” I wonder what the guy means? I’ll give you an example –
JOHN MCALLISTER: And what was his batting average on those? OK, give me an example.
MIKE LEVINE: It’s really good because – I’ll give you a hand. And now, it’s repeated many times because we’re in the finals of the North American Swiss, so I guess the top eight teams get to play the same hand.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Right, yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: So, you can see how they handle it.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: Let’s see. I had a monster hand. I had ace, king, jack, seventh. King, queen, ten, nine, fifth. That’s 12. And a stiff ace somewhere.
JOHN MCALLISTER: OK.
MIKE LEVINE: I don’t know whether it’s clubs or diamonds. It didn’t matter. Let’s say it’s clubs.
JOHN MCALLISTER: OK, got it.
MIKE LEVINE: So, [inaudible], I get a diamond opening, [inaudible] Michaels, OK?
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: And Zeke, all he has is the ace, third of hearts, and really nothing else in his hand.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Which is a [inaudible] seven.
MIKE LEVINE: So, it goes one diamond, two diamonds. Zeke bids two hearts.
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
MIKE LEVINE: And now, one diamond, two diamonds, which is both majors. Right? Yeah.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: One diamond. So, he knows I have both majors. And now, I bid four clubs, which was my void. OK?
JOHN MCALLISTER: OK.
MIKE LEVINE: Zeke bids, dutifully, four hearts. And now, I bid four spades. Which means my spades are so good, I can play them alone, even though you’re telling me you like hearts, hearts, hearts, hearts, and hearts. It turns out Zeke had three spades and three hearts to the ace.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: What the fuck is this guy doing? He’s got a hand big enough for spades, and he bothers to show me – which now, four clubs. Since I am 5-5, I have to have a splitter. Right?
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah, yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: So, jumping to four clubs must be a void. So, he’s showing me a club void and a hand that can play spades by himself. And he says, “I’m still not sure what to do.” So, he immediately bid five spades, and I bid six spades. And six spades rolls but also, six hearts happens to roll out the hit. But that’s not important. But getting to the right contract, most people just bid four spades. Six of the seven, eight tables. And somebody got the five hearts – six hearts, because I got the six spades, which is a vastly superior contract.
JOHN MCALLISTER: I played against you in the trials when – I think the last time they had the trials, maybe. It was in Schaumburg.
MIKE LEVINE: Yeah, I was out there – yeah.
JOHN MCALLISTER: And you were in a slam. You were playing with Eddie. I was playing with Adam Grossack.
MIKE LEVINE: OK. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. I remember that.
JOHN MCALLISTER: And hearts was your side suit. You had a four-card heart suit.
MIKE LEVINE: Mm-hmm.
JOHN MCALLISTER: And I think we were in the bidding. And I don’t remember if your trump suit was clubs, diamonds, or spades, but I made one of the worst plays I’ve ever made when you were declaring the steal because I pitched a heart. So now, you could not go wrong in the hearts suit. And I remember thinking, oh my god, I can’t believe I did that.
MIKE LEVINE: Well, again, that’s what I call the brain fart. I mean, you know –
JOHN MCALLISTER: I wonder if Eddie would remember it.
MIKE LEVINE: I’ll ask him about it.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Three years ago. I wonder if he will remember it because –
MIKE LEVINE: Well, it’s online. It’s still online. You can find it. They are all there.
JOHN MCALLISTER: I don’t want to revisit it, necessarily.
MIKE LEVINE: [Laughter]
JOHN MCALLISTER: I’m just telling you because I remember it. I remember thinking as soon as a pitched the heart, it occurred to me what I had done. It was like, oh my god, I can’t believe…so.
MIKE LEVINE: Well, it happens. We pioneered some new bridge – Oren and I did. You know, one of my most proud experiences – given, it was like, 3 or 4 years ago, we came in fourth in the Vanderbilt with a non-team. I mean, me and Oren and – you know, I mean, somewhat professional, but there were no big names there on the team.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah. Right.
MIKE LEVINE: That was one of the more exciting things. The other exciting things was Oren and I – well, this is just crap. It’s not going to help you. I saw a defect in Jacoby two notrump because we’re asking the five-card suit, does he have shortness.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: Well, you’d rather have the four-card shortness because it guarantees you an extra, you know –
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yes.
MIKE LEVINE: You have five trump in the one hand –
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah, yeah.
MIKE LEVINE: As many [inaudible] in the other hand as you come up with. And then, so, we set it up that there was – it had a whole bunch of [inaudible] that had nine trump and short. And then, we divided it into working points and non-working points. If one hand had a stiff and the other hand has, like, king third, that king isn’t very valuable because the king is as valuable as having deuce, deuce, deuce. I mean, there’s a 50% chance that the king is worth the trick.
Now, if you put the king anywhere, then you have a stiff versus three little, the king is gold and silver because it makes the suit that the king is run because instead of the ace, king, jack and you need a hook in that suit, it makes the suit run. It makes it also run quickly because you can get quick discards, knockouts, or stoppers.
And so, we worked out a whole [inaudible]. We revised Bergen to show. So, in Bergen, we can show using 300 – a preemptive raise, a constructed raise, a limit raise, a void raise with 11-plus, and a singleton with 13-plus raise. And then, we get into the singletons and the voids, which now produce the slams that we need because of the 30-point deck. So, the king in the suit is almost worthless. The king outside of the suit almost guarantees the slam.
JOHN MCALLISTER: What’s your void raise in that structure?
MIKE LEVINE: OK, so yeah, let me go to the singleton I remember. So, with a five-four fit and a shortness in the four-card suit, assuming you have the controls that you can check for, you’re always just better than 50-50 of making the slam. Twenty-five points, turns out 26 points, you’re always better than 50-50, but not by a lot – like 52, 51.
So, we had methods with relay kind of systems there, which is pretty easy to do. We can get to those extra slams that nobody can get to. We can get to those 26-point slams because we know that the points are working. If the king is in that suit, that’ll do us some good as opposed to being potentially a half a trick. And we actually – if we get to the 5-level, you can go down at the 5-level. That took away from – we have to avoid the 5-level when we should, always, and get to the 6. It works out just super low.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Are you excited for live bridge to return? Because you’ve been dominating the online NABCs. I’m not sure if you want live bridge back.
MIKE LEVINE: Well, Eddie and I, first of all, won in live bridge. Eddie, mainly, because Eddie – I’m too busy looking at my cards, and Eddie is looking at the opponents all the time. The speed that – almost like bridge tails. So, he says he can’t get that online, so he doesn’t like it. But now, he’s become a convert.
For me, I like the online tournament play because it’s a social thing. One of the highlights was I was at the bar when we came in fourth at that Vanderbilt, and it was amazing. We really had a chance of actually – you know, I mean, the round of 8 and 16 that everybody’s on their iPad or whatever and say, “Wow, look at that hand! That’s going to actually win it.” I was amazed because it was a juxtaposition that all of a sudden, when we’re in third, fourth, four women surrounded me. And I think it’s something about I am what I am is that magnet – that’s the drummer and the rock star, you know what I mean? So, that’s what the in-person stuff does, and the friends you meet. But I don’t know. We’re here in Florida, and we’re not doing well. We just opened up a club, and they have too many of us. But Mikey and I try to go there a little bit just for a little practice. You know what I mean?
JOHN MCALLISTER: Mike Cappelletti. That’s your –
MIKE LEVINE: Yeah, Mike Cappelletti. We would be playing in the summertime. This time of year, there are four venues every day, and they average probably 12, 15 tables each. So, all of 50 tables, we now have 10 or 11 in one club.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah, sure.
MIKE LEVINE: So, we’re down by a factor of four. It’s a little early, but it’s very concerning because the other clubs – they can’t open in this environment. So, the season comes by. In the season we have, again, four times what we have in the summer. But it’s very scary. It may be over. It’s –
JOHN MCALLISTER: No, come on.
MIKE LEVINE: Well…
JOHN MCALLISTER: You know, there’s more young people playing bridge. I interviewed on this podcast, the last show we did, the Hsieh family. And the youngest one, Doug, was the youngest Life Master. He was 13, I think. And he said when he was playing bridge, there were no children playing bridge.
MIKE LEVINE: Wow.
JOHN MCALLISTER: So it’s like, I think in some ways, we’re actually ahead of the curve. The problem is we don’t have that – we don’t have the people who are taking it up in their 20s. You know? It’s like we have more children, probably, but I’m not sure that we have –
MIKE LEVINE: Oh, I see what you’re saying. Yeah. Because in college, I know exactly when – I can’t give you the precise year – but we’re now talking 1957, which sounds like ancient history. In 1957, in the league, the lounge, we’d have 10 or 12 tables just rubber bridge. And we could fill Cargill Hall with a regional. You know what I mean?
And now, in the Detroit Regionals, Peter nine years ago [inaudible] sectionals, and Zeke and I played there because that’s our home, and he wrote an article about that. We won every knockout, but we lost on quotient every single time that we played. I’d been working with Jay and fortunately, and we’re both sort of numbers guys, and the regional attendance has been declining at a 7% compounded rate –
JOHN MCALLISTER: Wow.
MIKE LEVINE: For the last 10 or 12 years, or something like that. Well, you know, a 7% decline says it halves in 10 years. That’s just been following that ugly, ugly turn without COVID. And so, we’re trying to work with the pros to have super regionals, which would get all the pros – you know, because we fly there, [inaudible] is the way to go. Like on Labor Day weekend, you go to Atlanta, or you can go to Los Angeles, or something like that. So, stack them up. You know what I mean? Offer some incentives.
And I don’t know. The other problem, which is a huge problem is that people don’t know, it’s a [inaudible]. In order to hold a tournament at a host hotel, they’ve got to offer ballroom space. You know what I mean? We’re going to give you 300 rooms, they’ll give you free ballroom space. Well, two things happen. With the internet, everybody’s finding a deal better than the ACBL deal at the same hotel, so they don’t count. The hotels don’t want us to take up their valuable ballroom space Friday and Saturday night. Nobody cares about the nights like – our [inaudible] tournament, which is peak time, winter, was in a convention center and was not associated with a hotel. You know what I mean? You have a 15, 20-minute drive to a nice hotel from where the site is. And this is falling like crazy in our tournament. Farther than Mid-Atlantic, there aren’t really bright spots.
JOHN MCALLISTER: What’s the solution?
MIKE LEVINE: Well, I tried to get a group together, and I failed in a different sense. Eddie’s solution was what he actually did. He went to Rice University, where he graduated. He talked them into business five or ten years ago to offer bridge up for credit class. And they set up the class, a bridge club, and a duplicate game at the university. But it’s just hard for people to actually go do that. A lot of people thought they could not – that they would get paid something. But if you have to teach a class when you’re a bridge pro, how do you be absent two or three, three out of four class sessions? You need to get traction. It’s like we’re losing traction and once it falls, it’s hard to regain.
But anyhow, it was just fun talking with you anyhow.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Totally. Totally, yeah. You’re a fascinating – you’ve got some really interesting – this has been a pleasure. Thank you very much.
MIKE LEVINE: It’s been a pleasure. OK, thanks a lot.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Alright. Bye, Mike.
MIKE LEVINE: OK.