Ep. 78 - Gavin Wolpert is committed to making you the best bridge player you can be!

[00:00:02] Hi, my name is John McAllister. Welcome to The Setting Trick podcast where we get inside the minds of some of the world's greatest bridge players. If you're looking for a way to engage with bridge away from the table, then The Setting Trick is here for you.

[00:00:16] I am here with the 2000 King of Bridge, a seven-time N.A.B.C. winner including the 2021 Soloway knockout and the 2005 Blue Ribbon Pairs with his wife,

[00:00:34] and a two-time Bronze Medal winner in Open World Championships, one of the Internet's favorite bridge teachers, and also a defenseman on the Spartans' Club hockey team. Gavin Wolpert, the first ever guest on The Setting Trick, it's great to have you back.

[00:00:59] Thank you for having me back. I'm excited to get a second shot and now that you've got the full production team and this is a whole ordeal, it's pretty cool.

[00:01:08] Well, I was googling you earlier today and the original conversation came up on YouTube and I was a little afraid to watch it. I was afraid at the horrors that I might have committed as a first-time podcaster.

[00:01:26] So you didn't look at it or you did? I turned it immediately off and then I couldn't find it again. And weirdly, it's not linked from our website. I found some random YouTube page.

[00:01:37] Maybe it was bad enough that whoever is in charge of the website was like, you know, let's leave that one off. We'll start from episode two. But you're doing a lot of video stuff yourself now.

[00:01:54] Yeah, basically once the pandemic started, I just jumped in pretty hard into the online teaching and I kind of had experience from back when we started Bridgewinners. One of the types of content that I was pump pumping out to get people to come visit the site were videos.

[00:02:11] But it was like before the days of this streaming software, like I was using pretty high-end video editing software called Camtage. It's not that high-end. I'm like overselling it a little bit.

[00:02:20] Basically, it was like I was piecing together a bridge-based table and my video and audio and doing it at the time. At the time it was an insane amount of effort because the software wasn't built out.

[00:02:32] But then when the pandemic came and it was clear that lots and lots of bridge players were going to suddenly be forced to not be able to do anything.

[00:02:41] I kind of jumped into the lesson teaching and streaming thing and discovered that software had come a long way in that decade. And it's amazing how much easier it is to produce content now than it was back then.

[00:02:53] And my desire to interview you again kind of started from a conversation we had around that time because you told me that you were enjoying teaching so much. You didn't expect yourself to love it.

[00:03:08] And I think the one thing which also stuck out was your students had bought you like a membership to be a member of the American Bridge Teachers Association, which I thought was a really sweet gesture. Yeah, it was cool for them to do that.

[00:03:24] Yeah, so when I moved to Florida I started teaching and tried to kind of break into the country club. I grew up with my mom as a bridge teacher. So that's always been a part of who I am.

[00:03:34] I would always go to her classes and she would let me skip school and show up at her classes. And so I was around bridge teaching a lot. But then when I moved to Florida I kind of tried to give it a go of teaching at country clubs.

[00:03:46] And I was doing while I was breaking in but the problem was at country clubs is I would go and I would teach a lesson on a Thursday morning on Stamen.

[00:03:56] And then I would come back a week later and say like, do you guys remember? Let's review what we learned last time. And I was looking at a sea of faces that nobody was playing bridge between one. Well it wasn't about the people.

[00:04:10] It was that they were just showing up for their Thursday classes and not going and reinforcing it at all during the week. And I just didn't enjoy it. I didn't enjoy just basically being just showing up and talking about not having people learn.

[00:04:25] But then when the pandemic, when people were all they could do was sit at home and watch my lessons and then go and practice on BBO. It was people were actually rewarding me by showing me that they were learning what I was teaching them.

[00:04:40] And I actually felt useful. So it gave me an energy about teaching that I had kind of lost. I kind of gave it up. I didn't even want to do it anymore at the country clubs. I stopped on my own accord.

[00:04:51] I just kind of told the clubs I didn't want to do it anymore and went more in a route of professional poker and also more one on one pro playing at the club.

[00:05:01] And that, yeah, that was much easier to teach somebody one-on-one and see the reward of teaching them. Right. Yeah. So you send out a weekly email which you run through like a play problem. And then you give the reader the opportunity to play the hand.

[00:05:21] And I recently, I had a friend, a high school classmate who's taken up bridge in the last couple of years. And he, I see him on Bridge Base a lot which is exciting.

[00:05:35] And so I actually forwarded him your weekly hand because I think it gives somebody like, I really like that you've got a structure to what you're doing. I love to hear you say, you know, like how you want to see people really learn.

[00:05:49] And I just thought it was a great way even though he's relatively a beginner. It's just like, I think it gives, I think it's gives him a great opportunity to kind of see Bridge what's possible.

[00:06:04] And I think, you know, so I'm excited to be able to share that with. Yeah. So the interactive problems is based on the idea that I really think that you need to actually make mistakes to learn.

[00:06:19] I think that that's the only really no matter what there's no amount of lessons that you can come to where you're just hearing any hearing and hearing it that you can't process all that information. You need to actually get at the table having real world experience.

[00:06:31] So the interactive problems take advantage of sharks amazing software. It's really unbelievable where I can kind of put in a single hand and tell the robots a little bit what to do, like what to lead, what the bidding is.

[00:06:44] And I can drop the person into the into the seat of the declarer in these case, declare there's ways of doing other kinds of problems. But for these interactive problems that I sending out basically like I record myself for five minutes playing the hand baby.

[00:06:59] I do a video where like I start by saying, well, this is how the auction went. And now this is the setting. Now go ahead and play the hand and then they click the button they play the hand themselves.

[00:07:09] They make the mistakes which you have to make everybody makes them you and once you've made them it's like in the bank and it's part of who you are as a bridge player. That's how I got better. I didn't have any fast track to learning.

[00:07:20] I was younger so maybe it came quicker. But really it's been a process of 30 years of making mistake after mistake after mistake and just having seen things before. So the interactive problems are just a really bite sized way to learn. Yeah.

[00:07:36] And you've got how many lessons do you do you have now like in your online? My store I would say something like 100 100 and each one is is like really its own little encyclopedia on the topic.

[00:07:51] I really made it an effort to go all out overboard to be honest with you on every single one of my classes so that I felt because I always felt like I wanted it such that anybody who was a first time student who would ever discover one of my classes.

[00:08:05] I wanted them to have a good experience at that time and I didn't want to have them come and be like, oh this wasn't worth 15 bucks or whatever I was charging for it. Yeah.

[00:08:13] And so I feel like that was always been my goal when I'm making a lesson is to make it so good and so thorough that if you came looking for a topic that you for sure would walk away saying man I learned everything I wanted to learn about that topic and I can't wait to learn more

[00:08:26] and that's kind of been my MO for the whole time drove myself a little bit crazy.

[00:08:32] Honestly, I when I when I set up a lesson and I put a topic on the board, I spend hours and hours thinking about what to talk about planning it and really also even though I am an expert player I also like to have everything that I'm teaching double check so I check with all my

[00:08:50] friends and partners I ask people lots of questions just to double check am I really teaching the right thing is this really what people play so that I feel like what my end product the thing that I'm presenting to my students is I can feel proud that that's that's what they that they're getting

[00:09:05] what they want.

[00:09:06] Yeah. So yeah 100 basically 100 classes. My most popular series is my master series which is where I kind of got the idea that I just I was I wanted to just share what an expert system was it's not the expert system it's not like expert standard it's

[00:09:23] what I play when I play with my partners like crayon or Vinnie or or what I was playing with Warren and so I just kind of taught that stuff from start to finish although there's still a few missing pieces I'm going to have to finish finish off the series and

[00:09:38] I've know what what happens is people come and they take one class and I can see their their path of their customer and then a couple hours later there they buy another one and then they get another one and they get hooked on it and because it's it's like that

[00:09:49] you like you realize because I tried to make sure in every class that I was teaching something like style oriented so that even if you're not going to play any of my expert methods you're going to hear me talk a little bit about my style like opening bids why I open light

[00:10:03] why we went to two over one or whatever things that you anybody can apply to their game and then I talked about obviously the actual system and why I play it and I and and just making sure that the advanced players get what they want the intermediate players get what they want

[00:10:19] and everybody comes out of each lesson like learning something you don't have to play the whole system to get a lot out of that that series or any of the series yeah

[00:10:27] what what's what's the video you're working on right now so it's funny though the video that I have not started working on it I'm like brainstorming phase still but what's happened is in last few months on into bridge they've programmed their robot to play my system and now I get a chance to play with the robot that plays my system

[00:10:47] and which I love it's awesome and it's awesome for my students to be able to go and practice what they've learned with the robot yeah but what's happened is I every so often I come to a spot and the robot doesn't play what I play when I'm playing with

[00:11:00] crann or Vinny and I'm like oh because I haven't taught this yet and I really so it's frustrating me that the robot isn't so the thing I'm working on right now is on my how to bid over week two so it it

[00:11:11] tilts me that that doesn't play preempt key card over week twos and so that's one thing that I'm going to go do a whole lesson on preempt so I'm going to talk about my style based on vulnerability what seat and vulnerability out of further the preempt and but also like

[00:11:28] what I like to play for two of a major tune or two anything to know and preempt key card and just just go through everything like I do that's I take a whole topic and just go start to finish until and feel like I've taught the whole subject and feel like I can be done with it so that's my next topic

[00:11:43] so that lesson would be like what would be the title of that lesson week twos and preempts maybe I'll call it something like that yeah that's gonna be one lesson all that it's one lesson that's what I that's what I've been doing I kind of go overboard I make sure to fill 90 minutes but I've never been able to finish a class in 90

[00:12:02] minutes because I always just want to make sure that I get the whole topic taught and and yeah so one lesson is 90 minutes 90 minutes and honestly the reality is each lesson if you really want to get it you're gonna have to watch it a few times it's enough content that

[00:12:17] you can kind of come back to it and that's I built the lessons with that in mind that knowing that I would be giving the student access to just review it over and over again the notes are really really thorough like yeah yeah and just just there

[00:12:32] there are things it's basically like almost like an encyclopedia that the students can go back to to look through when they need to like oh this situation came up let me go back there and they go to the no Trump opening section and they see and then they can read what I wrote and yeah

[00:12:47] and so in the process of doing those lessons again I was teaching so much content and really you can't learn things and then just play them perfectly you need practice like practices a critical component so about a year into my pandemic experience I

[00:13:07] and teaching online I discovered shark bridge and their ability to kind of put the students in seats right and so I kind of developed a couple different type class types through shark one was those declare play where you have the hero in the south seat playing

[00:13:24] the hand with a pre designed auction and a lead so that the student but then the other is bidding practice and being practice reinforces topics so I'll give you as an example and I'm not sure if I've talked about this online or not before but with reverses

[00:13:39] reverses I have a thorough classes on expert system over reverses like how to slow down after reverses because it's a complicated topic that most teachers don't get into because it's a little bit too difficult for early bridge players to really understand the complexities of it so they kind of leave it off to the side and nobody ever really did a good job of teaching it so my reverse class actually got shared a lot like people people when they found that they're like oh finally somebody's teaching stuff over reverses so but then so

[00:14:09] the student learns about reverses and it all makes sense during the class but the problem is that after the class how long does it take for reverses to naturally come up at the table like you have to be playing relentlessly for for example hands to come up and so what shark enables you to do is give the student like repeated reverse practice like 20 hands or 30 hands at a time

[00:14:32] and so when I started using the shark software the first time I had I organized the class and at that time everybody was showing up at the same time they would come and I could watch everybody bid the hand so I put the students into their tables as partnerships and I watched them bid the first practice set that I designed for reverses and it was scary I'm like oh man I can't believe how little that they were able to retain

[00:14:58] right so I'm like well we have to keep at this I'm not going to give up on yeah so then the next week we did a second week with with with another 20 example hands and it was slightly better than the third week we did another 15 or 20 reverse hands and it was getting significantly better and by the fourth week of relentlessly practicing reverses everybody was using the slow down effectively it was like it was like night and day mind blowing like wow okay now I understand the recipe for how to teach and and

[00:15:27] have somebody get something that it's not it's irresponsible to just teach a topic and it has to be a topic with associated practice because the practice is really what reinforces that's what makes us bridge players is we learn something we see it at the table we screw it up we see it again we screw it up again

[00:15:46] and eventually it just we get it and we're able to effectively do it and so what technology is now letting people do is fast track like rather than letting it come up organically we can artificially get build that experience and so so I've done that for all of my topics that I've

[00:16:04] taught now built built associated practice sets for people to go and reinforce the the the topic and is that on shark bridge that does like it's your well so it's it's interesting was one when when it started shark was like this live software where I had to be there had to be

[00:16:22] like a controller a person who who sat the people down but the problem was that as the the restrictions from the pandemic started lifting they people didn't weren't able to be at this place at 11am on a Wednesday or whatever so so it became not so practical for me to build

[00:16:42] to run these classes because I was it wasn't earning enough until now shark developed the software where I can you can kind of access the hands on the website without somebody controlling it which isn't where it is now and it's it's so so

[00:16:58] so so now yeah so now I've started the kind of built up and they're available in the store where you can kind of just go and buy the practice hands and yeah and does that like can you do that with a computer partner and also with the actual

[00:17:14] actual partner yeah both you kind of load up the set and and then when as soon as you're in the chair you can you can there's a little button that lets you type an email address in you type it in your partner gets a link and then they just come to the table and

[00:17:27] and they're sitting in you can bid and it's pretty cool because what like after you're done bidding the hand it pops up with like your auction my suggested auction and what I've written about the hand so you can kind of digest it see where you went wrong which bid

[00:17:41] didn't was where we deviated and honestly sometimes what people decide to play their own system and they still come and do these practicing and as long as they're getting to the right final contracts all the time it doesn't you don't have to bid the hand the way that I said that you had to bid it

[00:17:55] but I all I'm doing is saying what I think I would bid with both hands and why yeah

[00:18:01] yeah okay I've got a friend so my friend we'll come back to this but my friend is the is the director of golf and my golf club and he and another golfing friend of mine want to learn bridge

[00:18:19] so if you were me and you had these two people like thinking live what would you do

[00:18:26] I've been struggling with this question a lot lately I've had a lot of people coming up to me and asking me that almost frame it exactly that way there's not an amazing way to quickly pick up the game on the internet like tricky bridge is pretty cool

[00:18:41] we're working with Audrey Grant I'm working with Audrey Grant to help get her content available like with with her practice hands and her lessons online like for a new beginners to I mean it depends what kind of people they are if they have an endless amount of time I would probably search out a teacher in their area

[00:18:59] and have them sit and work with them but there needs to be a software solution where people can go and just kind of rip through a bunch of a bunch of quick lessons and get on board it I'm dealing with this with my kids too it's really a difficult problem I want them to play bridge

[00:19:15] but it's there's not an easy solution even tricky bridge it's it's slow in its own way for them they're like they didn't get hooked on it which seems like a pretty cool concept the tricky bridge and I think that they're doing pretty well with getting lots of people on board it didn't my kids were

[00:19:32] not jumping at it so I don't know but that's kids anyway I don't know if it's even built for your two golfer friends it's a hard problem it's a hard problem

[00:19:39] so you had like first crack with them though let's say you've got one you've got one session like you're going to give them an intro to bridge what are you going to do well and do they know anything about the mechanics at all I think they I think they know tricks I think they know trick taking maybe they played

[00:19:55] yeah so I mean I would start by doing a very quick review of the mechanics of the game I would get them playing cards very very quickly I would give them it's again it's easier to do from a single person perspective like we're putting them in a declare place chair and say hey here try to take tricks try to try and give them a contract and get them get them hooked on that idea then if I one hour that's what I would be doing I would probably be showing them like the early stage bridge master hands which are super simple and

[00:20:25] and and give you a chance to kind of tell them the goal you have to take nine tricks and see if they're interested in that if they get hooked in that then finding them a path for how to learn bidding I mean it would depend on how they like to learn finding them a book or I've never been able to learn from books books is like the last way that I would ever be able to process

[00:20:44] learning a new game I would need somebody to explain it and really I just need to be playing whatever game it is doing badly at it and figuring it out as I go that's who I am I don't know how people learn I'm not a beginner teacher that is definitely not what I am I've

[00:21:00] found my way with teaching intermediate players how to be advanced players that's really the market that I am I'm after that I that I that I enjoy anyway yeah

[00:21:13] but I really think honestly I mean and maybe I'm just like totally in the clouds about this I really like I'm gonna send that I'm gonna give him your email thing because I think it's like really helpful to have someone like explaining higher level and walking through higher level concepts and giving

[00:21:28] him a chance to play maybe it's like a waste of time but well no the interactive problems are awesome because the interactive problems I you don't make them bid that's the hard part for new bridge players is getting people bidding

[00:21:40] and my that's what I've seen with my kids they're perfectly happy playing cards and trying to take tricks but the bidding like even explaining the goal of the game is to like is to find a true a Trump suit and to bid game to get the game bonus like it's it's it's

[00:21:55] complicated yeah so finding the your trick with your friends and I think with anybody is keep finding them a route that they realize that they love the game they don't they don't need to become good right at all they just need to realize that it's a fun game to play

[00:22:11] so how where are your kids on that sort of spectrum and they're they're getting there they've got they've got it in in they think that they're bridge players for one thing

[00:22:21] if you ask them to not play bridge they're like yeah I know how to play bridge that's their answer are they I mean they know how to count their points they know how to open the bidding they know the mechanics of the game very well and

[00:22:40] kind of giving them a rough idea that that you need to draw trumps before you can enjoy your side suit winners they've learned they've learned the hard way by trying to take tricks outside and having their stuff get roughed and

[00:22:54] but where are they they only really want to play bridge with other kids they're not interested in going online even which is surprising to me with the amount of video games and fortnight and and brawl stars or whatever that they play they play the number of games that they play it's my

[00:23:11] bridge on the internet really didn't it doesn't hook them in they want to be playing with other kids so every summer nationals we throw them in there and the U.S. youth and ABC and they have a bunch of kids there which is an amazing thing I wish I just wish that at the nationals

[00:23:28] they had more than like those three days of the youth and ABC where kids of parents who are bridge players could come and just either learn card games just some kind of childcare that's not based on on putting the kids in front of a DVD

[00:23:49] but rather having them learning on a path the bridge I would I wish there was something like that where because that's where my kids that's where they would they've that's their entire bridge experience has been at the youth and ABC playing in the side room where they have helpers at every table which is fantastic they do an amazing job

[00:24:08] I just wish it was longer and more structured for kids to feel comfortable that I've never played before and to give us an area where kids who have learned but are still like very very early in just kind of separating it separating out the groups that I think that I wish they had more of that at tournaments

[00:24:29] I think they need more of that at tournaments to entice parents to come to tournaments as well just because that's lost when I was a kid the nationals my parents would bring me and they had amazing childcare absolutely amazing childcare I went to one the Washington ABC was when I don't know maybe like 19 I want to say 1990 I was about 91 somewhere in there 92 they dropped me at childcare went to play in the tournament the childcare was so amazing that I didn't know what I was doing

[00:24:59] I couldn't wait to come back to the tournament the thing was there were there were a lot of bridge players who had kids back then so it was it was a little different time and obviously as the decades have passed there haven't been a new influx of 40 year olds who have or 30 year olds that have 10 year old kids there aren't those people but they need to try to get that market back

[00:25:21] the problem is that they completely completely eliminated the childcare from the nationals there's no childcare at all really so people with kids who want to come to the nationals there's nothing you can't do anything there's no solution so we're that we we're obviously a special case because we're bridge pros and we kind of desperately need it for our own business but obviously we can afford to hire a babysitter or do whatever because we're being paid to be there but like for the average person coming on a vacation wanting to come play bridge at the nationals

[00:25:48] there's no if they have kids then there's nothing that they can do when they could use that I think as a way to both see the younger people with cards which I think is such an important thing and that's the one thing we've done with our kids our whole lives is we got cards in their hands when they were three years old whether it was with go fish or

[00:26:07] random games from Sweden that Jenny's played or as a kid or that I played as a kid and we've just kept relentlessly playing new games teaching them new games not so much with tricks but just getting them strategizing and planning and counting cards and doing stuff so

[00:26:22] yeah I think that the the the ACBL could do better with that with with enticing kids to come to the nationals and more enticing parents who to come to nationals who have kids and then give me by doing that by providing the kids with something fun and that gets them to start to like the game.

[00:26:41] Have you like what does it sound like when you like say over here one of your children describe what you and Jenny do for a living like you got any funny stories about. I mean they're really just proud they think I'm like a YouTube celebrity.

[00:27:00] Oh my dad's a streamer they're all really happy to tell her friends like.

[00:27:07] But yeah no they're pretty proud of us they think we're like really good and and and they're proud of it you can hear them telling their friends like my parents are these British players and they're proud of it so it's cool yeah I don't know not funny but they're they're definitely they definitely think that we're.

[00:27:25] It's nice that they are proud of it it's cool yeah well I imagine it's I mean there are you know a handful of.

[00:27:32] I mean you definitely live in a pocket where there is a fair enough more bridge pros than other parts of the US but I would imagine it's your fairly unique in terms of. In terms of you know that for the other kids that your kids are.

[00:27:46] Oh they have no yeah exactly no then there's no bridge well except Kevin Bathurst lives on like just down my street and and my kids have our close friends with his kids and so they know that he's also a bridge professional or whatever so it's a little less less unique but but but for everybody else obviously it's just yeah it's a cool story to for them to tell people and for us to also us when people meet us they're like.

[00:28:10] My hockey team when they found out that I was a professional bridge player they're like a professional bridge player what's that and then I told him that Vinnie was to and I was always possible that you both are bridge players yeah.

[00:28:21] I was trying to find out if you guys were the first line defense on the. They usually list us first we're pretty good at not letting the opponent.

[00:28:31] We're pretty good at not letting the opponent score when we're on the ice I'm physically not as capable of any skated his whole life so he's like he's unbelievable actually he's he's so much fun to watch play is skating inside he's a big guy yeah he's just a great great great hockey player and the team loves having him around because he's amazing.

[00:28:49] I am not nearly the same level because I didn't start skating even till I was 36 years old. Oh wow.

[00:28:55] Yeah and so so for me it was like I've had to pick it up and learn how to skate and keep up but I found that my mental game like being able to stay a step ahead of the play.

[00:29:05] I'm able to cover for the fact that I'm physically not as good as a lot of the people on the ice by just being in the right place the right time and it's amplified when I'm on the ice with Vinnie who's thinking at the same level and same pace that I am.

[00:29:18] We're kind of nowhere each other are where to be we're very complimentary to each other I say this because he's unbelievable so it's easy to compliment him but I feel like I compliment him well because he knows that I'm thinking that that I'm thinking at the same pace that he is so I'm always he sends the puck to places that he's not.

[00:29:35] Knowing I'm going to be there not without seeing me there kind of thing and we definitely very rarely get scored on when we're out on the ice. Your team must have been happy to have two Canadians on it when they until they saw me. You're not Canadian.

[00:29:55] Just to give you like how little I know about hockey in spite of your sort of encouraging me to learn more about it on our lap on our when we did this previously.

[00:30:05] I was playing at a golf tournament in my friends club in Maryland and this guy John Carlson who's a defenseman for the capital was there and he was he had played in the early in the morning and I didn't meet him but he was like literally he was right by me.

[00:30:24] By me and one of the guys who played with him and I said is he I said is he said he plays hockey and I said that he played in the group with John and I said is he any good. Yeah, he's good. Yeah.

[00:30:41] So that was my little celebrity run and I think they I think they won the tournament I think he's a pretty good golfer.

[00:30:48] I think there's a correlation between hockey and golf not just because you know you're swinging a stick that's very similar in size and whatever and it's the same hip rotation and stuff when you're really trying to get power into a slap shot and and sending a golf ball but also they play hockey in the winter and they have summers off so I think that they just like becoming the golf is a natural thing to do in the summer in a lot of places.

[00:31:11] So who are you rooting for in the Stanley Cup finals. If my friends from Florida are watching my family and friends from Canada are watching.

[00:31:24] I don't know whatever I'm when the Leafs lose I kind of disconnect a little bit which is every single year so since I was became a Leafs fan when I could you know eight years old they've been terrible since I since I was born so

[00:31:41] we recently were talking at the team trials and you said I was talking about Aaron Silverstein and his daughter Avery and how much she's gotten into it and you and you said you said that's the dream. Yeah, about about your kids.

[00:31:58] Do they kind of know that or no, no, no, no, I would never let them know that I want them to weigh bridge. No chance. Luckily we're long enough into this podcast that there's no chance they would have made it this far.

[00:32:14] No, I've gotten the root of like whatever you guys want if you want to play bridge you should play bridge if you don't play bridge don't play don't play because we want you to play it's got to be because you want to play that's always been the thing

[00:32:26] I'm like but the one thing I do implore like tell them is look we love bridge enough to make it our entire life.

[00:32:33] So and it's done amazing things for us we've gotten to meet friends and travel all over the world and do amazing things and because of it. I'm like, it might be worth looking into and if you if you want to you've got some good resources around the house that can help you

[00:32:50] and but not going to not try to force them into it not tried to definitely not.

[00:32:55] But now we're making a push to enable them because I really believe where it will first of all, as from from like what we're talking about about childcare, obviously our lives we get like infinitely easier if their childcare was playing in the duplicate game as opposed to us having to figure out

[00:33:15] but and I just see like families that where their kids are playing it's so cool like I just I would love to have I love what I had I got to play bridge with my grandma and my parents I want my kids to play with my mom like she would love to play with them and I would love them to have that same experience that I had just because

[00:33:33] I think that bridge is an amazing thing for for young people to learn how to interact with older people as well like just learning how to respect older people and just being even though I'm sure when I was a kid I was very disrespectful to the older people.

[00:33:48] I still you still learn as you grow up how to behave around people in a different way and work together with people and yeah so I definitely want desperately want them to and I think that we're on the path we're actually discussing it isn't set yet.

[00:34:03] Go even flying out to San Francisco this is going to probably be released later than the size of happened already but but we're because they're they're running one of those camps at the Palo Alto Bridge Club like Kevin Rosenberg and Amber Lynn and Will Watson and and those guys are do a camp for their local kids and we were thinking

[00:34:21] hey what maybe that's the answer just to fly him out there and which is a little ridiculous to fly through yeah six hours to 10 and when I emailed them about it they're like we were not really doing this for people to come from out of town like I don't know what you're expecting.

[00:34:36] Honestly what we're thinking is if we go there we can learn the formula and maybe replicate it over here because that's what we really like is to is to kind of give our kids an environment locally where there are other kids that they can be friends.

[00:34:53] It's not just about playing against other kids kids who are into bridge I've seen it with them and chess they're like minded kids that when you surround yourself with other kids who like to play games board games and card games they're they're similar to you so it's like it's it's it's

[00:35:12] creating a nice natural environment of kids that you can get along with where just yeah right yeah when is the camp. It's next weekend.

[00:35:24] It's the 29th I think it's both weekends but this weekend is not happening because our daughter still at some overnight camp and we're going to Universal Studios for a few days and getting the kids that kind of that fun on there.

[00:35:36] They just did the whole Harry Potter thing so they watched all the movies so we're going to go take them to Universal. And how old are they. Our daughter is 14 almost 15 and our boys are 12 and 8. Because you really got into the mind at the with.

[00:35:55] We actually yeah we just played the other day we got through as a whole as the four of us with our two boys we got through six levels without a mistake and then level seven. Every life.

[00:36:07] Yeah it's a great game really fun game and and I mean it teaches you to have like an internal clock and work together as teammates and it's a little easier now that our eight year old is eight as opposed to even when we taught the game even in the last six months or whatever.

[00:36:23] You can see so much development in his patience and his understanding of the internal clock he was he was way better when we were playing yesterday than he was last time.

[00:36:32] Do you guys do you guys play like games after dinner or like what's well we always bring a deck of cards when we go to restaurants that's one thing that we do is so that because we've always we've tried not to let them be on iPads and phones at the dinner table.

[00:36:48] It's not always possible but that's kind of been our mentality and so we bring a deck of cards dinner when we're out waiting for food we will play card games at home after we just play we're home a lot with our kids we have a life where we're not we don't have a normal life where we're working until I mean I actually have kind of turned my life into more of a nine to five e type of thing where I'm booking all of my hours and doing that but.

[00:37:13] Jenny's around and we're playing we kind of we play lots of games at but at random times it's not after dinner I would say that after dinner we're usually at the stage of the day where we finally let them watch some TV and chill out.

[00:37:25] It's early in the day that we're trying to keep them off the screens that's when we're putting in our time with the board games and stuff that is the constant battle of parenting right now is keeping your kids off the devices it's our it's it's something that no other generation had to deal with and it's brutal.

[00:37:41] So what's what's your card game of choice with them.

[00:37:45] So we play a bunch of games we play there's a Swedish game that called Gurka which cucumber in English that we play that it's good for many people because it doesn't really matter that you get six cards each so you can have I guess up to what nine people eight people I guess eight people will be the max and so we can kind of play and if we have an extra people it's good for five and then we can add six.

[00:38:10] We play this game called Couchon that which is big in French.

[00:38:15] It's a trump game which I'm sure you've played where you start with one card each and you got to kind of guess how many tricks you're going to take you flip one card up to say what the trumps are and then and then and then you kind of guess and and then two cards and then three cards and then you kind of with the trumps always being exposed but the last person isn't allowed to make it correct.

[00:38:36] So like yeah yeah so that's that we play that game a lot we play what we call president or what do we call it. Yeah. We've renamed it deuces. What else do we play.

[00:38:51] We played bridge the kids actually asked to play bridge a lot whether it be three handed or honeymoon bridge or depending on how many people we have like nine five two.

[00:38:58] I do know that game is it's just I mean it's it's three handed bridge you take out one card and then so that divides by 51 usually take out the two clubs and one person has to take nine tricks and that person gets to pick trumps one person has to take five five tricks in that which is actually the hardest of the three

[00:39:18] and one person gets to take two tricks and you kind of got to go plus you know like if it's a person who has to take two tricks take six they go plus four and the goal of the game is to get to 10.

[00:39:28] So you want to take what you it's not a cooperative game. No it's if it's three handed like everybody's on their own but it's the same idea trick taking game and so we do that we would you consider that for the my three person like these two.

[00:39:45] No I think with three people you've got enough to put down a dummy and have two people defend in one person declare. I think that that's the way to do it.

[00:39:53] I think that that's what you want people playing cards that's I wish there was more of a repository of good hands that you could just sit down for new players there probably should be just like basic hands where there's kind of a general concept on defense and a general concept on declare play but it doesn't be complicated.

[00:40:09] In fact the reality is in the beginning it doesn't have to be hard like there doesn't even need to be a point of the hand it just needs to be a makeable hand that's what I was thinking like for my kids they don't need to be tricked on the first hand that they're playing the first hand that they can have nine obvious tricks and if they get their nine tricks you'd be like well done great congratulations they don't whatever you move to the next

[00:40:28] hand I don't think that they you even need to start with anything even slightly complicated or even like I don't even think there needs to be a problem it's hard enough for them to sort their cards and realize not to play their aces and kings on the same tricks and things like that the little mechanics of it take a while to get used to so

[00:40:44] so you got to go yeah take I would ease them in but three if I had three people and they were actually people who wanted to play bridge I would I would pre deal the hands that's the hard part pre dealing hands and because because if you pre deal the hands you can put them in a contract and and

[00:41:00] and a reasonable contract no trumps honestly for the start and then and then trumps pick a trumpsuit for them and say like tell them a goal and eventually like you can explain to them that in the future we're going to be bidding and and that's how we're going to decide the contract but in the beginning just getting them trying to make a contract and trying to beat a contract seems like a good place to start

[00:41:24] I don't think I've told the story before but it's it's amusing to me that your passion for bridge is really palpable just like here in this you know virtual space where we're talking like your enthusiasm is I love it and it's it's

[00:41:42] it's a little bit of a surprise to me just because one time in my at the San Francisco Nationals I think it was in 2012.

[00:41:52] I was talking to you and this is this is different but I was talking to you after Dave play and I was I guess I was complaining of guess I was whining about how like I didn't do as well as I wanted to or I messed up on a couple things.

[00:42:06] And you said to me but it totally shut me up. Yeah, I played bridge today too. Yeah. That's the truth. That's funny.

[00:42:22] One thing Craniac said to me a partner of yours and a teammate of yours when you guys were you know on a great run. He said that he doesn't like you do not want somebody to come back or you don't want to hear somebody say you're sorry

[00:42:42] who me. Yeah, you don't want maybe I'm not he didn't say it like in a negative way.

[00:42:48] Well I just I mean my opinion when you're playing at least in an expert level is that everybody knows they've made mistakes and everybody knows that they've known them mistakes and everybody wants to win.

[00:42:58] I say sorry too much. It's funny to hear that I would that he has the impression that I don't like it when he says sorry because I'm very self reflective.

[00:43:09] I'm I feel sorry always my life is in a state of sorry when I'm playing when I'm playing bridge always like I've never feel comfortable. Never confident always like always on my own case like man I should have got that right I should have got that right but I'm feeling sorry all the time that I just I don't think that you need to express it to everybody

[00:43:27] I think it gets annoying like not annoying but it's just like it's we're all sorry we're all sorry. But how do you think you like channel that in a way like because you feel it. How do you channel it in a way where you're not actually telling people you're sorry like is there is do you think about that at all.

[00:43:46] Well I'll I don't I don't think about it but I've definitely adjusted my behavior to I preempt my opponents like my partner that's one thing that I do is I preempt my partner on when we have a bad board I'm very quick to say man you're too

[00:44:01] a spade should have been enough for me something like that like I that was that was a good card that you played that and I'll say the word sorry but it's more about about making my partner not be anxious that because usually when you get a hand wrong especially on defense both people could

[00:44:17] have done something like very often and but but so I'm very quick to kind of take the blame in it. That's something that who that's who I am. So I think that's helpful for my partners. I hope it's helpful for my partners to take some weight off of them so they're not sitting and second guessing themselves because

[00:44:37] I don't mind that feeling of the weight on me. I don't mind if people think that losing is my fault. At the end of the day you either way and or you lose and and and I feel like the more that you wait that I can take off of my teammates and my partners the more likely I am to win because I think

[00:44:55] I can handle it. I think I'm used to it. I'm feeling that way anyway so I really try my best to make my partners feel confident and feel like like it was so maybe in the end of the day people start they're like oh man he sucks he's getting all the you could have got

[00:45:09] so many of these hands wrong but I don't think so I think that in the end what really comes out is that they're playing their best and therefore we're doing better. Yeah. Different subject. You're your partner in your bridge teaching

[00:45:22] it seems like is your mother. Yeah so that was honestly the best part about the pandemic by far. It was it was that my mom and I who I moved away from her right I moved to Florida and in a totally different environment barely ever spoke to her

[00:45:36] I mean I call her when I'm on my way to hockey and stuff but like I didn't get to spend time with her and then when the pandemic it was like we were living in the same house. We would go and she's she was unbelievably helpful first of all we taught lessons together

[00:45:49] so which was really fun but we more importantly we designed the lessons together so we talked through all these hands and we we changed the cards and it was fun arguing with her because sometimes I wanted it to be a little more aggressive and she's like are you crazy

[00:46:03] you know like going to the back and forth I in retrospect I wish we had recorded our lesson creations like zoom because it was really fun to argue back and forth in in and yeah so I got to spend a ton of quality time with her

[00:46:19] and then yes we did a whole series which honestly that might be the best series of lessons that we that we have on my website which is the competitive bidding series where it's more focused on lower intermediates and teach like unbelievably there's some things that I

[00:46:36] I'm amazed that the world doesn't know that are completely standard like I did we did this class called dealing with over calls and dealing with over calls we did it in two parts and the competitive doubles like I open a club they over call a spade you bid two hearts and they bid two spades that opener on their second turn when they double that

[00:47:01] they're that they're just saying I have a good hand it's forward going to like okay I have too good of a hand to pass and the same thing if over two spades of opener passes and it comes passed back to the two art bidder it's the same idea that doubles like a way of getting back in to say I just have a good hand it's our hand let's go

[00:47:20] and like that's a concept that nobody knows and so when I when we started doing the dealing with over calls one class everybody in our whole class was like what are you I've never heard is what is the name for this what is this and and my mom and I were like

[00:47:32] these are just standard doubles so we we we realize like okay we really need to reinforce this and then the next class dealing with over calls to like really dug into those doubles and

[00:47:42] yeah so those those intermediate classes actually are some of the most if you can know those competitive bidding agreements really well that gets you so far in in in your scores and how you're doing I feel I fundamentally taking tricks and competitive bidding or what win or lose your club games and what most people play our club games they're

[00:48:06] playing pair games whether it's on BBO speedballs or or team board things or going to their club or going everybody's playing pairs these days and those to me are the two easiest ways to get better get better scores are learning how to get more over tricks so I really put a focus on if you've noticed the flavor of these interactive problems is almost always it's about over tricks and not about making your contract because when you read books it's always like

[00:48:35] focus on making your contract but everybody's playing the form of the game where over tricks are just as important and nobody's really taught so I've really put much more of a focus I really try hard to kind of add over tricks available over tricks in my problems to

[00:48:50] like purposely and I don't really tell the student like to look for that over but you want to have a mentality of like just like how can I make that extra trick yeah so anyway the competitive bidding thing this all started with us talking about my mom so we did this we did that series together lately

[00:49:08] we've I've been really busy she's been really busy we haven't done as much together but we we every time we talk we're like we need to just get back to work and build more classes together and do this up so I'm guessing that when when things calm down a little we will probably start working together a little bit more she

[00:49:26] just won the Canadian women's championship so she's going to go to Argentina on the Canadian women's team so I'm so pumped for her it's so excited she's I'm going anyway to play the trans nationals but so I'll see her there and I'm just really happy for her she she loves the game as much as you can see my enthusiasm for the game my mom has exactly the same that's where I got it all she's she loves the game as much as anybody that you'll ever meet obsessed

[00:49:50] you know she's an obsessive games player so does my grandma her mom like they my grandma the thing that I remember with her was every day she first of all she was a completely obsessed bridge player like if she if she ended up in hospital the moment they discharged her her words were take me to the bridge club

[00:50:08] and and when when she would come home from the bridge club in the afternoon she would come back from my mom's game they would come home together and my grandma would sit down and she would just start playing these three different variants of Solitaire like constantly just challenging yourself mentally to stay focused on cards and my mom is the same except for with my mom now it's

[00:50:30] wordle it's the into bridge daily you know she does her little like but she just constantly playing games and keeping their mind active and because of that I believe that they're they're sharper than then the average person and like my grandma when she was in her 80s was as sharp as a as anybody you could come when you play bridge with her she was feisty and and with it and never lost a beat and and my mom is similar she's just she's she's she's

[00:51:00] she's she's she's she's like she's she's she's she's she's she's have a huge impact on her like when she plays with her as well as when she wears her arms. Yeah so I think that we all have that I've got that in my blood or or whatever.

[00:51:16] I've copied their behavior and yeah what's out of you was your grandmother of your accomplishments well she didn't really get to experience so much of my accomplishments she didn't last until my a little bit of a troublemaking kid. I had a big mouth and a little bit disrespectful.

[00:51:35] That's part of what I mean about learning how to behave around older people. No, I don't think so. I'm thinking like how old was I when she... I don't remember the timing, but I don't believe that she was around when I started to really succeed

[00:51:51] at an international level. So your wife, Jenny, is also a professional bridge player. How often do you guys play against each other? Almost never. Yeah, almost never. Yeah, we like once in a blue moon, I think BBO has good software that stops it from happening or maybe like,

[00:52:10] because I feel like that, cause we're in the same IP address or whatever that maybe it keeps us away from, I don't know, but it feels like almost never, but maybe once every once in a blue moon on BBO. We used to do a little bit more frequently

[00:52:23] at the Bridge Club, except usually because the Bridge Club owner, there were multiple sections and they tried to seed the field. We would usually be in separate sections, but so not so often. We've just been talking about when we will start to play together.

[00:52:41] The problem is that, so before we had kids, we would, it was amazing for us to be at the same tournament at the same time and because we were together anyway. And so it was just, we were paying for the hotel room

[00:52:54] and we were paying for the flights. Like once we're there, it was great for us to work together. But then when we had kids, it became way different where one of us needed to be available for the kids. And so we've really kind of stayed away

[00:53:05] from playing at the same time for the last 15 years or so. But now we're just, our little ones, we're like talking about maybe this trials, playing the mixed trials together, but that it's just, we're like thinking like next one or whatever, but we're like,

[00:53:20] we're almost at that stage where we can start going away at the same time again and not feel like we're really harming the kids by leaving them home for, like the world championships is a bit of an hassle because it's like two weeks is the tournament. Plus, plus-

[00:53:32] And October this year too or something. Yeah. And plus you out, like often this time actually, at least it's in the same time zone or similar time zone. But like if the tournament's ever in like China or India or whatever, like you have to leave,

[00:53:45] it's like an extra days of travel and actually like in Marrakesh, it's just a big time change. We both went, it was like leaving our kids for three weeks and it was hard on them. Hard, hard, hard on them. Like in fact, when we kind of,

[00:53:57] when we got back from Marrakesh, we were like, yeah, we can't let this happen again for a little while. So even for the trial situation this time, we both played on the Rosenthal team. So that way, if I didn't qualify in the open,

[00:54:10] then she would get to play the mix. And so it was a little bit easier for us to kind of regulate that. It feels like every time I win the trials, she wins her trials right after. Like it's been that way anyway.

[00:54:22] But you've never played against each other in like a big... Well, we have, if you watch the old documentary that they made on CTV, they filmed us, she psyched against me in the rising air and won a board

[00:54:34] and we ended up missing qualifying by a half a board and they caught on me giving her our time about like, I can't believe you psyched against me. Yeah, yeah. No, we don't play in the same events, right? She's usually, in the last 15 years, playing women's events.

[00:54:50] So we don't really compete against each other so much. We've got a couple of the UVA bridge club kids are, I think you gave them full access to your library of deals. They're both, I spoke to both of them this morning to both very complimentary and thankful.

[00:55:07] It sounds like you gave the entire, all the kids in the US bridge federation. Yeah, and it's not just US. If you're out there and watching this podcast, if you're from Canada or you're from Denmark or whatever, if you're young, I want to help young people.

[00:55:20] I'm not in the business of selling lessons to kids. The more young people that we have becoming experts is the better, and that's what my lessons are for. They're mostly for helping people go from intermediate actually to expert. And so yeah, no, I basically just,

[00:55:39] if you're a young person, just you can just reach out by email and we'll just get you set up with lessons for sure. You're doing a lot of stuff with Into Bridge. How did it come to pass? Like you were, I don't remember if you won the,

[00:55:55] All organic, it's all organic. They sent, I basically anytime somebody starts something new with related to bridge, I'm early adopter. I check it out, see what's going on. And I tried their product with Rank Games. I loved it and I played a bunch of it

[00:56:12] and I gave them a bunch of feedback. I'm like, I need this, I want this, I want this. But just as a, I'm just a player on their site. I'm not, I don't work with them or for them, but at some point when they were, yeah.

[00:56:24] So basically I just want to embrace new things at Bridge and want them to get bigger. And because I think the more competitive of an environment there is in the playing space, then in my opinion, if there's bridge base when they were on their own,

[00:56:42] they weren't doing enough to grow the game. And so the more competitors that they have, I just think it's good for the world. I love bridge base actually. I think bridge base is amazing. Nothing against bridge base. I just think that the best outcome for bridge

[00:57:00] would be us to have a lot of platforms that instead of fighting for the same pie of bridge players that they're compelled to each work on their own initiatives to bring new players into game. Because that's going to be the easiest way

[00:57:13] for them to make money is to get a new customer rather than fighting to pull customers from the other platforms. So I just like whenever somebody's doing something new, I just want to support them. And so I got on board with IntuBridge

[00:57:26] just by playing and giving him feedback and helping them. And then I played the ranked games and I was very happy for them to use my name to promote it in any way because obviously the more experts they have on the site are the better.

[00:57:40] And then eventually they were developing their robot, Leah and they kind of said to me, hey, we are going to eventually allow Leah to build to play different systems. And would you like us to work on your system? And I'm like, that would be absolutely amazing

[00:57:55] because my students, their biggest problem is that when they learn my system, that they're like, I don't have anybody to play with within my area. So I basically gave Luke their programmer access to all of my lessons and all of my practice sets

[00:58:11] so that he could not only use the lessons to teach the robots, but to use the practice sets to reinforce whether the robot was doing what it was supposed to do. And so basically, and it's amazing how good it is. Like having an expert bridge player programming

[00:58:26] the robot turned out to be amazing because also my interactions with Luke where he's like, I'm not sure what you mean here or like what's going on here. And I could just like explain to him in very few words and then he makes the proper fix.

[00:58:38] And now what's also better is because I love playing on IntuBridge, I can go and practice with this robot and I see that I'm playing my system with the robot and when it does something I doesn't like, I quickly take a screenshot,

[00:58:51] send it in a WhatsApp message to Luke and he gives me the thumbs up, got it and boom, it's gonna be fixed for the next batch. And so it's getting better. And if you saw my text thread with Luke,

[00:59:04] like I can go for like, I have sent him like so many, so many, any poor guy I'm sure he deals with it with lots of people. But and so, and they've also made a partnership with Cubids, that Cubids also, which also absolutely amazing app.

[00:59:22] If anybody hasn't heard of Cubids, it is awesome. For bidding with your partner, I love the weekly, but I bid with Raj every week in the weekly because weekly all these good pairs are doing it. Like I can go see how like Joe and Brad bid their hands

[00:59:36] or like Shorten Boss or whatever, all these expert pairs and it's really great bidding software, but it is even better now that they have a robot and even better now that the robot can play my system. So now what I can do is go in Cubids

[00:59:50] and I can say like dealing with no Trump interference, like my partner opens one no, I wanna practice my transfer Levensal. I set up a set on no Trump entry and I deal myself but instead of it being like an asynchronous thing

[01:00:02] where I bid and I wait for my partner to bid, the robot immediately. So I'm actually just bidding hands with the robot and it's quick and the amount of practice you can get that bridge players are gonna have the ability to get better so much quicker now

[01:00:15] than they ever were before. It's kind of amazing. So it's, but it's cool the power of working together. Right? These are two unrelated companies Cubids and IntuBridge that they're collaborating on the robot. And then the fact that I collaborated with them

[01:00:30] with my lessons, it's the power of working together is pretty amazing and we're just starting. So it's like seeing like it's gonna get better and better. So like with Luke for example, when you tell him about a situation where the computer didn't do what you wanted it

[01:00:45] to do with your system, like how does he? How does he- Well, most of them are obvious. Like most of them, like the robot does something ridiculous and so he knows and he's able. In fact, it's better if I don't say anything to him

[01:01:01] because he can see why it's done this ridiculous thing a lot faster than I can. So basically I just show him the things that it doesn't do. But like occasionally I'll be in a spot where like, I really wanna make a bid,

[01:01:16] but I can see that the explanation for all of my bids are not good. This happens to me on BBO all the time where like you have no bids that fit your hand. And so I might send him a spot like that

[01:01:28] where I would be like every bid in this auction was gonna, I had no way forward. So I do something like that. But otherwise yeah, sometimes he clarifies like, well it did this because of this and do you agree with that?

[01:01:41] And I'll be like, and we'll have a back and forth about it, but very often it's just obvious and he just fixes whatever was going wrong. And do you find like instances of like one thing where you've given it to him?

[01:01:56] Does that have, has that same problem come up? Well, it takes them a week or two to release the fixes, but no, I haven't seen like a repetitive problem. I usually, excuse me, within two weeks or so the problem's fixed and maybe it wasn't fixed properly

[01:02:16] and something else will go wrong, but I have not experienced the same problems coming up. No, I think that it's definitely moving forward. It just seems like part of the challenge is a bidding is like creating a robot that bids well

[01:02:27] is that like how do you even like, maybe this is more of a software problem and not necessarily something that you can answer about like how do you even standardize it so that it like, you know, outside of like one situation, like the meta.

[01:02:43] It's definitely not a problem that I would want to be solving, but he seems to be doing a really good job with it. I'll tell you that at least my experience with my system, I don't know what's going on with the other system,

[01:02:52] but my experience with my system is that it's, she's good at evaluating, she's good at using the tools that and knowing which things to use when and so he's doing something right for sure. And we're gonna be able to get better as bridge players

[01:03:06] because we're able to primarily like bidding focus you're saying because as we can. Yeah, bidding, bidding. I just think the bidding is the hardest thing to get really good at because it's very hard to things don't come up enough for you to actually get better at them.

[01:03:24] Like you don't see Levensoll is a perfect example where if you go to the British club and you ask it's like one of the hardest systems but people will, it's the most messed up system like people make mistakes with it, forget it

[01:03:37] because the problem is it just doesn't come up enough. If it came up 17 times in a week by the end of that week you'd be like, I know Levensoll I'm never gonna forget it ever again. The problem is that it comes up once in January

[01:03:51] and then again in March sometimes you're playing with one partner that doesn't play Levensoll or whatever it just doesn't happen. And so it just never gets reinforced but if you go to Cupid's and you select my robot and you're playing my transfer Levensoll

[01:04:06] you can solidify it in a matter of hours. And you'll never mess it up again. Like that's cause once it's in there, it's in there. You don't screw up stamen, right? Like you don't, like you don't, the things that come up all the time

[01:04:19] you don't, I mean obviously some but some things that come up all the time you do but you definitely reinforce practice is the way to get really, really good at something and ingrain it into your mind. Now, is that gonna teach you proper bidding judgment?

[01:04:33] No, the only thing that's gonna teach you proper bidding judgment is being out there playing in high level competition and getting burned for your mistakes and seeing other people not make those mistakes and working to understand what they were thinking to get their decisions right.

[01:04:49] Like that's always been how I've gotten better is I am introspective, I look at a hand and be like, oh, I could have made that. Should I have made that? Was there anything there that I could have seen that would have helped me make that decision?

[01:05:02] And then, oh yeah, I should have known that. That was exactly what I needed to think. And then the next time maybe I don't know it again but as long as you keep thinking about what you should have seen,

[01:05:14] eventually you start to see it when you need to see it. You started a partnership recently with Chris Willanken. Are you playing your system? He says he likes to play his partner's system. We just played one event. It wasn't really a partnership. He's got his own nationals partner

[01:05:31] and I've got my own, it was for the trials and but he was great to talk system with. He's a really high level thinker about the game, really good player. We kind of met halfway. I started by sending him notes that I played with Warren

[01:05:47] and we kind of trimmed him down. He kind of saw holes in some of our agreements where he's like, I can see this leading to a problem if I try to apply this here. And then we kind of talked it through and edited the document down.

[01:05:58] He had some things that he demanded or not demanded but very strongly suggested that's what he wanted to do like adding multi and just little things. Like he had this thing about transfer, Levensal that he didn't want to play the transfers for Invitational Plus.

[01:06:15] He wanted to always transfer a week or better and have like two no always show clubs and three clubs always show diamonds. Like whatever I was happy to play with it. Like I could adjust little details but overall the structure was he played what I played

[01:06:29] but I play very simple things. Like the things that are my system is not complicated. I mean it's complicated to a low level intermediate would look at some of the stuff that we play and be like, that's ridiculous. Why would it? It's way too complicated.

[01:06:44] But like most of the stuff that I play is kind of expert standard like transfers after two no rebid, transfer Levensal. Try like the things that like most of the stuff that I play is very straightforward and standard so that he was very quick and easy

[01:07:01] to talk about the system. We bit a bunch of hands. Okay, last question maybe perhaps last question. What do you like to play when you open a week two? What do you like to play to know as? Yeah, so we play Vinny.

[01:07:15] Vinny invented a system that I really, really love. So that's gonna be part of my week two classes like introducing Vinny. I asked them, I'm like what do you guys call it Cran and Vinny because they've what they play and they're like Vinny.

[01:07:27] They don't even play it anymore cause they play them. They've started playing two clubs, 18, 19 and all this stuff. So they play, they've changed their system since but yeah, it's just, it's basically like if you think about when you would normally want

[01:07:40] a bit to know over two of a major there's basically two circumstances. You're either inviting game or you're looking for slam. Right? And so they play that to know first of all does it like partner are you minimum

[01:07:55] or are you maximum which is like kind of a normal thing which I've never really subscribed to the old the August, it's a little bit like is this a good suit? Is this a bad suit? Is this like it's just too complicated

[01:08:08] and so instead it kind of basically the way it works I can just explain in two seconds here. Three clubs says I like my hand I have at least a medium or better hand. Going back to three of your major is I hate my hand

[01:08:23] and the other three steps are showing six fours low middle high. So the idea is that finding a six the four four fit in the secondary suit can be absolutely huge. We often open with four card majors week twos. So yeah, so that's the idea.

[01:08:41] And then the only other thing is that over three clubs I like my hand three diamonds ask for shortness and it's shocking how good finding out whether the week two bitter has shortness or not can help you for slam. It's amazing how often that can

[01:08:55] and it's not just that they have shortness you also know there are six three three one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they didn't show the six four. So you end up being able to find side suit fits and it's a pretty good system.

[01:09:07] Six, so six four three shows six four. Yeah, I mean you're not really opening week twos with six four three so often but like yeah, yeah. It just doesn't come up very often. The idea that like it's way more rare

[01:09:19] as far as like percentage of time you're dealt it plus you have to decide to open a week two bit you don't love opening week two bits with side voids because it really it adds a little bit of playing strength like I'm not,

[01:09:29] I don't have a rule like I wouldn't open with a void but like you got to be careful when you have for like a random first round control that isn't counted by your high cards. It's like partners never going to really envision that

[01:09:40] so finding sometimes can find not find slams and yeah it's just so yeah. So I'm not really worried about six four three B at six four basically you show your six four like only when you like your hand. How long do you think it's gonna take you

[01:09:52] to produce this next one? I would say that every lesson takes me between like outlining it and then ordering it and making the diagrams for like the new things that I haven't really like when I'm explaining a new system.

[01:10:11] It's the whole process I would say is something like 20 hours, 15 hours something like that that I would put it but I am crazy. Like I'm sure I could do it in much less time but I refuse to cut corners and I am obsessive

[01:10:28] about making sure that the end product is like the best quality that I can put out. What's the best and worst feedback you've gotten on one of your lessons? I mean, the best feedback it's hard to say that there's been best feedback

[01:10:42] but tons of people saying wow this is like finally I understand this subject or this is just the greatest like the number one feedback I get from people is I've been waiting my whole life for somebody to teach lessons about things like this.

[01:10:58] Like it's never been content like this. That's my favorite compliment that I get. My feedback, people are pretty hesitant to give negative feedback. Sometimes I'll say like once I would give a class and people will say like it's too complicated

[01:11:13] it was more complicated than it needed to be that would be probably feedback or this wasn't at the level of your other master series classes I've gotten that one a couple of times where it was too easy, which I that's my hardest part

[01:11:27] as a teacher is really judging difficulty because everything is the same level to me kind of thing. It's not like so understanding what people are gonna perceive as hard and what they're gonna perceive as not as less difficult is it's hard for me.

[01:11:44] I one of my students has been on my case that I say things are hard too frequently. Like I'm constantly apologizing for the difficulty level. I don't know who I am. Well, Gavin it's been super fun to catch up with you.

[01:12:06] Like I said earlier your enthusiasm is really fun to be around and I look forward to seeing you soon in Toronto. Thank you for having me John. Thank you for listening to another episode of the setting trick. If you've ever wanted to partner with me

[01:12:28] or one of our guests, 33 past setting trick guests are available for bid in the Spark Education Auction. There is a Pro-Am which is taking place on July 15th where you'll get to play against a lot of great players and then there's also the opportunity

[01:12:47] for an 18 board BBO game after the upcoming Toronto NABC. I'm even bidding on some of these bridge players so don't steal my bids. You can play with me, you can play with today's guests Gavin, Bob Hammond, Adam and Zach Groessack, Kevin and Michael Rosenberg, Aaron Silverstein,

[01:13:10] Jenny and Tom Carmichael, Olivia Shurson, Ron Smith, Adam Viltoskey, Joel Wildridge, Ann Berlin, James Holzhauer, Robert Todd, Walt Schaefer, Fart Bramley, Greg Hinsie, Kitty Cooper, Olin Hubert, Phil Clayton, Ron Smith, Adam Kaplan, Alex and Finn Kolesnik, Anam Teba, Andrew Chen, Jacob Freeman, Joe Gru.

[01:13:34] I forgot about Joe Gru, John Craniac, Migri, Mikarim and Sophie Boudish. You wanna see what you got? You're gonna get a full review of the play with your partner. You can go up against Larry Cohen, Ralph Katz. This is a big event and it's raising money

[01:13:53] for Junior Bridge, some initiatives of the ACBL Education Foundation for juniors, for junior travel and it's a lot of fun. So there's a link in our show notes, the setting trick under the episode Gavin Wolpert, this most recent one and thanks for your consideration.