Brian Reynolds is an LA-based bridge teacher who, with his wife, Samantha, runs an educational website, The Bridge Teachers. They specialize in teaching people who've "never touched a deck of cards."
That's how they got recommended to the production team for the bridge documentary film, "The Kids Table." That initial meeting dramatically altered the film's storyline. One player quit on the spot!
As a bridge pro, Brian is refreshingly candid about his bridge ability. This conversation covers a broad range of topics.
[00:00:00] We're back from the dead, The Setting Trick. Frankly, I hate doing these intros. They always slow the process of making an episode down. But alas, here I am. Today's guest is Brian Reynolds, who might not be as well known as some of my previous guests.
[00:00:22] But I knew him a while back because he was featured in the film The Kids Table. And Brian has a pretty interesting reveal. For those of you who are listening closely, I'm gonna let him go for it. Alright, I have today Brian Reynolds, who I came to know in my friend Ed Benda's film The Kids Table.
[00:00:55] And we just met in person for the first time at the Las Vegas NABC. I was very impressed that you came just to kiss the ring in the Trumpian fashion here. In the realm of, yeah, the new era. So I couldn't, yeah. It's the stage is yours. Brian Reynolds.
[00:01:22] One of the, has a site where you teach bridge. It's called The Bridge Teachers. Yeah. Good to have you on. Well, thank you for having me. I think it was your second episode you had Bob Hammond on. Yes. So this will be a different side of the bridge world.
[00:01:48] I have the distinct honor of when Bob Hammond was approached by a gentleman named Eli Borach. This is probably 20 years ago now, 20 plus years ago now. Eli Borach was a huge UCLA alumni. And I think that's how he knew Bob. And he was big in the bridge world too. I played against him and his lovely wife all the time at the Barrington Bridge Club. RIP Barrington Bridge Club.
[00:02:16] Bob was approached and was asked to recommend a bridge coach for the UCLA bridge team. And he recommended me. And I have a voicemail, which I managed to, it was out of tape and I managed to save it. I have a, I have a voicemail of Bob Hammond on my answering machine saying, Hey, this is Bob, Bob Hammond.
[00:02:45] Like I wouldn't know who Bob was cause that's Bob all over. And he said, yeah. Eli Borach asked me who should be the bridge, you know, the bridge coach for the UCLA bridge team. I said, you, so give him a call. And, uh, I got to be the UCLA bridge coach for three years. Um, we grew from three players.
[00:03:11] When I started, we had three players, which is nerve wracking when you're, when you're, you know, sort of the brief that you're given as a coach is go win a national championship. And the national championship is a four player format. And you've got three players. It's a little nerve wracking. Um, and we grew, um, there was a, oh man, I can't remember his name right now. There was a professor at UCLA who was also a huge bridge player in the bridge LA scene.
[00:03:41] And also that, not, I don't know if he ever won a national championship, but he was a very, very good, much better bridge player than I, um, named Adam. I can't remember his name right now. Anyway, sorry, Adam, I don't remember your last name, but I can see your face and I know I could probably tell you his system notes, but I can't tell you his last name, you know, as in typical bridge player fashion. Um, but he actually, uh, also came, uh, came on, uh, cause you had to have a, you know, you had to have a professor cause it was like an extracurricular club type of thing.
[00:04:08] Um, and he, he obviously did a ton of work as well, but it grew from three kids to at the end of my third year, I think we had nine tables regularly. Wow. Yeah. Of kids playing bridge and, you know, one team, I think we actually had two teams the last year, uh, it competing at the collegiate world championships. Um, and they, my, my last year coaching, they did actually win. Wow. A collegiate national championship.
[00:04:38] Um, so it was really funny when I was listening to all these amazing people who play bridge at such a high level. Um, and I was thinking, do I belong on this podcast? Right. Cause if you want to hear about the time I executed, uh, you know, uh, a stepping stone squeeze against Paul Soloway, you're going to be waiting a long time that that didn't happen. Right. Yeah.
[00:05:09] Um, I have had the honor to play against top flight players. Um, Samantha and I once had an amazingly unbelievable disaster, uh, playing against, um, So tell us who Samantha is before. Oh, great. Samantha is, but great. Yeah, absolutely. So my wife, Samantha McDouglas, uh, is the head teacher at the bridge teachers.com.
[00:05:33] Um, it's funny cause you mentioned the doc, the, the, the kids table, which was Ed Benda approached us. We didn't know Ed. And actually again, uh, I believe Ed reached out to the ACBL who reached out to Jill Myers and said, do you want to teach these four millennials how to play bridge? Yeah. I can only imagine what Jill said.
[00:05:55] If you know, Jill, I can just, I can just imagine Jill, uh, being approached to, to, to give up 18 months of her life to teach four more millennials to play bridge. Um, she said no. Uh, but they said, who, who, who, who should, who should we talk to? And they recommended Samantha. Um, so it's sort of like the chapel Rowan. I don't know if you know who chapel Rowan is. She's an artist. I do.
[00:06:24] She had a very, I liked the pink pony. Oh, such a great song. Right. Um, she wants, I think she was performing at Coachella and she's, she said to the crowd, I'm your favorite artist, favorite artist. Uh, so I've been recommended to people as their bridge teacher. I mean, Jill's recommend me to her friends to play. I'm sort of your, I'm sort of your favorite bridge experts, bridge teacher. Got it.
[00:06:50] Well, Samantha is, I want to be really clear on this because if you've watched the doc, the kids table, it, you would think that I was the bridge teacher of record for the kids table. And the reason why is because I'm loud and obnoxious and I like to say both things. And meanwhile, Samantha is like, just not that, just doesn't have that personality. She's, but she did most of the work in terms of coaching. She was, she really did coach them.
[00:07:18] Um, but was it really 18 months? Yeah. It was 18 months of my life. Yeah. It's good. So when they first approached us, they said, uh, we're doing this doc. It's about people learning to play bridge for millennials learning to play bridge, which is the time was people in their twenties, you know, uh, mid twenties. And, um, we want, we want to compete seriously in a national championship in the next three months.
[00:07:52] And Samantha, Samantha showed me this email and I basically said something along the lines of, well, we're being punked, you know, like tell these people to kick rocks. Like, what are they talking about? Like, this is ridiculous. What are you talking about? Like, you don't know what you're talking about. Right. And she stopped me and she said, look, one of my main goals in teaching bridge is to grow the game. Yeah. Is to make the game, just get eyeballs on it, get more people playing.
[00:08:22] And, you know, and Samantha, I've had conversations about that. Samantha and I have been together for 32 years now. We've been bridge partners for 33 years now. Uh, but like. We've, we've talked and we've had conversations both at the, at the, you know, the sectional level or the club level all the way to the national level with people about how do we grow the game and what our goals are for what our goals are as teachers.
[00:08:51] And she said, look, you just need to stop. We need to talk to these people. They've got the documentary. They're serious. Let's go talk to them. I said, okay, great. Let's go talk to them. So we drove downtown LA, which, you know, is a sacrifice in itself driving for I drive to downtown LA. And we were, we were going to have a 15 minute in-person meeting that talked to them about their bridge doc. Yeah. And they sat us down and, and typical me fashion.
[00:09:19] I said, look, the email you sent us is makes zero sense. Like the questions you asked us make no sense. It seems bad they weren't filming this. They should have. And then the, maybe they did. I don't know. Maybe they did. I said they were very good. That, that probably, they might have. That production team is crazy good.
[00:09:43] Um, you know, they're super successful now, uh, on a bunch of different levels, but in any event, um, I said, this makes no sense. I said, what you're asking to do is you're asking to participate in the tournament world. You don't even know what the tournament world is. Like, you don't know what that means. So I said, here's the tournament world. And I wrote, so I talked for about two and a half hours. Oh my God. They asked a bunch of questions. This was supposed to be a 15 minute meeting.
[00:10:08] And they said, well, we're about to have our three other players. Cause Ed was one of the players. He was there for the production meeting. He says, we're about to have our three other players come. And our doc just changed. Like from your words, our doc just changed. Wow. And he said, would you stay and tell them what you just told us? Oh God. So Samantha and I hung out. They gave, they bought us lunch. It was very nice. It was very kind.
[00:10:35] And then the kid, the kids, cause they called them the kids table. Right. But these young men and women came in and they said, okay, this is what bridge is. And this is what we're thinking about doing now that we've talked to these two experts. Cause Samantha and I aren't expert players, but we're experts on the world and we're expert teachers, which I think is an important distinction. Right. Yeah.
[00:11:03] I mean, Samantha and I have made the cut at some national events for the second day. You know, I've, I've made the, I've made the cut with other partners, um, you know, for national events, but we're not national champions and it's not, it's, I mean, obviously I would love to, but that's not currently where our focus is. My focus is not to get really, really good at bridge. Although I do have, as I say that I'm sitting at looking at my desk and I've got, you know, bridge, bridge odds for practical players, which is an amazing book.
[00:11:29] And, you know, I work on my game all the time, but that that's not who I am. But anyway, the point is these three other people sit down, they listened to me talk. They asked a bunch of questions. It wasn't just a monologue, although I am very good at monologues. And one of them quit on the spot. One of them said, I'm not doing that. I'm not, forget that. What are you talking about?
[00:11:59] And, you know, this is my whole thing with bridge is that it is never how I would actually approach somebody who said to me, I want to learn to play bridge. Yeah. I would never approach them and go, oh, well, let me tell you about nationals. Yeah. And let me tell you about imps versus match points. And I would be like, cool, let's have as much fun as possible. Yeah.
[00:12:24] Because you can make it as fun as you possibly can for another human being. And my experience, because when I first started teaching, I would get these groups of four people, right? Right. I would, I was teaching, I was teaching one woman and she said, I got these group, I put together a little group because I didn't know what I was doing as a, as a business person. I didn't know what I was doing. I knew what I was doing as a teacher. Yeah. But she put together four people. So I always got these four people.
[00:12:52] And in my experience, every group of four people who learns to pray bridge, it's very, very simple. Well, two of them are going to want to play once a week. They're going to want to be with their friends. They're going to want to, what I call throwing cards. Right. Yeah. It's a social event. They're having fun. Yeah. Maybe they'll log on once in a while and they'll play a little thing. Right.
[00:13:20] One of them will quit. Yeah. Life is too big. Right. Right. My, uh, our, our, our partner, Morgan, our business partner and life partner, Morgan, she is, um, she is a, uh, you know, photographer. She loves to take photography like, and she travels the world and she takes photography.
[00:13:44] Um, and once upon a time, like back in the dim and misty, when we were all very, very young, we taught her how to play bridge. And one time at a nationals, I think it was early, early two thousands. Uh, Morgan and I happened to be in San Francisco at the same time as the nationals. And I was like, let's go play bridge. And she's like, fine. And we won an open side pairs, right? A little, little, no, little 9am side pairs. We stopped in and we won the whole thing. Uh, you know, that little, that thing.
[00:14:15] She won't play bridge. It has nothing to do with being good at it. It has nothing to do with like her being able to understand the game. It just doesn't speak to her. So anyway, back to the kids table. So wait, did you just tell me you're in a throuple? Oh yeah. We're in a polyamorous triad actually. Well, quad now, but that's a whole nother story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Drop that casually. Hi everybody. Hi. It's the ethically non-monogamous person in the room. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:44] Um, my, my wife, Samantha and I have known each other. Well, they've known each other since, you know, great, uh, middle junior high. Um, but yeah, I met Samantha in 90. I met Samantha in 1990. We became, uh, serious in 90. We started dating in 91. Uh, she said, you have to meet my best friend Morgan. I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I said, okay, great.
[00:15:10] Uh, and then in 93 or 94, we moved out to St. Louis of all places. Gross. To, um, to, I'm, to be, to sort of move in. And then at that time we discussed, um, cause Samantha had been ethic open. We've had an open relationship from the jump. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, so we'd been ethically non-monogamous and, um, that, uh, and by the way, this is before we, this is before the internet.
[00:15:37] This is before, this is before, um, it was, we became a thruple one year before this very famous polyarmist book called the ethical slut was published. Huh? So we were just three kids. I mean, 20, 23, 24, three kids trying to figure out how to have this pair, you know, this paradigm that does not, there was nothing like it. Sure. At least nothing that I'd heard of.
[00:16:05] I mean, there was no connection to any community of that nature, but yeah. So the three of us have been a family now for 30 years. Wow. Uh, yeah, I wrote a whole play about it. If you go to our, if you go to our entertainment site, which is called, uh, tube man, int.com T U B E M A N E N T.com. Uh, you can see, uh, I wrote a play called monopoly. It's been produced twice.
[00:16:32] Um, it's all about, uh, it's my take on ethical non-monogamy. Um, yeah. Uh, so yeah, so yes, casually. Um, but, uh, casually yes. Uh, and before, before we get too far, no, you can't legally, legally married to people. I'm not legally married to Morgan. We, it's amazing what you can do with LLCs and powers of attorney. Uh, definitely do your research if you're out there and you want to be ethically non-monogamous
[00:16:59] and polyamorous, definitely do your research on the legality of things, especially in your area. Maybe flee a red state in the next week. Uh, but yeah, there's a lot of info out there, which I didn't have. Yeah. When I was, when I was a kid and actually, you know, to, to bring it back to bridge, when I met Samantha, um, we were friends for about, I don't know, like a year. And then she went, you know, it was, it was college. She went back to, she went back East.
[00:17:25] And then when she came back, I was just kind of staring at her going, man, I really liked this person a lot. Like I really like not only, not only an attraction, like smoke show, but, but like her brain, like she's one of the smartest people I've ever met. And, and her way of looking at the world and her way of talking. I was like, do you want to go out? Like, cause we were part of friend, we were a friend's group. You want to go out and like, she's like, like a date.
[00:17:55] She has this way of saying things that make you feel like the stupidest person in the room. And it's just like, I like a date. I'm like, yeah, let's go on to like a date. Just the two of us. No, no, no big friends group. Just the two of us. And she's like, yeah, okay. But you have to learn to play bridge first. Oh, wow. Cause she had been playing kitchen table. Well, no, her parents had been playing kitchen table bridge for years, but never taught her the rules, like refused to teach her. I don't know why.
[00:18:23] And then right as she was leaving for college, it was like their parting gift to her or whatever. Like, okay, here's the rules to bridge, but she didn't have anyone to play with. I mean, again, this is. Where'd you go to college? I went to the university of Arizona. Well, okay. So when I met Samantha, I had already dropped out of college college and I did not get along. I like to learn too much to enjoy college. There's nothing that gets in the way of learning like an education. I, I am obsessed with learning.
[00:18:51] I have, you know, I have grad level textbooks on my, on my walls. I read, I read neuroscience for fun. But the structure of college and I did not get along. Um, and the other problem with college of the many problems that it did not align with what I wanted to do at the time I was doing professional theater. Um, I actually started doing professional theater when I was in high school, my senior year of high school, I started doing professional theater.
[00:19:17] Um, and so when you have rehearsals that last until 11 o'clock at night, and then you got to get back to your dorm. Via bus. Cause you don't have a car. And then you have organic chemistry at 7am in the morning. The schedule stopped working really, really fast. Um, and I went to the university of Arizona for chemical engineering. I wanted to be a chemical engineer. I love chemistry.
[00:19:44] Um, I love the science of it and the logic of it. I love all that stuff. Um, but I love theater way, way more. And also I was staring down the barrel of working, working three jobs, going to school and, you know, waiting and waiting to be a chemical engineer or working three jobs and doing professional theater right away and loving it. So it was an easy, easy choice.
[00:20:14] So when I met Samantha, I'd already dropped out of college. Uh, I do have a Paul Soloway story. I do have a Paul Soloway story. I was sitting down at the table with Paul. I forget what event it was. Obviously I wasn't playing with him. I was playing, you know, he was from LA. I don't know if Paul was from LA. Did he live there? No, this was at a national. So, okay. I just bumped into him. He was in, you know, we were in some pairs event and he, he came, I think I was playing with a, with a client actually.
[00:20:44] And he came and sat down at my table and, you know, beat us up pretty good as Paul did to everybody. Um, and I never met him. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, he, he passed away shortly after this story. Actually, unfortunately, RIP Paul, he's such a sweet man. I mean, like my experience is the, the, the better you get at bridge, the nicer you become. Yeah. I've had very few negative experiences playing against top flight players. Um, medium, medium flight players.
[00:21:14] I've had a few negative. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I actually did get once get into it with a, with, um, I don't know who they were, but I did once get into it with a, uh, with a, with a couple of experts. I think it was the first round of the spin gold. And they were so angry that they were playing me and Samantha. They were so ticked off. I'm like, look, if you have a problem with, you know, baby teams playing in the spin gold, talk to the ACPL, but don't talk, you know, it's not my problem. I want to play against you.
[00:21:45] And at one point they, they asked about discards and we were playing Laventhal at the time. And, uh, they were like, what is this nonsense? Laventhal. I'm like, oh yeah, it's only been around since 1930, whatever. Okay. Whatever, dude. And so he said something to his partners. Like, it's just like odd even, except they don't have the problem if, you know, they don't have a low card to discard. And so then later we were, they were defending some hand and the guy had a discarding problem because he didn't have any odd cards. Oh.
[00:22:15] And he, he and his partner, they, they navigated anyway. They're experts. But they got done and they're like, he's like, yeah, I, I, you know, I threw the four clubs cause that's all I could do. And I said to Samantha, I said, yeah, they're playing odd even discards. It's kind of like Laventhal, except they don't have the, we don't have the problem if we don't have any odd cards. And he was not happy. He was like, how dare you talk to me with your, you know, 1100 master points. They won the mash. Oh, they did. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:22:46] We've, we've never won a mash in a spin gold. Hmm. The closest wish again, bridge stories, the baby bridge stories, right? It's, you're not going to hear, you're not going to hear stories of, you know, Bob not leading the correct ace in the net, you know, and costing his team, the world championships, which I got a chance to talk to him about once, which was really cool. Um, he's like, yeah, I should have known. And so he's that dude is like the coolest of cool.
[00:23:09] Um, I, we were playing against, um, we were playing in, I believe is Reno. And at the time my knockout team had won something like 72 straight knockout matches. Wow. Because it was me, Samantha, uh, and our, our GNT partners. And we, I think collectively we had something like 1200 master points.
[00:23:42] But the problem was, is that we were way better than that. Right. Like, I mean, if you, if I were to be like brutally honest with myself, we were probably, we probably had about the ability of like, let's say people with like 3000 or 4000 master points each. Right. Got it. Yeah. Just being, just being brutally honest with myself. Sure. But the problem with that is when you've got a team that should have like 13,000 master points or 12,000 master points and you're going to play against people who also have a thousand master points collectively. Yeah.
[00:24:12] You know, the score is ridiculous. We would win matches by over a hundred on 24 board matches. So we go to the tournament directors and we say, look, we, we would like to play up. This isn't fun for them. It isn't fun for us. We'd like to play up. And at this point we were nine days into a nationals and we won every match playing in three sessions a day on a four person team, which is crazy. But what are you going to do?
[00:24:37] And they, they, they, they, they said it kind of like to put us in our place. They said, okay, well you have a choice. Like you can play in the top bracket or you can play in your bracket. That's the only thing we can do under the rules. And they were expecting us to crawl back to our table bracket with our table. And I said, oh, absolutely. We'll take it. We'll take the top bracket. We'll take the front. Yes. Right now. Do it.
[00:25:06] And they went, oh, wait, no, no, no, no, no. I'm like, no, no, no, no. You just said, you just said, we're holding you to that. We're, we're playing in the top bracket. We're playing in the top bracket. Now at the time, again, baby bridge player. I didn't know the, the, the firestorm that I had just created because this is a nationals, you know, it's not the 9am game. It's the, you know, it's the 1030 or whatever, or the one, one o'clock game.
[00:25:36] And I just bumped some team from, I don't know, Hungary or wherever, or, you know, some national team from, from Scotland. The national team from Scotland just got bumped into the second bracket. And that cascaded all the way down through all the brackets. And I didn't, I didn't know. And the directors shouldn't have pulled this garbage. So all of a sudden we, everybody hated us.
[00:26:02] I mean, we got people walking up to us saying, this is, you shouldn't do this. This is unethical, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, you're talking to a guy with 400 master points. Like he thinks he knows what just happened. Like go talk to the directors. They gave me a choice. They gave me a choice, which was to go beat up on another team, make everybody unhappy or play against the best players in the world. And what do you think I'm going to choose? I love playing against the best in the world. Do I care that I've never won a Manchester spin goal?
[00:26:30] No, I learned so much by watching Bobby Wolf have me have an absolute disaster at the bridge table. Nothing like, nothing like having a disaster when Bobby Wolf is kibitzing over your wife's shoulder. It's fantastic. It's definitely a learning experience. But anyway, so we sat down against arena. I can never pronounce her last name. A spot, a client team or sponsor team that I think they went, I think they were getting ready to, to compete in the women's world championships like six months later. Yeah.
[00:27:00] Oh, they were mad. They were so mad. They're like, what is this nonsense? Like, why are we playing against these people? And I was like, now you know how I feel sitting in the bottom bracket all day. Like, you think you're going to beat the, you're going to beat the absolute tar out of me. Yeah, absolutely. Like this sucks. Sucks for everybody involved. Too bad. And then we were up by two at halftime. Oh, wow.
[00:27:28] And they weren't laughing anymore. And they, they were, they were mad, but they were mad for a different reason. And on the very last board, we were winning the match. I think we were up by like five with the last board to come. And they were playing a precision club system with a mini, I think it was 12 to 14. It might've been 13 to 15, but they were playing, they were playing a mini, mini no trump. Yeah.
[00:27:57] Or a medium no trump, whatever you want to call it. Which was exactly the same system that my partners were playing at the other table. They were playing, they're playing the same thing. Okay. So at both tables, the auction goes one no trump double, which at my table was strength, but ostensibly takeout. And at the other table was just pure, you know, like strength slash penalty. Right.
[00:28:23] And at my table, when one no trump double pass and at the other table, one no trump double pass. Okay. And the person sitting in my chair passed and one no trump doubled went for 500. All right. And there's really no good run out anywhere you run out to the expert play, both, both, you know, both players sitting to my right were absolutely hosed. There was no, I think they were even playing the same rescue system.
[00:28:52] It's just one of those hands where you're going for 500. Good luck. Yeah. But in my partnership, that was ostensibly takeout. And I must've sat there for like, I don't know, five minutes. And just like, just like, I, this is wrong. I should pass. I should violate system agreement. I should violate partnership agreement. I should violate all the talks we've had about how we're dealing with a mini no trump, all the ways we've been coached. I'm like, I should just violate it.
[00:29:22] I should just pass. This is, this is, I should pass. I should pass. And they didn't. Eventually I bid two hearts and we made our, we got our non vulnerable game and we lost the match by one and we were never allowed to move up brackets again. But, you know, arena was very sweet. She came up to us afterwards and said, I thought it was a joke. I thought you guys were a joke. You know, you play great.
[00:29:51] You're, you're, you're really good players. Keep working on it. By the way, here's the system for playing that. I think you should be playing over a mini no trump. That's way better than the system you're playing, you know, reach out to me and, you know, if you need to talk or want to talk, very, very sweet. But man, can you imagine if we'd knock them out in the first round? It's like, who's laughing now? But you know, that's what I love about bridge is that like, I've gotten to play against the best in the world, even though I'm not the best in the world.
[00:30:21] Now, do I think that's good for tournament bridge? I don't necessarily think it is good for tournament bridge. Is it good for me? Yeah, it's absolutely good for me. Is it good for Samantha? Sure. And is it good for people who have those aspirations? Yes. To get down, to get to sit down and play against Bob, if you're lucky or even someone, you know, like I know I've listened to your podcast and you're pretty self depreciating about your bridge journey.
[00:30:49] But you're serious about the game and you're a very, very good player. You're, you know, you're an expert level player. And I know you're already smiling like, I don't know if I call myself expert, which is, you know, kind of the mark of an expert. But, but like, if I got to sit down and play against you and your team, let's say, you know, Samantha and I had a team. I would say our chances of winning are very small, right? Like, like, depending on my teammates a lot.
[00:31:18] But, but like, just mathematically, statistically, my chances of winning a match against you and your very good team are very small, especially the longer the match. But I would learn so much and I would grow so much, right? As a player. And the next time you saw me be a little tougher and a little tougher after that. I think that's really great for the game of bridge in terms of that's how it's accessed by, by people.
[00:31:45] Um, but I think the challenge that I think the challenge that players of a high enough level face is that in order for the game to grow. They have to have a less enjoyable experience than they might otherwise have. Right.
[00:32:16] Like, like you mentioned that I, I, I actually flew all the way out to Vegas just to meet you because I really wanted to be on this podcast. And, and, you know, if Bob Hammond calls you and says, I want to be in your podcast, you don't ask him to fly out to Vegas. Well, I thought you might beat him for the tournament. I wish I could, you know, Samantha and I have not gotten to play regular tournament bridge in years. Like just because we've been teaching so much, like I miss it. I miss, I miss going to the nationals and playing for 11 straight days.
[00:32:46] Um, and I definitely was a better player actually before I got it before, uh, right before COVID, I was playing on a, on a sponsor team. Um, and I was playing with a really, really good player. Oh my God. I'm sorry. I'm so bad with names and I can, I can see his face. I can hear, I can see him yelling at me for passing three space doubled. Um, it's the guy who plays with Finn, John. Oh, Ramos. Yeah. John Ramos. I was playing with John Ramos and I was playing with him regularly.
[00:33:13] I got to play with John and Samantha was playing with the sponsor and, and oh my God, John is a masterclass. By the way, if you are a bridge player and you're listening to this podcast and you're like an intermediate or advanced player, you have, you're playing in tournaments and you've got aspirations to get way better. Better at tournament play. Look up John Ramos, call him up, call him up, say, Hey, uh, I want to take lessons from you.
[00:33:43] Um, because I specialize in people who've never touched a deck of cards before. Yeah. Right. Yeah. If you're already good and you want to be get better, John Ramos, man, he gave me an education at the table every single session. And he was, he was great to play with. I love playing with John, love playing with him.
[00:34:00] Um, and we actually texted, I actually texted John before this interview because I looked up your, uh, your name and ACBL, uh, live. Yeah. I saw that you guys were on a team that had won a knockout, uh, together. So I texted him. Yeah.
[00:34:22] Our, our, our, our sponsor wanted to, uh, well, she, she was more about learning the game, but she, she could, she was in position to win. I think it was a rookie of the year or one of the master point races. Yeah. And, and, um, she was teaching, John was teaching her at that time as well. That was sort of a co co partnership between him and Samantha.
[00:34:41] Um, and he, he sort of put together a tournament schedule and then going into 2020, um, we were putting together a tournament schedule and I was asked, I was tasked, asked to put together a tournament schedule. So I put together a huge tournament schedule for 2020, um, which, you know, I'm sure I, I was sure I was more excited for that tournament schedule than John was.
[00:35:11] Um, I, uh, I like to think that every session with me, uh, was a better experience than the one before with John. Um, because I'm very passionate about my own game and I, I do listen and I, I do respect him a lot as a player and his teacher. Um, and I don't have that thing where I'm a teacher too. So like, what can I learn? Like, I don't have that thing.
[00:35:38] It's like, you know, wake, wake me up when you've won as many championships as Bob has. And then you can start, you can stop worrying about learning, you know? Yeah. When you're, when they call you Mechwell, then you can worry about not learning anymore. But, um, but yeah, yeah. Um, we, we got a few tournaments in to, um, 2020 and then all of a sudden no more tournaments. Um, well, it looks like you haven't played in a tournament since 2020, according to the ACBO. I haven't, I haven't left my house for seven months.
[00:36:08] Uh, I, I didn't leave my house for seven months in, uh, then I went off and made a movie. Uh, we made our first feature film that I wrote and directed. It's a thriller. Um, we, we had been asking our clients for years to learn virtually rather than in person. And they wouldn't do it. They didn't care about the technology was available. We didn't care that it's actually better.
[00:36:34] It's so much better to learn online than it is to learn, you know, in person. Um, I have an auto dealer machine in my, in my, you know, office gathering dust because I used to have to deal out lesson hands and take them to people and drive all over LA, which is not fun. Yeah. And so when the pandemic hit for a week, we didn't have any students for one week, we didn't have any students.
[00:37:01] And Samantha was freaking out and she was like, oh my God, we just, we just lost our entire livelihood. I'm like, they think this is going to be over in a week. They think this is going to be over in a week. Just tell them next week you're doing virtual. Um, and, and, and the other thing is we had been wanting to launch our bridge website. Um, we had, we had been working on it steadily. It's actually mentioned in the doc.
[00:37:29] Um, but that, you know, in the kids table, you mean? Yeah. At the very end of the kids table, you can see us when our original setup where we actually had a, we actually had a camera pointed down at a bridge table and I would move cards around for Samantha. Yeah. So it was like, I got to hand act for her. Um, and then she's trying to see the hands. I watched some of the videos. You don't see the hands like that. Right. Uh, yeah, yeah. We would edit them out, but some, sometimes you can see me point or whatever in the very, very early ones.
[00:37:58] She might've refilmed them because now she will go on bridge base and just, you know, she'll highlight a hand or she'll set up less than hands to talk about the, um, I'm curious, you know, let's, I feel like I've talked for like a solid hour. I'm curious what you thought of our teaching website for beginners. Uh, I mean, I had some issues getting connected at first. Right.
[00:38:27] And then we fixed that. And when we met up in Vegas, you told me about the two minute, you had a two minute video. Yeah. Figure out how to watch bridge. And so I watched that. Uh, and then I watched a couple of those things. Um, it seemed like there is a menu of like a lot of things.
[00:38:51] Like I would wonder, I would wonder what, yeah, I would wonder how people consume it. Um, yeah. One of the things we want to, where we are currently in the process of adding in is me saying, hi, welcome to the site. You might see this library of over 500 videos and you might think, oh my God, just start here.
[00:39:17] And me pointing at a thing and saying, when you've watched these come back and, and I'll have another, I'll have another little thing for you. Uh, like if you're confused, watch this because that's the whole thing about bridge, right? It's like, what do you like? Cantor talks about teaching play first. I think Bob also thinks you should teach play first. Other people, they just teach betting first. I think bidding is a lot easier to teach than card play, especially defense.
[00:39:47] Teaching people defense is really difficult. Um, it's difficult for them. It's difficult for you. Um, it's sort of the last thing people get even sort of competent at is defense. And I think it's really easy to like, it's really easy for us to know the game, to see the entirety, right? The gestalt of the game. And then to take out a little piece and go, well, I'm going to teach this little piece,
[00:40:15] but in our heads, we can see how that little piece connects to every single other piece of bridge. Yeah. Right. So it's like, so no, that's great. That's great feedback. And that's, I mean, that's what we're always seeking to do is like, understand the end user experience of the site. And I, I like, uh, the big thing for us as teachers right now is if you, if we manage
[00:40:40] to get your eyeballs on our site, man, you know, would love for you to sign up. Then we want it to be something where you're feel like we're there giving you the game as opposed to, yeah, here's a huge pool jumping and swim. Yeah. Um, which has always been our attitude towards teaching bridge.
[00:41:06] Like I sort of feel like the crazy wilderness and the crazy profit in the wilderness, but I have never cared about making a good bridge player ever. I don't care. I don't care because let's imagine, let's imagine John that you could wave a wand and tomorrow, a million people decide they want to learn to play bridge. Yeah. Well, what do we know?
[00:41:35] Just statistically in my, in my very small data set experience by the next month, 250,000 of them are going to be, are going to quit. Yeah. 500,000 of them are going to become casual bridge players ranging from social to maybe a regional here and there. Right.
[00:42:01] And 250,000 people will become you. What the hell? I mean, I am like as in on bridge as anybody. I mean, you don't know what I do. You don't, you don't play a lot of bridge, but wait, you don't think those people are out there. I mean, I definitely think that they're, I don't know. I think that I'm like hyper, uh, hyper. Yeah.
[00:42:28] I, yeah, I once met a, I once had a woman at a bridge club. I was playing at the Beverly Hills bridge club, which is still around. Thank goodness. And I was playing with a student and she sat down with her partner and she had a sheet that looked like, it looked like a serial killer had filled it out. It was like the tiniest writing I'd ever seen. It was just like one page. And on the other side, it was the tiniest writing I've ever seen.
[00:42:58] And it was filled with these like incredibly neat, detailed algorithm notes. And I, I was like looking at her and she'd look at her sheet. She'd read it and then she'd set it down. Then she'd play a hand of bridge and then she'd pick up her sheet and she'd read it. And she set it down and she'd play a hand of bridge. And I, I watched this and we played her for, we played her for a round and, and she made
[00:43:27] some pretty basic mistakes. And I said to her, I said, if you don't mind me asking, uh, like, could you tell me? I'm about to crush you. If you don't mind me asking, I'm about to just eviscerate you with this question. You might be surprised by what I was interested. I said, I'm really curious, like, is that, is that your note sheet? And she says, yeah. I said, oh, great.
[00:43:55] So you're, you're like, you're taking classes, you're reading books. She says, yeah, I'm taking classes with this teacher in LA. I said, oh yeah, I know that person. They're, they're, they're a great teacher. That's awesome. Are you enjoying the classes? They said, yes. I said, um, do you feel that those notes are helping you? Yeah. And she says, yeah, I really feel they are. I said, that's awesome. Um, can I ask you? How long you've been playing at the club and stuff? And she goes, this is my first time ever at the club. Oh, wow.
[00:44:25] And I went, you're playing Flannery. You're playing like Jordan to no Trump. You're playing. I mean, they had a full card, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't like we showed up and we, what are these boxes? Her card was like something out of, you know, like any tournament players, like, and I was like, this is your first time playing. She's like, yeah, I've been taking lessons for like a year, but this is my first time I'm playing. And I'm like, okay, sure.
[00:44:55] I didn't say anything. I'm like, okay. And she goes, well, how, how did I do? Or something like that. I'm like on the boards you played against me. It's because, yeah. I said, well, you know, here's some things you can think about next time. And she goes, oh, that's, ah, I never thought of that. I'm like, yeah, just something to think about. And then I'm walking, I'm walking away. Right. Cause my, my big thing is like, I don't like it when people poach students. Yeah. I don't like it. Yeah. I've had, I've had people poach.
[00:45:24] I've had people talk to my students right in front of me and tell me that they should take lessons from them instead of from me. Yeah. And that to me is like, what are you doing? Yeah. Like, what are you doing? I've had, I've had people talk, tell, tell, you know, other teachers or experts or, you know, tell my students, these people aren't good enough at bridge to teach you bridge. I'm better than them. So you should take lessons from me.
[00:45:53] And I'm like, okay. I mean, you are better than me. I'm not going to argue with that. Are you a better teacher? But anyway, so, so I walk away and she says, what can I get your number? I said, um, I mean, yes, you can. But you have a good teacher. You should keep teaching with this teacher or learning from this teacher. She says, yeah, but like you're playing. Was that your student today? I said, yeah, that was my student.
[00:46:23] And she's like, well, you guys scored 56%. We scored 38%. I said, yes, but you were playing with another beginner. That makes a difference. She says, yeah, but I know. I'm like, okay. And my other teacher doesn't play. Right. Only, only gives classroom lessons. I said, okay. She says, I want to play with you. I said, okay. And then I proceeded to play with her in something like 170 tournament days every year. Wow.
[00:46:52] And that's my thing is that you say there isn't, there isn't another person like you out there. But like, for me, like one of the things I love to do is bowl. Right. I love bowling. Yeah. Right. And people who love bowling, guess what? They buy a new bowling ball like every week. Right. People who love rock climbing, if you want to start talking about rock climbing, they'll talk your ear off about like finger holds and leverage and da, da, da, da.
[00:47:18] So there is in the U.S., let's say there's another 10,000 John McAllister's out there. Now, are they going to ever be as good at you at the game? No. Some of them will be slightly better. Some of them will be, most of them will be worse. Some will be right around your level. They'll get there. Right. Just talent, time, opportunity, all that stuff. But they'll dive headfirst into the game.
[00:47:48] And in my experience, you don't have to do anything to get those people to show up at a tournament. Right. Like, I don't know a lot about, when did you learn to play? I learned, I was in freshman college, but it was at my parents' house. Okay, cool. I was visiting, and she suggested we were going to play hearts. She said we should be playing bridge. There you go. Yeah.
[00:48:13] And it was like, I loved it from the moment, you know, like I was a little reluctant at first, but then when we started playing, I just loved it. And I wanted to play as often as I could, but I really only knew to do it with my parents. Right. And then obviously it evolved over time to where, you know, I had a bridge teacher, my first bridge teacher. Right. And she took me to the local bridge club, which I wouldn't have thought about. Right.
[00:48:39] And so I think about, you know, like I, I, I have a lot of gratitude for my aunt for suggesting it, for my sister for telling me that she had a group of four that needed, sorry, a group of three that needed a fourth for bridge classes. Right. For that first teacher who took me to the local bridge club. I mean, all of those things were, you know, really important in terms of my, like, I loved bridge, but I just didn't have outlets for it.
[00:49:08] Now I have. Same. Tons of outlets. Same. Yeah. Doing this podcast because. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, so when Samantha and I met and she taught me the rules, I didn't know anything about bridge. She didn't know anything about bridge. We, we, we got some bridge books. Um, I think we got like Frank Stewart's book and some other books completely incomprehensible to us.
[00:49:38] Like what, what, what's going on? We played kitchen table bridge. We were terrible. We played against a friend's parents, got our clocks cleaned. And bridge was just like this thing we did for fun with our friends. And I probably would have never played tournament bridge in my life, honestly.
[00:49:56] Um, and then I was on a national tour of Romeo and Juliet and I fractured my leg in the middle of a sword fight, fractured my leg in the middle of a sword fight and flew back home to DC. Couldn't walk for six months except, you know, I was on crutches for six months. Luckily didn't have to have surgery. Um, but okay.
[00:50:21] Bridge had just launched, uh, just launched. And I could sit in front of a computer and do this for eight to 10 hours a day. And again, no idea what I was doing. Like no idea. And Samantha, I was obviously, I was just crippled with depression. You know, I wasn't on tour performing.
[00:50:45] I was sitting at home with my leg up and, and Samantha found a bridge, uh, bridge club, called them up and said, Hey, we, we know how to play, you know, but we want to come play. And they said, Oh, we just started this thing called easy bridge. I don't know if you remember easy bridge. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's all around us. I think she died though. Yeah. She died. She died. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:51:12] Um, and we went to the bridge club and, and, you know, we got a little 10 minute easy bridge lesson, which was cool. It was fine. Right. And then the four of us, there were four of us. Actually, there were, there were five of us. Cause I was sitting out. I was, yeah, there were five of us. I was sitting out and we started just dealing cards and playing for ourselves. Right. And this older gentleman walked up and he said, can I, can I kibitz you guys?
[00:51:42] And I, I played chess as a kid. So I know what kibitz meant. Um, nobody else did. I'm like, it means he wants to watch. And, and they're like, Oh yeah. I mean, we're terrible, but okay. And he's like, that's fine. I don't care. He sits down and he's sitting over Samantha's, uh, right shoulder and her partner leaves the ace of clubs and dummy comes down and dummy plays. And Samantha goes to play a card. He says, Oh, don't play that card. She goes, what do you mean? Don't play this card. My partner's winning the ace.
[00:52:12] Why would I play a higher card? He goes, no, play, play the eight instead of the two. And that way he'll know you like it. And for Samantha night, it was like a shotgun blast went off in our skull. Wow. I was like, I'm sorry. What did you just say? Could you say that again? Like really slowly, like super, super slowly. Okay.
[00:52:42] So he led the ace of clubs. Bill led the ace of clubs. Shout out Bill Kenny. And then Bill, if you're out there, I love you, buddy. Doesn't play bridge, but okay. So he led the ace of clubs and dummies playing low. My partner's winning the trick. It's a suit contract. Okay. Play the eight instead of the two. And then my partner will know what? And I said, okay, what else can you tell us?
[00:53:13] Like what? Tell us, tell us everything. Tell us everything. And one of the players was Morgan. Not her thing. She learned to play, but not her thing. One of the things was my friend Bill Kenny, another friend Jesse. And they didn't become bridge players. Yeah. But Samantha and I, we started playing tournaments. We started playing at the club the next day. I would crutch in.
[00:53:40] They would, they would give me a North South, even though this is back in the day when you had to be 90 years old to get a North South. They'd give me a North South and someone would be pissed. It's like, well, he can't walk. I can't walk either. It's like, and we got our clocks absolutely cleaned. I think the reason Samantha and I stuck with it is because we tend to laugh when we have our clocks cleaned. I remember, I don't remember a lot.
[00:54:07] I remember hands now, but I don't remember a lot of hands from that day. But I do remember playing five clubs redoubled in a three, one fit. Oh. Yeah. How many tricks did you take on that one? Like two. That's a big score. That's a big score. It was a big score. That's the biggest score I think I've ever been a part of. But yeah, we've always laughed though.
[00:54:36] I mean, I think that's one of the reasons why Samantha and I survived is many, many years ago we were playing in a KO and it was 9 a.m. It was day 10 of a Nationals. And there's a joke in our family and my partnership that I always F up key card. Always. Yeah. To this day, I always F up key card. Like I'll stare at the box and go one, four, three, zero, two. And I'll still mess it up.
[00:55:05] So Samantha and I have a key card auction. I bid seven, no Trump. And he leads and I realize I'm off three cashing aces. This is board one of 9 a.m. Knockout. The finals of a 9 a.m. Knockout on day 11 or whatever in Nationals. My brain is mush at this point. Four person team, four sessions a day for 11 days. And they didn't double you? They did not double me.
[00:55:33] And my lefty was on lead with an ace, did not lead it. My righty was on lead with two aces or not on lead, but my righty was on. Well, there's no way you can make seven, no Trump, with no aces. Yeah. So I'm down. I'm down four. I'm down four. So I say. So I say to Samantha, thank you, partner. I proceed to play it as fast as I can because like just rip the bandit off. We're down four. Yeah. And Samantha and I bust out laughing. We are laughing hysterically. She's like, you always F up key card.
[00:56:02] I'm like, I always F up key card. And our opponents are staring at us like, what is wrong with these people? Like, how come they're not screaming at each other? And I'm like, that's hilarious. Lose 13. Lose 13. And then we won the match 113 to 13. Wow. Baby bridge, right? But back to getting players. Like my, I wish that, I wish that a million people tomorrow would try bridge.
[00:56:33] Yeah, for sure. But the thing is, this is my question. Do you think that would be a positive experience for tournament players who already exist? If I'm, if let's say you got a million people to look at bridge and try bridge seriously. Like they tried it for like three months. Yeah. And you got 500,000 new tournament players across the U S. Yeah. Do you think that would be a positive experience for the current tournament player?
[00:57:03] I mean, uh, you know, like my, certainly my, uh, without much thought response. I mean, I can see how it would be like, yeah, there's going to be some, some kind of, uh, some turbulence. Absolutely. Like, because you got all these new players. Uh, it would be amazing.
[00:57:29] You know, like I made that doc, I made a documentary movie about bridge and I saw it. It was great. And, and thank you. And my goal, like, absolutely. What I, what I like bridge. I mean, you know, we, I, you don't have, you don't need me to tell you this, that we would love it, but yeah, they would probably would be, it would be, it would be difficult for sure. But like, that's just not even like 500,000 tournament players.
[00:57:54] What kind, what is the, what is the like event that creates that? Like, I just don't see any event. Queen's Gambit. Yeah. I mean, even look at chess.com. Right. Then they're going to have to, there's going to be, there's going to be a learning curve. Like you don't just become a tournament player, you know, like, okay. Just become a tournament player. Like, so this is my thing. What is a tournament player?
[00:58:26] Uh, I mean, I would say a tournament player is somebody who plays in tournaments. Right. Right. If they, if they follow the rules, like they're not revoking, they're not, they don't, they don't realize they need to bid five clubs over four space instead of four clubs. Right. If they don't. First time I ever played a bridge club, I tried to claim by collecting all of cards from dummy.
[00:58:57] Got my hand slapped, literally slapped. And the woman apologized. I read to reach for the cards. I dummy. And she slapped my hand, which is, I'm so sorry. But if you do that, it's going to screw up the entire game. But I'm like, not a problem. Right. But if they're not doing that, right. If they're not that the fact that they show up and they pay their card fees to me, that makes them a tournament player.
[00:59:21] And I think there's a perception in the bridge world of not from you, but I think for most people, it's like a tournament player. Well, they have to know stamen or they have to, they have to know this, or they have to know third, you know, third hand high, second hand, low third hand high. Right. And my whole thing is, no, a tournament player is someone who shows up and gives you whatever it is for card fees, $20 in card fees and sits down and plays bridge. That's a tournament player.
[00:59:49] I think, I do think that I make this distinction sometimes since we're talking about it. Yeah. I think of like a club player as somebody who goes to the local bridge club. Yes. Regularly. And I think of a tournament player as somebody who, you know, yeah, there's a sectional tournament in town. Right. Maybe that's not a tournament player, but a tournament player is certainly somebody that goes to regionals or travels to sectionals. I think that's a, I would define that as a, as a tournament player. Right.
[01:00:18] And you're always going to have this wedding cake, right? You're always going to have this cake of, there are people who play online because they have a half an hour and they jump in and they, they hop on bridge base and take me to a table and they play for half an hour. Right. That's going to be, that's always going to be your biggest base. Right. And then you're going to have the people who play in tournaments on bridge base and then people who play at bridge clubs and the people who play at sectionals and so on and so forth all the way to the nationals.
[01:00:46] So you're, you're, it's always statistically you're all, that's always going to be your wedding cake. And it doesn't matter whether you're talking about like, I, I bowl a lot. Like I love bowling. Um, um, I didn't bowl for years and years and years and I just got back into it, you know, a year and a half ago and I love it. You want to talk about cover stocks and weight blocks and oil patterns. I'll, I'll talk about that all day, but, and I like, I've never heard of any of this. Yeah. Yeah. So I like to go, I like to go to tournaments and I, I've even gone to like, you know, bigger tournaments at, you know, in Vegas and stuff like that.
[01:01:16] And then there are people, and then there are people who bowl with me in a league. Which is bigger bridge or bowling? That's a great question. They're both, you know, it's so funny. I sort of have, I sort of have a fetish for games that were super popular in the fifties and are kind of dying. So they're both kind of the same, right? Like, which are you better at? Oh God, that's tough.
[01:01:42] I'm currently a better bridge player, but I have the potential to be, I, I bowled my first 300 this year. Oh yeah. Uh, but I switched to two handed. I, when I actually bowled semi-professionally back in the nineties. Um, and I bowled one handed. When I came back this year and a half ago, I switched to two handed style. Um, like where you throw it between your legs? No, no. Uh, both. Do you just, do you have both hands on the ball until the moment of release? Oh. Yeah.
[01:02:10] I thought you were like, yeah. I like to stand on one foot and just bounce it off my head. No. Uh, if there's a guy named Jason Belmonte, you can look him by on YouTube. He revolutionized. Well, wow. Um, he, he was one of a couple of people who revolutionized two handed bowling. Um, and it's actually, it's actually more popular with juniors now than it is for, it's very similar actually in sort of like the precision system thing, right.
[01:02:37] That happened in the seventies where this, you know, sort of weird system that, you know, CC way put together or, you know, commissioned to put together or however you want to think of it. And then all of a sudden, you know, it became like this thing. Um, that's, that's currently what's happening in the bowling world. But the point is, is that I am an outlier. You're always, whenever you talk about people who play tournaments, even if you don't, even if you're not talking skill level, which is a whole nother discussion, even if you're
[01:03:07] not talking about skill level, there's always going to be a wedding cake of commitment, commitment. And my whole thing is you never have to incentivize people, people's commitment. And in fact, I don't think neurologically you can incentivize people's commitment to bridge or anything.
[01:03:36] Like I just told you about cover stocks and weight blocks. Are you going to go take up bowling tomorrow? No, no, no, a hundred percent. And if I took you to, and if I took you to a bowling alley and I showed you how to be a better bowler and, you know, the path to being a better bowler, would you suddenly take up bowling? No. Would you bowl once in a while? Maybe. Maybe. Would you maybe buy your own bowling ball and shoes so you don't have to rent shoes? Maybe. Would you join a league? Maybe. Right.
[01:04:04] But I can't. I literally, I have no methodology to incentivize you to take up bowling. But somewhere out there, there's some guy who just retired or some woman who has extra time because her kids left for college. Or there's a young kid who, who is never going to be tall enough to play basketball, but loves sports who, if they, if they take up bowling, all of a sudden they might be the
[01:04:33] next, you know, they, they might start bowling in tournaments and will they become a world champion? I don't know, but you don't have to incentivize them to go to the bowling alley. I've never, I've gotten to work. I've gotten to teach a bunch of things. I've taught chess. I've taught acting. I've taught stage combat, sword fighting. I've taught bridge. I've taught bowling. I've taught like, I've taught all these things. And in my experience, you neither have to, nor can incentivize someone to be committed to their activity. You just can't. Right.
[01:05:03] I bet, I bet I never had to force you. I bet no one ever had to force you to crack open a bridge book. No. No. Or sit down at the table and figure out a double dummy problem. So. That's harder. It's harder, but I bet you did it. I bet you did. But, but my whole point is like, we, if I love this game so much, like I'll shout from
[01:05:30] the rooftops how I think this is the best game on the planet. Like, I think this is amazing game. And I play, I play, I play so many games and it's like, I think the only difference between a thriving tournament scene for bridge and what we currently experience, which is a dying tournament scene. Like it's literally dying. Yeah. Is eyeballs.
[01:06:01] Just. Yeah. Just eyeballs. And you know, I, I think, I think there's some other problems too. I actually have a, I actually have a question for you. Okay. Which is what is your opinion of master points? Love master points. You do give them to me. Yeah. You mean you like getting them? Yeah, for sure. Do you think they're good for the game of bridge?
[01:06:31] Uh, I mean, like, I, I mean, I don't know. I, yeah, probably. Cause really incentivize people to play. Maybe they incentivize people. I don't know. Like, I mean, I've, you know, like I, I take pride in the amount of master points I have. I, yeah. You know, I was talking to my bridge partner recently about how many master points she has.
[01:07:00] And I was like, how do you have that many master points? Like you haven't even been playing that long. Uh huh. So, I mean, I think master, I, I mean, I, yeah, I don't think they're, I don't know. So, you know, in the kids table, I wasn't there for that interview, which, um, so it was great to see it afterwards. They interviewed the head of the ACBL at the time. And they talked about master points.
[01:07:27] I believe the sequence in the doc starts with me going master points, like some grumpy old man, get off my lawn type of thing. Um, I think that, I think that master points.
[01:07:49] And I think that when you talk about people about their master points, we have to really honor and sort of like acknowledge the significance of master points. Like if you say to me, I have this many master points and X number of them are platinum. Right.
[01:08:18] I will, I think it's very, very important that the bridge community as a whole go. Wow. And I'll tell you why, because master points are really hard one. Like in a certain extent, you can just sort of sit in the water and accumulate master points, but that's not true for a lot of people's master point experience. Right.
[01:08:48] The problem that I have with master points is what it does to people who are playing bridge for the first time. Right. Oh, I never got to finish my Paul Soloway story. This is a good time for this. So Paul, Paul cleans my, my studentized clock for two boards and we're sitting there and, you know, I think we had two claimers. So we had like another eight or nine minutes of the clock and Paul doesn't know what to say to us. And I don't know Paul.
[01:09:16] So I'm like, so finally it's like, we're just kind of like chit chatting and he, he just had a fall. So I was asking about his health and stuff like that. And he was, you know, he was kind of going through it, I think outside of the bridge table and right as he gave me leave, I said to my student, I said, would, you know, I'd love to give you a little interesting trivia fact. And she goes, okay.
[01:09:40] I said, if you take my master points and Paul was the number one master point holder at the time and you divide it by this gentleman's master points, you have my GPA from college. And Paul laughed. And then he, I think he kind of felt bad about laughing and he says, oh, you must've been a really good student.
[01:10:03] I'm like, Paul, we both know what the joke was, but, but I didn't say that, but you know, I'll, and I'll tell you another story about master points. So when Samantha and I first, Samantha and I took easy bridge and then, and then Andre Leroux, who, who is the gentleman who told Samantha to play the eight of clubs instead of the two of clubs, who two years after that day gave away my wife at our wedding.
[01:10:34] Walked her down the aisle and gave away my wife at our wedding. Shout out to Andre Leroux. He, he taught us a little bit. I think we kind of knew Stamen sort of, and they said, there's a tournament this weekend. And I'm like, let's go. So we go into play in the zero to five and we had like an 81%. Oh, wow. So then we play in the 49er, I think. And we had like a 78%.
[01:11:03] Wow. And we said, you know what? To heck with this. We're going to play in the two 99er. And we had a 70%. I said, this isn't bridge. I don't know what this is, but I don't want to do this anymore. This isn't fun. We're going to go play in the open pairs. Span says, absolutely. Let's go play in the open pairs. We did okay. I think we had like a 39, 40%. You know, we weren't, we didn't embarrass ourselves. We didn't know like a 25. Right.
[01:11:34] But, but oh my God, it was so much more fun. And then the last event Sunday after Sunday evening of a sectional, I think it was a huge tournament sectional. It was back East in DC. They had a pro-am. They took everybody in the field and they arranged them by master points. And the top played with the bottom and so on and so forth until, you know, the two middle players played together.
[01:12:02] And I had slightly, I had like 0.1 more master points than Samantha. Yeah. Yeah. Cause somebody had invited me to play with them at the club when Samantha was working. Um, she's, she's working three jobs. So, so Samantha goes off with some top flight player. I don't know who it was. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The name is lost in the midst of time, but, um, they won by the way, they won the whole thing. Oh, well, it wasn't, it wasn't close.
[01:12:31] Cause Samantha, you know, Samantha was way better than, I think she had like 0.3 of a master point. Right. Yeah. And I had 0.45 of a master point. So I sit down across a gentleman who was advanced in years, let's say. And he, I say, hello, I'm Brian. I'll be your partner. I, I'm a beginner.
[01:12:56] Um, but I have a card and he does not respond to me like at all. Like doesn't even look at me. So I'm sitting there and I'm like, okay, I don't know what's going on, but expert level player. I'm just going to be over here with my cards. We sit down, we sit, we get first board comes out and non-competitive auction.
[01:13:25] The opponents bid to four spades or whatever my partner leads. And in the fullness of time, he revokes twice on the first hand. This doesn't follow suit. So the director comes over, she decates the result, goes away. Second board. He revokes twice on the second board. Just doesn't follow suit. And I go up to the director's table. I said, excuse me.
[01:13:53] I'm so sorry to say this, but I think there's been some sort of misunderstanding. You see, I am playing in the pro-am and I have 0.45 of master points. And I should be playing with a player who has the most amount of master points. And I am clearly playing with another beginner right now. I think there's been an error. I think I'm playing with like either the number one player who doesn't have the most amount of, you know, the least amount of master points or somewhere in that range. And the director said, no, that's not possible.
[01:14:21] You know, we do this whole, we do this all the time. I'm like, no, I'm serious. I really do think there's been an error. She goes, no, there hasn't been. I said, well, my partner just revoked four times in two boards. So you tell me what's up. Because at this point I was a very angry young man and the filters were coming off. Yeah. And she goes, she does this. Like if this is me, she goes, oh.
[01:14:53] I say, what do you mean? Oh, what's oh. And she goes, oh, well, that's, you know, that's Jerry Smith or whatever. I'm like, you say that like I should know who Jerry Smith is. Like what? He's like, he is one of the top players in the D.C. area. Yeah. He's won every tournament in D.C. for the last 40 years. Yeah. Uh-huh.
[01:15:19] He has like over 10,000 master points, which back in 1990 or whatever was a ton. I said, uh-huh. But he had a stroke six months ago. Yeah, I figured that was the case. And I'm like, okay. And she goes, do the best you can. I'm like, okay.
[01:15:46] And, you know, I grew up, I grew up, take, you know, my grandmother was very big into philanthropy and, and I took care of a lot of, you know, older citizens in my youth. And I took care of my grandmother when she was getting older and in the hospice situation and all that stuff. So it's like, okay, I'll go take care of Jerry for 24 boards. And it really stuck with me. That moment stuck with me.
[01:16:11] And then throughout my time as a bridge player, master points have consistently been something that has lessened my enjoyment of the game of bridge. And as I learned more and more about the neuroscience of learning, there's one particular factor.
[01:16:40] When you're in a community or group, there's one particular factor or in your learning experience that is pretty predominant, which is the quality of your peers. So let's say you're learning knitting, for instance, right? If you are in a group with people who are all better than you at knitting by a substantial amount, you don't learn as well. Oh, interesting.
[01:17:10] And if you are in a group where you are better than everyone else, you don't learn as well. The absolute optimal experience for you personally is to be in a group of people where everyone is a little tiny bit better than you. So the optimal peer group for learning is something where everyone is about the same level when it comes to learning.
[01:17:38] And they also find that it's also the best optimal experience for just joy, right? Well, what's joy? Let's measure it in terms of dopamine, serotonin and all that cocktail of chemicals so we can keep it in the science realm is when if you sit down at the bridge table and it's kind of a coin flip of whether or not you're going to win or lose.
[01:18:03] That is the optimal conditions for enjoyment of your competitive experience. Interesting. If you know you're going to lose, right? When I sat down, I can't remember their names. I'm so sorry. It was like everyone called him Pratap or Piratap. He had played this weird system where they were playing two or one when they were vulnerable, but like some like yeehaw mini no Trump system when they were not vulnerable.
[01:18:33] There's a guy named Pratap. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we were playing against him in the first round of the Spengold. Bobby Wolf was sitting over Samantha's shoulder. They won the silver in the world championships like six months later. They cleaned our clocks, of course. And Samantha and I had our disaster. It went two clubs, two diamonds, and Samantha passed. And in the fullness of time, they bid seven diamonds. And I took the push to seven no Trump, went double, and went for like 500. Or no, went for like, sorry, 1400.
[01:19:04] And they told us, hey, do you have a system over interference over two clubs? I'm like, no. They're like, oh, well, this is the system you should play. I'm like, cool. Awesome. But yeah, Bobby Wolf got to watch that happen. How do you, how can they make seven of, how can they make seven diamonds, but you have a stopper in their suit for no Trump? Are they going to guess your? So what ended up happening was I bid two clubs and I had some balanced 22 to 24 count, right?
[01:19:33] And my lefty had every other high card in the deck with a long diamond suit missing the ace, but every other high card in the deck. Maybe I didn't know. Yeah, yeah, I did have the ace. No, my partner had nothing. No, their partner had the ace of diamonds. It got, it got wild. No one knew what was going on. Right. I think he bid seven diamonds because he thought he literally told me later. He's like, I thought you were psyching. And I'm like, it's illegal to psych a two club opening.
[01:20:02] He's like, yeah, I didn't think you knew that. I'm like, okay, well, fair enough. Fair enough. I mean, I got 700 master points. Like I get it, but yeah, no, it was wild. That was wild. I wish I had the whole hand, but I didn't write it down. I was, I was too busy going. Wow. I just like, and Samantha was mortified for Samantha. She was just sitting over there passing and like not understanding what was going on. Like, why was I bidding like a wild man? And I, and I, at the time, I don't know why I thought she had something, but I thought,
[01:20:30] I thought this guy was just bidding preemptively yada, yada, yada. But you know, I learned a lot in that moment. Right. But the thing is, is like, I am an outlier. You're an outlier. We look at those moments and go, yeah, I got my head beat in. I, you know, it's quote embarrassing. I don't find it embarrassing. I think that's the key. Right. It's like the first time Samantha, I ever played it in a, like a regional. It goes to no Trump by Samantha. I bid three hearts.
[01:20:59] Super excited to try this new convention we learned called transfers. So it goes to no Trump, two hearts, three hearts, four hearts by Samantha, four spades, five hearts by Samantha, five spades, six hearts by Samantha. Six spades and all the blood drains from Samantha's face. She goes, why does a ghost? She never forgot transfers again. Like ever.
[01:21:28] But that's the whole thing, right? It's like bridge requires you to pay in blood. Like literally bridge demands that if you want to be good, you got to, you have to suffer. I bet if I asked you for some disaster stories, I bet you have some Lulus. Trying to think. I played with this kid who's a, so UVA has a bridge club.
[01:21:58] And I played with the president of the club in a sectional yesterday. Yeah. No. Sunday. Uh-huh. Sectional Swiss. And we drove to Richmond, which is like an hour drive each way. Uh-huh. And he told me this story about how I played with another kid from the club a year ago in a sectional in Lynchburg, which is like an hour in the other direction. And we had driven down there. It was our first time, the only time we played together.
[01:22:27] And he said there was a hand where, uh, I guess he threw the declare. My partner was declaring and he threw away the wrong card at trick 12. And I like walked away from the table for like five minutes. And that was like, and I was like, oh man, I didn't realize that he knew that. But, and then I was thinking about it because I could remember the deal.
[01:22:56] And I remembered that the reason I was so pissed is because the person had, he saved the card from a suit that the person had already showed out on that was going to like knowingly was going to be on lead. They had already showed out in that suit. Need save that card. So, uh, yeah. I messaged that guy today and we had like a laugh about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:23:25] Uh, Samantha and I were playing in a really big, I think it was a regional. It was at the, uh, LA, um, LA casino down in, uh, Inglewood. And we, it was our, it was our GMT team. And with one round to go, we were leading the, we were leading the Swiss. We were leading the Sunday Swiss. And it was a big deal. It was a big deal.
[01:23:53] And Samantha, Samantha and I bid to six spades and she didn't rough out dummies hearts and make the contract. So we lost and we took second or third. I can't remember which one. And she was gutted. Oh my God. She was, she was so devastated. She cost us the match, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, oh, that was a lot of bridge. That was a lot of bridge to point out one hand. Like, look, learn this.
[01:24:20] If you take away from this, that, you know, rough out a suit to set up dummy. So you can discard. If you take that lesson away from today, worth it. Right. Does it suck to not win this open Swiss in front of, in front of Jill Myers, in front of all these, Sid Brown, seeing all these players that we admire, Ed Davis, Mitch Dunitz, like to win a Swiss with those people in the field. Like, would it have been a huge feather in our cap? Yeah. Does it suck? We lost. Yeah. It's not your fault. I mean, like I didn't play perfect bridge. What are you talking about?
[01:24:49] It's just two, it's a two session Swiss. Like I could have definitely won us more victory points earlier in the day, whatever. Like, let's not, let's not make this all about you, you know, but she was gutted. That drive, that was one of the worst drives home ever. Are you kidding me? Like to win a two session Swiss with that field. Yeah. Like that would have been crazy if he was there, like everybody was there, you know, and she had, oh my God, we were once playing. We were playing against Mitch and if D in some side pair thing or whatever.
[01:25:18] And they sit down, they're playing a multi two diamond against us. And they hand us the sheets. And they're like, we recommend you play the complicated version. I'm like, okay, we'll play the complicated version. And they bid it. They bid it against us. And we end up in a moision in four spades. And dummy, if he leads, dummy comes down. I say, good luck partner. I say, good luck. And Mitch does this thing where if you say good luck, he'll say, thank you. You know, he's your opponent. Shout out Mitch Dunn.
[01:25:46] It's doing the Lord's work when it comes to getting, you know, the educational fund and educational part of the ACBL. Mitch is, you know, amazing in so many ways. And a great guy, super friendly, always been there for, you know, beginning players and things like that. You know, love Mitch. Anyway, point is, Samantha starts playing this, you know, moision fit in game. And it was a, it was a team match. So I was like, imps.
[01:26:15] And I just see her doing this. Her hands are just like shaking. And I can't tell you what happened because I was more concerned about my partner's mental health at that point, but she made it. And after, and after she made it, you know, F.T. Turner said, you played that beautifully. And you, you know, she could have, she could have floated home from Reno or, or, or, or she could have, she could have flown on her own, you know? So, you know, at the highs and lows, the bridge.
[01:26:44] And, and I think that, I think the more we can give people that experience with bridge, and it's not going to be for most people, it's not going to be sitting down and getting to play against world-class players and getting your heads beat in and learning. Like, that's not going to be a good experience for 99% of human beings.
[01:27:14] Right. You have to, you have to really want something really, really bad to go through that. Right. So, you know, my whole thing about master points is you've earned your master points and we can't just say, let's get rid of master points.
[01:27:35] We can't do that because that is a disservice to everything that's gone before in bridge, right? Bridge has a very rich history. It still has, it's still, it, you know, it, it's definitely facing a lot of challenges in this, in this modern time in terms of keeping the game alive and thriving and building it. I mean, I'd love to see it get built, but I don't think that comes from just jettisoning,
[01:28:06] jettisoning what it had and what it has. Um, but I think that there's a place for adding something like an ELO system. Oh yeah, that'd be great. Absolutely. So it's like, and I think that would be, tell the, uh, tell the kids, kids table doc story, your, your perspective on them playing in the, uh, rising or boredom. Uh, uh, yeah.
[01:28:35] So at, uh, San Diego nationals fall nationals, 2017, I think it was, uh, I mean the rising or for those who don't, you know, aren't experienced tournament players don't play at the NABCs. The rising or is like arguably the toughest event on the AC bill calendar. It's board a match. It's the best teams. It's the best players playing with their top partnerships. It is, it is a nasty thing.
[01:29:04] And, uh, Ed Benda, who I came to be friends with, uh, because I was making a movie and he reached out to me and he came to the screening, our initial screening of double dummy in Toronto at the summer NABC that year. And so he, uh, yeah, their team entered the rising or, and, uh, we played against them. We played two boards. It was, it was the first day.
[01:29:31] And I mean, they got to like one ridiculous contract on one of the boards and we won both boards. And I think they got like two and a half points, like 13's average 26 max. They got like two and a half points in the round that we played against them. Like the, the, the, the session that we played against them. And there's this woman named Debbie Rosenberg, who's a friend of mine, who's a pro. And there were four sections in the rising or.
[01:29:59] And so only two of the sections got to play against Ed's team, or maybe there are three sections. I don't remember which it was, but Debbie was complaining that her team didn't get to play against Ed. Which is valid. I mean, like that's a valid complaint, right?
[01:30:22] I mean, if it, if it affects the, if it affects the date data table of what it's going to take to make the cut. I mean, once upon a time with my GNT team, um, we lost, we lost, we were, we were in the mix for the second day of the rising or, and we lost on the seventh tie brick. Oh wow. And I was mad at one of my teammates cause they did something unbelievably dumb.
[01:30:51] And I was like, like to me there's, there's bridge mistakes. And then there's just like, what, what, what brain cell went on the fritz when you did that. Right. Um, and I was, I was mad and, and then we didn't make the second day of the rising or, um, but yeah, but that was the first time I made the second day of the rising. Amazing. Congratulations. Shout out to Ed Benda for getting John McAllister into the second day of the no, but, but, but
[01:31:21] she's, she's not wrong. Right. And that's my whole thing is like, we, I, I happen to think, and I don't think it's, I don't think it's intentional. I don't think that anyone is out there saying, I don't want a whole new influx of, of new tournament players or bridge players. I don't want that. And Debbie Rosenberg is a perfect example because she's really big on education. She's a great teacher.
[01:31:48] She's, she's passionate about getting people to play the game, you know, even, even with her being, and, and, and my perspective on it was she, she didn't just complain. And like, I mean, I, I think she was like really, really ticked off. And again, justifiably, justifiably, but, but, you know, six months later I was playing in the nationals and one of the people had to step out. So I was playing in, um, I forget what event it was. It was some big event, a team event.
[01:32:16] And apparently I won her some money, uh, because I was playing with, uh, Monique Thomas, I think. And, um, we only lost our, we, we were in a round Robin and we only lost our matches by, uh, a combined like 78 imps. And she had the over under at a hundred. So apparently she needs some money off of us, betting on us.
[01:32:39] Um, uh, but, but Debbie has two lives as a bridge community member. She has a competitive life and she has an educational life. And the competitive part of herself looks at that and goes, well, this data table is corrupted,
[01:33:06] is polluted by results that would not happen. Probably will never happen again in the history of the risinger, right? No one will ever have a score as low as they did in the history of the risinger. Yeah. I'd be surprised. I mean, they, I think they talked about changing the rules. I don't know if they did. Right. Of entry. Yes. Yes. I have had, I've had people have that conversation about me many, many times.
[01:33:32] I've had people talk, say, well, those guys shouldn't be allowed to enter the spin goal. We shouldn't have to play them on the first day. We shouldn't have to sit down. I think people compare, complain about playing a weak opponent on the first day of the spin goal though. Oh yeah, they do. Yeah, they do. Really? Yes. And that's, that's my whole thing. And I, and that's. They have to play a weak opponent on the first day of the spin goal. But that's why, that's why I wanted to be on your podcast. Right.
[01:33:58] Because, because, and I really appreciate you having me on. There's a reason why I flew to Vegas just to meet you is because I want to be on your podcast because I am not an expert level player. When people ask me how good, like you asked me how good I am, am I better at bowling or bridge? When people ask me how good I am at bridge and they have no perspective on bridge, I compare myself to your local golf pro. I'm a scratch golfer, right?
[01:34:26] If we go on the links, I'll, I'll beat the tar out of you. Yeah. If the PGA rolls through and I get to play in the PGA because they're at my club, will I make the cut? Maybe I know the course really well, but the odds are against me. Right. So when it comes to bridge, I'm a scratch golfer. Right. Right. But my experience as being someone who's played with clients in big tournaments long, you
[01:34:56] know, played, played a lot of sponsor bridge, gotten to play with, with and against top players. My experience is way different than the people who, you know, the, the John McAllister's of the world or, or the people who play a lot of turn of a bridge at high levels. And I got to tell you, I've had people say really nasty things to me at the bridge table, which I don't care. I laugh, but I've had people say really nasty things to Samantha at the bridge table, which is a whole different animal.
[01:35:25] I don't play. You want to, you want to say something mean to my wife. We're going to have a discussion that has absolutely nothing to do with bridge. So what's going on with the, the kids table to wrap this up with the kids, the kids from the kids table. What are they? They don't play bridge. I'm playing bridge. No. No. Why would they? Why would they like, like legit question? Why would someone play bridge in 2025? And that's the great game. Yeah.
[01:35:54] But we don't love it, but we don't make it easy for people to play bridge. We, we don't make it easy for people to play bridge and we need to make it easy and we need to make it fun. Like we, like we need to, we need to really like, I know our website is not perfect. At all. Like it's not even close. Like we're constantly thinking about how can we make this easier for someone who's never
[01:36:22] played to, to navigate our website to like, I don't know what to learn next. Hey, here's what you should learn next. Like we, we, we, we constantly are trying to iterate towards it being in a better end user experience because until that happens, no one's going to like our, our subscriptions base isn't going to be where we want it to be.
[01:36:44] And it's the same thing with bridge until we make bridge enjoyable to be a part of, like, just think about this. Like you're Ed Benda and you've spent the week in pre-production, post-production filming. You've been on set 16 hours a day and here comes the weekend. Hey, there's a sectional in Pasadena. You want to go play bridge for four hours? Yeah. Okay. Right.
[01:37:13] But I mean, bridge base, shout out to bridge base, man. Shout out to bridge base. Like, seriously, like I like for all of bridge bases, like I, I have notes cause that's just who I am as a person, but man, bridge base is like, it's, it's the closest thing we have to something that's going to be accessible for people who don't play bridge. Right.
[01:37:43] Like I talk about it all the time, sign on, make an account. You can be playing in five minutes. Are you going to be good? No. Are you going to piss off your partner? Yeah. Like play against robots. If you're awkward, they have robots. You don't even have to embarrass yourself in front of human beings. Like, and you can play for five minutes and then you can go home or you can go, you can, you know, click on something else. But like, but like, that's my whole thing. Right. It's like, let's get a million people playing bridge and then we'll get, I don't
[01:38:10] know, 10,000 John McAllister's, which is what we want. Right. We want 10,000 people who are like, yeah, I spend my weekends playing bridge with kids from UVA. You play, you spend your weekends playing bridge with kids from UVA. Yeah. I mean, he was, he's, you know, I enjoyed. Yeah. We need 10,000 more of you. We need one of you in every college from community college to D1 in the U S we need one of you in every college in the U S right. And then you'll have all the bridge players you want.
[01:38:41] You'll, you'll have, you'll have, you'll have a regional every weekend. Right. But when we won't have 10,000 of you until we have a million people who log onto bridge base once a month and play for half an hour. All right.
[01:39:10] Told you I was a crazy prophet wandering the wilderness, spouting my, spouting my theories. Well, uh, I mean, maybe I should have been more rigorous when you said, how long can my answers be? For sure. Edit the heck out of me. Edit the heck out of me. Edit the heck out of me. Do it, John. I don't think we have the, I don't know. I don't think. Yeah.
[01:39:38] Um, yeah, but I do have to run. Yeah. No, thank you. I thank you for your time. And, and like on a serious note, uh, if I talk too much, I totally get it. I'm sorry for that. I apologize. I just, I'm passionate about the game and I really, I really like your podcast. So thank you for having me. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. It's been, it's been entertaining. All right. I'll talk to you soon. Great. Talk to you later. Bye. Thank you for listening.
[01:40:06] And I hope you'll check out, uh, my new web series. It's called Bridge with Ballers. You can find it on YouTube. There'll be a link in the show notes, uh, at the setting trick.com. And, uh, it's my first guest. It's a trial episode that I recorded with a friend named Danny McNally, who I've known
[01:40:29] since we were sports camp counselors together after my junior year of high school. So please check that out and let me know what you think. Thanks.