August 2016 - 7

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Much ado about McAdoo

I was happy to see that Tom McAdoo
Smith will be inducted into the Hall of
Fame (May, pg. 33).
Tom was the first friend I made in the
game room in Willard Straight Hall at
Cornell. We played cribbage, poker and
gin. I did not play bridge until Malvin
Eisenberg asked me to play, with about
20 minutes of instruction, in a par
game that Walter May was directing.
Tom later asked me to play with him,
with more instruction, in Elsie Matson's game in downtown Ithaca NY. He
suffered through my ignorance - just
as he dealt with my golf inability - with
smiles. I kept playing bridge, not golf.
Years later, I wrote to Sports Illustrated to ask some questions about a
Goren article. Much to my surprise, I
got a nice letter from Tom that answered my bridge questions. He also
asked what I had done in the intervening time.
I never saw Tom show anger at his
bad luck, others' good luck, or any of
my bad play. He certainly deserves to
be recognized. R.I.P., Tom.
CARLSON YOST
Portsmouth OH

Speed record

I got off the leash to play in the KOs
of the Cleveland Regional this year.
I played with Frank Treiber, and our
teammates were Keith Woolf and an
old friend.
Prior to one of the matches, our
opponents announced that they were
playing Precision Club. Frank suggested that we play a double shows the
majors, and a notrump overcall shows
the minors. I was cognizant of Keith's
theory that my short attention span is
not conducive to playing conventions,
but it seemed relatively simple, and I
had played it before, so I agreed.
Seconds later, the match was un-

Letters to the Editor

derway, and my left-hand opponent
opened 1♣. Frank then bid 1NT. By
that time, unfortunately, my mind had
wandered away from bridge, on to the
far more crucial topic of whether the
bar in this small hotel would be open
after the game. So I bid 2♣, which I
had intended as Stayman to Frank's
1NT overcall.
To my credit, by the time the bidding had gotten to the three level, and
the director was at our table, I did
have some vague understanding that
something was amiss. My RHO argued
that my failure to Alert 1NT had kept
him from bidding. The director was
unsympathetic as Frank accurately
pointed out that RHO had been privy to
the same discussion we had had right
before the play started. But the director
looked at me incredulously for having
forgotten a convention we had agreed
to three seconds earlier.
It was not my finest hour. But Frank
tried to cheer me up by pointing out
that I had perhaps set an ACBL record
for the shortest interim between "convention agreed to" and "convention
forgotten."
As a result of the screw-up, we
missed a cold diamond slam and were
behind IMPs at the half. My teammate
Keith, however, was ecstatic, as the
whole misadventure had validated his
theory.
WILLIAM S. JACOBSON
Shaker Heights OH

Evaluation experiment

I live in a retirement community of
400 residents. We have had an enthusiastic response to a weekly bridge
topic of hand evaluation using highcard points, losing trick count and
Rosenkranz control count (in which
an ace counts as two controls and a
king counts as one). The three tools are

used in a checks-and-balances concept
to help choose whether to bid conservatively, normally or aggressively on a
given hand.
Our discussions were drawn from
articles that had appeared in the Bridge
Bulletin. Each of the evaluation tools
has its own basis for what constitutes
an opening hand: 13 for high-card
points, seven for losing trick count, and
four for Rosenkranz controls. Conventions were not discussed.
I researched and used biddable slam
deals played at local duplicate clubs by
dozens of pairs.
The deals I selected were ones in
which all declarers took 12 or 13 tricks,
but only 15 to 30 percent of the pairs
had bid slam.
Our participants then found it very
exciting to play and discuss hand
evaluation from a checks-and-balances
concept reduced to a simple number
system. It helped overcome the lack
of expert instinct. It encouraged more
people to improve their bridge, join the
ACBL and have more fun!
After about eight sessions reviewing the three tools, attendance from
our community grew from four to 26
people, simply by word of mouth. A
resident who is an accredited ACBL
teacher helped direct each session. Ten
people then attended an ACBL tournament, almost all of whom had never
been to a tournament. Now, many are
interested in joining ACBL, hiring a
director and sanctioning the duplicate
games held at our community card
room twice a week.
PAUL ZATULOVE
Phoenix AZ
Letters to the editor are welcome by regular mail and email.
Brevity is considered a virtue, as is subject matter with relevance
to a majority of ACBL members. Unsigned letters are not
considered for publication, so please include your name and
hometown. Letters may be edited. All letters will receive a
response. Send emails to editor@acbl.org.

August 2016 Bridge Bulletin

7
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of August 2016
