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Di stories - let's introduce ourselves :)

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hi bye:
We have our own stories. Stories about who we are, stories about love and friendship, stories about loneliness and failure. Every person has a story to tell. I have had this idea - to create stories about bridge. Welcome to Di stories!
This is the first story which represents what is bridge for me.
Hello! My name is Diliana. I started playing bridge at the age of 14. At first I had no idea what contract bridge is. But with the time, I fell in love with it. For me, bridge is a game of partnership and trust, hard work and skills, concentration and a bit of luck. Bridge takes a lot of time and practice. But you will meet people from different counties. Also, you will see your progress while playing with good players. For some people, bridge is passion. For others - competition. Bridge is this part of me which helps me grow and learn so many things. What is bridge for you? Share with us!
Di stories will try to represent the way we see things and opinion that matters.

hi bye:
Di stories welcome tourney starts this Thursday (20.02.2020) at 19:00 UTC.
There will be a short story after each tournament. Please, plan to join us!

Curls77:
WTG Di, welcome to IAC TD team  !H
I hope many members attend and share their stories with us :)

kenberg:
I'm Ken.

Growing up I played crazy eights, cribbage, poker, hearts, various forms of rummy but not bridge. I learned rubber bridge as a young adult. Back then (and that's quite a ways back) you learned bridge by reading Goren.  Opening 2 !H was a game forcing natural bid. When I later tried duplicate I doubled a bid by the opponents, Lho asked my partner if my double was negative, I had no idea what they were talking about.

I have played off and on, sometimes a lot, sometimes not at all, currently I play a modest amount although my wife Becky, a non-bridge player, might disagree with calling it  "a modest amount".

The game suits me. Thought is often rewarded, but luck also plays a role. In a recent club game hearts were set as trump, partner bid 4NT, I bid 4 !S showing two keys and the trump Q. Oops, partner had only one key. What to do? He bid 6 !H and hoped for the best.  Fortunately we were not off two aces, we were off one side suit ace and the trump K. The finesse worked. Whew.

A good sense of humor can be useful in bridge, especially in cases where the required miracle does not happen. I enjoy going over hands examining how much was due to luck, how much was due to good or bad choices. 

I am not sure if I can make it this Thursday but hopefully I can.

jcreech:
My name is Jim.

Similar to Ken, I grew up playing all sorts of card games.  Somewhere along the way, the games became a bit specialized.  Cribbage when I visited my uncle in the Pittsburgh area.  Hearts when camping in the Boy Scouts.  Euchre during study periods during high school.  Double-bid Euchre in college.  Double-deck Pinochle when visiting my brother’s college.  And a separate group of college friends played Spades.

Bridge was the odd game.  My parents played some social bridge, complete with the Goren tablecloth that described how to convert your honors into points, and how many points you needed to open, bid game or slam.  I remember opening According to Hoyle’s section on bridge and becoming completely confused by their discussion.  So I never took it up, but I did start reading the bridge column in the newspaper, learning something, but not too much in depth.

Working on my Ph.D., there was a table in the dorm hallway of bridge players, and to help guarantee that they would always have at least one fourth, one offered to teach an introductory class.  That was a brief introduction, because after the semester ended, so did the game.  Next time for bridge was a few years later, on a Post-Doc; there was a sign in the student union –Free bridge lessons:  intermediates at 6, beginners at 6:30.  I decided it wouldn’t hurt to sit in on both, so I came early.  The instructor came in, asked who wants a lesson, and who wants to play?  Everyone else voted to play, so I joined in.  Somewhere in the middle, the auction went 1H-2H-P-3D; P-3H-P-4C; P-4H-X-P; P-P.  So I found myself in 4HX, when RHO opened 1H; I had a terrific hand and great 6-card heart suit, so the contract came home and I was hooked!

My Post-Doc was in Measurement of Social Psychological Concepts, so I justified my obsession as being a different form of applied measurement and bidding, the method by which a partnership communicates to arrive at “true score” or contract.

I moved into directing at local clubs along the way.  For a while, I was a fixture on Imagination, playing bridge and spades, but when they raised their prices significantly, I jumped ship.  For about 25 years, almost all of my bridge playing was with last minute pickups to fill out movements where I was the director.  Now I get to play more often, and need to  (I pull hands from my play to bring to my mentoring classes).

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