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Yesterday's Results

Today's PDF file

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Spingold KO

Wagar KO

50 Years with a
rulebook in hand

Guess what Tournament Director Stan Tench was doing 50 years ago? Right – he was directing. He was in Vancouver BC, and he was directing for the very first time. He was only 25 at the time.

Now he’s 75 – he celebrated his birthday earlier this week. And of course he’s doing what he likes best – directing. Just by the way, he arranged his day off for yesterday three months ago – he went to see “Producers” with his friend, Phyllis Burstein.

A quick aside about the day he was born – July 11. “My grandparents heard about my birth the day before I was born,” he said. “I was born in Japan, and because of the time difference it was still the 10th back in the United States.”

Stan assisted John Donnelly during that first assignment back in 1954, but he was the directorin- charge the following year. His assistant? None other than Phil Wood, the man who eventually became the king of directors in the Northwest.

Stan worked for the Canadian government for 30 years, so he did all his directing on weekends and during vacations. He moved East to Ottawa in 1956, and he has especially enjoyed working in the Maritimes and northern Ontario. “The people are so social, so friendly, so enjoyable.”

Stan wistfully remembers the good old days when directors used pencils instead of computers to score. “It was more fun the old way, but I suppose the computers are faster.”

Directing is a great way to meet people and to travel, Stan said. “And I’ve so enjoyed working with such wonderful men who were my fellow directors – fellows like Johnny Wiser, Maury Braunstein, Harry Goldwater, Henry Francis, Tom Weeks, Karl Marks, Karl Johnson, Jerry Friedlander, Jules Jacobson, Jerry Prisyon, Lou Kelner, Mike Linah, Buddy Spiegel and Ronnie Rubin.

“Henry and I used to have a wonderful time in the Maritimes. We’d race to finish our 25-top sheets, and we’d each have a rooting section cheering us on.”

Doing sheets was fun for Stan. “One time we were doing a stanza 25-top where we scored the first half while the contestants played the second half. One of the players – Hugh McLean who used to play with Ron Andersen – bet us that we couldn’t get the first half in balance before play finished in the second half. We eagerly took the bet. Then we bet him we could finish by the 12th round. We won that one too. But when we offered a bet on the 11th round, Hugh refused. He had learned his lesson.”

Canada is a bilingual country, so at one point Stan was ordered to learn French because he was a high-ranking governmental official. He used his French exactly once in his work, but his new language has proved to be a big help indirectly – after all, he works a lot of tournaments in Quebec.

Now that he has retired, Stan works all the NABCs, so he is in frequent contact with all the friends he has made through the years.

“I love directing,” Stan emphasized. “I have enjoyed every minute of it.” 

Welland tries harder
but he's not No. 2

As a games player from an early age, Roy Welland has always set high standards for himself.

“I’m a bit of a perfectionist,” says the 41-yearold New Yorker. “If I do something, I try to do it as well as humanly possible.” For Welland the bridge player, “as well as possible” has turned out to be quite impressive.

Less than four years after applying himself seriously to bridge, Welland has several major wins to his credit, including last year’s Spingold Knockout Teams. In October, he and his squad will travel to Istanbul, Turkey, to try to win the World Team Olympiad.

The team will be one of the favorites to bring home the gold medal, and many top ACBL players  believe Welland is good enough to lead his team – Bjorn Fallenius, Michael Rosenberg, Zia Mahmood, Robert Levin and Steve Weinstein – to victory in Turkey.

Says Bob Hamman, a member of the Bermuda Bowl champion Nick Nickell team: “Roy is a good competitor. He’s technically sound and has worked really hard, especially in terms of seeking out good competition. He’s doing it all right.”

 

See complete article in today's pdf version of the bulletin.

Two major upsets in Spingold KO

Teams captained by Rose Meltzer and Rita Shugart are on the sidelines today as the third round of play gets underway in the Spingold Knockout Teams.

Meltzer’s all-star squad – Kyle Larsen, Peter Weichsel, Alan Sontag, Chip Martel and Lew Stansby – fell to the No. 61 seed, an all-England team captained by Jack Mizel. Meltzer jumped out to a 48-13 lead after the first quarter but were blasted 52-5 in the second quarter and never recovered as they dropped a 135-88 decision.

Mizel played with Alexander Allfrey, Arthur Malinowsky and Andrew McIntosh.

By contrast to the other match, Shugart held a 41-IMP lead with a quarter to go but were outscored 53-8 by a New York-Canada team led by Fred Hoffer. The final score was 140-136.

Hoffer, of Cote Saint-Luc in Quebec, and fellow Canadian Don Piafsky of Toronto were playing with New Yorkers Barry Piafsky, Allen Kahn and David Rosenberg.

In another upset, the No. 15 seed, captained by Bart Bramley, lost a close match to the team led by Phillip Becker.  

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Rosenkranz leads Senior Swiss Teams

The team captained by George Rosenkranz was in the lead after two qualifying sessions of the NABC Senior Swiss Teams. The event concludes today.

Rosenkranz is playing with fellow Mexican Miguel Reygadas, Floridians Ed Schulte and Zeke Jabbour and Arnie Fisher of Clementon NJ.

They had a lead of 12.24 Victory Points over the second-place team from Nebraska: Gary Amundsen, Mike Albert, Rod Beery and Mary Egan.

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The time has come for Intellympics

“If we believe in our capability, we will succeed in our project to build a new category of Olympic Games, the Intellympics,” World Bridge Federation President Jose Damiani believes. He is with us here in New York this week because of the Junior activities.

According to Damiani, the International Olympic Committee expects the bridge world to show how important we are not only as a competitive sport but also as a human activity. “We have been officially confirmed as an international sports federation under the new criteria set by the IOC. This was by no means automatic, as many federations have been rejected.”

Damiani and Gianarrigo Rona, president of the European Bridge League, will speak about the contribution bridge makes to education and health at the Congress of Sport for All, organized by the IOC.  

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