Last week I got a new life experience as a vugraph operator, broadcasting a bridge game in real time. We went to Penticton, BC, for the bridge finals of the Canadian National Team Championship Flight A; the teams were playing for the right to play in the Bermuda Bowl in Sao Paulo, Brazil. This is the most prestigious bridge tournament in the world. Vugraph operator is the closest I’ll ever get to a bridge tournament at this level.
We got there on Thursday afternoon, and set up a couple of practice sessions to work out the bugs. There were some, but judicious application of a flyswatter took care of those pesky critters!
Friday morning we went live, prime time as it were. My heart rate was extremely fast, which didn’t help with keeping up with the extremely fast play of the cards. I was very worried about missing the actual play of discards. It took both of the two morning sessions to get used to this, and to settle down and enjoy the ride.
I discovered that I was too short to see over the screen and to the middle of the table, and for the afternoon sessions I had a box to sit on. That helped a lot, and we figured out that if we stacked two chairs together, I would be able to see. We did that at both tables for all of Friday. Even though Colin and Bruce were both a lot taller than me, it also helped them.
Friday morning, getting ready to start session 5 of 8, perched on two chairs.
I was much more relaxed Friday morning, and the whole day was very entertaining for me. Dan didn’t have it so good, he was stuck being bored while I was at the bridge venue.
International competitions all use these screens.
The way this works, for people who don’t know duplicate bridge for team games, is this. Each team has four players playing during a session, and each team has a north/south pair and an east/west pair. At the Open Room, the home team sits north and south, and the away team sits east west. At the Closed Room, the home team sits east and west, and the away team sits north and south. Both tables play the same boards, and the results are compared between the two tables. This takes the element of luck out of the game to a huge extent, and it becomes a game of skill and cunning.
The cards are placed in a carrier which is set in the middle of the blue square seen in the middle the table, and flap is dropped down concealing the opening in the middle of the screen. The players make their bids which are done using bidding cards, and the blue square is slid back and forth under the screen. Once bidding is done and the opening lead is made, the flap is raised and the cards are played. The players can see each others hands and cards but not their faces, so “table feel” is pretty much a non-issue.
I was sitting in the corner of the table, between the south player and the west player.
My job as vugraph operator was to keep track of which board number they were playing, enter the bids and play of the hand online, and it was then broadcast and commented upon by world class players from multiple countries. The idea is that the vugraph operator is an observer and not a participant in the game, and so other than double checking the final result for the board, I managed to refrain myself from saying “SLOW DOWN, YOU GUYS!!!” which was something I felt like doing a whole lot of the time.
We got home bright and early Sunday morning and spent the next couple of days relaxing and recovering from this excursion.
On our way home we stopped at Mount Baldy ski resort to check it out. I had hopes of being able to see the mountain we live on from up there, but alas we weren’t able to drive farther than the base of the mountain. To get up for a view we would have to ride a chair lift and that wasn’t operating, and something I wasn’t keen on doing regardless. On the upside, we did see a moose.
Monday we went to an organic farm and picked up 16 containers of just picked strawberries, and I spent the afternoon cleaning them, and that was our supper. I always feel rich when I have a bunch of strawberries to play with.
The organic farmers, a young hippie couple who reminded us of us when we were a lot younger, have planted pickling cucumbers and I plan to get some of those and see if I can make pickles out of them. I have Mom’s recipe and hopefully I can duplicate them. Dan says that when he was in school, he could trade of those pickles for anything another kid had brought for lunch. They were great pickles. I miss her!!!!!