After the Covid-19 vaccinations became readily available in the late spring of 2021 competitive bridge1 started a very slow return in New England. The Hartford Bridge Club reopened in August of 2021, but attendance was disappointing. The Simsbury Bridge Club’s first game was a five-table gathering on September 18. The only sectional held in New England in the entire year was an EMBA event in Watertown on December 10-12. It drew 133 tables, exactly half of the attendance at the equivalent tournament in 2019.
The Executive Committee (EC) of District 25 planned to hold a tournament in Warwick, RI, at the end of August. I had publicized it rather heavily.2 However, it—and every other regional event scheduled for August—was canceled by the ACBL. A regional tournament that was also planned for November in Mansfield, MA, was canceled by a vote at a Zoom meeting of the EC.
District 25’s Tournament Scheduling Committee (TSC) held a couple of Zoom meetings in late 2021 in which it decided to change the 2022 schedule drastically. Peter Marcus, the district’s Director-in-Chief, had been arguing—with some degree of seriousness—that the district should schedule no tournaments at all for 2022 rather than play by the ACBL’s rules. Instead the TSC decided to shelve the plans for three events:
The Presidential Regional that had traditionally been held in February in Connecticut.
The intermediate/novice event scheduled for April that had been called the Rainbow Weekend or Gold Mine.
The Senior Regional/Cape Cod Sectional that was also planned for April.
Although I was a voting member of both committees, I was unable to attend either Zoom meeting and was shocked when the TSC proposed this at the Zoom meeting of the EC in early 2022. I voted loudly against the recommendations, but no one else did.
Instead, a four-day tournament called the Gala Regional was scheduled for May 19-22 in Marlborough3, MA, in a hotel that had never before been used for a tournament. The flyer for the event has been posted here. I had a long streak of attendance at regional events, but I could not attend this one because of a European cruise that had been scheduled many months earlier (for a period in which D25 had never run a tournament) and had already been postponed twice. That adventure has been described here.
On April 14 I sent out the first promotional email for the Gala to over 2,000 players in Districts 3, 24, and 25 who had less than 300 master points. A copy is posted here. 61% of the recipients opened the email, but only 51 of them clicked on the link to the flyer.
On the same day I sent a slightly different version to the players in the same districts with between 300 and 750 masterpoints. A copy is posted here. This group was about half the size of the previous one. Again, about 61 percent opened the email; 48 clicked on the link to the flyer.
The third version was sent to “Gold Rush Grads”, those with 750-2000 masterpoints, about 1,000 players. A copy was posted here. 58.2 percent opened it, and 46 clicked on the link.
The fourth version went to players with over 2,000 masterpoints. A copy was posted here. 56+ percent opened it, but only 20 clicked on the link.
So, only a total of 165 players clicked on the link to the flyer. I haven’t checked every email, but I suspect that this was the worst rate of any set of emails promoting tournaments that I had ever sent. People were either still scared of Covid-19, or they were upset about the vaccination requirement. Or maybe my emails were less effective because it was difficult for me to be enthusiastic and creative about the promotion of an event that I could not attend.
I sent a second email a week later to emphasize the convenience and quality of the hotel, which I had never seen. Only people with less than 50 masterpoints were excluded from this email (copy posted here). Nearly 59 percent opened it, and 127 clicked on the link to the flyer. There was no link to the hotel; reservations needed to be made by telephone.
On April 29 I sent a set of three emails that Sue Miguel composed. Her style was much different from mine. A sample of one is posted here. A total of 120 people clicked on the link to the flyer. No further marketing was done.
The schedule placed a lot more emphasis on the party element than the bridge.
Sue Wavada attended the Gala, and when she picked me up at Logan Airport after the tournament was over, she reported that she enjoyed it. She also was allowed to take home some balloons.
The Grand National Teams (GNT) was one of the events scheduled to be held at the eleven-day Summer NABC to be held in Providence in July. Both the qualifying tournament in District 25 and the finals of the event had been held online in 2021. Although I hated playing online I played with my partner, Ken Leopold, on Bridge Base Online (BBO) as often as I could. We teamed up with our long-time teammates, Trevor Reeves and Felix Springer.
On October 25 of 2021 I sent an email to all three about the 2022 qualifying tournament for D25:
My total masterpoints went over 2500 yesterday. However, I just checked the ACBL’s Conditions of Contest for the GNT for 2021-2022 (http://web2.acbl.org/documentLibrary/play/coc/gnt/GNT2021-22.pdf). The cutoff date for the GNT is the roster of August 6, 2021. So, I will still be eligible for one more GNT. The finals will be at the summer NABC, which is scheduled for Providence. The date for the qualifying tournament has not been finalized, but it will probably be in April or May.
I hope that you guys will be willing to play with me again in my final opportunity for this tournament.
All three responded positively to this request. On April 28, 2022, I wrote the following email to all three in order to confirm our plans.
The GNT qualifier for Flight B is on April 30 and May 1. I have read the Conditions of Contest. It will be held online under approximately the same conditions as last year. Two teams will qualify if more than eight participate. The cost is $15 per session
The finals in Providence start on Wednesday, July 13.
Is everyone still up for this? If so, I will register us.
Felix responded within an hour or so with this disheartening message: “Dan Morgenstern asked Trevor and me a while back to play in the GNTs with him and his partner and we accepted. Another time.”
This was soul-crushing news. I really wanted to compete in this event with a team that I trusted and could plan strategy with. I forwarded to them a copy six months earlier of their positive responses to my invitation, but neither of them responded to that email.
Ken suggested that we should look for other teammates, but I told him that I did not want to do so. We had played with inferior teammates in this event in 2019, and I had not enjoyed it at all. In that case the event was face-to-face. This would be online, which I could scarcely tolerate even with good teammates.
Felix and Trevor’s team qualified in the second team from D25 and got to play in Providence.
I was heavily involved in the promotion of the Providence NABC, helped with the partnership desk a couple of times, and played bridge almost every day. The beginning of the description of my involvement has been posted here. Felix and Trevor’s team made it to the semifinals, where they lost to the eventual champions.
The first regional tournament that I was able to attend was the Ocean State Regional in Warwick, RI, which ran from August 30-September 5. The flyer has been posted here.
The first promotional email was what I would call a postcard. Sue Miguel designed it. I sent it on July 27, about five weeks before the tournament began, to everyone in D3, D24, and D25, as well as the people who attended in Providence. 41.3 percent of the 15,000 recipients opened the email. 340 clicked on the link to the “schedule”. There was a mistake on it. I sent out a correction the same day. The correction, which has been posted here, had an additional 500 clicks.
I wrote and sent out the second email on August 18 to everyone in D3, D24, and D25. 184 people clicked on the link to the flyer. It has been posted here.
Sue designed an email for 3,000 players in D25 with less than 750 masterpoints. It was sent on August 22. The email, which was posted here, did not contain any links. She also had me send one for the 824 “Gold Rush Graduates” (750-2000).
The less said about the actual tournament the better. On Tuesday Sohail Hassan4, whom I had met at the partnership desk at a tournament before the pandemic, and I did poorly in the Open Pairs. Sohail showed up at the last minute for both sessions. Since there were a few things on our convention card that I was shaky about, this distressed me.
We intended to play in the Wednesday-Thursday knockout, but we were unable to find teammates. Since the schedule had been pared back to save on director’s fees, our only other choice was to play in Wednesday morning’s Side Game5. It was a horrendous experience. Sohail again appeared at the last minute for both sessions, and in the morning he got into a boisterous argument with one of our opponents. The director had to be called to calm them down. I made several mistakes; our scored was miserable. Nevertheless, we had a 58.71 percent game in the afternoon Side Game.
Bob Potvin.
On Thursday we played in the Open Swiss. We teamed up with two guys from Rhode Island, Don Rankin and Bob Potvin. I had played against both of them before. We somehow finished third in B and sixth overall. This was not that great an accomplishment. Most of the participants were teams that had been eliminated from the knockout on the previous day.
I confided to Don that playing with Sohail had been a miserable experience. He replied, “Maybe we should play together.”
Abhi Dutta.
On Friday I had scheduled a new partner, Abhi Dutta6, for the knockout. Our teammates were Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider. Although the four of us were fresh from a victory in the sectional in Great Barrington, MA (described here), we could not get any traction in our five-team group. We were eliminated and forced to play in the Open Swiss on Saturday. I remember a general feeling of great frustration, but no details.
The Executive Committee met on Friday. I was in no mood to participate. This version of the Warwick tournament, which had always been the jewel in the district’s crown, seemed pitiful to me. Even though we did not even rent the other ballroom, the main room was not nearly full. The rotunda was used for both the side games and the 299ers, and there was still room to spare. The attendance, by historical standards, was alarmingly low.
We learned that we had taken a financial bath at the Gala, and Warwick was probably worse. The only good news was that, as I for one had come to expect, Joe Brouillard, the treasurer, had turned water into wine with the district’s finances. We still had a lot of money in the bank.
I could hardly believe that the roles of tournament chairman and partnership chairman were no longer going to be handled locally. Sue Miguel was going to do the former, and Denise Bahosh had volunteered for the latter. The problem was that the two new sites, Southbridge and Marlborough, had no natural constituencies. Who would take the responsibilities for them? Nevertheless, I considered it a mistake not to use local people in future tournaments in Warwick.
The decision was made to raise the table fees to $20 and to use the projected revenue to turn the Spectacle Regional into a very enjoyable event. I voted for it and even spoke in favor of the move, but I would have liked to see more details about how Sue Miguel intended to spend all of that extra money.
Mark Aquino, the Regional Director, made a depressing presentation that included the statement, “The ACBL is broken.” I left the meeting with the strong feeling that our best efforts might not be enough to save bridge as we knew it.
The Saturday Open Swiss once again was dominated by teams that had been eliminated in the knockout. We finished fourth in B and won a few gold points for a performance that was not worthy of any recognition.
The Ocean State Regional was the most disappointing tournament that I had ever attended. I had no fun in any event in which I played, and I found the EC meeting depressing in the extreme. The Crowne Plaza was not a disappointment, but only because I had also stayed there during the NABC event in July (description begins here) and no longer expected my room to be cleaned after I used it.
The last D25 tournament of 2022 was the Spectacle Regional, held in Southbridge, MA. It began on Tuesday, November 15, and ended on Saturday, November 19. I had been asked to prepare a Bulletin for this event. I therefore joined Curtis Barton (president), Carolyn Weiser (secretary), Sally Kirtley (tournament manager), and Denise Bahosh (partnership) in a “walk-around” inspection of the facility. Sue Miguel was also expected, but for some reason she was unable to attend.
The hotel/conference center was a nice modern place, but the rooms in which we would be playing were much smaller than the ballrooms in which we usually held regional events. The plan for this event was to provide exceptional hospitality, which meant free food and something new (and free) for newer players. Sue Miguel devised that approach, which she called Fest.
I sent out the first promotional piece on September 9. It was composed by Sue Miguel in the postcard format that she preferred. The message was that a lot of gold would be dispensed in Southbridge. I have posted it here.
Sue designed the piece sent on September 12 as well. It was directed to 2,000 players with less than 150 masterpoints. It provided an introduction to the concept of Fest. It has been posted here
On September 15 I sent a different email that Sue created. It was also in postcard format, but it also contained a link to the schedule that had by then been posted on NEBridge.org. The target audience was everyone in District 3, 24, or 25. It can be viewed here.
On October 19 I sent an email to the same audience. This one was in the format that I ordinarily used, but I emphasized the convenience and uniqueness of the site, not the bridge schedule. I considered the latter very meager. I have posted it here.
On October 25 I sent out another solicitation to those with less than 150 points. This one included the 9/15 postcard, but it also had text that Sue had written to explain the Fest concept. It has been posted here.
The next day I emailed to the rest of the players a message that I had written. This one has been posted here. This was the last email that was sent to promote this event, and it was also the last email that I composed for the district. Sue Miguel took over the creation of the emails more or less by default. I don’t think that they tried to find anyone else to do it.
I intended to promote the “Knock-in Knockout” event because it was the only imaginative offering on the schedule for players with more than 2,250 points. The district had also enjoyed great success at attracting players at all levels to bracketed events like this. However, I had been warned by Sue Miguel and Peter Marcus to avoid any explanation of the event or to use the Kiko abbreviation. Apparently they feared that the ACBL might come down on us. I don’t know why.
I decided to commute from my house in Enfield to the hotel. The drive was less than forty-five minutes each way. Sue planned to drive up on Friday morning, play on Friday, attend the Board of Delegates (BoD) meeting on Saturday, and see what she felt like doing on Saturday.
On Tuesday I played with Sally Kirtley in the Open Pairs. Attendance at all events was meager. Sally and I had not played together often, and we were definitely out of our depth in the open event. Playing with Sally at regional tournaments is always challenging. She was interrupted to deal with some sort of problem fairly often in her role as tournament manager.
On Wednesday Eric Vogel and I teamed up with Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider in the Kiko. There were only three brackets! My recollection is that there were only five teams in our bracket. At any rate, we were eliminated on Wednesday. On Thursday, however, the same foursome finished first in the Y strat of the Open Swiss. It did not seem like much of an accomplishment.
On Friday I played with Abhi Dutta, at least that is what my calendar said. The only game that I was eligible for was the Open Pairs. Abhi should have found a partner with fewer points so that he could play in the Gold Rush Graduate event.
On Friday there was a free lunch consisting of a couple of a couple of pieces of pizza. The hotel was poorly prepared for this. Although the total attendance was not very good, the lines for pizza were very long. I had to rush back for the second session.
Robin Hillyard.
While I was in line Pete Matthews and Gary Schwartz complained to me about the fact that the only pairs games available on Wednesday and Thursday were side games. They asked me why no Open Pairs games were scheduled. I said that I did not know. I was not on the Tournament Scheduling Committee any more, but I would bring up up at the EC meeting that night. Previously Robin Hillyard had sent me an email asking why the Sunday games had been eliminated. This was hard on the players who were still gainfully employed. I told him that I would bring that up as well.
I found the attitudes displayed at the EC meeting rather shocking. People were raving about how successful the Fest—a combination of education, free lunch and other goodies, and a short bridge session (also free)—had been. The yardstick for this was that a good number of the forty-four participants had approached the organizers and presenters to offer thanks and praise. Sue Miguel said that it was the best thing that the district had done in twenty-five years. Give me a break.
I, frankly, was much more concerned about the turnout of the people who were willing to pay to play. The attendance in the Gold Rush (0-750 masterpoints) events was shockingly low. My wife Sue had driven up on Friday to play in the Gold Rush pairs. When it did not make, she had to play in an event in which she had little chance of success.
Another surprise at the meeting the report by Mark Oettinger (vice-president). It brought up the possibility of getting more pro teams to come to our tournaments. Evidently Adam Grossack agreed to help with this effort. I wondered if anything would come from this. How would they find them to offer enticements to attend?
My wife Sue and I attended the BoD meeting on Saturday morning. There was no coffee, and the hotel served only breakfast sandwiches that were improperly marked. The only attendees from CT were Paul Burnham, Peter Marcus, Sue and me. That meant that nine delegates from Unit 108 were absent. Curtis announced that the Fest was the greatest thing ever. He insisted that the people attending the meeting were responsible for doing whatever it would take to increase attendance at future tournaments. It was not inspiring.
Sue surprised me by making a little speech complaining about the lack of events for people like her. She got tearful when describing her frustration about the fact that the Gold Rush event on Friday had been canceled. Mark Aquino offered to play with her one day in the Presidential Regional in the same facility in February of 2023. She was happy (and a little nervous) about that.
1. When I write “bridge” I usually mean face-to-face bridge. The online game is, in my opinion, not worthy of the appellation of “bridge”.
2. As soon as I heard that the tournament was canceled, I sent emails to that effect to the same email addresses that I had sent promotional mailings. I also posted a notice on the website. However, one couple from New Jersey read the initial email, but for some reason they did not receive the second one. They drove all the way to Warwick and were shocked to discover that no tournament was in process. I sent them a personal email apologizing for this.
3. Sometimes it is spelled without the final “ugh”.
4. Sohail was retired from a job on Wall Street. He had a house in the NYC area and another on Cape Cod. I could not find his LinkedIn page on the Internet. His name was much more common than I imagined.
5. This was the first time that the district scheduled side games during the daylight hours. I do not know what the TSC was thinking of when it drew up this schedule. I was not a party to it. I had resigned after I had to miss the first three meetings because of scheduling conflicts.
6. Abhi lived in Walpole, MA. I met him when he played with my wife several years earlier. I had teamed up with him once in the Grand National Teams qualifying tournament in 2019. His LinkedIn page has been posted here.
If you were offended by the title of this entry, you know where you can cram it.
Bill Watson.
In the twelve years before the pandemic the Hartford Bridge Club had hosted a one-day, two-session 199er Sectional, usually in October. For at least two of these events I emailed promotional pieces. The last one in 2019 was run by Bill Watson. The club was open in October of 2021 and 2022, but the event was not held.
The ACBL had special rules for Limited Sectional. They were sponsored by the unit, but run by the club. The unit had no financial stake in the outcome.
The most attractive rule was that the club did not need a Tournament Director certified by the ACBL; it club could use its own directors. In late 2022 I researched the feasibility of resuming this activity and proposed to the Planning Committee and the Board of Trustees that the time was right to try it again. I created a spreadsheet (posted here) to demonstrate the profitability of the undertaking under certain assumptions. Although Bill was not interested in resuming his role, the other directors were on board, especially Linda Starr.
However, just as the club was finalizing its plans, the ACBL changed the rules: a TD or an Assistant TD would be required for Limited Sectionals. To become an Assistant TD one must pass an exam that had not yet been written. Peter Marcus, the president of the Connecticut Bridge Association and a qualified TD, assured us that we could hold the event as long as he was “standing by” if needed.
Donna Feir.
So, in January Donna Feir, the HBC manager, was considering applying for a sanction. On the 15th I sent an email to Linda Starr asking whether the directors had set a date, and, if so, did they want me to send emails1 promoting it. She answered the next day:
Yes! We have decided. We’re having a one-day, two-session 0-750 NLM2 sectional on March 26. (The flyer is attached.) Who do you send the information to? (Just curious. I’d love to have you send it out to anyone 😁)
The flyer to which she referred can be viewed here. The event actually had two flights: one for players with less than 200 points and one for non-Life Masters with less than 750 points.
I had been thinking about how to approach the emails for this event for a few months. The key aspect, in my opinion, was the color of the masterpoints: silver. When I think of Silver, I think of the fabled steed of the Lone Ranger. So, I decided to make the horses of the LR and his faithful Indian companion Tonto the theme of the first email. You can view it here.
I sent a copy to Linda, whom I considered to be my boss on this project. She responded enthusiastically, “Thanks, Mike! This announcement is great!! It should get plenty of interest.”
Well, she was right about the interest. I sent the email to players in four units: Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA), Rhode Island, Central Massachusetts, and Western Massachusetts. 1,300 were sent; 54 bounced; 770 recipients opened the email a startling 1,794 times. The flyer was opened 90 times.
No one was in any way angry about it, but two people did not like the focus on Tonto. Elaine Reitman wrote this:
Not Tonto.
Don’t you think that in this day and age when sports teams from schools through NFL Pros are urged to change their team names exploiting Native American stereotypes and the US as well as local governments are expunging the term “squaw” from place names that this is a decidingly jingoist message. Couldn’t bridge players be encouraged to attend a tournament for their own benefit without bringing midcententury stereotypes into play. It’s insulting to receive messages using pidgen language and dated images.
Not Jay Silverheels.
Her reaction frankly surprised me. Did she really feel insulted? I doubted it. Uncomfortable, maybe, about the fact that she was in the same group as someone who used a metaphor that had been a familiar part of the culture for nearly seventy years. I wrote back to her:
Did you think that the Johnny Depp movie was insulting? Jingoist? How so? The LR and Tonto on TV were good friends, and all of the bad guys that I can remember were white men. I used “Tonto” and “Scout” in the headline rather than “I am scouting for” to help people remember that Scout was the name of Tonto’s horse.
It is very hard to get people to read emails in this day and age, and I really care about reviving face-to-face bridge. I would not want to eliminate about half of the possible metaphorical references from my youth.
I am sorry that you did not like my choice of metaphors. I don’t get paid for this. I just do it because I love the game.
She did not reply. I received one other email in the same vein from Butch Norman:
If I am the only one to comment on your use of the pejorative word “Tonto”, then I guess it is my problem. However, if I am not, then you do have a problem that needs to be addressed. The Native American definition of “onto” is “idiot, fool, stupid”.
I was surprised to learn this. Actually, the Native Americans have a very large number of languages. I didn’t have any idea which one Tonto spoke. here was my response:
One other, so far. I certainly did not intend to insult Native Americans. To me Tonto was a TV character who caught bad guys in the fifties. He talked a little funny, but so did Gabby Hayes and a lot of other sidekicks. Maybe that is problematic, but I don’t see it.
Butch sent this reply:
Thanks for your reply. Please don’t apply to today the standards of what was acceptable in the 1950’s. (Amos ‘n’ Andy comes to mind. I know you to be a better person than that.
I would have been happy to argue with him about Amos Jones, but I had to admit that Andy Brown was a blockhead. What that had to do with Tonto, who, in my opinion in no way conformed to any racial stereotypes, I never did figure out. I just let it go.
Bill Segraves.
The next email that I received was from Bill Segraves, the new webmaster for the CBA. He was not on the mailing list, and so someone must have shown a copy to him. He had a very different concern:
I just saw a copy of the draft advertisement for the 750 sectional and I very strongly advise against it.
I asked my wife, a non-bridge player “how bad is this?” She said “Bad, very bad. Do you know what Tonto means in Spanish? It means stupid.” I loved the Lone Ranger when I was a child, but we live in different times.
PS – if this fell into the wrong hands, it would be potentially very damaging publicity for Connecticut bridge. This is not how we want to make our appearance in the newspapers.
I don’t know why he thought that what he saw was a “draft”.
I blame Miss Goldsich.
In the seventh grade at Queen of the Holy Rosary School in Overland Park, KS, I had a class Spanish, but I don’t think that Miss Goldsich ever drilled us on the twelve words in Spanish that mean “stupid”.
I checked my text again to be certain. All of the rest of the email was in English. Of what importance was it to anyone what one of the words meant in Spanish?
I could not let the claim in the PS go unanswered. Did he really think that someone was going to report us to the thought police in the media over this email? I sincerely hoped that they would! If they did, they would be required to let me respond, and I was quite sure that the CBA would come out very well in such an exchange.
Peter Marcus.
The President of the CBA, Peter Marcus, asked me to put the email on hold. It was too late for that, as I explained:
718 people have opened this email. Only two complained. I responded to both of them. Only eight people unsubscribed, a very small number. 32 people clicked on the link to the flyer. The content was approved by Linda Starr, the HBC director who is managing the project. She said that it was “great”.
I think that this is a tempest in a teapot, and everyone I asked at the HBC today agreed with me.
Peter’s response was typical of his bombastic communication style:
So, first, a small story/analogy. It is customary in the Jewish faith to name a child after an important dead relative. Sadly, my father’s father died 7 years before I was born, so, in a normal situation, it would have been automatic that I was given his name. It was a perfectly good name when he “got it” long before, and there was no problem with it at that time.
Yet, I was born in 1955, and my grandfather was Adolf Marcus. As you can imagine, the number of new “Adolfs” in 1955, particularly in a Jewish home, was pretty small.
The point is, something that was totally normally in 1900 was completely unacceptable in 1955. Obviously, if my father had named me Adolf he wouldn’t do it to offend anyone or for a bad reason, he would do it to honor his father. But, motives and intent didn’t matter; it was wrong and no amount of “good intent” could make it right.
I too grew up in the era of The Lone Ranger, watched it as a kid, and, between being desensitized to any bad undertones and living in the society at the time, it became part of my “normal world.” It was not widely seen as wrong back then, at least to a small child in the early 60s, so it entered my mind and environment as totally normal.
But, we grow up, we advance, we learn from our mistakes. What was societally acceptable in 1960 or, for that matter, 1860, is seen as wrong in 2023. Much of this comes from how we grew up and the people around us. And, while my parents didn’t express any concerns about the stereotypes in The Lone Ranger, they constantly reminded me not to repeat anything that I heard when we visited my mother’s parents, both of whom were of Southern society from the late 1800’s and thought nothing of using “the N word” in every day conversation. To them, that was normal, what they grew up with, and they wouldn’t understand how anyone could see that as wrong. But, thankfully, my parents had advanced from that mindset.
Mike has called this “a tempest in a teapot” and that is a fair view in some ways. But, it is also the view of people who aren’t part of the stereotyping of Tonto, Kemosabe, etc. People with that background may see it as more than that, as well as others who don’t have that background but understand that there are analogous things that could be said about whatever their ethic, religious, national, or cultural background is that they would find much more than “a tempest in a teapot.”
But, even if that is true, so what? Are we “proud” that, in less than 12 hours, 2 people expressed complaint and 8 unsubscribed? What will those numbers be 24 hours from now? And, even if the protest is miniscule, what happens when this gets more public exposure? Do we really want to read about this in Bridge Winners, or get a call from ACBL headquarters, let alone if this reached a wider audience? As unlikely as it is, I really don’t want, as President of the CBA, to be explaining to a Hartford Courant reporter that we just see this as “a tempest in a teapot.”
At the same time Peter sent the following email to the officers of the CBA, with cc’s to Donna, Bill Segraves, and me.
I am sending this to just the CBA Officers and asking for as quick as possible your input/view on what has happened and what we should do.
Attached below is an ad for the March NLM sectional being held at the Hartford Bridge Club. This is a tournament that was quite successful pre-pandemic and is targeting the very players who seem to have stepped away from face-to-face bridge. So, we really want this to be a big success and have begun advertising it. This started with an email to a fairly wide audience (a little over 700 people) who are eligible to play in it and live in the greater CT area. The contents of the email are below.
When this was brought to my attention, I immediately sent a note and left a phone message asking to hold off on sending this out, but it had already been sent. We have so far received few comments; 2 people complained, not sure who, and 8 people requests to be unsubscribed from our email distribution, both relatively small numbers. But, of course, that is in just the last 12 hours during which time most people were probably asleep, so who know what will happen in the next day or two.
A small group of players in the Hartford area saw this and thought it was a very effective ad. And, in many ways, it is. So, there was no serious concern raised about it.
But, I did get input from someone and, when I saw it, and then passed it by some other people I respect and they saw it as a very, very serious problem. While it is true that people of my generation and my ethnic background watched The Lone Ranger and saw nothing bad about it, that was when I was 6 and we lived in a different society. In reality, this was a very bad show (Tonto is the Spanish word for fool or idiot) and, back then, the respect shown to Native Americans was so non-existent that the TV producers had to hire a Caucasian actor with heavy make-up, since it was just “known” that American society wasn’t ready for an honest depiction of a Native American. Sadly, that view extended to many other groups seen as “lesser” by mid-20th century America. But, the fact that it was customary and normal doesn’t mean it isn’t seriously offensive in 2023.
Below is an email I have written to apologize for this ad. I am asking the officers for quick feedback on two issues
1) The apology itself and any rewording you want to suggest
2) How widely do we disseminate it, to just the people who got the email or to a wider audience, such as the CBA membership and/or the website
As to the 2nd issue, I can make arguments on both sides. Wider distribution will just put this in front of more eyes who may be offended. Lesser distribution can look like an attempt to “sweep it under the rug.” Sadly, by the time we learn which of these is correct, it will be too late to actually do that.
Anyway, please get back to me as soon as you can. I really would like to address this today, if at all possible before 12:00-1:00 so we can get something out before we start to get more negative feedback. As I have said to someone, as unlikely as this may be, the last thing we really want is for the President of the CBA to be interviewed by a reporter for the Hartford Courant.
Two things about this are noteworthy: 1) I sent the email to Rhode Island, Central Mass, and Western Mass, not just CT; 2) Peter did not ask the officers whether they thought it was a good idea to send the apology; he just asked them to comment on the wording.
Despite Peter’s claim that it might be considered “sweeping it under the rug”, the three other officers said that the apology should only be sent to the addressees. One proposed a change in the wording. I had a different take.
So, the standard now is “can be offensive”? Who judges that? I am not only offended but insulted by this entire process. Can I veto it?
By the way, the people whom I informed about the two complaints asked me if I told them where to cram it. I did not. I responded politely, as I always do.
If anyone was actually personally offended (as opposed to imagining that others might be offended), which I doubt, I will be happy to apologize to them face-to-face with great sincerity. However, I would insist that they tell me what about this totally innocuous character (other than his name, which in a language not spoken by either major character is one of the twelve words for “stupid”) they find threatening or even discomfiting. I never heard of Tontophobia, and I doubt that more than a minuscule portion of the target audience has. Tonto merchandise and reminiscences are all over the Internet. I have never heard of anyone complaining about them. I can understand, to an extent, Bill Cosby being upset about Andy Brown and Kingfish, but I cannot understand anyone getting upset about Tonto.
I am as woke as anyone. I think that the rest of us owe an unimaginable debt to Native Americans. However, I think that it is a huge mistake to make any more of this. Two complaints out of 719 opens is a very small number. Believe me; I have read every single response to the more than a million emails that I have sent promoting bridge.
I also think that it is a terrible idea to try to rein me in. I have a proven track record over this last decade of grabbing people’s attention and getting them to tournaments.
Frankly, I would welcome any attention drawn by outsiders to the campaign. They would be forced to let me respond, and I would emphasize how hard it is to get people’s attention, how innocuous Tonto’s behavior is, and how important it is to get out our message.
Peter responded in his usual way.
I am sending this to you alone. If you want me to expand the audience, I will.
1) No, you cannot veto it. I am sorry if you feel offended by the process. That was never the intent, but, if it had that effect, I apologize for that. I am not telling you that you are wrong to be offended, the fact that you feel it is real, just as offense at the email is real. But, I can be sorry that I had a part in making you feel that way, and I am.
2) Not sure I understand your comment about “…where to cram it.” I have no doubt that you handled any complaints fairly and professionally. My primary interest in knowing who they are is, if there is an escalation by them, I would know they were “the original two” and not new concerns.
3) Actually offended, yes. Obviously you do not feel that way, nor does Linda, and likely others who helped develop it at HBC. But, under the heading of who were offended, we have
me
Bill Segraves
Sue Miguel (when I asked for her opinion if this was an issue, since I didn’t want to over-react based on my personal feeling alone, she immediately called me back and screamed “Are you out of your mind!!”)
Gail Marcus (twice CEO of half-billion dollar corporations who has experience with unintended but negative publicity)
I would also note that none of the CBA officers–Phyllis, Deb or Cindy–made even a suggestion that apologizing for this wasn’t necessary.
You ask what is offensive about this. I will speak for myself alone. The first think I thought of, when I learned what Tonto means, is, as I was watching my tv when I was 6 and enjoying The Lone Ranger, what was the little 6 year old in the next apartment, whose parents came from Puerto Rico and spoke fluent Spanish, thinking as he saw a tv character called “Fool.” Another group of people who lived in America (actually the first who lived in America) being insulted by American society, in this case, the TV industry. This was what offended me as an individual, and it was a profound sorrow.
As to your record, I have to be one of the most understanding of that since my tenure being involved in these tournaments is the longest. It is true, you have been outstanding at the technical issues of publicizing tournaments. But more importantly, your copy, particularly for district emails to open players, is accurate and very effective. I very much enjoy your humor and think you do an amazing job. But, no one is perfect and I believe this was a well-intended but real error. I do not see it as a concern or something for the future. No one is trying to “…rein you in…” or even suggest that you shouldn’t use your considerable talents in marketing and humor to create bridge notices. In fact, when someone suggested that, as President of the CBA, I should approve all CBA-related email, I rejected that concept totally. I have complete trust in what you are doing (as I do with what Bill is doing on the website, Robin on the Kibitzer, etc.) and I have no belief that I need to approve everything or make sure there are no problems. No one is “sitting over your shoulder.”
On a final note, sorry, but this is what I don’t understand; why is this an issue? Linda’s email from yesterday (and a follow-up that she sent to me alone that I have chosen not to respond to) basically raise the “pc police run amuk” issue and you refer to yourself as being “as woke” as anyone. All of these are newly introduced political terms to just feed ridiculous debates.
Even if one person was slightly offended, should we not care? Is there really an argument being made that there was no way to publicize this tournament other than the Lone Ranger reference, that it was mandatory to use this imagery, and none other? Why can’t we do a great job and not run the risk of offending someone? And then, when someone is offended, rather than recognize that and address it, we get mad and raise the ante by suggesting their being offended is wrong and we shouldn’t care. And, would we really be making this argument if the title of the email were
Imbecile Scout for Silver, Kemosabe
Because that is exactly what it says and I am sure some of the players who got it understand Spanish, let alone have Hispanic heritage. While not Hispanic, my Grandmother was Spanish and my father’s full name, born in Berlin, was John Theodore Ricardo Roccamora Marcus. I don’t understand Spanish (my wife does and knew immediately) but I was aghast when I learned what Tonto meant.
Bottom line: this was a good, clever, interesting idea that, in another environment, would have been exactly what it was intended to be without any excess baggage. However, we live where we live, not where we wished we lived, and, in our world, this was a mistake. It has to be recognized as such and, when there is a mistake, you apologize and move on. You don’t dwell on it, but you don’t ignore or defend it either.
I should have insisted on a change to the wording of the apology to make it clear that the decision to send it was not approved by either the Hartford Bridge Club or the Board of Directors of the CBA. I was not impressed by Peter’s attempt to appeal to authority (his wife and Sue Miguel). It was a ridiculous notion that someone writing in English must check every word in a missive against every other language’s use of that combination of letters. It was also totally ridiculous to set the level of judgment as the potential that one person might be offended. I WAS personally offended by the apology. Why was my actual offense ignored in favor of fear of the imagined offense of some vague group?
Peter then sent me one of his shortest emails ever: “When you send out the email, could you add me (or make me a cc) for it, so that I know it has gone out. In the unlikely event that I hear about this independently, I would like to know if that happens before or after someone sees the follow-up.”
My response was even shorter: “Who said that I was sending out a follow-up?”
He sent me another long email. The important part was “In response to your latest question, ‘Who said I was sending a follow-up?’ the answer is me, President of the CBA.”
Of course, I knew that he was the president. I had attended meetings of the CBA for over ten years. The president presided at those meetings. I never heard of any other president ordering anyone to do anything. Peter had the only copy of the bylaws that anyone knew about, but I seriously doubted that the president had authority to order anything.
I responded simply: “I never agreed to send this, and I am not in charge of communications for the unit. I am absolutely convinced that this is just opening a can of worms for no good reason.”
His next email was another long one. The key paragraph was this: “I do not care what you are convinced of. I am the President of the CBA and I am instructing you to send this to the same distribution list that you send the Tonto email to.”
I wasn’t impressed. I wrote back: “What gives you the right to order me to do anything? I am convinced that this Is unnecessary and potentially counterproductive. I refuse to do it.”
Cindy Lyall (right).
An email from Cindy Lyall, the treasurer of the CBA and daughter of Rich DeMartino3, put things in a different light: “Hi – just seeing if we have sent out an ‘apology’ yet. If we have not, and only received 2 ‘complaints’, are we sure it’s necessary? Don’t want us to exacerbate the ‘situation’ unnecessarily. “
Peter ignored this attempt to cool things down and instead sent the following:
At your convenience, find a dictionary and look up the meaning of the word President.
Since you claimed not to be responsible for communications for the unit, by what authority did you author and send this out? There never was a vote of the CBA Board not approval from the Officers. While the tournament may be run at the HBC, it is a unit function, not an HBC function, and the unit has responsibility for the tournament.
However, I have no interest in fighting with you.
You will send out the email apology as I instructed to the entire distribution list, copying me, and you will send me a copy of that distribution list to me as well. This will go out before 5PM today.
Failing that
1) I will develop a list and send it myself.
2) I will inform D25 that, as President of the CBA, you are no longer on the D25 Executive Committee.
3) I will bring a motion at the CBA meeting on Thursday that you be removed from the CBA Board.
4) As District Tournament Coordinator, I will not sanction the tournament, so there will be no tournament to advertise. I believe it is not in the interest of the CBA, ACBL or bridge to be associated with a tournament that appears to associate itself with offensive imagery and language and then refuses to correct it. Your call.
I was not afraid of the CBA board. I had a lot more experience working with them than Peter did. I knew how they thought. On the other hand, I did not want to be removed from the Executive Committee, which had become dominated by people who had very different ideas about how to resurrect bridge after the pandemic.
I took a different approach with my next email:
I asked for permission to use the CBA letterhead before the Orange tournament for which I drafted two emails because the CBA’s emails were so meh.
I will be happy to send you a spreadsheet with the names and email addresses of the people to whom I sent the email, but I will not participate in any apology or retraction. If you want to do those other measures, go ahead. I won’t like it, and I think that they are stupid moves. The only things that I live for are my cat, who is dying, my wife, who has a half dozen chronic illnesses, and face-to-face bridge. This does not affect the first two, but I am convinced that it is bad for the last. I also find it unbearably humiliating.
Peter responded with this:
Fine, please send me the distribution list. Since the email does not come from your account and would be over my name not yours, your intransigence in this matter mystifies me but it is what it is. Given that, I would welcome you changing your mind and doing the purely mechanical function of sending the email to end this disagreement. Failing that…
I will inform Carolyn Weiser that you are no longer on the D25 Executive Committee.
You can either send me an email with your resignation from the CBA Board or, on Thursday, I will bring a motion for your removal per the CBA by-laws.
Since you are providing me with the distribution list, I will not do anything to impact the tournament itself. There is no good reason to harm 50-100 bridge players4 because of your position.
It took me a few hours to produce the spreadsheet that I sent to him. In his next email he expressed sympathy for the condition of Bob the cat and asked me if I intended to resign. I ignored the former and answered his question in the negative.
At this point Peter sent a copy of the emails that we had exchanged to all of the members of the CBA board. He included the following text:
I am sorry, this is not a pleasant issue to raise. Over the last few days, I have been dealing with an email, sent out under CBA auspices, advertising the March 26 NLM sectional at the Harford Bridge Club. This has engendered a long series of email back and forth between myself and the other CBA Officers – Phyllis, Cindy and Deb, Mike Wavada and Linda Starr and Bill Segraves. It concerns the advertising copy for this tournament and the issue that I and a number of other people found it inappropriate if not offensive. This email was sent to about 1350 NLMs in CT and surrounding units.
As President, and with the input of the Officers, I generated a follow-up email, apologizing for the content and sent over my name and contact information. Linda and Mike objected and didn’t want me to send it, believing the email was not an issue and that sending an apology would bring more attention to it. I and others felt that this was the kind of issue that, as unlikely as it might be, could explode on social media and other venues and that the best approach was to be forth wright, apologize and move on. As CBA President, I was willing to “take the heat” and did not expect Mike or anyone else involved in its creation to be publicly criticized or humiliated.
Yet, over the past few days, Mike, who had the distribution list that it was sent to, has categorically refused, despite my request and then my instruction as President, to send out the apology. He has, finally, sent me the distribution list and I have sent out the apologies (you all received one), despite the fact that this caused some havoc with my personal email due to the volume being sent.
While we can disagree on the severity of this issue, I maintain that there is no setting in which offending even a small number of players is good when other imagery and wording could have been used which would offend no one. I have also been accused of being part of “PC cops run amuk [sp]”, having no authority to make this decision, etc. I did decide to move forward without the full Board, because of concerns about the timing, but did involve and get at least tacit agreement from the other officers.
Sadly, I cannot accept having Mike Wavada on the Board with his repeated refusals and hostile attitude towards my role as President.
Therefore, per CBA By-Laws 6.12(b) – Removal – An At-large representative may be removed by an affirmative vote of the Board of Directors,
as Mike is one of the 4 at-large representatives, I am requesting a vote on his removal from the CBA Board be held at Thursday’s meeting.
It should be noted that, while there are very specific rules concerning removal of a District Representative Board members, including certified notice 30 days before the Board meeting (ByLaw 6.12(a)), that is not true for at large representatives, who per by-law 6.6(f), “…shall service at the will of the President and the Board of Directors.”
Attached are 8 .pdf files, numbered 0-7, the first (#0) showing the original email advertisement for the tournament that is the subject of concern, and the next 7 being copies of emails (I believe complete showing all correspondence to which I was a party). In each case, I have put the name of the person sending the email in red, so you can more easily follow the discussions.
Obviously, this is not a pleasant request, as I have know and worked with Mike for many years. But, given the exchanges over the last few days, I do not see any alternative.
Feel free to call or email as you wish. My next email will be the ZOOM instructions for the meeting.
The only word that upset me in this email was “finally”. I had set to work on preparing the spreadsheet as soon as I sent the email promising to do so. It involved exporting the “audience” from MailChimp to my PC. I had not done this for several years and never using Chrome, which is the browser I used when working on my free account. Chrome displayed the page in a way that threw me off. It also has a totally different way to handle downloads than Firefox, which I had previously used. I did not dawdle. It took a few hours to figure this out, find the extract file, unzip it, load the file for the subscribers into the spreadsheet program, remove all of the columns except the email addresses, save it as a csv file, and send it to Peter.
Peter did not ask for anyone’s opinion on the matter, but the response was overwhelming. Jan Rosow’s was the first to arrive:
I am against Mike Wavada being removed. His articles have no malicious intent and are creative with researched pictures. I am sorry that this is overblown in my opinion. Mike has given countless hours of volunteering and web site creation and it would be a Major loss not to have him on the Board!
Someone whom I did not know named Marsha Scherr sent me a very nice email. I have included a photo that she embedded in it:
Clicking on the above image will take you to the story that inspired Marsha.
Hi. I feel a need to write to you to say I’m sry you got grief from people who, in my opinion, are uninformed about The Lone Ranger, Tonto, and the whole Lone Ranger cult. Of course I’m talking about anyone over the age of 60. My friends and I have had an email exchange and we feel similarly. We were all Lone Ranger fans. We girls had Lone Ranger lunch boxes, etc. Girls loved the sexy Lone and appreciated the friendship of Silverheels. I think all kids understood we were watching 2 friends who trusted one another, who were from different cultures, & worked together to get the bad guys (& I sort of remember the bad guys were white guys).
Silver was a euphemism in the days of Tonto and the Lone. You made it a meme so kudos to you
PS: Please add my name to distribution list of CT Bridge
Take care & don’t let the naysayers get to you.
This was followed by supportive emails from Esther Watstein, Deb Noack, and Roger Caplan. Others must have called Peter. This long defense of his conduct was in his inimitable style.
I am sending this directly to the 5 people on the Board who have responded to me directly, copying the other Board members. Obviously, for those who have not responded so far, your views are welcome and appreciated.
Let me make my position very clear.
Mike Wavada is an extremely valuable resource. As I said in one of my emails, I probably know this better than almost anyone as he has served as the communications chair and webmaster of D25 for many years and we have worked together quite successfully. I also wrote that I have seen dozens of examples of Mike’s authoring publicity for tournaments that is creative, funny and very effective and I have told him and others that many times. Someone suggested that, in addition to expressing the CBA’s apology for this email, I should tell Mike that he could not send out any future unit-based communications without my prior approval. I rejected this concept totally. However, ill-advised I believe the “Tonto” email was, Mike has, as he has said, a long track-record of excellent communications and one email, if it is unfortunate, cannot wipe out a long history of excellence.
I personally feel the “Tonto” ad was a mistake, not intentional and not malicious, but a mistake nonetheless. I did not come to the decision to act on this view based on my personal opinion; in fact, I asked a number of bridge players their view to see if I was over-reacting and, to a person, was told that this was totally inappropriate.
Someone (apologies, but I believe it was Roger, best wishes to your daughter) commented on his view that this should have gone before the entire Board. That is certainly a valid view but, in my opinion, not logistically workable until Thursday and taking action that far away would not be effective. And, I did, and do, believe that action was necessary. So, I did bring into the discussion the other Officers; none suggested doing nothing and Deb was kind enough to rewrite and significantly improve what I had originally written. From this, I believe I was acting with the support of the Officers.
As I have said, I do not want to wade into the offensive/woke debate. I do not believe that this email is about either. Mike wrote that he would welcome responding to people who were offended. Personally, my goal is to not offend people who will want a response. While I do know that people can be offended by anything (a friend told me of neighbors who are offended at one of them flying the American flag from their porch), I think minimizing such offense has to be a reasonable goal of any organization. It is with this in mind that I believe the “Tonto” email was unnecessary.
For the record, I believe I sent out something like 1300 emails and have so far received a total of 4 responses, two of them thanking me for addressing an offensive email and two of them telling me, in basically so many words, “To get a life.” I have responded to all, thanking them for taking the time to express themselves.
Anyone involved in media knows that, if you get a small number of replies, there are a lot of people who feel the same way who don’t bother to write, so I am sure there were many people who were not offended and some who were. However, I believe that, if the imagery were a silver mine, or a silver tea service, or anything else silver, there would have been none offended. Wouldn’t that be better, particularly when we are working overtime to try to get people back and cannot afford to lose even a small number of players?
But, I do not believe this is now about the “Tonto” ad. It is about the roles on the CBA Board. After consultation with the Officers, I wrote to Mike to send out a communication to the members expressing the view of the President and the Officers. While Mike wrote that he was not the Board Communication Chair, the original email was sent over his name and I did not see any email from Mike to Ken with the proposed copy or Ken’s approval as Communications Chair.
I could understand if I had told Mike to send this out over his name, basically making him publicly apologize for “his mistake.” But that was never the case, and all he as asked to do was “push the computer button” that would send out the emails. If Mike has the information of whom he sent email to, and the President asks him to send an email to that audience, particularly after the other Officers have been involved so this is not “a President run amok,” I expect him to do it. If Mike, or anyone on the Board, has the authority to flatly refuse to do this, then the President is no longer the President. It is for this reason, not for the original copy, not because Mike (and others) felt it wasn’t offensive, and not because he (and others) expressed their disagreement to me in ways that I found offense (I am a “big boy” [in man ways] and have heard a lot worse things said about me, just ask any ACBL Board of Directors member), that I requested Mike’s removal from the Board.
I have repeatedly written to Mike that I am sorry if he disagrees with what I did. I have never meant to offend him, impugn his work or anything else. If Mike will write to the Board that he apologizes for the way he handled this, not the original email but his refusal to send out the communication that I sent him, and accept that I had the right to ask him to send it, then I will withdraw my suggestion that he be removed from the CBA Board. That will allow us to put this in the rearview mirror and move forward.
The “Push a button” comment was not accurate. Peter was ordering me to use my personal email account to send an email that I was convinced would be both humiliating to me and more likely to be counterproductive than not for reasons that I had already explicated. The idea would not have been as innocuous or anonymous as he depicted:
My email address (Mike@Wavada.org) would be listed on each mail. It was probably the most famous email address among bridge players in New England. If I changed the setting for this one message, it would increase the probability of being flagged as spam. I had twice faced dealing with being blacklisted. I took great pains to avoid that possibility.
My home address was listed at the bottom of each email.. I doubt that I would have remembered to change it. This would be another red flag.
My experience told me that a good number of people would unsubscribe if only because it came so soon after the previous message. I needed to use this account for planned future emails for this event and others.
Linda Starr.
Linda Starr, who at the time was also on the CBA Board, wrote the following shortly after receiving Peter’s email.
Regarding the Tonto issue itself, you might be interested in some facts. If so, you can check out the Wikipedia entry on Tonto, in which it says: “The radio series identified Tonto as a chief’s son in the Potawatomi nation. The choice to make Tonto a Potawatomi seems to come from station owner George Trendle’s youth in Mullett Lake, Michigan. Located in the northern part of the Midwest, Michigan is the traditional territory of the Potawatomi, and many local institutions use Potawatomi names. Trendle gained the name “Tonto” from the local Potawatomi, who told him it meant “wild one” in their language.” Note that Tonto, whatever it means in Spanish, is not and never was taken from the Spanish language. Wikipedia goes on to say,”in the Spanish dubbed version, the character is called “Toro” (Spanish for “bull”) or “Ponto”. I found this information on several other sites as well, but this was the most concise.
Also, on Britannica, it says, “Tonto was identified in some stories as a member of the Potawatomi tribe and was presented as principled, virtuous, and fiercely loyal. Despite his stunted English, he was also portrayed as both intelligent and wise.”
So perhaps with a little research and greater early communication with the entire board, we might have simply decided to provide this information to anyone who was offended and let them decide for themselves if Tonto was, in fact, an unflattering and “horribly offensive” representation of Native Americans.
Beyond those facts, and whatever you choose to believe about the appropriateness of Tonto, I believe the request to remove Mike from the board or of subjecting him to any further repercussions is … honestly, I simply lack appropriate words to respond to this proposal. We all know the tremendous amount of great work Mike has done on a volunteer basis to support and promote bridge in New England for many years. And in this case, as is characteristic of Mike, he simply stood up for what he believed despite enormous pressure. I admire him for it.
PS: Just as I was about to hit Send to this email, I received Peter’s latest email. I do NOT believe Mike owes anyone an apology. This just goes on and on.
Peter must have received negative feedback from others. At this point he decided to resign as president! Here is how he did it.
(I am copying Rich DeMartino since he initially approached me and asked if I would be willing to be put on the nominating slate for CBA President.)
I am sending this to you as the Vice-President. As of Tuesday, January 31, I will be resigning as President of the CBA. The way the organization and the Board is responding, not just to the original email, which I agree was well-meant but unfortunate, but then to the response by people like Mr. Wavada and Ms. Starr, is not one that I feel I can properly represent.
Things that need to be done:
1) I am a CT representative to the D25 Executive Committee, and the next week is in two weeks. Phyllis will need to appoint a replacement (Mike Wavada is the other CT representative). You need to communicate your choice to Carole Weiser, D25 Secretary.
2) Cornelia Guest resigned as tournament coordinator, send me information about the church for a sectional, and they have written to me. You need to contact them so they will contact you and not me. You will also need to appoint a new Unit Tournament Coordinator.
3) You need to inform the ACBL of the change in officers so they will send future emails to the correct individuals.
4) If you wish to have the Board meeting I called for this Thursday, someone will need to set up the ZOOM meeting and send out the invitation information.
I wish you all the best. I was hoping this would be an enjoyable and beneficial relationship for me and the CBA and a return to the unit that I served for so long. Sadly, it appears that cannot be the case.
I did not want this outcome. Several of my open projects required assistance from him in his other roles. I had no relationship with the vice-president, Phyllis Hartford. I did not know her very well, but I doubted that she wanted the job under these circumstances.
Rich DeMartino.
I received a telephone call from Rich DeMartino. He told me that he thought that this issue had gotten “way out of proportion”, which was in accord with my “tempest in a teapot” comment in the beginning. At his request I sent him this email concerning whether I could continue working with Peter.
I have no objection. I consider Peter one of the most talented and the most generous person that I have ever met. I have worked closely with him on several projects, some of which are still ongoing. It would be a lot easier for me if he agreed to continue and let bygones be bygones.
I am only speaking for myself.
Peter asked to talk to me on the phone about continuing to work together. I said that I really hated to talk on the phone, but I provided my cell number if he thought it was best. Instead he sent this email.
I want to express my concern, sadness and regret at how events have unfolded over the last week. Specifically.
1) I do not and never have blamed you or felt you did something wrong in creating the image and copy of the email notice for the Hartford I/N sectional. I did, and do, feel that some will find it offensive and do not believe it is effective to advertise a bridge tournament by offending anyone.
2) While I am new to the CBA, I have worked with you for many years at the district-level and seen your excellence at developing tournament marketing. Your words and pictures have always been not only effective but creative and funny. I have repeatedly told you that before many tournaments.
3) Nonetheless, for this latest email, I felt that something more was needed, so I worked with the other CBA officers to develop a follow-up email, which was actually written by Deb Noack, improving on the one I originally wrote. I believe sending this out had the support of all the Officers and I believe, with the support of the officers, I had every right to expect this email to be sent out on behalf of the CBA.
3) The message did not in any way implicate you nor criticize you or anyone else. It would have come from the CBA, not your personal account over my signature so, to the extent that there was embarrassment, it would have fallen on me, not anyone else.
4) I asked you, as the expert in using the email system and the originator of the distribution list for the Hartford tournament, to send this subsequent email to the same audience.
5) When you repeatedly refused to do so, I reacted angrily by proposing your removal from the CBA Board. This was a serious over-reaction and I apologize for doing it and for any negative implications it had.
I hope you will accept this sincere apology and we can move forward collaboratively.
“See” you this Thursday.
My reply was, as usual, much shorter:
There was no need to apologize. I don’t hold anything that you did against you.
You certainly had a right to send the apology. I had reasons for not wanting to send it myself, but I did not express them. I apologize for that. I tried to get the list to you as rapidly as I could, but I had never done that in Chrome (which is what I use for CBA stuff), and I could not find the file that I had exported for almost an hour. I am also sorry that I did not ask you or someone from the board to review the original email.
Most of all I am sorry that this whole mess caused a battle of wills between two people who need to be on the same side in the fight to prolong the future of face-to-face bridge.
A lot of people approached me at the club in the ensuing weeks to tell me that they were sorry that I had to endure this. I did not say so, but in fact the only thing that really bothered me was the prospect of being removed from the D25 Executive Committee.
Epilogue: I received one more mild complaint. Lynn Thomas, whom I did not know, wrote me that the email was “very un-PC”. I asked her who would be offended. She replied “the entire Native American community”.
I sent this email to her:
I have researched this and seen absolutely no statistical evidence for your claim. Are Native Americans offended by James Fenimore Cooper’s secondary character of Chingachgook, the Last of the Mohicans? Do you think that it is impossible for a writer to create an inoffensive character of a different race, nationality, or gender? Tonto was beloved by millions of Americans, and merchandise that features him is still all over the Internet.
I think that Tonto’s character stands on its own. He was as close to a flawless individual as I can imagine, and he was portrayed on TV by a Native American, Jay Silverheels. His grammar wasn’t great, but obviously English was not his native tongue. If he is compared to anyone, it should be to the other sidekicks, who were always quirky and sometimes buffoons. My firm opinion is that we should not cancel the character of Tonto.
And his horse, Scout, was just as cool as Silver, and he didn’t rear all the time.
I should have also emphasized that Tonto really rocked those buckskins.
The clue for 8 Down was “The Lone Ranger’s Companion”.
Linda Starr had the last word: “From Monday night’s (actually Tuesday’s, I think) NYT online crossword puzzle. I was so offended, I could barely finish the puzzle. I hope the press doesn’t get hold of this!!!”
The Limited Sectional that the original email promoted was very successful. You can read about it here.
1. I maintained a relational database that contained one record for everyone in the ACBL from 2014 on. I also had a free MailChimp account that allowed me to send emails to several thousand people at a time, and I was allowed to use two lists. One list I used several times per week for the Simsbury Bridge Club. The other I used for this project.
2. NLM is short for non-Life Master. The rank of Life Master had several criteria, one was the earning of 75 silver masterpoints. All points at sectional tournaments were silver. Other opportunities for receiving them were rare.
3. Rich DeMartino was a legend in the CT bridge community. He held the highest rank in the ACBL, Grand Life Master, and had won a World Championship. He was District Director of New England for many years. Both Peter and I had worked closely with him and held him in very high regard.
4. The actual attendance, even excluding the considerable number of volunteers from the HBC, was considerably more than the upper limit that Peter mentioned.
This entry, like the process that it describes, is absurdly long. In fact, it is much longer than it looks because it has links to a large number of documents that have more details. I don’t expect anyone to read this entry. I did it out of a combination of determination to leave nothing out and a sense of catharsis.
I really loved my job as webmaster for District 25 and all of the other functions that I had added (as described here). The only aspect of it that I found tiresome was the assembling of photos for the Winners Boards. I had decided unilaterally that I would no longer do that in 2020, but I was still enthusiastic about everything else that I did.
The pandemic struck New England in March of 2020. The game that I loved that involved card tables, chairs, playing cards, bidding boxes, human beings, and conversation vanished almost overnight. Some people enjoyed, or at least tolerated, playing on the Internet, but I did not like it at all. It did not seem like bridge to me.
At first I enjoyed my new life of leisure. As I described here, I started walking a lot, occasionally traversing as much as ten miles per day. I also read books much more frequently than I had previously, and I invented a method for the people who had played together in Simsbury to describe what they were doing in the new world of isolation. I discovered that a very large number of operas were available free on YouTube. I downloaded a free program, MP3Studio, to make mp3 files that I could download to my mp3 player. So, I could carry forty or fifty operas in my pocket.
In June of 2020 my schedule changed dramatically. I undertook the gargantuan 1948 Project that is described here. From that point on I sat in front of the computer for several hours per day writing and researching, and the more time that I spent on the project the larger that it grew.
Bob Bertoni.
In the summer of 2021 my friend and boss in District 25, Bob Bertoni, died after a long and debilitating illness. At that point almost all of the people with whom I had enjoyed working for so many years were no longer involved in the district’s leadership. Moreover, the ACBL had taken strong measures to promote online play as an alternative to real bridge. It seemed almost certain to me that the game that I knew was doomed.
The Hartford Bridge Club tentatively reopened in the summer of 2021, and Sally Kirtley and I figured out a way to schedule games of the Simsbury Bridge Club. However, no tournaments were held in New England except the poorly attended sectional in December sponsored by the Eastern Mass Bridge Association (EMBA). At the time I was a member of both the district’s Executive Committee and the Tournament Scheduling Committee. Both held occasional Zoom meetings. I wrote this about the decision-making:
I have been on the scheduling committee for a few years, but two crucial online meetings were held in the winter on Wednesday evening, the one time that I am committed to play at a very small club. Evidently a lot of decisions about the three tournaments in 2022 were made at those meetings or at the one in May, during which I was in Europe.
Sally and Helen
In the last quarter of 2021 I notified the Executive Committee that I intended to resign my positions tied to the webmaster job at the end of 2022. I modeled my decision on this with how Helen Pawlowski handled the termination of her long tenure as the district’s tournament manager. She had given a year’s notice that she was leaving. A committee was promptly formed, people applied for the job, Sally Kirtley was chosen, and Helen showed her the ropes at several tournaments.
After I resigned not much happened for several months. When I had started in 2013, absolutely nothing was documented in writing. By contrast, I had already produced on NEBridge.org about forty web pages that documented everything that I did in every area. Thereafter, I spent an enormous amount of time making sure that each of these pages was up to date. They can all be reached from here.
The oldest email that I could find about the subject of the transition was dated November 30, 2021. In It Curtis Barton, the president, asked me, “Do you have a candidate to replace you?”
The one thing that I did not want to do was to become an active participant in the search for my replacement(s). I thought that it was incumbent upon the people who would be running the district going forward to determine which of those functions was still important and to find people who were willing and able to perform them. I did not want to prejudice this effort with my own ideas.
I felt that I had done everything that I could to smooth the process. When I was chosen to be the webmaster, Bob Bertoni had assumed the responsibility of finding someone for the job, mostly because he was the only person who knew how the site worked, and there was no documentation whatsoever. In the intervening years had thoroughly documented how my various functions were performed.
So, on December 31 I sent the following reply with four attachments.
As promised, I have produced and attached documents that outline the duties of four functions that I currently perform: • Webmaster • Database Manager • Email Manager (MailChimp) • Bulletin Editor (printed, online, and Day 1).
Someone needs to decide on who, if anyone, should perform these functions in 2023 and following. The Database Manager and Email Manager are not official positions.
I am not sure if the Communications Committee still officially exists, but I formerly set the agenda for and presided over its meetings.
I also have been composing a high percentage of the emails used to promote tournaments. Whoever assumes that function in 2023 and following will need to work with the Database Manager on the selection criteria to be used and the Email Manager on the format to be used for text and images.
At some point Gary Peterson, who was a Tournament Director for the ACBL, expressed an interest in becoming the webmaster. He negotiated with Curtis about how he would be compensated for his efforts. I was not privy to those exchanges. My assumption was that he would be responsible only for maintaining the website. I suspect that Curtis expected him to do much more than that. It is also possible that Curtis only glanced at my write-up.
In April of 2022 I sent all the members of the Executive Committee an email that detailed open issues in areas that I was involved. I attached to this email a spreadsheet that served as the index to the documentation pages.
It has been a long time since I made a report, but I have been keeping a list of developments and issues.
Website: 1) I removed four items from the main menu in the left column that appears on every page of the site. Three of them I moved to the “Archive” tab: District Director Info, District Director Report, and Learn from the Experts. The other one was a link to the ACBL’s Partnership Desk, which the ACBL’s webmaster told me is no longer supported.
2) There are three issues. The Tournament Location option is a custom program that uses a list of the district’s tournaments to create a map. For a while it was broken, but Megahertz fixed it. I removed Cromwell and Sturbridge. I added Providence and Marlborough. I left Mansfield and Hyannis on, but added notes that they were canceled for 2022. This will need to be maintained (using the “Clubs” option in the admin section) when the 2023 schedule is set.
The second issue is the banner, which currently says “Exciting New Event Schedules for 0-2500 –Click Here for Tournaments”. It links the NEBridge.org calendar. I don’t know how to change it. Bob always did this. We should probably be highlighting Providence. After that, I don’t know.
The third issue involves reports from the Regional Director. The DD reports had their own custom option. Should I add the RD reports to this program (and bring it back from the Archive)? Should I create a new tab for RD reports? They are now emailed to members; posting them on the website is less critical than it was ten years ago.
3) The list of winners of NABC and NABC+ events has not been updated since 2019. The source of data was lists provided by the DD. I have not received any such lists since December 2019. What should the policy be for the future?
4) I have decided not to post Winners Boards (photos) for the 2022 tournaments. It is a lot of work, and I won’t be attending one of the three events. If someone else wants to take the photos of winners and solicit photos from the ones that were missed, I will post them. However, I don’t want to do this if the percentage of missing photos is high.
I also decided not to award the Best in Class prizes in 2022. With only three events, all in the eastern half of the district, it did not seem worthwhile to me.
5) Someone should check the conditions of contest on the website. I don’t think that the first five documents on the Conditions of Contest tab have been checked in a long time.
Database: 1) A decision should be made about whether the MySQL database, which I maintain on both my iPower account and my local server, will be used in 2023. If not, a suitable substitute to be used as the basis for emails should be found. The current database includes all ACBL members–active and inactive, living and dead–since 2014. It also contains pretty good records of who attended D25 and NABC tournaments since then. It also has a history of achievement of ranks of D25 members and points by month of everyone.
2) In the past I have received .LZH files from Keith Wells at the ACBL to use as the basis for the attendance (at tournaments) table. He did not respond to my last request. Does anyone know if he still works for the ACBL? If not, from whom could I get these files. I used the attendance tables both for targeted emails and for the attendance breakdowns after tournaments.
Email: I currently create the emails by using a text editor on my PC to write HTML statements. I then use the “Code your own” method to paste the code into MailChimp. As I was writing up the documentation for this process it occurred to me that it will probably be very difficult to find someone is who is both willing and able to do this. MailChimp has a lot of templates for emailing that would presumably be much easier to use, but I have never investigated them because I already knew how to make the emails look exactly as I wanted them to.
If templates are used exclusively, it will affect Sue Miguel’s emails. She sends me an email that looks the way she wants it. I extract the HTML from it and then post it using the “Code your own” method.
Bulletins: I was told that there will be neither a printed nor an online bulletin for the Gala. Eventually decisions should be made about the other two tournaments in 2022.
Documentation: I have documented almost everything that I do in “pages” on NEBridge.org. I have created a spreadsheet that serves as an index to these pages. I have attached a pdf of it to this document. I am confident that by later in the year it will be complete and as accurate as I can make it. I suspect that the person or persons who do these tasks will want to simplify the processes, but whatever process is used, it should be documented, and I think that the format that I chose is optimal, since anyone can see the most current version.
The starting page is 342. It can be accessed with the URL NEBridge.org/pages/342. All pages can be reached from there, but if you want to look at a particular page, the easiest way is to key in NEBridge.org/pages/ppp in your browser, where ppp is the three-digit page number on the spreadsheet for the index.
Communications Committee: I think that consideration should be given to restarting the CommComm in 2023 or maybe sooner. I am willing to serve on it, but I don’t want to be chairman in 2023.
Two regional bridge tournaments in New England in 2021 had been canceled because of the pandemic. The Presidential Regional that was scheduled for February 2022 was also canceled because no suitable site in the southwestern part of the district was available. A new event, which was called the Gala, was scheduled for late May, which was the time that my wife Sue and I had planned to take a cruise in Europe1. We had deliberately chosen the second half of May because, in all the years that I had been going to tournaments, the district had never held an event then.
Curtis Barton.
Meanwhile Curtis was trying to figure out if, as an ACBL Employee, Gary would be allowed to be both webmaster for the district. Curtis finally determined that he could. In early July he asked me to set up a Zoom meeting with Gary, Peter Marcus2, and himself. I told him that I had no idea how to set up a Zoom meeting, and that I was very busy at the time.
The second half of July was dominated by the Summer NABC that was held in Providence. Curtis decided that he needed two people to replace me. He offered one of the jobs to Gary in this email sent on August 10.
The other candidate wasn’t interested. That puts you (Gary) back where you’ve been – my choice for NEBC Database and NEBridge.org Webmaster. If you accept the position we will discuss compensation (Mike gets free plays and some other stuff – not too valuable for you) on a per tournament basis.
I suggest you contact Mike for his write-ups on the efforts. If you accept I will also begin the search for a Communications lead to supplement (not replace) existing efforts.
Communications Lead:
• Voting member of the TSC • Cannot be an ACBL employee • Essentially a volunteer position; may, in the future be compensated with free plays or similar consideration. • This primarily a marketing function with technical considerations as agreed with the NEBC Database/NEBridge.org Webmaster • Coordinates the electronic aspects of tournament advertising and execution • Works with the Database/Webmaster • Edits the Tournament Bulletin as required • May use MailChimp email system to create messages as required.
NEBC Database/NEBridge.org Webmaster • Does not and cannot be a voting member of any NEBC Committee • Can be an ACBL employee • This is a compensated position on a “per tournament” basis • Maintains the NEBC website • Maintains the NEBridge.org database • Works with the Communications Lead and Tournament Coordinator to maintain Calendar
This was by far the longest communication that I had ever received from Curtis. It appeared that some progress was being made. The fact that he was conflating the webmaster and database jobs was, of course, disconcerting. The webmaster job had gotten easier over the years. The database job was quite another matter.
This missive pretty much confirmed my notion that no one wanted to revive the Communication Committee. The “as required” appellation applied to the bulletin position was also ominous.
Peter Marcus.
An email from Peter asserted about the database that “It might be work, it might cost money, but I think we really don’t want to abandon it.” Nobody ventured a different opinion. The question then became where the database would be kept. I did not want other people with administrative authority to sign on to Wavada.org.
I am not sure that my next contribution was helpful, but I did not want anyone to claim that I was not forthcoming about the difficulties.
Now that I think about it, iPower is not a critical element. Assuming that two copies of the database (one live and one for testing/backup/disaster recovery) are used, what are needed are two installations of WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, php) or the equivalent. I used iPower for the live version because I already was using its server for other projects on my personal website, and there was a lot of capacity. WAMP is available as a free download for windows-based computers. iPower uses a UNIX version of the three products, but they do not charge extra for MySQL and php.
Mark Oettinger.
Mark Oettinger, the newly elected (sort of) vice-president of the district, suggested that Sue Miguel could do some of the work of the Communications Lead. No one objected.
Gary officially accepted the job of webmaster and indicated that he and I might be able to meet together at the Ocean State Regional in Warwick, RI, (documented here) scheduled for the end of the month. I responded with the following:
I have created a user profile for you for the admin section of NEBridge.org. The user ID is GaryP. After I send this email, I will send the password in a separate email.
I will be in Warwick for all five days. I will be attending the meetings of the Tournament Scheduling Committee and the Executive Committee. I will have the other evenings free. I will be pretty busy until then.
I have documented almost everything that I do on numbered pages (the ones that have the green menu on the left) within the NEBridge.org website. The starting page for all communications functions is #342. The starting page for webmaster functions is #85. The full URL’s are https://nebridge.org/pages/342/ and https://nebridge.org/pages/85/, respectively. The easiest way to get to them is to go to NEBridge.org, click on “Tournament Results” and change the /3/ to the page that you want. I have attached a spreadsheet that has all the page numbers.
There are wysiwyg tools for editing the numbered web page. It is also possible to enter HTML code. I resort to the latter when the former doesn’t provide what I want. The concepts are pretty straightforward. When I started in 2013 there was no documentation, and Bob Bertoni’s training session only lasted thirty minutes.
I am looking forward to meeting you in Warwick.
I introduced myself to Gary when I played in the side game, but I never met with him in the evening. I did meet Steve Ackerman, a player from Vermont. Mark Oettinger had recommended that I get him involved in the transition. I sent him essentially the same email.
In September Curtis sent Gary and me a short email asking whether I could teach them to use MailChimp. I did not envision either of them using it much, but here is what I responded.
MailChimp is not hard. I will set up a user ID for NEBPres and for NEBWeb. I will send the passwords in a separate email. The steps for using MailChimp are documented on NEBridge.org. I will provide training if necessary. I know nothing about using Zoom for training.
The big issue is what is going to happen to the MySQL database that is used for, among other things, populating the lists on MailChimp. The database currently resides on an iPower server on which I have leased space for about ten years. I am willing to give the php scripts that I have written to maintain the files to the district, but the database and the scripts somehow need to be copied to a server owned or leased by the district. That is unlikely to be an easy task. However, there is a great deal of other stuff on my website on iPower, and I don’t really want anyone else to have read/write access to it.
The other big issue is that Keith Wells, who is now a contractor for not an employee of the ACBL, has not answered any of my emails in five months. His last one said that he was still the person that I should contact in order to obtain the .LZH files used by the scripts that update the attendance table. On the advice of Tim Hill I sent an email in September to tournaments@acbl.org. The unsigned response, with a cc to Keith, said that Keith was still “at the ACBL”.
So, I have been unable to maintain the attendance table by my usual methods. Someone needs to decide whether it is still necessary for the district to maintain the attendance table, on which I formerly recorded who attended each regional and sectional in New England and each NABC. If not, it might not be worth the effort to continue using the MySQL database to keep a comprehensive roster of players, their advancement, their attendance, and a few other things. In that case the whole emailing strategy may need to be rethought. Maybe it could be done with spreadsheets or some other method. To my knowledge no other district goes to so much trouble to target emails.
It is possible to update the attendance table without the LZH files. The alternative method uses the “Master Point Winners” report in the posted results on the ACBL tournament schedule. However, 1) It is both kludgy and very time-consuming because there are no ACBL numbers, and 2) there is no way that I know of to account for people who earned no points at the tournament. So, I have been reluctant to resort to that method.
I am doing what I can to help the transition, but I don’t want to be the one who makes important decisions that affect how the mailings are done in 2023 and following.
The first sentence was a mistake. The way that new user profiles are created in MailChimp is to “invite” other people through an option in MailChimp. They then are sent an email from MailChimp that explains how new users can create their own profiles.
As of this writing in June of 2023, I have still not been able to gain access to the LZH files.
Shortly thereafter someone brought up the possibility of using the Pianola software that a third party had customized for the ACBL When the product was introduced several years earlier, I had looked into this and shared my low opinion of it with the members of the Executive Committee. I repeated those points for Curtis and Gary.
Addendum: The ACBL allows direct but very limited access to its active player database for emails, but there are several limitations that render this approach less effective in targeting. I have not investigated this approach recently, but the limitations that I remember are:
1) You must use Pianola. My understanding is that it does not support images, tables, font changes, and other tricks that I sometimes have used within messages. Both Sue and I use a lot of embedded images.
2) You can only access the records for a limited number of districts/units.
3) The format is, to say the least, unimaginative. It is black on grey.
4) I am uncertain of how much targeting can be done. I seriously doubt that one can target (as I did for NAP) based on the May 6 ACBL roster. I also feel certain that targeting based on attendance or zip code (Cape, for instance) is not possible.
5) The rate charged U126 is four times what we paid, and the last time I looked that rate is still available.
6) Access to the database can only be for the purpose of emailing. If you want to use it for some other purpose, you must keep your own files somehow.
7) I am not sure that Pianola has all the reporting tools that MailChimp offers. People who have complained to me about not receiving an email are sometimes surprised that MailChimp knows whether each email was delivered, whether it was opened, and whether any links were clicked on.
8) A small number of people have provided me, but not the ACBL with their email addresses.
9) I think that if someone unsubscribes on Pianola, they can no longer be reached. MailChimp has the same rule, but because we have lots of lists, we can control the effect. For example, if a club manager unsubscribed to the recent club mailing, he/she would still receive emails about tournaments, letters from the president, surveys, and other types of emails. On the other hand Pianola does support attachments, and MailChimp doesn’t. I have not found this to be much of a limitation, but if we did not have a website on which to post the attachment so that we could link to it, it would be.
Nobody mentioned Pianola for quite a while after that. Somehow someone got the idea that I would host the database for the district. On October 28 I wrote the following to Curtis:
I don’t host the database now. I pay $200 per year to iPower to host it. I know very little about hosting databases. The district could get an account with iPower or some other hosting service that supports MySQL and php and has a way to import databases and programming files. I contracted with iPower a long time ago. I don’t remember why I picked them.
I will help with migrating the database and the scripts over. I don’t really want to support the php scripts, but if you cannot find anyone who knows php, well … I would have to think about it.
If you are really asking me if I would agree to set up user ID’s for others on my iPower account, the answer is no. I have a great deal of other stuff on my account, and I have spent hundreds of hours on it.
So, the first decision is whether it is worth the effort to maintain a relational database. If the district cannot find a reliable source for getting the lzh files, I would be inclined to doubt it. The roster files, which are the source for most of my selections, can easily be downloaded from ACBL.org and then opened in Excel. Someone who is a wiz at spreadsheets could probably do the selections from the spreadsheets. The uploads to MailChimp require csv files, and spreadsheets could–after some slicing and dicing–be saved as csv files for that purpose.
When the above issue has been addressed, one other remains: How many lists on MailChimp will be used and reused? I suggest at least one for presidential communications, one for regional tournaments, one for NAP/GNT, one for clubs, and one for I/N. We now have a very large number of lists–one for every email (as Bob recommended). This has been feasible because the database has a field to flag players who have unsubscribed. I never select these people for any mailing promoting a tournament. Without that field I would need to reuse lists, as I sometimes do now for other types of emails.
If you decide to reuse the lists, you should add fields for masterpoints and rank description so that you can “segment” the lists as required for the email. This is the way that I handled the five emails promoting the 2022 NAP. The only problem is that someone would need to decide whether people who unsubscribed in response to those emails should also be unsubscribed from one of the other lists.
Curtis put the burden on Gary and Steve with a short reply: “We need someone to host our data base, and we need that someone now. You guys are the experts. Figure out what we need to do, and let’s get it done. “
Gary said that he was not a database engineer, but he was an “Excel weenie.” Steve set up a Dropbox for me and asked me to put the database and the php scripts in it. It took me most of a day to do this because a great deal of what is on Wavada.org is related to my blogs, journals, and other projects. Even after I culled those out, the remainder barely fit in the Dropbox, and the company that sponsored it kept sending me emails that I should upgrade my subscription.
Not much else happened until I wrote up the following summary on November 28:
General: All of the tasks have been documented on pages of NEBridge.org. The appearance of a few MailChimp screens has changed, but the work flow has not. All the documentation pages can be reached from https://nebridge.org/pages/342/.
Webmaster: I have given the credentials for the email redirecting to Gary Peterson. I have also set the emails for webmaster to redirect to his email account.
Action item: The ad on NEBridge.org for the ACBL online regional was still there today.
Database: Peter said that LZH files should now be available from ACBL somehow. If so, it is still probably a good idea to keep up the database if someone can learn how to maintain it. Those files can help with both targeted mailings and analysis of attendance at tournaments.
Action item: I will communicate with Peter about how to get the LZH files from the ACBL. When I do, I plan to upload all of the files for D25 sectionals and regionals in 2022 as well as the Providence NABC. I will then submit attendance reports for the Providence and Southbridge regionals and the Providence NABC to the Executive Committee members via email.
The current database is MySQL. The scripting language php is used for maintenance and reporting. I will create a copy of the database, the php scripts (including the Javascript and CSS), and a file of the SQL statements that I have used for lists and other purposes. I will then send them to wherever the new home is. I will also help with the migration as much as I can.
Action items: If the database is to be continued, 1) Who will maintain it and use SQL to select lists for mailings? 2) Where will the data and programs be stored? The system can actually be run on any Windows or Unix computer that has the free download WAMP or XAMP, but I chose to run it somewhere that provided support, which I have used four or five times per year. 3) Will the person who manages the database also manage MailChimp?
MailChimp: Policy decisions need to be made about how many lists will be used. The issue is how to handle “unsubscribes”. If a person unsubscribes from one list, should they simultaneously be unsubscribed from all? This will not happen automatically on MailChimp, but there is an “OK to email?” field on the database. The “actives” view of the players table, which I often used for selections for email lists, eliminates players with an N in this field or any other disqualifying information.
Action items: Who will manage the site? What will the workflow for new emails be? Will there be any reporting?
Email composition: Sue Miguel.
Bulletin Editor: I have copies of all the ones that I have done. I can send in odt or word format.
Action items: Is this worth doing? Who will do it? Will we resume using online bulletins?
This email generated a lengthy thread of responses. Curtis established the parameters:
Mike has done his usual great job in laying out the tasks ahead. I will take the Bulletin Editor3 task for Southbridge 2 (Mike: please send me the last Bulletin in Word format, please.)
Who will take on the rest of the effort? Please advise soonest.
I sent a copy of the Bulletin that I had created for the Optical Regional in 2022 to Curtis.
Curtis sent the following to Steve Ackerman and Neil Montague, who had expressed some interest in handling the emails:
We need a Mailchimp email expert (or maybe two!) to do the email parts of Mike’s current job. You both are great candidates for this. Any interest? Note: this will, in effect, make you a part of Sue’s marketing campaigns. It’s fun.4
Neil told Curtis that someone would need to show him how MailChimp worked. I invited him to create his own account and wrote:
MailChimp is not difficult. I have documented everything that I do in it on the NEBridge.org website, and the MailChimp site has very good FAQ’s and support when one needs it. I figured it out with no training whatever.
The bigger issue is whether to continue using the MySQL database as the source for creation of lists, and, if so, where it will reside.
Curtis wrote that Neil would officially become the MailChimp person and that Sue Miguel would compose the emails. Steve attempted to address the database issue.
As far as the database goes, I’ve taken a look at the LZH files that ACBLScor uses to update its database. Unfortunately, it only ACBL numbers and Points, not names and addresses. We would need more information than that to maintain the database. Another option is Pianola. I understand they are pricey, but it might be possible to work out a deal with them. https://www.pianola.net
I could not let that go unanswered.
I use four sources of information for the database: 1) Once a month (on about the 7th) I download the entire ACBL roster, which has almost all the census information on all active ACBL members; 2) The ACBL sends Webmaster@NEBridge.org a list of the players who advanced in rank during the previous month; 3) The LZH files for attendance at tournaments; 4) Individual maintenance when I learn something such as a nickname, a new email address, or an unsubscribe. Here is what I have for each player:
I described the problems with using the ACBL’s program that uses Pianola on a previous email. I will look for it and resend it if necessary.
This exchange generated an overly optimistic assessment by Mark Oettinger that showed praise on all the participants. No emails were exchanged in December except one from Curtis that asked me how much I would charge to continue to send out the emails “for one more month”. I said that I would certainly continue to do it if it was necessary. In actuality I sent out all of the emails in the first five months of 2023.
In January Neil wrote this to me: “I think I am supposed to send out the e-mails to the district via MailChimp. I have an account but since I’ve never really used it before, some quick help from you would be appreciated.” Neil was referring to the computer-generated emails sent by BridgeFinesse.com to players who had advanced in rank. I explained to him that he did not need to get involved in this process.
On February 11 Curtis notified me and the other participants that there would be a Zoom meeting to discuss the succession issues. He then wrote that Peter would send the invitation. At some point it was changed to an in-person meeting at the Presidential Regional in Southbridge. That gathering was never canceled, but it did not happen.
An email that I received from Sue Miguel got my goat. Here is what I sent to everyone on the Executive Committee.
In November of 2021 I gave notice that I did not want to be involved in precisely this type of thing–promotion of online gold point events, which I am convinced will be the death of regional tournaments. I have not seen one inch of progress in removing this responsibility.
I will send this out, but I AM PLEADING that the district relieve me of this responsibility. It makes me furious to be promoting this sort of thing.
Curtis sent me an email that said that Sue should have sent the email to Neil instead of me. I sent out this email and several more over the course of the next few months.
Neil sent me an email on March 8 concerning an email that he had received from Paul Harris, the president of EMBA. He wanted to know the details of the district’s contract with MailChimp. I answered the inquiry with the following.
MailChimp charges D25 by the number of emails sent. Back in 2015 or 2016 Bob Bertoni negotiated the purchase of 2 million email credits for $2500 in a “pay as you go” plan. We had to purchase that many to get that rate. At the time we had no limits on the number of lists or the total number of contacts. We have about ninety lists (but they won’t let us create any new ones) and a very large number of contacts. In the old days I built a new list for each version of each email, and I had roughly seven or eight versions for each tournament.
808,020 credits remain. I am not sure that MailChimp still allows pay-as-you-go plans. It appears to me that it now sells four or five tiers of plans that require a monthly fee based on the total number of contacts. Each has other limitations as well.
In my opinion MailChimp’s best feature is that it allows you to “code your own” emails in HTML. It is much more time-consuming to do it that way, but you can–with a few small exceptions–make the email look exactly the way that you want it to. Of course, you have to be familiar with HTML and how email clients (as opposed to browsers) interpret various tags. The only thing that I have never been able to do is to get Outlook to show correctly a caption for an image.
Without the “code your own’ feature I do not know how anyone will be able to create the kind of emails that Sue Miguel likes to send. She creates the emails using a program on her Mac and sends me the finished product. I extract the HTML and make a few changes to fit MailChimp’s requirements.
By the way, MailChimp is now owned by Intuit, the QuickBooks company.
I know nothing about Constant Contact.
I have been promised that I will not be required to send any more emails, but the meeting that was scheduled for Southbridge to determine who would do it and (more importantly) how was never held. Then there was supposed to be a Zoom meeting about it, but it never occurred either. At this point I do not know whose responsibility it is to find a way to continue. I am pretty sure that Curtis does not want to hear any more about it.
Another Zoom meeting was scheduled for March 30 at 8 p.m. Peter sent out the following email at 6:56 a.m. on that day to the people scheduled to attend the 8:00 meeting and a few people from the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA).
I just attended a webinar (not sure if any of you did, but I did see Ken there) about their new marketing program, sending out emails, and using Pianola. I don’t know enough to know if this is any good, but, unlike a lot of what ACBL does, it actually looked at least presentable.
One obvious benefit is an immediate access to ACBL data (email addresses, masterpoint holdings, etc.) without having to update them ourselves. A downside, to the extent we do it, is that it doesn’t seem to include information about tournaments attended though they said that could be added.
The tools for developing emails did seem reasonable and it does have the ability to include attachments, like a flyer.
Obviously, one issue is cost. I know, when Bob Bertoni investigated this, we ran from Pianola because of cost. They addressed this and said they are cheaper than MailChimp (what they compared themselves to), though they talked about buying 10K or 25K Mailchimp credits. If I remember correctly, D25 bought something like 250K, which was an upfront cost (almost like a capital cost, buying new equipment) and then it lasts for years.
Anyway, I do not have the technical expertise to make comparisons. So, my questions are
1) They recorded the webinar and are offering a masterclass in developing emails/marketing next Tuesday (for about an hour). I will forward the link to the recording and the masterclass if anyone wants to hear it or sign up for the class. I will not sign up, I don’t have the background to make an informed decision.
2) Where are we with MailChimp credits, i.e., are they about to run out or do we have years to go?
3) They are setting up credits for each unit and district and accounts to send emails will be done individually, i.e., a unit or district says who should have access and they will get their own login, not done with everyone in one organization sharing the login. But, is there any rationale to considering setting up credits for the units and district to share, as a way of lowering costs, particularly for smaller units?
I am not looking for answers, since I wouldn’t know how to evaluate them, just asking questions. We can discuss more tomorrow on the ZOOM call.
Will send out the info from them when I get it.
I watched the webinar later, but I wanted to provide answers to Peter’s questions before the Zoom meeting.
I could not attend the webinar because of a medical appointment. Incidentally, the message announcing the webinar was composed using the new tools. The last word or two of every line on the message was cut off when I opened it in Outlook. I tried changing the width of the window, but it did not help.
D25 bought 2 million credits from MailChimp. Over 800,000 still remain. Attachments, especially ones with images, use up a lot of band width. Requiring links rather than attachments is the main reason that MailChimp delivery is so fast.
I have never used Pianola, but I know where I ran into problems with MailChimp. Some of my questions are:
1) How are unsubscribes handled? If someone unsubscribes to an email sent by one user will other users still be able to reach them?
2) To which districts would we be allowed to send email?
3) Can pre-formatted emails like Sue’s be sent or must they be redone in Pianola’s tools?
Curtis took notes at the 8:00 meeting and sent them to the participants. I have posted them here. It is worth discussing his three “Takeaways”.
“Peter will transfer Mike’s data to a new source.” In fact, I sent an up-to-date copy of the database to Steve. Peter had nothing to do with it.
“Henceforth we will use Mike’s data from Peter’s source for emails and the like.” It was not until May that Steve’s copy of the database was available. In actual fact, the audience that I had been using on MailChimp was still used through the end of June. However, Neil did successfully process a couple of Sue Miguel’s emails in May and June.
“Peter and Steve will attend the Pianola Master Class to determine whether we can easily port the current system and data to that (ACBL) system.” I don’t think that anyone involved in the transition process ever attended the Pianola Master Class.
Peter, with whom I had a bizarre contretemps (described here) earlier in the year, recognized the crux of the problem in a friendly email:
I understand that Mike, who has been so good to do all this for us since forever, and had announced his departure as of the beginning of 2023, is still involved and really, really “wants out.”
If we need help to actually move this to final migration, I think we should consider actually getting a professional in this kind of work to help/do it for us. Even if this group has the skill (and I don’t), finding the time can be a much bigger problem, and, if we have to pay for it, so be it. We could speak first to Megahertz5, to hire them, and, failing that, find someone who could get it done. I don’t think their geography matters though, unlike the ACBL, I would suggest we don’t save money by using IT contractors from Poland.
Curtis favored a different approach:
Here’s what we can do to get Mike OUT of the loop, at least formally.
1) Neil: if you can take Mike’s stuff for storage, please do so.
2) Gary/Steve/Neil: please discuss this among yourselves, and determine whether we should take Peter’s suggestion and hire Megahertz to set things up. Let me know what you decide, and I’ll get it approved.
Then let’s finish this.
Steve immediately reported that he had a copy of the database, and he would find a place to put it. His email on May 3 listed the progress that he had made.
I have uploaded Mike’s database to a server on google as I had some issues attempting to sign up at Oracle.
I’ve created user accounts for everyone on this list. To log in, use your username portion of your email, and the number you enter into the bridgemates (so no letters).
I have updated the masterpoints based on the April version of the MP file available to ACBLScor. I understand that in the past we were able to get a more complete database listing from ACBL, but I don’t know who to contact for that.
Neil & Gary, let me know if you need help generating the queries to populate your mailchimp lists.
A few thing that he wrote were not quite accurate. Here is what I replied:
On your MyACBL page do you have a tab called “Member Rosters”? It should be right below “Ribbon”. If not, I think that either Curtis or Mark Aquino can designate you to have access to that feature from the ACBL.
A new roster will come out on 5/7 or maybe 5/8 since 5/7 is a Sunday. I have a list of email addresses that have unsubscribed in the last year or so. The “OK to email” field for all of them should be set to N. Should I send this to you, or is there some way that I can do it?
After I sent another email for Sue, a player replied with a request to change her email address. I forwarded it to Steve. He replied with some good questions.
Does the normal procedure include asking the player to make sure they also update their email with ACBL? I suspect that when I update next week from the roster this email address may be incorrect if the player doesn’t also notify ACBL.
In addition, I updated the player database to flag not to email the addresses you sent me. However, I found about 20% of the addresses were not in our database. I’m assuming these addresses may not be active ACBL members, or they are for some other list than D25? I’m attaching them for your review.
I was happy to respond to this. It indicated that someone was finally getting into the nitty gritty of the database.
When they give me a new address I also change the “email source” to Player. I should have told you this. My program for processing the the new roster does not change the email address unless the email source is ACBL.
Either the addresses were changed, or the players were added to the database after I sent it to you, most likely the latter. So, after the database is next updated, the update of the “ok to email?” field should be run again. Should I change the email that receives messages about unsubscribes to some other account? I received notice of one more yesterday.
This is only important if a different audience is used for a future email. As long as the audience that I have been using is employed, the fact that they unsubscribed from that audience will prevent them from getting any more emails.
A few days later I sent the following to all of the people involved in the transition.
1. A new roster came out over the weekend. Is there a plan for updating Steve’s copy of the database?
2. One more player has unsubscribed, carl_palmer@yahoo.com. Should I change the owner of all of the audiences (Mailchimp word for mailing lists) so that someone else gets the emails that indicate such changes?
3. Neil, when Sue has another email to send out, do you want to try to do it? NAP qualifiers and Nashua will probably be promoted soon. Since we have not gotten access to the .LZH files, they can all be sent from the audience that I have been using (2209_Southbridge_D3_D24_D25) for the last year, but a new selection should be made from the database to update it. Then already defined “segments” of the audience can be used in the definition of the mailing. If necessary, it is easy to define new segments. That audience includes fields for rank description, masterpoints, and district.
4. I have a folder of files with SQL statements that I have used in the past. I would be happy to share it.
Neil Montague.
Neil said that he would try to send out Sue’s next email, which arrived in my Inbox that same day. Most of my subsequent conversations were with Neil, who had told me that he was very familiar with SQL and had extracted HTML from emails.
Sue has just sent me an email that she wants sent to potential players in Flight B of the NAP.
I will forward it to you. It contains formatted text and an image with a link on it. It does not have a width, but I always set the width to 600px. The link she provided should work, but the image must be uploaded to MailChimp. Sue does not like her emails to have the masthead, but this one is signed by Peter Marcus. So, I would add the masthead at the top. I have enclosed an HTML file that has the width and masthead set. You should be able to paste the text (after removing the instructions in red) into the HTML file. Then find the image (<img) tag and whatever divs or spans are around it. After the physical image (which I get by using Prt Scr and then cropping in an image editor) has been saved as a file and uploaded to MailChimp. The “src=” in the image tag must be changed to the URL on MalChimp. An alternative is to ask Sue to send you the image in a jpg and then upload it.
I almost forgot: the image tag has style=”float: right” in it. Since Microsoft Outlook does not recognize that, I always add align=”right”, which it does recognize. Incidentally, the width in the HTML is set in a table because that was the only way that I could get Outlook to recognize a fixed width.
This is all described in the instructions in detail with pictures on NEBridge.org. The instructions begin on https://nebridge.org/pages/345/. You may very well be able to do all of this using one of MailChimp’s many templates. I have never tried that.
This afternoon I updated the audience (2209_Southbridge_D3_D24_D25) with the data from the latest roster. The SQL statement that I used was:
select familiar_name, last_name, email, name_town_key, rank_desc, masterpoints, district from actives where district in(3,24,25) and ytdpoints >= 1 order by last_name, first_name
It will be necessary to define a segment of the audience that is limited to records in which the district is 25 and masterpoints are less than 2800 or 2900. The limit is 2500, but the check is made against the database as of last August. It would be tricky to get that because there might be people who were not on that roster (late with dues or other reason) but are now eligible. It seems better to annoy people like me who are not actually eligible than to miss some who are.
I should be in most of the day.
Neil, who was still gainfully employed, said that he would work on it over the weekend. He did. He wanted to do the project from scratch, which began by making sure the list (“audience” in MailChimp) was up to date. I was happy to explain MailChimp’s concepts of audiences and segments.
In olden days I created audiences for each email. That made sense when other people (president, I/N director, and district director) were also using MailChimp. If they unsubscribed because of one of their emails, I did not want them to have automatically unsubscribed from mine. In addition I was sometimes using MailChimp for other purposes than event promotion (emails to clubs and for the Best-in-class competition). Furthermore, I also sent to people who had attended New England or NABC events, and the selection was too complicated for segments.
In the last year all of the emails have been composed by Sue, I no longer have access to the tournament attendance data, I did not contact the clubs, and I stopped doing the Best in Class. So, I have been using the 2209 audience for every event. It includes all active players in D3. D24, and D25, and I have updated it every month with the SQL statement that I sent to you. I had previously added the masterpoints, rank description, and district fields so that I could use simple segments to select from this audience for emails for both regional tournaments and Grass Roots qualifiers.
Peter is still, at least in theory, working on getting access from the ACBL to the LZH files again. If we had them, we could update the attendance table as before. This would allow us both to send emails to more people with some likelihood of attending and to evaluate our tournaments better. It would, however, necessitate recycling some of our previous audiences, of which there are 89. MailChimp no longer allows us to create new audiences.
I sent the following to Steve and Neil:
All the “unsubscribes” that I sent to Steve had unsubscribed from the 2209 … audience that I have been using for the last year. When I updated the audience last Monday I selected from the actives view, which excludes anyone with N in the OK to email field. It would not matter for the current email project because they would all be excluded by MailChimp anyway. It is not possible (as far as I know) to send an email in MailChimp to someone who has unsubscribed from the audience used in the campaign.
I got the list of unsubscribes by taking the “export” function in the audience section of MailChimp. It sent to my download folder a zip file that contained three csv files: subscribers, unsubscribeds, and cleaned. The last had email addresses that had repeatedly bounced back. These files all have a large number of fields. I deleted all of the columns except the email address from the unsubscribed file and sent it to Steve. Since I have been using this audience for many emails, and I have previously run this procedure to change the ok to email fields, I am sure that a good number of those on the unsubscribed file already had the ok to email field set to N.
My phone number is 860 930 8784. I am scheduled to play bridge at the Hartford BC on Saturday. I will leave my house at noon and return a little before 5. I have no plans for Sunday, but I wake up early in the morning and then take naps during the day.
I was actually a little excited about Neil taking on this project. It would have been much better if I had been next to him when he did it, as I usually was when I installed a new AdDept system at a client’s. He wasted a lot of time trying to clean up the HTML that had been generated by the software product that Sue used, and some of the things that he did made it worse. He sent me a test copy and an email with the following questions.
I think I have completed the work necessary to send out Sue’s e-mail but I have a few questions:
(1) I thought I put the code into centering the image at the top but it’s not centered. My HTML experience is minimal and from a few years ago, although I did successfully embed the link that Sue wanted in the image. The instructions talk about having text appear when someone is using an e-mail client that doesn’t support images, but when I did it, the text always appeared which isn’t what we want. Do I need to worry about this? If so, let me know what to change.
(2) I followed your instructions of pasting your e-mail into Outlook and saving the source and pasting that into Mailchimp. There are a lot of tags that probably don’t need to be there but probably some of them do. Should I not worry about this or should I eliminate the ones that don’t really belong. As both you and the instructions mention, different e-mail clients require different tags so I can’t really go by how it looks on my machine.
(3) The next e-mail you receive is the test e-mail. I sent it to myself first and verified that I did the href tag correctly (I have experience doing that as we convert statutory references in the law to links to the legislature’s web pages when the Massachusetts budget gets signed so I actually have done this before.
(4) Finally, can you verify that I did this all correctly? The segment should be fine and you shouldn’t have any trouble finding this new campaign.
I looked it over and then sent Neil what I had discovered.
1) The image at the top should be the banner, which was in the HTML that I sent you. It should NOT link to the flyer. The Chicago image should be where Sue placed it. I separated it out on its own line in the HTML editing screen. There is already a link around it. I am not sure if it works. You must change the src= on that image to that of the one that you used at the top. Don’t change any of the other attributes, but add align=”right”.
Also take out lines 8 and 9.
2) The tool that Sue uses inserts a lot of extraneous tags, but I never worry about them. I am worried about the extra line feeds. We need to figure out where they came from.
3) Make the above changes and send me another test. When I say that it looks OK, send a test to Sue.
Neil made some changes and sent me another test along with the following email.
I think I made all of the changes and I eliminated the “excess” html code – at least I think it is excess. I put <br> tags in to force line breaks in the right place. I’m getting three errors (code turns red) but it doesn’t seem to be causing a problem. If I remove the body tag, then the text only goes half way across the page. Please take a look. I also am sending you the test e-mail now.
His remark that “the text only goes halfway across the page” was a reaction to the code that set the width of the email to 600. I looked at the entire campaign more thoroughly this time. Here was my reply.
I had not checked the segment before. I noticed this morning that the total number selected was roughly twice what I expected. D25 has about 6,000 members. The audience also includes D3 and D24. Here is how it currently is defined:
2. From section: As it is,the replies will go to Gary (webmaster@nebridge.org). That should probably be changed to inchair, but Sue may want the replies to go to Peter. It is her call.
3. Subject section: I always have copied the subject from Sue’s emails and pasted it directly into the subject line. That would put it in all upper case. I don’t know if it would increase or decrease the number of people who open the email, but she gets to make decisions like this now.
4. Content: I removed the <html, <meta and the second <body tag. I put “Folks,” inside a <p tag.
On the second <img tag:
I removed align=center and replaced it with align=right. I know that was what she wanted because her original source said style=”float: right;”. I also replaced width=500 with width=400. I also added a ) at the end that she forgot.
After this I expected the test email to look like what Sue sent me, but it doesn’t. This is because you removed all of her <font tags.
You did a lot more work than was necessary. I am sorry that I did not describe this to you very well. Basically, Sue’s email was fine. It was not necessary to remove all of the extra stuff that her program puts in, and, in fact, those font statements were necessary to make it look the way that she wanted.
The only changes that I usually make are:
1) Start with my frame.html
2) Add the banner if necessary
3) Find all of her <img tags: upload the physical image or find the URL if it is already uploaded, change the src= parameter to the location on MailChimp, and add align=”right” if she used <style=”float: right”. By the way, it would make things easier if she sent the image as a .jpg file in addition to the one that is embedded in the message.
In this case the image itself is no longer showing up in my copy of the email that she sent. We may need to have her send it again. I decided to replicate the campaign you made, and show how I would have done the content. The campaign I created is titled 2023 Flight B GNT (Mike’s content). I hope that this makes things a little clearer. I do not understand why Sue’s original image is no longer showing up in the email that she originally sent. I would like to see what her image looked like in Outlook.
Neil replied in detail:
1. Sorry about that with the segment. I have added the criteria that the players have to be from district 25 and now there will be 5466 recipients which is about what you expect.
2. I’ll ask Sue who she wants the from to be. I guess Gary is the default but obviously we can put whatever we want in that box.
3. I’ll ask Sue whether she wants the subject in all upper case. I was taught that all upper case is “yelling” although it probably doesn’t make a difference whether it is all caps or not. I agree with you to defer to Sue on this.
4. There still were some red tags (errors) when I opened my version of this which you edited for me. However, I added a few more tags and close tags at the top and that seem to fix the problem without changing anything.
5. I added back the font tag towards the top. The font appearing on my computer is Helvetica 11 when I put the tab back and when I look at the original e-mail you sent me which was Sue’s e-mail. Yesterday, my version was sending it in Helvetica 10. As you know, fonts are at the mercy of what is on the users computer so what you are seeing might not match what I am seeing. I am looking at these in Chrome.
6. Your version of the e-mail is doing what some of my previous versions did which is only going half way across the page for the image at the top and all of the text. My version has the image at the top the same as yours but the text goes across the page entirely. I think that’s what we want, right? Your change to the Chicago image pushed it to the right and has the text wrap to the left. That’s not what came across in the original from you but I think it looks good your way. I guess I’ll find out how much Sue wants these e-mails to reflect “exactly” what she sends. Not sure what you mean when you say the image from her e-mail disappeared? So we can proceed one of two ways. First, I am sending you my updated campaign test e-mail. If that looks good to you, I will send it to Sue with the question for her from above. If it is still problematic, I guess we can use your version but I will ask Sue about the width issue since it looks weird only going half way across. If it is easier to talk, my phone number is 617-771-2527 if that is how you would like to next proceed. Looks like we’ll get this done today which is what I told Sue.
Our conversation ended with my reply:
3. I am virtually certain that Sue wants the subject in uppercase. When you talk with her, I would not mention about “yelling”. I was taught the same as you. I avoided all-upper case when I wrote emails or anything else. You also should probably ask her about the banner. She did not like it on the ones that she composed, but this one was mostly written by and signed by Peter.
4. The width of the email that I composed was 600 pixels, the standard size of an email window and also the size of the banner. If your window is wider than that, it might have seemed strange that everything everything wrapped at that spot. The 600 px setting was set in both the body and the table. Some email clients respect the one in the body, but Outlook only respects the table. So, if you closed the <body or <table at the top, it would be wider than 600, as it was in Outlook on the test you sent me.
5. On Outlook the font is now Calibri 11. On my version it was Arial 16, which was what was specified in Sue’s. Maybe my eyes were deceiving me, but this morning Sue’s original email had the word image001 where the second image was before. The computer on which her image was stored must have been down; the image is back now. It is smaller and has slightly different writing on it than the one whose URL I gave to you. If I had this to do over, I would try to use it or at least set the width to around 320.
What you sent me is, in my opinion, perfectly fine. You should see if Sue agrees.
Going forward (if you are still game) I advise using the method that I proposed in the replica. I can do one of her emails in about a half hour, and it always maintains her fonts and positions her images where she wants them. Sometimes in the middle of an email she likes to change the font size, color or even the font itself. The only mistake that I have made is failing to find an image that was down at the bottom of an email. If the src= parameter is not changed, it does not appear in the MailChimp version.
You also might want to investigate using a template. When I started, I had several years experience at writing emails in HTML, and I hated the restrictions of the templates.
A few security issues still remained, but the email went out on time. In a few days the security issues were resolved. I had to change the owner of the audience. That will probably need to be redone every time that a new audience is used, but since Neil has been designated as the owner of the account, that should not be difficult.
At the end of the Executive Committee meeting on June 24 in Nashua Neil button-holed me to assure me that he would handle Sue’s emails the way that I recommended. He seemed to enjoy telling me about how he had dealt with the issues. I did not voice my primary thought, which was, “Better you than me.”
After the email went out Neil asked me about the fourteen bounce-backs that were reported. I explained how MailChimp handles them:
The ones that have bounced will have a status of “cleaned”. I generally do not worry about them. They will no longer be sent emails by any campaigns in this audience. If you recycle an old audience for new emails and select them, they will be set to subscribed unless they were already unsubscribed or cleaned on the audience that you archived or deleted. If the first mailing bounces, they will be set to cleaned forever.
Just a reminder: the audience has one record per email address. The database has one record per ACBL number. A lot of players share email addresses.
There is a field on the players table called email_rejected. I have not kept this up, but if you wanted to, you could export the audience. One of the csv files in the zip that it produces will contain all of the cleaned ones. That could be used to make the database more accurate. However, if they later provide the ACBL with a new valid address, that one will appear after the next monthly update. The email_rejected fields are NOT currently automatically reset by the monthly update program. So, the email_rejected field would not be accurate.
The last issue (so far) was that Sue wanted an NEBridge account for TheFairyGOLDMother. I turned this request over to Gary Peterson, to whom I had provided the credentials for the software that redirected the emails. He had lost the password. I sent it to him again.
1. This trip did not come off as planned. However, I did go on a cruise, as is thoroughly documented here.
2. I am not sure why Peter Marcus, who was the principal tournament director for the district was involved at all. Perhaps Curtis thought that because Peter had worked for DEC, he would understand what I did.
3. No Bulletin was produced for the Presidential Regional, the tournament to which Curtis referred. I had produced the Bulletin for the Optical Regional in November. Thereafter the Bulletin, which cost to district $100 per tournament, was considered too expensive to continue after an informal email poll of members of the Tournament Scheduling Committee.
4. Over the years I sent out perhaps twenty email messages for Sue Miguel. I do not remember that any of those experiences was what I would call fun.
5. Megahertz Computer was Bob Bertoni’s company. In theory they supported the district’s website, but it was difficult to get them to respond to problems and questions.
The governing body for competitive bridge in North America (and a few islands like Bermuda and Hawaii) was the American Contract Bridge Association (ACBL). Its headquarters was in Horn Lake, MS, a suburb of Memphis. The ACBL sponsored three national (actually continental) tournaments in different locations every year in March, July, and November-December. These were the spring, summer, and fall North American Bridge
One of the primary purposes of the ACBL was to provide the rules for distribution of masterpoints, which, depending on the event could be black, silver, red, gold, or platinum. Nearly every player aspired to attain the rank of Life Master, which, when I started playing required an assortment of masterpoints totaling 300. In 2011 the needed total was changed to 500, and the number of silver and gold points was increased.
When I began playing in 2004 there were eleven ranks:Rookie, Club Master, Sectional Master, Regional Master, NABC Master, Life Master, Bronze Life Master, Silver Life Master, Gold Life Master, Diamond Life Master, Platinum Life Master, and Grand Life Master. In 2011 the rank of Advanced NABC Master was created for players who had achieved 500 masterpoints but did not meet the other qualifications for Life Master status. Later the rank of Ruby Life Master was inserted between Silver and Gold, Sapphire between Gold and Diamond, and Emerald between Diamond and Platinum. That increased the number of ranks to fifteen.
Geographic organization: The ACBL was organized geographically into twenty-five districts. The six New England states comprised District 25. The governing body for District 25 (D25) was the New England Bridge Conference (NEBC). Prior to 2020 each district elected one person, the District Director, who served on the ACBL’s Board of Directors.
Each district was divided into units. D25 had eight units—one for each of the less populous states and one each for western, central, and eastern Massachusetts. The unit for Connecticut was identified by the number 126. Its governing body was the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA). The other units had similar appellations and three-digit numbers. The most populous by far was EMBA.
The ACBL’s districts and regions in 2020.
The lowest level sanctioned by the ACBL was the club. Most clubs were owned by one or two people. The Hartford Bridge Club (HBC), which was the oldest continuously operating bridge club in North America, was one of the few that was owned and operated by its members.
In 2020 a new geographic entity, the region, was created for the purpose of reducing the size of the Board of Directors for twenty-five to thirteen. D25, 24 (NYC and Long Island), and D3 (northern NJ and eastern NY) were combined into Region 2. The Regional Director (RD) was elected by the units within the region, but the person so elected was not supposed to represent his/her constituents. Instead the RD was charged with promoting the interests of all members.
Masterpoints: Winners and high finishers in club games ordinarily received black points. The units could sponsor sectional tournaments that awarded silver points in larger quantities than club games did. The districts could run regional tournaments that awarded red and gold points in still greater quantities. The most valuable points for achieving Life Master status were gold and silver.
The primary way to receive silver points was to attend a sectional tournament sponsored by a unit. Most units in D25 ran several sectionals per year. Three or four weeks a year Sectional Tournaments at Clubs (STaCs) could be run at clubs within the participating unit. These events also paid silver points. At some point in the teens the ACBL began to sanction sectional tournaments on cruise ships as well.
The primary way to receive gold (and much less important red) points was to attend a regional tournament sponsored by a district. Through 2019 D25 ran five regionals per year. The NABCs also included regional events that paid gold and red points. At some point in the teens the ACBL began to sanction regional tournaments on cruise ships as well. My wife Sue and I went on one in 2012 (described here). We signed up for a second one in 2020 (described here).
Administration: The ACBL and each of its units and districts were not-for-profit organizations. The ACBL itself was, in theory at least, run by the Board of Directors, who were bridge players. The day-to-day operations of the organization were run by salaried employees, most of whom knew little about bridge. Aside from running the three NABCs, the ACBL also hired and trained the Tournament Directors who administered each event at tournaments. It also tested and certified directors for club games.
The governing body of the New England Bridge Conference was its Board of Delegates. Its members were chosen by the units. It only met twice a year. Its main responsibility was to elect the four officers: president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer. Most policy-level decisions were made by the Executive Committee, a group that met several times a year. It consisted of the four officers and representatives of each unit (two from the CBA and EMBA). The president appointed the tournament manager, the webmaster, the tournament coordinator, and committee chairmen and members. The most important committee was the Tournament Scheduling Committee. The district also had a director-in-charge and and Intermediate/Novice chair. Those roles were held by Peter Marcus and Sue Miguel for all the years that I was involved.
The governing body of the CBA was its Board of Directors. This group was elected by attendees at a designated tournament. It consisted of the same four officers as the distric, the past president, and twelve representatives, eight of whom were from specific regions. The president appointed the tournament coordinator, the list manager, the webmaster, the unit coordinator, and STaC chairman.
Bridge clubs had a manager and at least one director. The former administered the club, and the latter ran the individual games. At many clubs the director and the manager were the same person. The Hartford Bridge Club was administered by a Board of Trustees, all of whom were elected at an annual meeting. It had the same four officers and a set of six trustees. The Board met once a month. The manager of the club had been Donna Feir for as long as anyone could remember.
The games: All competitive bridge games are “duplicate”, which means that each pair’s results are compared against other pairs playing the same cards. The most common form was pairs, in which each pair of players competes against other pairs. The scoring was rather simple. Each pair gets one point for each pair that it outscored on the hand and a fraction of a point for each pair that it tied (one-half if two pairs tied, one-third if three pairs tied, etc.). Adjustments were made if the same number of pairs did not play all the hands. Almost all club games were pairs games.
It was also possible for four people1 to compete as a team in various formats. They were explained in detail here. A few large clubs—such as the HBC—scheduled and ran Swiss teams events. They were usually quite popular.
A third form of the game, in which persons competed as individuals, became an endangered species in this period, but I had several interesting experiences with it.
Tournaments: Sectional tournaments ordinarily lasted last two or three days. They were ordinarily held at a hall owned by a church or ethnic organization, a senior center, or some other similarly large room. Usually the last day features one or more Swiss teams event. The other days are pairs. In general they must be run by a tournament director approved by the ACBL.
Regional tournaments ordinarily ran from four to seven days. They were generally held at a hotel with a ballroom or two and featured a mix of events. In most cases both pairs and teams events were offered at the same time. Traditionally the last day was devoted to a teams event of some kind.
Each NABC lasted for eleven days and featured a large assortment of events every day. Some were held at hotels; some were at convention centers. Traditionally the last day featured a very large teams event of some kind.
People sometimes attended tournaments without a partner. The administrators of tournaments tried very hard to find a suitable match for each such person.
Equipment: Bridge was, of course played with a deck of fifty-two cards. Four people sat around a card table. Competitive bridge required a little more equipment. In a social game the cards were shuffled after each hand. In duplicate bridge the cards were kept in carriers (usually called boards) made of plastic or metal to keep the cards used by each player (North, South, East, or West) separate so that they can be played by others siting in the same direction.
At tournaments and large clubs the boards were created by dealing machines, and scores were entered on hand-held devices called BridgeMates.
In duplicate bridge the bids were made by selecting card from a bidding box. Players were also required to make available an official convention card that explains the meanings of their bids.
High-level events at NABCs sometimes positioned the players behind screens. In that case players did not talk among themselves at all. The purpose was to minimize the opportunity for cheating. Nevertheless, some players were caught doing it.
Online: At some point during the teens the ACBL recognized a game with rules and behaviors similar to those of bridge that was played on the Internet. A website called BridgeBase Online (BBO) signed an agreement that even allowed its users to win masterpoints on their website. I hated this game and refused to call it bridge.
1. In events that last two or more days teams could have five or six members.
If you are not familiar with competitive duplicate bridge in North America, you may wish to read the entry posted here first.
Because of the threat of COVID-19 only two bridge tournaments were held in all of New England in 2021. Both were three-day sectionals in Watertown, MA. 114 people won masterpoints in the first one in October. 178 people won points at the Holiday Regional in November. This was better, but still unspeakably bad attendance. In the last tournament held in Watertown in 2019 exactly twice as many people won points—356.
The tournaments in Watertown were run by the Eastern Massachusetts Bridge Association (EMBA). I was not a member, and I attended none of the three tournaments listed above. However, I was a member of the Board of Directors of the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA), the “unit” for the state of Connecticut. The CBA ordinarily held six sectionals per year. Two of them were restricted to players with less than 199 masterpoints.
The June Tournament: I am pretty sure that the unit’s official bylaws required that the final decisions about the scheduling of tournaments be voted on by the board of directors. I can say without fear of contradiction that no such votes were taken between March 8, 2020—the last day of our last pre-pandemic tournament—and June 2022. In point of fact the board did not meet at all during that period. We did not even have a Zoom meeting.
Somehow a decision was made, probably after consultation between President Frances Schneider and Tournament Manager Cornelia Guest, to hold a three-day tournament on June 3-5, 2022 at the St. Barbara Greek Orthodox Church in Orange, CT. The schedule was essentially the same as used in 2019-2020. I don’t know who, if anyone, approved the date. The Rhode Island Bridge Association (RIBA) held a tournament the same weekend. The district was supposed to prevent conflicts like this, but someone evidently fumbled the ball.
The first notification of the tournament went out on May 8. Here was the text of the email.
Dear Michael,
CONNECTICUT 2022 SECTIONAL
June 3 – 5
St. Barbara Greek Orthodox Church
480 Racebrook Road Orange, CT 06477
See the attached flier for tournament information.
In my opinion the notification should have been sent earlier, and more effort could have been put into content of the email. For over a year the people whom we needed to attract had been paying only a few dollars to play bridge. Persuading them to return to face-to-face play and pay a lot more would require more effort than this brief announcement displayed.
As usual I sent an email to dozens of my partners past and present, but I only one responded to the invitation to play in Orange. Sonja Smith said that she could play with me in the pairs games on Saturday. She was a very good player, and I knew that she and her husband Chris were planning to move to North Carolina before the end of the summer. So, I jumped at this chance to play with her.
I was also committed to making the trip to Orange on Sunday if only to attend the board meeting that had always occurred on Sunday morning before the Swiss teams game. Chris brought Sonja to Exit 38 on I-91, and I drove the rest of the way. On Sunday I drove myself. I planned on offering to play if they needed me.
I was quite excited at the prospect of playing in duplicate bridge tournaments again. During the drive to the tournament Sonja and I discussed our convention card. We agreed on a set of conventions that was much reduced from what we had played the last time that we played together. I had pretty high hopes that we could do well.
Sonja Smith.
I was not expecting the large crowds that the unit’s sectionals had been experiencing before the pandemic, but the turnout was still disappointing. The open pairs had only thirteen tables, and the 299ers had to play a three-table Howell. Friday had been even worse. The Open Pairs had fourteen tables in the morning and twelve in the afternoon, but there were not enough 299ers to play in either session. Their games had to be canceled. They either had to go home or play against the Grand Life Masters.
Sonja and I had some difficulties in the morning. Most of it was my fault. The competition, as expected, was very good. They avoided mistakes and took advantage of ours.
In the afternoon, however, we rallied with a score of over 62 percent, but that was only good enough for fifth overall out of twenty-six. Still, we both had a very good time, and we returned home with a couple of silver points.
Jan Rosow.
The Sunday meeting was the usual frustrating session. Everyone was morose about the attendance, but only Jan Rosow had a workable suggestion for improving turnout. She suggested changing the upper limit on the limited game to 500 points. We all agreed, and Cornelia was directed to arrange for a sectional in October.
The other main outcome of the meeting was to appoint a committee to prepare a slate of new board members. I managed to avoid participating in that endeavor. Frances had been president for much longer than she expected and was obviously ready to pass the baton to someone else. In fact, she had asked me if I would do it. I had to decline because of commitments to the district.
After the meeting we were all pleasantly surprised to see a fairly large group1 ready to play in the Swiss. Sixty-seven people were waiting to play. John asked me if the offer to play still stood. I said that it did, and I played a very simple card with him as my partner. Our teammates were Barbara Federman and Jim Levitas, who were from California2. She was an experienced player, but he had less than ten masterpoints at the time.
We entered here for both tournaments.
We bumped around the middle of the pack until round six out of seven, which we won with a blitz. In the last round we met an A team that was much more experienced than we were. We would have won if not for the last hand that John and I played. Debbie Benner stretched her nineteen-point hand to open 2NT. Her partner, Art Crystal, who had over 5,000 points, had passed in the first round, but he jumped to 6NT.
The cards sat favorably, and Debbie was able to bring home the slam. At the other table Jim and Barbara did not bid as aggressively. We lost the match by one point.
We won the B strat, however, with 81 points. We also tied for fourth in A, which was very good for a patchwork team. I was very happy with the 6.7 masterpoints that I won in just two days of work. In fact, the drive home was probably the most pleasant experience that I had had in Connecticut since the start of the pandemic.
The board’s reaction to the first sectional: Treasurer Cindy Lyall released a report on the financial hit from the first sectional on June 21.
As requested at the Board meeting, please find below an accounting for the Orange Sectional Tournament that took place from June 3-5, 2022. A spreadsheet version will be included as part of my next Treasurer’s report. If you have any questions in the meantime, please feel free to reach out to me or Cornelia. Unfortunately, the loss from the tournament was just over $4,000.
Thank you,
Cindy
Revenue:
Table Receipts: +$4,984 based on 89 tables (26 on Friday, 29 on Saturday and 34 on Sunday)
ACBL Related Expenses:
Less Fill ins: -$112 Less Tournament Director’s Hotel Accommodation (3 nights): -$631.35 Less Tournament Director’s Per Diem: -$258.75 Less Tournament Director’s Fees ($210 per session): -$1260 Less Sanction Fees: -$281.88 Less ACBL Duplicated Hands: -$32 Less Sectional Surcharge: -$180 Less Caddies, Clocks, Supplies, Boards, Bridgemates, Predups, Hand Records, Free Plays, Pizza: -$935.23 Plus amount Paid to ACBL: +$30.21
Net: +$1323
Additional Unit Expenses:
Cornelia Stipend: -$250 Gene Remuneration: -$750 Snack Expense: – $266.28 Marketing: -163 Venue: -$4160 (Space $3000, janitorial service $700, Table rental $210, security deposit $250 which will be applied to next event)
Total Additional Unit Expenses: -$5,589.28
Loss of $4,266.28 – Please note that the $250 security deposit for this event has not been returned as it is being applied as a deposit to our next event, as such the “loss”for this event is $4,016.28.
In early September the second sectional was announced in the same pedestrian manner as the first. I sent the following email to all board members:
I see that in Orange the limited games have been expanded to under 500. By my calculation this increases the target audience (for unit 126 and 188) from 2235 to 2607. That might help, but it might also reduce the open attendance if people drop down.
Are we doing anything to attract the under-500 group? Many of these people have never played F2F. I propose that someone arrive a half-hour early each day and conduct a lesson in the mechanics of F2F play: bidding boxes, BridgeMates, alerting and announcing, how to avoid leading out of turn, how to prevent your partner from revoking, etc. I will volunteer to create a syllabus and do it on one of the days.
I also think that we need to send two sets of emails targeted to this group, one this week and one in two weeks. If this is already planned, fine. If not, I will volunteer to do it.
Have fliers been sent to the clubs? I have not seen one at the Hartford Bridge Club.
If we don’t want another financial fiasco, we must act soon.
I sent two emails to players in Connecticut and Westchester County, NY. I then sent the following email to board members.
I have attached three things. On 9/16 I sent Email1 to 1,600+ players from CT and Westchester. 64.8% of them opened the email, and 1.3% clicked on the link to the flyer.
On 9/30 I sent Email2 to the same people. 56.3% opened it, and 2.2% clicked on the link to the flyer.
In the emails I mentioned that “an experienced player” would be available on Friday and Saturday to explain the differences between F2F tournament play and online play. The attached F2F Outline contains a list of things that I could think of and a full-page picture of a Bridgemate. I can be there both days. If anyone wants to help, I would appreciate it.
Email1 can be viewed here. Email2 can be viewed here. The F2F Outline is posted here.
Peter Marcus.
During the period between the tournaments the unit’s nominating committee came up with a list of candidates for the vacancies on the Board of Directors, but the information was promulgated to neither the membership nor even the board. Peter Marcus, of all people, would be the new president. Phyllis Hartford would be vice-president. There would be five new members: Phyllis plus Roger Caplan, Linda Green, Linda Starr, and Debbie Prince. This would give the Hartford Bridge Club five members of the board, the most in the ten years that I had been involved.
Great Barrrington in August: I don’t remember exactly how or when the arrangements were made, but Abhi Dutta, Jim Osofsky, Mike Heider, and I agreed to play in the Swiss event on Sunday at the Western Massachusetts sectional tournament at the Berkshire South Regional Senior Center in Great Barrington, MA, on Sunday, August 14. Abhi and I also agreed to play in both sessions of the open pairs to be held on Saturday.
On previous visits to this tournaments I had taken the back roads through Suffield and points west. This time I decided to take the Mass Pike to Lee and then go south to Great Barrington. That was a good plan, but I became engrossed in the opera to which I was listening on Saturday morning, and I drove all the way to Northampton before I realized that I had missed the exit for the Mass Pike. Fortunately, I had left early enough that I still arrived in GB with ten minutes to spare, but Abhi was quite nervous.
Abhi and I played pretty well in the morning session, but we fell apart in the afternoon. However, Mike and Jim had a good day. They placed fifth overall.
I remember one startling fact about the morning session. There were two occasions on which we bid one of a suit, and the opponents overcalled 2NT. In the twenty-first century virtually everyone who played in open events treats that as the “Unusual Notrump”, showing at least five cards in the two lowest unbid suits. In both of these cases, however, when we asked about the bid the opponents said that it was strong and natural. Yes, that was what the bid meant when I was playing in the sixties, but what are the odds of being dealt a twenty-point balanced hand with stoppers in the opener’s suit? They are not good, and the happened to us twice, and both of those opponents were playing this defense. As of this writing I have been playing duplicate bridge for almost nineteen years, and I have never encountered this bid before.
The other thing that I remember was that in the first round of the first session we were East-West against a couple from Connecticut. I had played against them several times in sectional tournaments there, but I had not seen them for years. They told us that they had never used the BridgeMates to record the score before! They said that they always sat East-West at tournaments. So, I had to give the man a very brief lesson on how to use the machine, and I had to help him record each result. I don’t remember the names of the couple.
The Swiss was, from our perspective, absolutely amazing. There were eight six-board matches, and, unbelievably, we won our first seven. Our lead over the field after the seventh round was so large that we could have been blitzed in the last round and still won. We did lose the eighth round badly against a very weak team, but we still won the event by twelve victory points over two good teams from the Boston area.
My most vivid memory is of the match in which we played against John Debaggis and Motoko Oinaga, two Western Mass players who had occasionally played at the HBC. John had opened 2♦, which Motoko alerted as a Flannery bid showing five or more hearts and exactly four spade. John actually had six spades and four hearts. After the hand Abhi called the director and claimed that John had psyched (which is legal in a tournament). John agreed to this. Tim ruled that psyches were not legal when a conventional bid had been employed and penalized John and Motoko.
After the tournament I approached John and asked him if he really psyched. He sheepishly admitted that he had made a mistake. I advised him that he should always admit to mistakes in such situation. I then told him about the times that I had accidentally opened 1NT with two diamond suits (and no hearts). No penalty was imposed either time.
The October sectional: The second sectional was scheduled for October 14-16. The venue would be the same church in Orange that was used for the first such tournament. Eric Vogel told me that he could play on Friday and Saturday in the open pairs. On Sunday Linda Starr and I would be partners in the open Swiss. Our teammates were Abhi Dutta and Paul Johnson, who was Abhi’s partner when he lived in Connecticut a few years ago. I liked this arrangement’ I would get to play against the best players, but we would be in the B strat3 in all five events.
I got to St. Barbara’s at about 9:15 on Friday. I sat near the director’s table to see if anyone appeared to need help. The attendance seemed to be much better than in June. I did not end up giving any kind of a class. The same thing happened on Saturday.
Eric Vogel.
The competition on both days was very good. Eric and I had a miserable morning on Friday. We played better in the afternoon, but our score was not quite good enough to qualify for a place in the overalls.
Our play on Saturday morning was better. The highlight was when I doubled Joe Grue, one of the best players in the world, and he was unable to make the contract. However, we once again failed to win any points. I made one very stupid play against one of the best teams.
Everything came together for us in the afternoon. For the first time in the three days (one in June, two in October) that Eric and I played together, we seemed to get some breaks in the form of mistakes by our opponents. Of the thirty-two players who played in that session, we were the only ones to score above 60 percent. We won 9.35 silver points. This was only the second time that I had won a pairs event at a sectional. The drive back to Enfield was very pleasant.4
The board meeting on Sunday morning was more interesting than usual. Peter talked about the sectionals for next year. He indicated that clubs could run limited sectionals. They could set the limit to any number of points up to 750, and they could exclude Life Masters if they wanted. I ended up on a communications committee, but we only communicated by email. I was also confirmed as one of the unit’s delegates to the district’s Executive Committee.
Linda Starr.
A guy named Bill Segraves was the new webmaster. I had never met him before. He seemed very eager and competent. The board was badly in need of someone with those attributes.
The new board members attended. I knew all of them well except for Debbie, whom I played with a few weeks later, and Phyllis, who—despite her surname—was from Stamford, a very long way from Hartford.
Our team played pretty well in the Swiss. We received a very bad draw for the seventh round. Linda and I had to play against the pair of Steve Becker and Larry Bausher, two of the very best players in the state. Our teammates had an even worse draw. Their opponents were Rich DeMartino and Geof Brod, both of whom were Grand Life Masters—the highest rank in bridge.
We played well enough to win, but we were once again defeated by a clever bid by one of our opponents. Linda opened a nineteen-point hand by bidding one of a minor—as I would have. We ended up in 2NT. At the other table Geof upgraded his hand because of his five-card suit and opened 2NT. Rich raised to 3NT. Both declarers scored nine tricks, and the game bonus was enough to give them the victory.
Steve Becker and Larry Bausher
Rich DeMartino and Geof Brod
We ended up fourth in B, which was worth 1.98 silver points.
152 players earned points at the tournament. That was a big improvement from the 116 that won points in June. However, it was still far short of the 248 players who won points in the sectional held in March of 2020. Cindy Lyall later reported that the unit lost a little under $2,000 for the tournament.
1. In all 116 players won points. In the last sectional in Orange before the pandemic the number was 284. So, attendance was down almost 60 percent!
2. I don’t know how they heard about the tournament. Someone told me that they were in the process of moving to Connecticut. However, as of December 2022 their addresses were still both in California. Jim was not even on the December ACBL roster, which meant that he had not paid his dues. I learned that Jim was a University of Michigan graduate who was a little older than I was.
3. Some events at tournaments had more than one “flight”. Some flights had a limit on the number of points each player may have. If not, they were called “open”. Each flight was usually divided into two or three “strats”. The lower strats had limits on the average number of points. In Connecticut the cutoff between the A strat and the B strat was usually 3,000 masterpoints, but sometimes the directors assigned different levels.
4. The only unpleasant part was the first few minutes. There was not a cloud in the sky, and after I turned onto the parkway I was going straight east. In several places the sun in my rear-view mirror or the one on the left was absolutely blinding.
