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I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to Microsoft's Internet Gaming Zone Bridge
area. If you have not done so already, please try out the beta release of the new Zone Bridge
game. I think you will really enjoy the new software as well as the friendly atmosphere on the Zone. Whether you are a new bridge player or a serious competitive player, the Zone is a great place to play Bridge
on the Net. Perhaps the best news is that Zone Bridge
is free.
Microsoft is serious about Bridge
, and they have realized that it takes more than a terrific game to keep players interested. Building a strong online "community" is imperative. Some of Microsoft's initiatives in this area will involve weekly Web articles about the game (at various levels of difficulty), online interviews, and online teaching seminars. As I will be involved in the development of much of this content over the next several months, and hope to become an integral part of the Zone Bridge
community, the primary purpose of this first article will be to introduce myself.
My name is Fred Gitelman. I can often be found playing Zone bridge
under the name of
fredgit
. If you see me on the Zone I would be happy to talk to you about Bridge
, the Zone software, or just to say hello! I am 33 years old and have lived in Toronto, Canada my entire life. I live with my partner, Sheri, and our dog, Magic.
Sheri and I own and operate Bridge Base Inc., a small company that develops and publishes educational software for bridge. More information about our company and our products (as well as many interesting articles about bridge) can be found at our Web site.
Towards the end of 1997, Microsoft hired me to help design and develop the new online Bridge
game. The result of this effort is the Bridge
game that is currently in beta. Our primary goals were to completely rewrite the user interface of the old Zone Bridge
game, to introduce duplicate, and to include more "bridge features" (like claims, alerts, convention cards, etc.). I am very pleased at how the new Zone version has come out and I hope everyone is enjoying the new software!
Bridge is a full time job for me. When I am not sitting in front of my computer working on Bridge software or writing about Bridge, the chances are good that I am playing Bridge. I learned to play Bridge in my last year of high school when I was 18 years old. I was immediately captivated by the game and spent the next several years playing and studying as much as I could.
By the time I was in my mid 20s, I was widely considered one of Canada's best Bridge players as well as one of the best "young" players in the world. Young is in quotation marks because in most sports and games, young players are in their early teens. In Bridge there are special tournaments for Juniors but Juniors are defined as 26 and younger. One of the high points of my Bridge career was being a member of the 6 person Canadian team that came second in the World Junior Team Championships in 1991. Now that I am too old to play as a Junior, I have become involved in coaching and training Canada's top young players.
It is mildly disturbing that at age 33, I am still considered a young Bridge player. There are not enough people of my generation playing Bridge in North America. I am hopeful that computers and the Internet will be effective tools for introducing young players to our game. It is great news for all Bridge players that a company like Microsoft has taken an interest in the game. Their efforts to provide a high quality free online Bridge
game as well as online content should really help attract new young people to the game.
Now that I am no longer a Junior, I am forced to compete with the "adults" in open events. I have represented Canada several times in international tournaments. My greatest success was winning the Silver Medal in the 1995 Bermuda Bowl World Championships in Beijing. The Bermuda Bowl is the most prestigious bridge event there is and it was a great honor to be part of Canada's best ever showing in this event. This was a very exciting moment, as we lost a very close match in the finals to a highly favored American team. I will write about what it is like to almost win a world championship in a future article for the Zone.
I now spend about 3 months a year travelling and playing Bridge against the best players in the world. In the last couple of years I have been to China, Denmark, England, France, Greece, Holland, Iceland, Indonesia, and South Africa, as well as dozens of cities in North America -- all for Bridge tournaments! In the upcoming months I will be travelling to some big tournaments (including the World Championships in Lille, France late in August) and some of my future articles on the Zone will include reports from these tournaments. I will also be attending the Zone Bridge
convention late in July (see www.zoners.com for details) and hope to meet many of you there.
All of this travel may sound exciting, but it is not as much fun as you might think. For one thing, I have to spend much of my time in a hotel playing Bridge -- there isn't much time for being a tourist. Another problem is that the play is extremely intense and competitive at this level. It's fun when you are winning, but it can be pretty horrible when you are losing.
Fortunately, I usually do pretty well in these tournaments. My latest success was a 3rd place finish (out of 56) at the recent Cavendish Invitational Pairs in Las Vegas. The Cavendish has by far the biggest prize money of any Bridge tournament and the quality of the field is a reflection of the huge rewards that success in this event can bring. My partner in the Cavendish was 27 year old Brad Moss from New York. The Internet Gaming Zone sponsored the 1998 Cavendish, which really helped to contribute to the success of this event. The winners of the 1998 Cavendish Invitational Pairs were Bob Hamman (the number 1 ranked player in the world) and Nick Nickell. Both Bob and Nick were part of the American team that my Canadian squad lost to in the 1995 Bermuda Bowl (yes I am getting sick of losing to these guys!). A full report of the Cavendish can be found here on the Zone.
Some of my other interests include golf, downhill skiing, and tennis. I still spend most of my leisure time (not that I have much) reading and studying Bridge. One of the great things about Bridge is that you can never really master the game. Despite all the work I have done on my game over the past 15 years, the more I play, the more I realize how much there still is to learn. I sincerely hope that I can contribute to your learning and enjoyment of Bridge
in the months to come.
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