Team games are very exciting to play as each partnership is under pressure to play each hand or defend as well as they can so as to beat the opposing team playing in their same compass seat. Just one trick in declarer play or defense can make the difference in winning or losing the match.  This year, at the Reno Youth Bridge Washoe County School District Middle School Interscholastic Team Game Championships,  the format will be slightly different than last when the teams played a knockout team game.  In last year’s knockout team games there was only one survivor and the finals between Depoali Middle School and a team made up from Davidson Academy played four hands in the final match to determine the winner.  This year the teams will play what is called a Swiss Team format.  Each team will play four hands against another team and the scores are then matched to determine who has won the most “victory Points”.  Each team then goes on to compete with another team and after four or possibly five rounds, the team that has accumulated the most victory points will be declared the winner.  Each of the members of the winning team will receive their personal trophy and the RYB Silver Cup will be awarded to their School to display in their trophy case.  Kathy Lane, President of Reno Youth Bridge says that they hope to have 25 teams competing in this tournament.  Some teams may elect to have five members so that one of the team members may rest during the later rounds.  Washoe county school bridge team teachers will monitor the play of their teams and verify that the scores are correct.

As is the tradition at Reno Youth Bridge, students participating in one of the three major tournaments for the first time will receive a black RYB Game Jersey to wear during the tournament and during their classes there after.  Possession of the black game shirt means that you have competed in one or more of the RYB Major Duplicate Bridge Tournaments.  A Practice white jersey is given to all members of the school bridge teams and is worn at the student’s discretion during practice session in their after school activity class.

Following the Tournament, a light lunch will be offered to the students, teachers and assistants at which the winners will be announced.  For winning this tournament, each of the winning team members will receive 50 RYBAP achievement points.  The student who has accumulated the most achievement points during the year will be awarded a $1000 College Scholarship and a $250 Gift Certificate redeemable at one or more retail stores and restaurants here in Reno-Sparks. Those Students accumulating enough points to rank from second to tenth will also receive gift certificates ranging from $35 to $500.   The Kohl’s Department Store is sponsoring the RYBAP achievement Program this Spring and RYB is very appreciative of their support.

In either case a student may stay for the entire two hours or leave whenever they have other things that need to be done.  Three students may sit at the table with Bud and bid their hands as they compete for the contract.  If anyone of them becomes declarer, they will play the hands trying to make the contract. The other two players (Sometime Bud uses robots) will defend against the Declarer.  During the play, if a serious error is made, Bud will undo the play and suggest that the declarer select another line of play in order to make their contract or if defending, Bud will ask them to think about another line of defense to cause the declarer to have under tricks.  If any student just wants to kibitz the play and hear what comments Bud has to make about the bidding or the play of others, they may do that for any length of time during the lessons.  If you are able to get online this coming Saturday morning, February 4th at 10:00AM, come see how it works.  The easiest way to join the table is to make Bud a “friend”.  His User ID is “Brew775″.  If you add his ID to your friend’s list, his user ID will show up in purple on the “Who’s online list”  If you don’t see it at first, click on the tab for who’s on line and the list will be shown.   Merely click on his user ID and when his profile drops down select “Join Table” and you will be checked in. You will most assuredly learn something and it will make you a better player.  In addition to having a little fun with one on one learning, each Reno Youth Bridge member at the table or kibitzing will receive 5 RYBAP points for each Saturday that they participate in the Saturday morning Teacher Table.  Students should check with their parents to obtain permission to use their computer and to be on line for up to the two hours of the class.

As Reno Youth Bridge Students have been advised,  the operators of BBO are very strict about the language players or kibitzers use while on the site.  Chat is encouraged if it is modestly  long and pertinent to what is going on at the table.  In other words, private third party conversations should be held off line.  When you start to play and join an open table it is common courtesy to type “May I join?  If you have to leave a table on which you are playing, you should type “Thank you, I have to leave”  Never leave in the middle of a hand except when you are the dummy.  In that case, your departure doesn’t affect the completion of play of the hand.  Always treat your partner with respect.  They want to win too.  The best way to learn and get comfortable with table protocol is to come watch for a while.

Bridge, Inc. also sponsored a Mini Bridge Tournament at the same time as this Youth Tourney and five tables of enthusiastic school team members played a representative number of Boards thus determining the overall winner to be Andreya Russell and Kaleigha Valdez from Shaw Middle School.  Shaw’s Bridge Team is coached by the couple of Dane and Kelly Nott both of whom are certified teachers in the math department at Shaw.  Their program is growing very rapidly and the after school activity for bridge has registered over 25 students this year versus only 8 last year.

Finishing second in the Youth Pairs event was the partnership of Henry Weisberg and Matt McKinley of Billinghurst Middle school, in third place were Harley DeGuzman and Owen McClung of High Desert Montessori Charter School.  In second place in the Mini Bridge Tourney, were Hayden Davis and Nielsen Gage of  Depoali Middle School, followed by Kitt Dylan and Joe Hogan of Shaw Middle School located up in Spanish Sprngs area.   The next major tournament to be held by Reno Youth Bridge is scheduled to take place on April 21, 2012 at the Nugget Hotel in Sparks.  It is at this tournament that the RYB Silver Cup is contested in a team game with the winning team taking possession it for the following year

About eighty of the 200 middle school students registered in the Reno Youth Bridge teaching program this year posed for a picture following their highly competitive play in the Premier Reno Youth Bridge Youth Tournament December 30th.  Several Reno Youth Bridge classes are expanding each month as students are telling their friends just how much fun this game is.  For the first time in the four year history of Reno Youth Bridge teaching program,  Pine Middle School, one of  Washoe County’s fourteen middle schools, is teaching bridge as a part of their math curriculum.  Students elect to take this course as a part of the school’s program to bring reality to mathematics that students can relate to.  Suzanne Walsh, the faculty member teaching this course, is a bridge player and appreciates the value of how the game helps students with critical thinking and inferential reasoning.  Students split the semester between bridge and cribbage, both games played  with a deck of 52 playing cards and players can express variable values for progressing in the game.  With 4 days a week of learning and playing the game, Pine students will have quite an edge over those students in one hour a week after school activity classes.  Reno Youth Bridge Directors are hoping that this program will spread to the other middle schools and the game will become just like any interscholastic sport played among the County’s school system.

Middle school students have been focusing on learning the basic rules and techniques for play of the hand. Beginning with Whist and then proceeding to Mini Bridge, students have learned that Bridge is a partnership game and the objective is to take that number of tricks that one partnership has bid to take and thereby contracted to play the hand for.

One individual member of that partnership becomes the Declarer and his partner, after the opening lead, lays his cards on the table and is referred to as the “Dummy”. The defending partner’s objective is to deny the Declarer the ability to fulfill their contract.

The Teachers have used the Audrey Grant Texts “Bidding” and “Play of the Hand ” to provide instruction regarding how to reach the optimum contract and plan for and execute play of the cards so that they will win at least the number of tricks they contracted to win.

Scoring is based on making a game bonus requiring a specific number of tricks to be contracted and to win at least that number.   If the bid is for at least a number of tricks equal to a game (nine tricks with no suit as Trump, ten tricks with a Major suit, Spades or Hearts, as trump, eleven tricks with a minor suit, Diamonds or Clubs, as trump) the declaring partnership receives a bonus of 100 points.

Bidding for less than the number required to make game is called a Part Score. If you bid and make a number of tricks less than game, you receive a bonus of 50 points. Your total score on each hand you play depends on whether you play no-trump, a major suit as trump, or a minor suit as trump, and whether you bid and make that number of tricks that earn a part score bonus or a Game bonus.

If you bid for and make 12 tricks (“small slam”) or 13 tricks (“grand slam”) out of 13 tricks possible, you get another bonus in addition to the Game bonus. To sit down and play the hand after bidding a specific contract, RYB recommends the use of certain basic guidelines or rules for playing the hand.

As Declarer:
1. After the opening lead, and before you play any card if IN A SUIT CONTRACT, COUNT YOUR LOSERS!

2. After the opening led, and before you play any card, if IN A NO-TRUMP CONTRACT, COUNT YOUR WINNERS!

3. PLAN YOUR PLAY! Try to figure out a plan to reduce losers or force the timely creation of a winner(s).
a. Usually a good idea to PLAY YOUR TRUMP SUIT FIRST! to remove an y ruffing power by Defenders.
b. PLAY HIGH TRUMPS FIRST! then follow up with the next highest. Count the number of trump in all hands. Sometimes best to leave last trump in Defender’s hand if it is of higher denomination than your remaining trump.

4. Try to play trumps so that you end up in whichever hand (yours or the Dummy’s) so as to allow you to LEAD UP TO A SUIT HEADED BY AN UNSUPPORTED KING, AQ OR KJ!
a. If unaware which opponent has the A, or the K or the Q in these examples respectively, leading up to the high card or combination allows you to win the K or Q or to win or force the A if the higher card is on your left. This is called a finesse.
b. Another type of finesse is when you have a QJ combination opposite two or more cards headed by an Ace. To make this play, hoping the K is in LHO hand, you need the lead to be in the hand with the QJ combination.

5. TRY TO TRUMP LOSERS IN THE HAND WITH THE FEWEST NUMBER OF TRUMPS (Yours or the Dummy’s) In some cases when declarer has three small cards or two small headed by an Ace in a side suit opposite 2 of the sme suit in Dummy and Dummy has only 3 low cards in your trump suit, it is a good idea, after the opening lead, to play on this suit before pulling trump so you will be able to trump the 3rd small card held in your hand with one of Dummy’s 3 low trum cards thereby promoting a winning trick.

6. In a fairly balanced hand, Declarer can FORCE OR PROMOTE WINNERS BY PLAYING TOUCHING CARDS FROM A SUIT (KQ, QJ10, J1098) After one, two or the three rounds of play, respectively, if Declarer has controls in the other suits , it is possible to create a winner.

AS DEFENDER:

1. Against a suit contract, it is usually a BAD IDEA TO LEAD A LOW CARD FROM A SUIT HEADED BY AN ACE!
2. In any situation where the bidding has not shown you otherwise, the  following leads are or can be reasonable:

a.           If Partner has bid a suit, usually best to LEAD PARTNER’S SUIT!

b.          From hands with 3 or 4 cards in partner’s bid suit, if none are touching honor cards, LEAD THE LOWEST CARD!

c. From a hand in which you have touching honors, AK, KQ, QJ, or J10, LEAD THE TOP CARD IN SEQUENCE, no matter how many cards in the suit you hold.

d.          If Partner has not bid a suit, you might try any of the following opening leads:

i.    The LEAD OF THE TOP CARD FROM A SMALL DOUBLETON may work well if you are able to then trump the third round before your opponent pulls your last trump card.

ii.    LEAD TOP OF A SEQUENCE in a side suit headed by the J or higher: KQJxx, QJ10x, J109x.

iii. LEAD A LOW SINGLETON IN AN UN BID SUIT.

iv. LEAD FOUTH HIGHEST CARD FROM A BROKEN SUIT with four or more cards: KJ952, Q9632, J8754.

v. LEAD ACE FROM AK, K, or KQ in the un-bid suits.

e.     When Partner is on lead and leads a low card, after Declarer plays a lower card from Dummy than you hold:

i.      Remember the rule-THIRD HAND HIGH!

ii. After partner leads and Declarer plays from Dummy, you must PLAY THE HIGHEST CARD NECESSARY TO WIN THE TRICK:

Example: Partner leads the 3 of spades , J95 is in the Dummy.  You hold Q104 of spades.  You must play your highest card or whatever card is necessary to cover the card Declarer plays from Dummy.  In this case you play the Queen if he plays the J, the 10 if he plays the 9.  If Declarer then plays the A of the suit and your partner’s lead was from the K, he knows that you have the Queen, otherwise Declarer would have played that card.

f.         If Declarer is on lead:

PLAY  SECOND HAND LOW.

When defending and Declarer leads from his hand to a suit in which the Dummy has KJ104 and you have A95, it usually is right to play a low card.  Declarer does not know where the Ace is and possibly your partner has the Queen.  If Declarer has to guess, he may play the Jack on which your partner may win with the Queen.  In any event Declarer is going to win the King if you play the Ace so the only chance to limit the number of tricks is to duck and let him guess.

g.         After play begins and you are on lead (and you have no logical alternative):

WHEN THE DUMMY ISON YOUR RIGHT, LEAD THE WEAKEST SUIT IN SIGHT!

WHEN DUMMY IS ON YOUR LEFT, LEAD THROUGH STRENGTH!

Duplicate bridge is scored by a comparative method whereby players form partnerships sitting either in a North-South direction or an East West direction. Each N/S pair plays two hands against each of the E/W pairs in a series of 9 or more tables. When playing to a trick, the cards are not co-mingled but placed individually on the table in front of each player. When it is determined who wins the trick, each player places his card trick face down in a vertical or horizontal direction indicating a trick won or lost. After playing each hand against an E/W pair, the hand is replaced in a “duplicate board” to maintain the same cards for play by other N/S and E/W pairs. The duplicate boards are then passed to the next lower numbered table and the E/W pair moves to the next higher numbered table and they play the next two boards against that opponent. After each round the scores of that round are collected and at the end of the tournament, the scores are matched to determine which N/S pair has the highest total match points and the remaining partnerships are ranked accordingly. The N/S pairs earn one (1) match point for each hand on which they score better than the other N/S players, one half (1/2) match point for ties and (0) match points for hands on which they score less points. The pairs sitting E/W are scored in the same fashion competing against each of the other E/W pairs in the tournament. At the end of the tournament the match points for each partnership on each hand are added up and they are ranked accordingly. Winners of each section win a trophy as well as 50 RYBAP achievement points. The next highest ranking down to 3rd, 4th or 5th place earn a descending amount of RYBAP Achievement Points.

An estimated 100 Students will be competing in this tournament and those that have selected a regular pairs event shall be competing also for ACBL Master Points, a means by which that body designates its member’s achievement in competition. The first ranking is “Club Master” (20 Master Points) and the highest is “Grand Life Master (25,000 Master Points). Needless to say the Grand Life Master has only a few dozen members out of almost 200,000 ACBL members.

Following the Tournament, a light lunch is being served and the winners announced. Parents or friends are welcome and may sit at any of the tables observing the play as long as they follow the Kibitzing rules that forbid any suggestions, hand signals or other disturbing commentary .

Known as RYBAP, the program automatically enrolls all registered students and also registers their teachers who have the opportunity to also participate based on how well their bridge teams perform and how many of their students play in RYB’s three major tournaments.

The program works as follows: Students earn RYBAP points for attending each of their weekly or bi-weekly after school bridge classes. They earn points for attending each of the Three RYB sponsored Major Tournaments and for playing bridge online with a teacher or one of the RYB Directors. They earn more points for ranking high in any of the three RYB major interscholastic duplicate bridge tournaments.

The first of these competitions is scheduled for this coming December 30^th and the second is scheduled for April 21, 2012 at the John Ascuaga’s Nugget Hotel with a final year end tournament scheduled for June 2, 2012. The student or students who earn the most RYBAP points during the school year will receive a scholarship of $1000 that will be available for use for their tuition at a college of their choice.

There are some conditions for receiving the scholarship, including the requirement that the student must not only graduate from high school but they must have maintained a GPA that would qualify them for entrance to the University of Nevada at Reno (UNR). In addition to this scholarship, gift certificates of up to $500 will be awarded to the 10 next students earning the highest number of RYBAP points.

The WCSD bridge team teacher whose team wins the Spring Interscholastic Team Game Championship will receive a gift certificate for $250.00. The Teacher who has the most registered students in aggregate attend the three RYB Major Tournaments will receive a gift certificate of $250.00. All gift certificates are redeemable for any one of several major retailers and restaurants here in the Reno-Sparks area.

The December 30^th tournament will be held at the Grand Sierra Resort during the ACBL District 21 Regional Tournament and will give the students their first look at the size and scope of big time ACBL duplicate bridge competition by some of the country’s best bridge players. Two formats will be used for the students at the December Tournament.

Our students who have just begun to learn bridge at the basic level will be able to compete in a “Mini Bridge” Tournament, a special type format that is used to introduce the students to the game and get them used to playing specified contracts. In addition, for the returning or more advance youth player, RYB will hold a regular “bid to contract” section and students will be qualified to earn their first master points as members of the ACBL.

In addition to winning trophies and RYBAP Points for gift certificates, the School bridge teams will compete in a Knock-out Duplicate Team game at the April 21^st interscholastic tournament where the winning team will be presented with the RYB Silver Cup for display on their school’s Trophy Case and earn bragging rights for the following year. Watch this site for more information regarding youth tournaments.

Among the many benefits received by students who take up the game is their increased proficiency in critical thinking, solving math problems and inferential analysis. For some reason, unknown to researchers so far, the ability to make reasonable inferences analyzing the actions by one’s opponent is a skill that is difficult to teach in the normal academic classroom environment. But playing card games like Poker, Chess, Cribbage or the granddaddy of all, Contract Bridge, exercises this skill and provides enrichment in the ability to do better solving all kinds of everyday problems. When asked what it is about Bridge that they like the best, most students answer that not only is the game fun to play and compete, but the hands are different all the time. They say they enjoy the partnership aspect although they have only scratched the surface of how partners, using a limited language called “Bridge Speak” communicate with each other. Bridge Speak is made up of 15 words and numerals that when used in the bidding to contract phase, allow a player to communicate the strength of his hand, the suit in which he holds the most cards, or if defending , whether he believes his side will defeat the Declarer’s contract. When he has nothing further to tell partner he just says Pass. Because of this limited number of words, phrases or numerals, bridge players can go anywhere in the world either by personal travel or by going online in a program called Bridge Base Online where he can sit down with one of 250,000 members to partner with from any country in the world and play the game.

Utilizing a new out-of-the-box concept for helping students improve their math skills, Pine Middle School Teacher Suzanne Walsh has selected the card Game of Bridge along with the game of Cribbage as a means to get her students actively processing critical thinking and everyday numerical computations in a new class called “Exploratory Subjects. “

As one of the Pilot schools in the Washoe County School District to introduce this new kind of teaching, Pine offers its students the opportunity  get a hands-on experience with a number of different subjects in which they participate in a practical use of the basic academic subjects like science, geometry and basic math.

In this class, it is math and Bridge is an excellent way to sharpen up on calculating numerical answers to problems and learn inferential analysis while playing the game. Twenty students have selected the course for Cribbage and Bridge this semester.

Following the first ten weeks of the fall semester during which the students were taught Cribbage, the students were introduced to Contract Bridge on October 17.  Bridge is the subject in place for the remaining weeks of the fall semester.  The class is being taught Bridge in accord with the lesson plan and material provided by Reno Youth Bridge, Inc.

At the completion of the fall semester, Bridge students will be invited to join an After School Activity Class in which they will continue to gain experience playing Bridge and learning the skills to master the world’s most popular card game.

Pine Middle School’s bridge team will compete in three interscholastic duplicate tournaments during the second semester and the teams will be selected from this Bridge class.

The WCSD RYB Major Team Game Championship Tournament is schedule to be held at the John Ascuaga’s Golden Nugget Hotel in Sparks on April 21, 2012.

According to Ms. Walsh, with the students able to have more than 44 hours of instruction between now and the end of the fall semester, The Pine Middle School Bridge Teams should make a good showing at the Winter ACBL Regional and the RYB Major Team Game Championship Duplicate Tournament next spring.

Volunteer teachers from the Washoe County School District finished the second of Reno Youth Bridge’s two bridge teaching seminars on Sat., Sept. 24, 2011.

David Weinberg, Dan Green and Mollie Rakestraw, all three of whom are RYB Directors as well as Bridge Teachers approved by The American Contract Bridge League, monitored the Volunteers as they practiced playing the game of Mini Bridge.

The Volunteer Teachers are fired up to get their school’s bridge team recruited, trained and ready to compete in the WCSD-RYB interscholastic duplicate bridge tournaments beginning just after Christmas of this year. Ten of the WCSD Middle Schools and three private schools have identified volunteer school teachers to recruit organize and coach their school’s bridge teams in after school activity classes. Middle School Bridge Teams returning from last year are Billinghurst, Cold Springs, Depoali, Incline, Mendive, O’Brien, Shaw, and Sparks.

New entrants this year include Swope Middle School and Vaughn Middle School. These ten WCSD middle schools will be joined by High Desert Montessori Charter School, Davidson Academy and Our Lady of the Snows Catholic School.

Reno Youth Bridge introduces the game of bridge to 6^th, 7^th and 8^th grade students at the basic level of what is called “Mini Bridge”. Easy to learn but containing important treatments for the play of the hand, students are able to gain understanding for analyzing and evaluating how they must play the cards to make their contract. They learn which card to play in a given circumstance, protecting entries to the hand on the table as well as their own hand, and generally become more proficient in playing their contracts.

Mini-Bridge Under-Tricks

In Mini Bridge, the players announce the point count that they hold and the partnership with the most combined points will become the declarer and “dummy” (a term used to describe the hand placed on the table). Declarer then asks his partner how many cards he holds in each suit and then selects which suit to name as trump or whether to play at No-trump. Declarer then wins points by making his contract or the defenders win points by causing under-tricks by Declarer.

Two returning teachers, Collett Gilmore and Suzy Davenport each described how their experiences have been over the past two or three years teaching bridge at their schools. The greatest benefit they noticed the students gained by learning and playing bridge was not just the measurable improvement in their math skills but also their development of social skills as they began to understand that success in the game of bridge depended on the teamwork of a partnership.

Suzy Davenport, a three-year veteran teaching the game to students at Sparks Middle School, noted that one problem she had to learn how to deal with was that students have difficulty concentrating for more than an hour during “after school activity” classes. They have been required to conform to class room discipline during the regular four or five formal class room sessions in the morning and after lunch they typically want to be less constrained. It is manageable but she warned that new teachers should be prepared to deal with an environment where talking and acting up is more common than in regular classes. Both recommended that classes be limited to 60 minutes and a judicious use of snacks be incorporated to influence behavior.