Adventures of a bridge professional 15: Bridge professional?

After the World Championships I somehow couldn't get started writing a column. Why? I don't know. Or maybe I do: for some time I didn't fancy bridge.

The reason was simple, I had single-handedly thrown away our team's chances at the World Championship teams (contesting the Bermuda Bowl) in São Paulo.
On returning to Netherlands I learned our team mates for the Dutch Master League teams were ending their partnership. In short: I had had enough.
Now, almost 2010 (Sjoert wrote this column for the Dutch Bridgevaria.nl site shortly after Christmas 2009, -Ed.), I am glad to say my team mates (they agreed to postpone the break-up until after the final of the Master League) did extremely well, enabling us to make it to the Master League final. We will start that final trailing 17 IMPs (the carry-over from the round robin), but I hope we will begin performing in 2010 like we did most of the time in 2009: winning matches.

My best experience this year was the clinic I gave in the small town of Kockengen (Central Netherlands). In order to do something new I asked the participants five questions. Here they come:

Anja is behind the microphone. Enthusiastically she calls me up front. 'Our honorary member is present: Ed Hoogenkamp is joining us tonight!'
Yes, tonight I'm playing at my old club: Crash from the city of Leiden. Nathalie is to be my partner. I would have preferred to keep a low profile to my visit but a moment later I'm smiling at many familiar faces from the past. Honorary member... weren't they usually very old or dead? I don't feel like an honorary member.

It feels like only a short time ago, but already since 1994 I have been making yearly visits of a few weeks to a small village in the mountains of Galicia, in the northwest of Spain. It's called Gorgoloza and is situated some 30 km (19 m) south of Ourense (for those who still haven't got a clue: Ourense is about 60 km southeast of Santiago de Compostela). My parents-in-law own a house there in which they spend some three months every summer (for the rest of the year they live in Barcelona). Every time I enjoy going there very much.
I remember my first visit vividly. We left for a six week stay in this village in the middle of nowhere, a village I had never even heard of. I stuffed my suitcase with books, fearing endless dullness and boredom.

At the end of April I was in England in order to participate (for the tenth consecutive time) in 'The Spring Foursomes' in Stratford-upon-Avon, birthplace of William Shakespeare.
This is a great tournament. Long matches — 32 boards — so there is little risk here of being knocked out by one expensive unlucky board, as is so often the case in short matches. Teams can afford to lose once in this knock-out tournament: in that case they enter the so-called once defeated pool and can still win the event.
What strikes me again and again is the sheer joy of playing in the United Kingdom. Polite, calm people, no indelicate words are used and the atmosphere at the table is excellent, almost without exception. Quite different from tournaments in some countries I can recall.

We had registered our team for the first Open European Championship and were staying at a hotel in Nice.
The start was hilarious... that is, for our team, with the exception of one player. The reason is, that he suffers from a fear of mountains and heights. He had figured out that he could travel by train from Nice, via Monte Carlo to Menton. No problem. He intended to leave for Menton early on the first day of the tournament. We planned to leave a little later by car.
Some time after he had left, he called us. He was panicking: he was stranded in Monte Carlo, the train tunnel had partly collapsed, blocking all train traffic between Monte Carlo and Menton! He had already started to get drunk. Only if he was drunk was he going to be able to endure the drive through the mountains...

What is it that makes bridge so much fun? One thing is certain: it's not only the game itself. The 'things surrounding it' play an important part as well.
Top players value one thing above all: winning. My former partner Louk Verhees once expressed this as follows: 'If I want to do something for fun, I head for the tennis court. But bridge I play to win...'
There it is, winning, with everything that comes with it: fame, money...