Summer Camp 2015 - Week 1

In the first session, 29 campers aged 9 to 17 enjoyed intensive bridge instruction from experienced mentors, under the direction of Debbie Rosenberg, Kevin Rosenberg, and Elianna Meyerson. About a dozen of these campers had little or no experience in playing bridge, and some had never played any trick-taking card game. The rest of the campers had either taken SiVY bridge classes at local schools or had other experience playing the game. By the end of the week, even the least experienced campers had learned the rules of the game and were enthusiastically bidding their contracts and taking their tricks. More experienced campers had been introduced to new strategies in both bidding and card play, and gained greater confidence in executing familiar strategies.

A highlight of the last day of camp was the appearance of Larry Cohen, champion bridge player and extraordinary teacher. Larry showed the campers two amusing bridge hands. On the first, he recounted the story of how one of his former bridge partners had managed to score minus 7,000—a score few of us are ever likely to see. On the second, he showed the campers how an Italian world champion player found a lead that cost 26 tricks. As Larry said, “If your partner ever accuses you of making the worst lead ever, you can tell him he’s wrong. You have now seen one that is clearly worse!” Larry also graciously autographed copies of his books awarded as prizes to lucky winners of the end-of-Session One raffle, and donated decks of Larry Cohen cards to be given to every camper.

The week concluded with a pizza party and a 15-board duplicate tournament in which 24 of the campers participated. Several of the least experienced campers achieved some of the highest scores in the tournament, showing clearly that they had been paying close attention to the instructions they received. For scoring, campers were divided into “strata” based on pre-camp experience, and trophies were awarded for first and second place in Strat A and Strat B.

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