Almost 50 years ago, Texas businessman Ira Corn invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to recruit and train the first full-time professional bridge team. Known as the Dallas Aces, the five experts – Billy Eisenberg, Bobby Goldman, Jim Jacoby, Mike Lawrence and Bobby Wolff -- moved to Dallas for two years of intense study and practice. Their goal was to end Italy’s dominance in world championships and win the trophy for the USA.
Corn hired retired Air Force colonel Joe “Moose” Musumeci as the Aces’ coach. Moose focused his training on developing the mental and emotional toughness necessary for winning at the highest levels of the game. The regimen included strict rules regarding diets, physical exercise and curfews. Even more rigorous were his demands related to bridge performance, which centered on the players’ ability to avoid the “Seven Deadly Sins”.
The sins were mistakes caused not by a lack of skill or knowledge, but by a breakdown in mental discipline. They included lapses in concentration, attempts at heroics, giving in to emotions and other departures from logic. After every session, the Aces would analyze all the hands and assess blame. Moose instituted a system of demerits for violations and even imposed fines for the most serious errors.
What served as commands for the Aces are good advice for all players at all levels of competition. No matter what your skill level, these are the types of mistakes that are easy to avoid if you’re using all your powers of concentration. The Seven Sins were:
#1 and #2: No-win declarer and defensive plays. These were irrational lines of play that couldn’t possibly be successful. They also included “sloppy” play, characterized by lack of mental effort and failure to have a clear plan.
The actual result on a deal was not the main issue in the Aces’ discussions. They found fault only when a declarer or defender didn’t take advantage of all his abilities to analyze the situation and make a more thoughtful try.
#3: Bidding without values. Partnership trust was paramount in the Aces’ bidding philosophy. They were firm believers in giving partner accurate, reliable descriptions of their hands. Deceptive or misleading calls – including ultra-light openings and overcalls and psychic bids -- were unacceptable.
#4: System violations. The Aces were required to have firm agreements and know their systems by heart. Forgetting a convention was remedied by hours, sometimes days, of practice. The far greater offense was intentionally departing from a system agreement.
#5: Unilateral actions: Like system violations, these were bids and plays that excluded partner from the decision-making process. The Aces were expected to recognize which decisions were best left to partner and to stay out of his way when it was likely that he needed room to describe his hand. Each expert was called upon to put his ego aside, look objectively at what went wrong and take the blame if he bore sole responsibility.
#6: Mechanical errors. Bids and plays out of turn, revokes, dropped cards and other blunders were treated as signs that a player had lost focus and wasn’t concentrating.
#7: Impulsive actions. This covered a wide range of transgressions – bidding or playing too quickly, acting on hunches, making precipitous jumps to final contracts. (More about this sin – and why it’s committed so often -- in the next issue.)
These
prohibitions may seem overly rigid and perhaps even old-fashioned, but they
worked for the Aces. Just two years after their debut in US tournaments, the
Aces (now with Bob Hamman as a sixth) won the 1970 and 1971 Bermuda Bowls,
ending the USA’s 15-year drought in world championships.
© 2017 Karen Walker