THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 11, 1995 TAG: 9511100057
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E01 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
IN THREE DECADES of writing about everything from Pepsi-drinking mules to the world's most tattooed man, I had never written about a bridge tournament, figuring I'd cross that bridge when I got to it.
I crossed it this week when I attended the Mid-Atlantic Regional Bridge Tournament at the Cavalier Hotel in Virginia Beach.
About 3,000 bridge players from across the country, some from as far away as California, had gathered for night and day sessions at the Cavalier's beach club and conference center.
One of the reasons I'd dodged writing about bridge is a total ignorance of the subject. It seemed to me that it exceeded only one other sport in irrelevance - rowing. In rowing, the participant sits on the behind and goes backward. In bridge, one sits on one's behind and does nothing - in the view of the ignorant observer. And I was all of that.
When I arrived, there were hundreds of tables set up in the cavernous conference center at the Oceanfront. The card players at the tables had the serious expressions of people waiting for a dentist. Behind them, near the entrance, were long tables cluttered with items for sale, nearly every one with aces, kings, jacks or queens - printed singly or in combination - on them.
Ear rings, jackets, pocket books, book bags and neckties.
My favorite was a T-shirt that read: ``I Spend Most of My Time Playing Bridge. The Rest Is Wasted.''
The tournament had attracted some bridge champions who are household words, at least in houses where bridge is played: Ron Anderson and Jeff Meckstroth among them.
But the player talked about most was Lynn Deas, a Newport News native who is the best woman bridge player in the world.
Deas sat in a corner of the huge playing room, looking - in her bright red skirt, sweater and hat - like a cardinal among sparrows.
She has earned an astonishing 19,000 master points in competition and has stopped lecturing, preferring instead to occasionally tutor pupils who pay big bucks to become her partner.
It works this way. You are a rich lady who wants to beat your friends at the card game played each Thursday. You phone Deas at her home in Schenectady, N.Y. She agrees to take you on as a bridge partner in a tournament. That way, she can coach you later on your mistakes in play.
When you return to your home, you beat the bejeebus out of your friends at bridge. When your friends ask what has come over your game and why you have taken every trick, you shrug, examine your nails and say: ``Gee, I have no idea. It must be the new glasses.''
Deas said she had been a student at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk a decade earlier but had dropped out because of a car accident. She has been an avid bridge player since high school.
The world's greatest woman player is married to a bridge player. ``We met at a bridge tournament in Raleigh, N.C.,'' she said.
She has six dogs, each named for a bridge term. They are Wish Trick, Finessa, Trumpet, Snag Dragon (a double), Imp (named for a method of scoring) and Part Score.
She's on the road playing in tournaments most of the year.``When I am home, I spend most of my time reading books about bridge,'' she confessed. ``I own a computer. It's possible to play bridge on the Internet with people around the world.''
Most of the people at the tournament are well over 40. Edith McMullen, a regional director for the contract bridge association, said that many of them who are single find husbands and wives at tournaments and just keep playing and playing.
McMullen said that actor Omar Sharif is the best-known bridge player in the world.
On my way out, I found a little old lady with a twinkle in her eye. She puffed on a cigarette while seated on a chair in the hallway, one hand grasping a cane. She had come all the way from Austria to play in the tournament, she said.
``There's a sign on the bulletin board here that says everyone should wear a white ribbon to show that bridge is `fun','' I said. ``Do you know what that means?''
``I don't have a glimmer,'' she replied, dismissing me, my question and a cloud of smoke with a wave of her hand. ``I have to get back to work,'' she added, rising with a grunt, eyes glinting with determination as she shuffled away on her cane. ILLUSTRATION: [Color photo]
CHARLIE MEADS/The Virginian-Pilot
Newport News native Lynn Deas, above, is the best woman bridge
player in the world.
by CNB