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John Carruthers is one of the best known Canadian players, and as much famous as bridge author and journalist. Today he’s editor of the International Bridge Press Association (IBPA) Bulletin. In the last issue, reserved to IBPA members, between the other things John has dealt with the Cavendish Invitational, and Neapolitan Club has just published his entire article. Laura Camponeschi, co-founder of Neapolitan Club, has then sent to Carruthers some considerations on the matter. It has come along an interesting discussion, and John and Laura have decided to make public their private mails; we therefore publish an excerpt of Laura Camponeschi’s mail – about the Cavendish – and John Carruther’s response.
Laura Camponeschi wrote – Dear John, as usual your editorial is great and I published yesterday on Neapolitan Club. About Cavendish: After the success of 2012 Monaco Cavendish, Mr Jean-Charles Allavena, President of the Monaco Bridge Federation, announced that the World Bridge Production (WBP) will not organize the Cavendish in Las Vegas next year and, therefore, the Principality will be pleased to welcome back the prestigious event.
I love your sense of humor and I think a Macau Cavendish is absolutely fantastic. But I have question. In my mind the Cavendish was a “traditional” event, such as lentils at New Year’s Eve in Italy or the U.S. Thanksgiving turkey. I mean it’s a typical American-style tournament, because its structure is in the form of an auction. All previous editions of the tourney were played in the week leading up the Mother’s Day, which is celebrated in U.S., and in Italy, on the second Sunday of May.
Now they change the location and the date and the format too. I’m not so stupid to underestimate the economic reasons, but I’m wondering why they continue to call it “Cavendish”. There are many invitational and aucion tournaments all over the world: do all of them deserve to be entitled “Cavendish”?
John Carruthres aswered – Hi Laura, Thanks for your kind comments. The Cavendish is named after the bridge club of that name in New York City. They decided to move it from NYC to Las Vegas some years ago due to the regulations on betting in Nevada being easier than those in New York state. It’s one of those things where a trade name becomes the standard and thus becomes the generic name (Coke, Kleenex in America; Hoover in GB, etc.). So when they moved to LV, they kept the name and on to Monaco.
Other events like it have started up and they’ve begun to use ‘Cavendish’ as a generic name to identify the type of event. The event is really not particularly American (or anything else) as it is the only event of its type. (Smaller versions that I know of have been played in India, England and Canada and there are no doubt others.)
In my view, IMP pairs is the bridge event most prone to luck. I use the example of matchpointed pairs. A bottom board there affects at most 4% of your score for a session (1 board out of 24-26). A bad board at IMP pairs scored across the field can negatively affect as much as 25% of your session score. Two adverse slam swings 12-13 IMPs minus instead of plus or vice versa is a huge swing. In a team game, you always have your teammates to save you but the ‘field’ never saves you in IMP pairs.
However, against that view is the fact that Stevie Weinstein has won the Cavendish Pairs 7 times with 2 different partners and come second once with a third partner. He clearly is doing something better than anyone else in that game. He wins at poker too, so perhaps he is simply a great gambler.
I am very surprised that WBP will not run the event in LV again. Perhaps Bob Hamman and his gang are just tired of it. It does take a great effort to run an event like that, and I suspect the reasons are not economic, but logistical. The event basically pays for itself as some portion of the auction proceeds go toward running the event.
It really is a natural for the Chinese, with their increasing emphasis on bridge, and particularly their love of gambling. Macau would be perfect. A Las Vegas-Macau-Monte Carlo rotation would be great.
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November 11, 2012