davidStern

Interestingly nobody has included Brogeland/Svendsen. Brogeland is World and European Champion and rates very highly in my world rankings and Svendsen played exceptionally well in Yeh Cup and other recent tourneys. My top 10 in order are as follows: 45. Bobby Levin & Steve Weinstein 22. Helgemo & Helness 41. Boye Brogeland & Odin Svendsen 30. Hampson & Rodwell 37. Georgio DuBoin & Guido Ferraro 02. Ton Bakkeren & Huub Bertens 27. Fred Gitelman & Brad Moss 01. Sam Lev & Jacek Pszczola 04. Bjorn Fallenius & Peter Fredin I have in fact rated the whole field to a 100% market and will see how close I am. Regards from Las Vegas - David :P

In an effort to ensure that the event does have BBO could somebody please provide a budget of how much would be required to see it happen and I will see what I can do in terms of sponsorship.

I find this whole discussion fascinating. The WBF admitted that the Sydney WYTC was overmanned with WBF personnel. Their total was WBF Convenor (Gerentopolous) WBF Master of Ceremonies/Protocl (Back) Internet Layout (Fotis) Bulletin Layout (George) Bulletin Editor (Senior) Operations Manager (Ballas) WBF Director (Van Bastenfeldt) Head of Appeals Committee (Gerard) WBF Vice President (Wignall) [And this number was after pleading our ability to provide competent staff thereby reducing the possible numbers they could have sent] Each one of these people cost the event approximately $US2,500 onsite plus I am guessing another $US20,000 in airfares. I am not for one moment suggesting that any of these people did not contribute to the event but the internet layout and bulletin layout could have been done from overseas. I noticed this tidbit from our friend Fotis: I am again 100% with you my friend - I never wanted and never want generally to go to any event at all - my job can be done equally well from home. Alas, you somehow forget the "small" difference in time between the WBF Internet office and Sydney - just something like 8 hours, if I remember well. I am sure you wouldn't mind to live in the nights and sleep in the day, but some of us have a small problem with that. If he doesn't believe that I can take the $US2,000 airfare and $US2,500 onsite costs and ($US450 a day) not come to an arrangement to compensate somebody to work at night in Greece and still have some change - I leave you to judge whether he is stating a genuine opinion or merely defending an indefensible position. Now are we saying have one less WBF person and allocate their cost of around $4,000 towards BBO and promoting the game - you betchya.

Just to set the record straight about BBO and the WYTC in Sydney 2005. If the WBF had their way (read Panos) they would have been perfecty happy for the event to spend $US10,000 or more to provide a Vugraph theatre for the 20-50 spectators who attended the venue Vugraph. We resisted this for cost reasons and went with broadcasting BBO at the venue and had 4 tables going every day and 2 for the finals. The discussion of the internet being down is NONSENSE. The internet collectively was not down for more than 1 hour over a period of 450 Boards or less than 1.5% of the time. Stop defending ANY decision not to provide BBO. The WBF and all people involved with an even like the WYTC have an obligation to market bridge as widely as possible to promote the game, promote interest in the game.