joe_costa

A couple of people earlier in this thread asked for a translation of the interview with Maria Teresa Lavazza. There is a translation on rec.games.bridge: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.b...ca888819f48e5b2 Copy/pasted it here for ease of reference: Maria Teresa Lavazza: "In Shanghai I started to think it was time to make some changes. The Italian team needed a jolt. Something that would bring back that hunger for winning that has always been characteristic of the Blue Team (...) Aside from the bitterness about the bad result in Shanghai, I noticed from the start of the tournament a certain atmosphere within the team. My impression was that our players, some more, some less, had started to think that all they had to do, in order to beat anybody, was just to sit down at the bridge table. A little bit of self confidence doesn't hurt, but complacency can be really harmful (...)" "If changes had to be made I couldn't go about it without including in the team a player that, according to all the other members of the team, is truly great. I am talking, of course, about Antonio Sementa (...)" "At the same time Bocchi and Duboin told me they wanted to terminate their partnership. As I was already looking to include Sementa, I thought too much change could be destabilizing (...) So I have asked Bocchi and Duboin to play one last time as a partnership for the Italian team. Both agreed fully (...)" Interviewer: "So I guess that if you didn't want to exclude Lauria- Versace and include Sementa, you had to sacrifice Fantoni-Nunes" "I don't like the word 'sacrifice'. It's true: I never considered excluding Lauria-Versace. Apart from anything else, Lauria is like a great wine: the more he ages the better he is. I will always call him to the national team, as long as he is available (...)" "Fantoni and Nunes have contributed a lot to the national team in the past and I am sure they will continue to do so in the future" Interviewer:"Why did you choose Angelini? He hasn't played with Sementa for over a year." "True. But before that they had played together for over 10 years. Between 1998 and 2006 they won a Rosenblum, a European Championship, four Champions Cups, and an infinite numbers of Italian Championships and Coppa Italias (...)" "Angelini joins the team for these European Championships in recognition of his great passion and dedication to bridge. After all, equal to mine. To be even clearer, I deny in the most absolute terms that his joining the team has brought any financial rewards to the Italian bridge federation (...)"

Hi, I am an expert player (by BBO standards; Adv+ by OKBridge standard: my IMP Lehman on OKB is 57) and I am looking for a 2/1 player at similar skill level with time to invest, if we seem to click after a few trial sessions, in a serious partnership. I mean lots of playing, of course, but also discussing agreements in depth, practice bidding, possibly play in off line tournaments, etc. I like IMPs and a focus on getting better, while I don't care much about winning postmortems or scoring ego points. Please email me if you are interested.