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TENERIFE

El mejor club de bridge del mundo

Real Casino de Santa Cruz

Viva España

 

Los Cristianos, Arona, Tenerife

ESCUELA DEL SÁBADO

clases / lecciones

GRATIS

para niños españoles de 7 a 10 años

Todos los sábados

desde principios de julio de 2024.

Las lecciones también estarán disponibles durante la semana después de la escuela.

Consulte la página de información para conocer los horarios.

 

LANZAROTE
LANZAROTE

2024 - El gran reto

Encontrar y entrenar un equipo de bridge sub 16 para representar a España en el próximo Campeonato de Europa Juvenil.

Apenas unos meses después de que Luis Lantarón y la presidenta de la AEB, Elena Orbegozo, pusieran en marcha el proyecto IMPULSA, ya cuentan con dos fantásticos récords nacionales:

El 2 de septiembre Luis era entrenador del equipo suizo que ganó por primera vez el Bermuda Bowl.

El 9 de diciembre, Elena y Luis estaban jugando un torneo en Lanzarote donde Vincent, de 10 años, batió el récord del jugador más joven en un gran torneo en España.

 

GREAT NEWS for SPAIN

It is only a few months since the Spanish Impulsa project was launched by Luis Lantaron and Elena Orbegozo, but they already have two wonderful records to celebrate:

On 2 September 2023 Luis was coach of the Swiss team that won the Bermuda Bowl for the first time. 

On 9 December 2023, Elena and Luis were both playing in a 3 day tournament in Lanzarote where 10 year old Vincent shattered the record for the youngest player to ever complete a major tournament in Spain.

The news does not get any better than that. 

 

Good news travels Fast

Look who has sent her congratulations:

The world's highest ranked bridge play

From: Kathrine Bertheau 
Date: Tue, Dec 12, 2023 at 5:55 PM
Subject: Re: Vincent and Markus
To: Trevor Wilson 

Hi Trevor,

Nice to hear about your project.

Regards Kathrine

WBF Women's Ranking 

WBF Masterpoints to November 2023 

 Rank    Name    NBO  MPs  PPs  
 1    Kathrine  Bertheau  Sweden  2538  27  
 2    Emma  Övelius  Sweden  2151  15  
 3    Jessika  Larsson  Sweden  2043  20  
 4    Sanna  Clementsson  Sweden  1848  10.5  
 5    Wen Fei  Wang  China  1726  48.5  
 6    Janice  Seamon  USA  1718  49  
 7    Nevena  Senior  England  1624  31.5  
 8    Kerri  Sanborn  USA  1609  57  
 9    Ida  Gronkvist  Sweden  1600  11.5  
 10    Yan  Liu  China  1597  14.5  

.

Latest News from FRANCE

La VIE est BELLE

Date: 23/9/23

Venue: Ste Esteve, South West France

Event: Tournoi du Roussillon

71 Tables - 284 players

Latest News from FRANCE

Félicitations à Régine, Jean Marc, Patrick et Michel du Club Stéphanois pour avoir organisé un si bel événement.

Une chance pour moi de retrouver mes amis français de l'époque où j'enseignais le bridge dans les écoles françaises. 15 ans après le début de ce projet, il existe un nombre incroyable de 560 clubs de bridge enregistrés dans les écoles en France.

Le superbe dîner dansant m'a donné l'occasion de discuter avec Luc, le directeur du tournoi,  comment atteindre en Espagne le succès que nous avons tous deux connu : Luc était entraineur de l'équipe française des moins de 13 ans en même temps que moi. j'étais le coach de l'équipe thaïlandaise des moins de 13 ans!

 

Club Stéphanois

A few days after the tournament ended, I visited the local club's premises where I was able to personally thank them for their organisation. I was told that, for the 2024 edition of the Tournoi de Roussillon end September, the number of tables will be limited to 80 = 320 players. You therefore need to book your place well in advance if you want to join the party. 

What a great day that was!

Club Stéphanois
Winning Chang Rai under 16 team
Winning Chang Rai under 16 team

At the end of the Thai National under 16 championships, the winners invited some of my (slightly shorter) youngsters competing in the same event to join them for the photo call.

Chang Rai was where the 12 cave boys and their teacher were dramatically rescued in 2018. Some of those boys trapped underground for a week in a flooded cave were bridge players!   

ALL PART of the SERVICE

We are not just a social club here at ACES. We can also...

-Find good, reasonably priced accommodation

-Arrange pick-ups from the airport

-Help solve your mobility problems

-Advise what to do – and not do – on the island

-Offer recommendations re places of interest

-Give guidance on Brexit related problems

That`s what friends are for

IG2 Educational benefits
Boys will be boys

SUPERBOY - SUPER CLOWN - SUPER DUPER KIDS

 

Click on link to see Youtube videos

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Part 1

This young man was in my team chosen to represent Thailand in the world schools (under 14) bridge championships in 2017. Aged 6 years, 3 months, he was already fluent in Russian, Chinese, English and Thai. Here you can see him starting his French test just two weeks after starting to learn that language in preparation for the trip to France. Note the concentration required:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_XZ0DwfBs0

Part 2

Having overcome the initial concentration problem, my star pupil was given the speed test. Trying to break the record for naming all 52 cards in French, he actually managed to do it faster than any of the French adult members of the club! As for the tricky bridge question he was then required to answer at the end of the session, he also passed that test with flying colours. Extraordinary. The more so given that his headmaster confided that he had a concentration problem at school.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_kjmGy4vvY

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The ideal place to teach bridge, chess and a couple of languages: A hypermarket cafeteria!

This was the introuction to the bridge game for mute twin girls (aged 8 but both unable to speak) and their big sister.  They had simply gone shopping with dad. Until, that is, I bumped into them and called up infant reinforcements to help give a totally unplanned lesson. Improvisation can often produce spectacular results as you will see here:.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMF_GNQ8BXA

Puzzled passers-by were able to witness first hand the many educational benefits of learning to play bridge. A game that most had never heard of. 

++++

If you are wondering what happened to the boys who became over excited and had to be banished from the bridge table at the end of the top video, you will find the answer here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bf6t_VzEVo

Developing an impressive speed of thought is yet another advantage of playing both chess and bridge in the case of these youngsters.   

Learning and teaching bridge & chess should always be fun. Like shopping for groceries!!!

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SOCIAL INTERACTION & STUDYING

 

INTERGENERATIONAL

can be 

SONS & MUM

Good news travels fast and far it seems. No sooner had this site been set up than I was summoned to a dining room 30km from base camp in Fuengirola. To give a German family their first bridge lesson.

The three knew nothing about bridge whatsoever. Nor did the Polish friend who had invited them for their first visit to southern Spain. Agi had however heard that her country won the Bridge World Championships in 2015 - and that the game is now taught in Polish schools to children from the age of 8. They were curious to know why that could be.

The lesson lasted a total of just 20 minutes. Long enough nevertheless to not only illustrate many of the educational benefits, but also the social benefits as the different age groups interact and help each other to complete the challenge in a makeshift classroom.

A video of the lesson and more photos will be added to this page shortly.

Trevor 12/2/19

 

 

 

German lesson
German lesson

Improvements in

Concentration, confidence and discipline

are just three of the benefits to look out for when watching the video of the lesson.

 

But also improvements in logical reasoning and speed of solving mathematical equations. And somewhat unusually in this case, improvement in language skills: Ben had only started learning English at school just after his 8th birthday five months ago 

 

Understandably nervous but excited at the start of a lesson in an alien language, Ben soon settles into the right concentration mode as the photo shows. Able then to benefit on all counts from that short lesson. Starting in German but, towards the end after he had got used to the new foreign bridge words, conducted almost entirely in English.

 

 

Playing their 1st hand
Playing their 1st hand

It is often a good idea to get complete beginners to play this hand as soon as they start learning. In order to illustrate the fact that bridge is a game of skill. As opposed to other card games where success is largely dependent on the cards you are dealt.

This particular hand demonstrates how a pair can win all thirteen tricks with only five points between them. Bizarre that millions of experienced players do not know that is possible. Especially when 21 year old Tim can actually perform the feat after just 20 minutes of learning about the game!!!

For the curious who are sceptical of the fact that a pair can conceivably win thirteen tricks when one of the opponents holds THIRTY TWO points, the hand will be reproduced at the bottom of this page.

 

 

 

 

Although Mum and 8 year old Ben performed brilliantly, big brother was the star of the show. A short lesson was all that the young man needed to be able to go back to Berlin and teach his other brother and father the beauty of bridge! And that is precisely what he intends doing.

But before he got home, he was going to get Agi plus his young brother and mother to practise how to make those 13 tricks with five points. In the airport departure lounge!!!

Teachers might like to note that fact when reading the article on the “Pyramid” system explained on the Teaching techniques page. This case study provides an excellent example** of how that system works to bridge the gap when there are too many students and not enough qualified teachers.  

Well done Tim? The new pupil turned teacher who probably learned a lot about his own (hitherto unknown) qualities and skills that day. Which in turn, along with Ben`s sudden interest in the game, was almost certainly another nice surprise for Mum.

+++

FOOTNOTE

** Yet another good example of the effectiveness of my Pyramid system of teaching is the Youtube cafeteria lesson shown via the link at the top of this page. You will see there how a ten year old living 200 metres away and called in to help, is able to take over the teaching when she arrives. Watch again and see how she tunes in immediately to the speed of learning of her new 9 year old pupils. Without any advice or help from me. Yet she had never previously met them - and two of her pupils were unable to talk. 

On this occasion she was only teaching the correct pronunciation of Thai, but she was equally adept at teaching bridge basics up to and including Jacoby etc. So whenever she and her equally gifted sister (aged 11) came, I was able to go and have a cup of tea whilst they finished the lesson.

I was able to hand over the reins even when I was teaching the adults the Jacoby transfers at the club. And they did it far better than me. That`s because I don`t have their patience when it comes to teaching adults who, as we all know only too well, invariably have a concentration problem. Like me nowadays.

Trevor 6/3/19

BRIDGE for all GENERATIONS

 

Intergenerational

means

FOUR to ONE HUNDRED and FOUR

I am not joking

 

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At one end of the age scale, in the video (part 3 at top of this page) we see the

educational benefits of bridge for a 6 year old player

A little lad who started playing chess and bridge at the age of FOUR

 

and at the other end, you can read on the next page (IG health benefits) about a doyenne of bridge, Madeleine, who was 

still learning about life playing at 104 years of age!.  

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MIRACLES do HAPPEN

 

BRIDGE MIRACLES

If you have digested the entire contents of this page and noted my comments regarding child teachers in the footnote, you will  enjoy looking for a second time at the impromptu hypermarket lesson. 

This time in the knowledge that, by the end of the following week, those lovely twin girls

WERE ABLE to TALK 

to their teachers

Their teachers being the supergirl who took over my lesson that day, and her super supportive sister who was by her side as she gave it.

 

Explanation: the twins (living in Surrey) suffer from an impairment that I had never previously come across. They can speak normally with the family at home, but find it impossible to speak to anyone they don`t know extremely well. I have never heard them talk. Not one word. Which means....

Their teachers deserve medals for performing the cure in record time

after starting the course of treatment at the bridge and chess tables

in a Bophut hypermarket cafeteria

+++++++++++++

Not wanting to take the gloss of that story, it could not be classed as a miracle due to the fact that there is clearly a rational explanation. However, in my thinking, the final bridge story I am about to tell is a miracle. To this day, I have heard no rational explanation of how I came back from the dead.

In fact it was the one and only time in my life when I actually said to myself "That`s it. That`s the end. Goodbye...." before starting to recite the names of all the people dear to me. I hadn`t got far down that list before losing consciousness. In the sea, in the pitch dark, unable to shout for help any more. 

The next thing I remember as I recovered consciousness lying on my back, was genuinely thinking I was in the after life. Until someone kneeling by my head said "Did you not see the Red Flag?" If I had not had an oxygen mask on and if I had my wits about me, I would have said something like " I suffer from colour blindness when I go for a twilight dip".

I remembered I had gone for a swim whilst waiting for the others to arrive for St Tropez bridge club`s annual dinner and dance at the restaurant on Pampellone beach.

The first miracle is that I lived to tell the tale, The second is that, the following day I was able to go with the other members of my St Tropez bridge team to play the regional finals of the Interclub comperition in Aix on Provence. Not only that, I played my best ever bridge for the two days and we qualified for the final in Paris a fortnight later. 

I am not going to tell the whole story myself. Instead I am going to wait for one of the 80 plus bridge players at St Tropez to come forward and tell their version of what happened in the middle. How and why I came back to join the bridge party and prizegiving at 11PM. In only my hospital gown!  

In the meantime I would say that the only explanation I can think of was that Buddha must have sorted it.  I say that because my next outing after the weekend in Aix was to have a chat with a delightful lady* affectionately called "Vitamin". She ran a restaurant in the Port at St. Trop. When I told her the story,  she suggested I go to Thailand to teach the kids bridge whilst I recover from the shock. Buddha will look after you, she said. So that`s what I did. To show the Thais the educational beneifts of bridge.  

Trevor 7/3/19

*Vitamin asked me to bring her back a present. I won`t tell you just yet what the present was that I bought in a Temple out there. The clue is that every Thai person knows which day of the week they were born  - and I was required to tell the monk her birth day (as opposed to her birth date) to get it.