North Tahoe Bridge Club

Welcome to the North Tahoe Bridge Club. Lake Tahoe is a great place to play bridge. We are, at present, the only ACBL sanctioned club at North Lake Tahoe. We welcome all players, members and non-members, young and old, beginners or Life Masters. So, come and join us, play bridge and earn masterpoints at the same time.

Bidding with Bob!

Bob Sendall has posted his “Table of Contents” for the entire 2009 season of “Bidding with Bob!” You can access each article individually by clicking on the article number in the table of contents. Each article is displayed in .PDF format so you must have Adobe Reader installed on you computer to read it.

Bob will be back next year (beginning in May) with a whole new series of articles for the 2010 season.

Youth Bridge/Tahoe Program Revived!

Regina Straver and Julie Ginocchio of the N. Lake Tahoe Bridge Club (back/left) gives a check to John Hassenplug (right) of the Boys & Girls Club of N. Lake Tahoe to help fund the new Youth Bridge/Tahoe Program for 2010.

Study shows-that students who learn and play contract bridge do better on standardized tests for math, science, reading and social studies. Researcher Dr. Christopher Shaw of Carlinville, Illinois did a study of comparable students in the 5th grade through the 8th grade. He separated the students into two groups, one that was taught how to play bridge and the other that was not. Each year the students took the Iowa standardized tests for the four subjects. The results showed that the group that learned to play bridge did progressively better on the standardized Iowa tests than those who did not. The degree of difference increased every year.

These results were astonishing. By the third year comparisons showed that those that played bridge scored 20-40% better than those that did not. This astounding record was explained by Dr. Shaw when he said that bridge players gained skills in inferential reasoning, a skill that cannot be taught but is learned when playing bridge.

The N. Tahoe Bridge Club (NTBC) is happy to announce their new Youth Bridge/Tahoe program for 2010. After our first attempt to develop a Youth Bridge program (with the Washoe County School system) was unsuccessful due to scheduling conflicts, the NTBC was able to sign an agreement with the Boys & Girls Club of N. Lake Tahoe. Setting up and organizing the program is scheduled to begin in early spring of 2010. By summer it should be in full operation. Team competition, between Reno (Reno Youth Bridge) and Tahoe will be determined by the progress our program achieves. The program will be administered and directed by Julie Ginocchio.

Julie brings a wealth of experience to the program. She has over 20 years of teaching experience in the pu Julie Ginocchio blic schools. She is also one of the very few Silver Life Masters in the club with over 1200 master points. We could not have found a finer, more qualified director. Julie will determine any assistants needed (TA’s, etc), materials needed, teaching methods and student qualifications for the program. She will work closely with both the Boys & Girls Club and the NTBC to assure the success of this program.

The program will be located and administered at the Boys & Girls Club in Kings Beach, CA., and will be free to the students accepted. All questions about the programs operations should be directed to Julie Ginocchio. All questions about the Boys & Girls Club involvement in this program should be directed to Mindy Carbajal, Unit/Program Director for the B&G Club of N. Lake Tahoe, located in Kings Beach, CA.

The NTBC will be adding a section to this web site dedicated to the Youth Bridge/Tahoe program. On that page all updates and progress will be reported. The page will be entitled “Youth Bridge/Tahoe”. Please check back for further additions to this announcement as we continue to go forward with this much anticipated project.

Weather 1 Predicting the weather is hard, often inaccurate, but all we have to go on is the weather reports. Our main concern is the safety of our players on the road (some of whom are senior citizens that do not live in the Tahoe basin). Please, don’t forget to check the Club Page for any game cancellations before setting out to play.

It’s Getting To Look A Lot Like Winter...

Holding winter games for this year was an experiment for the club. It was an experiment that has not been successful. Because of weather, road conditions, flu or other reasons, games have had to be continually cancelled.

The club will go back to it’s previous policy of not holding winter games. There will be no games in February nor March. We will try to hold our next game of the season the first week in April (4/6/10) if we get enough sign ups, otherwise we will try for the last week in May (our usual start date).

You can sign up for the April games at any time, up to three weeks in advance.