“The secret to winning a world championship is great teammates, a good partnership, and good team spirit.”
Kitty Munson Cooper is a bridge blogger, genetic genealogist and world-champion bridge player. She has won eight North American Bridge Championships and the Venice Cup in 1989. She currently lives in San Diego, CA. Today we talked about her background, the secret to winning world championships, sexism in bridge, and more.
Kitty has won NABCs with two different husbands. Playing with someone close to you is a different feeling; they see what you don’t see, and you see what they don’t see.
[18.26] 1987 – forcing her way onto the British ladies’ team in the 1987 European championships.
[23.11] The dream team – winning a world championship with the help of a good partnership between teammates.
[27.35] The keys – Willing to play up, having a good partnership, and having the killer instinct are the keys to having success in open bridge for women.
[35.50] Stories about playing with the great players in the old days.
[42.02] Teaching bridge – talks about how satisfying it can be to teach kids bridge and designing a beginner curriculum.
[47.03] The 70s – walks us through the story of meeting her late husband in the 70s, then re-meeting and marrying him in 2000.
[51.49] Thoughts on what makes a serious partnership.
[57.39] Playing with your spouse – the difficulty of playing bridge when emotions get involved.
Resources
Connect with Kitty
LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/kittycooper/
Website - openskywebdesign.com/
Twitter - twitter.com/openskyweb
John McAllister: I am here with Kitty Cooper. You’re a Venice Cup champion, you’ve won North American titles …
Kitty Cooper: Eight of them. Three of them open events. That’s the North American Swiss, the three-day Swiss, I’ve won that three times.
John McAllister: Is that the one in the fall or summer?
Kitty Cooper: It’s the one underneath the Reisinger. It used to be most of the good players were in the Reisinger. The three times I won it there were some pro teams, now it’s gotten really hard to win, but I have won it three times: three different teams, three different partners, two different husbands.
John McAllister: Is Munson your maiden name?
Kitty Cooper: Munson is my maiden name. I’m half Norwegian, my father was Norwegian-American. He was born here but his dad was born in Kristiansand. I even have at least five words of Norwegian. My mother was German, half-Jewish, and lucky for her, her mother said to her husband, the Jewish doctor, “I don’t want to raise my daughters in this environment, we’re taking that offer for you to teach in Boston.” Because he didn’t want to leave, he said, “oh, it’ll blow over.” So I have both the Scandinavian genes and the Jewish genes which are very helpful at being a good bridge player.
I’ve also got tons of seconds and I think for me, one of the major things was I actually got to the Round of 8 in the Rosenblum on a pro team and I was the only girl, of course, in the event at that point.
John McAllister: You mean you were like on a pro team in like there was a sponsor playing on the team?
Kitty Cooper: That’s right. I actually got hired to play on an open team. A guy named Bob Binsky– his girlfriend was a big fan of my game – and I was playing with a guy named Larry Mori for about 10 years trying to break into open bridge. See, my ambition was to win a world championship, but once I did that, it was like, what now? And women’s bridge was a cesspool back then. I mean, I could tell you some hair-raising stories about switching partners three times on some of these teams. It’s so much better now, I think.
John McAllister: So, let’s go back to the start. I was at a wedding in Virginia, where I live, this summer, and I ran into a woman named Elsie Thompson, who I know.
Kitty Cooper: You’re kidding! Elsie – she was my best friend in second grade.
John McAllister: I told her that I love bridge and she said, “I have a great friend who is a bridge player,” and that was you. So, I said I’m going to mention that in Phoenix, and we played in the same event.
Kitty Cooper: Yeah, I’m sorry. You caught me at a bad time, and I did come up and apologize later.
John McAllister: Right. We played the same event, the Mixed Swiss, the last two days, and your team came in second and my team came in fourth and that’s where this conversation, like the idea for me to invite you to be on my podcast, happened. You gave me your number – I don’t mean you just gave me your number …
Kitty Cooper: I thought you were cute, actually.
John McAllister: And so here we are.
Kitty Cooper: I thought you were interesting, because by then I’d learned about these podcasts and the movie and what you were doing to publicize bridge and that’s near and dear to my heart, to publicize bridge, because I’m really worried that our game is going to go away. And I don’t like that.
John McAllister: Actually, at the tournament in Phoenix, I felt it the most that I’ve ever really felt it. I won my first event there and I was sort of like, there are not even that many people here. If the attrition has really started, I feel like we’ve kind of gone over the cliff. In Reno, for example, there were 46 teams playing in the Vanderbilt, which is the premier event of the Reno tournament. When I played my first Vanderbilt in Memphis in 2012, there were maybe twice as many teams.
Kitty Cooper: I remember a Spingold with 144 teams, but that was before, I mean, some of that is the ACBL’s doing – having the mini-Spingold and all these lesser events running at the same time. There didn’t used to be four different national events you could enter on the same day.
And now the other reason I think it’s small is older people are much more careful about not getting COVID because it can kill us. For the most part, in my age bracket in the 70s, most of my friends seem to shake it off when they get it because we’re multiply vaxxed and it’s just a mild flu, but it isn’t worth risking death to go play bridge! You young people, you’re going to be fine, but Bob Hammond spent like eight months or something in the hospital – that was insane. It’s scary and we didn’t think he’d make it. So, I think that’s some of it and some of it’s also that some of them have died.
John McAllister: The more I did research, the more I learned about you in the process of preparing for this interview. I got excited because not only have you had a lot of success as a player, but you’ve also been married to multiple bridge players with whom you’ve won open events with.
Kitty Cooper: All true.
John McAllister: And so, my question to you, I know that you lost your husband, Steve, in March of last year … or 2021 …
Kitty Cooper: Two years. We’re coming up on the second anniversary.
John McAllister: And I never met Henry Bethe, and I know they’re both pretty good players.
Kitty Cooper: Well, Henry was a great expert. Steve gave up the game for 20 years, I mean, he was a good player, his card-play was terrific, but his bidding was antediluvian, so I mean, it was really fun to teach him modern bidding. Henry, he won the Life Master Men’s Pairs with (John) Solodar; he was considered a really great player, except he was not that good under pressure, so he didn’t have many team games to his credit. But he was a wonderful analyst, he wrote for Bridge World; back then, everybody knew who he was. See, what happened was, he taught me to play. I already knew how to play, but he taught me how to bid, he taught me more about how to play, and then one day he turned around and he’s on this airplane and talking to this guy going to the nationals and they introduced themselves to each other and the guy says, “Oh yeah, you’re Kitty’s husband.”
John McAllister: He didn’t like that.
Kitty Cooper: This was not good for him because he was the son of a Nobel Prize winner, so he had gone through life being his father’s son, and to become his wife’s husband, that just did not work for him. That was just crushing for him. So, then we had a Grand National team coming up and I’m looking at him and I’m saying, “Sweetheart, we can’t keep everybody waiting. I can play on this team with Karen, or on that team with you, and I don’t care which team I play on, but we can’t keep everybody waiting.” And he looks at me and he says, “It’s really hard for me to accept that you’re my best option.” That was a marriage killer.
John McAllister: Wow.
Kitty Cooper: Maybe if I’d have said to myself, “Gee, if I’d been somebody’s Pygmalion, I would be thrilled if they got to be better than me.” And it’s true, my dear husband Steve got to the point where he thought he was better than me and that was fine, I mean, fine. There’s such an ego thing with men! I think that’s a part of why there are more men at the top than women: they’re just better at aggressively asking other good players to play, they’ve played team sports in high school, they’re better at being team players. A lot of it is socialization. Anyway, I digress, but it was hard playing with my husband until I learned to say, “yes, dear.” And he had this wonderful T-shirt that had ‘yes, dear’ on it, which I got him one Christmas, and I referred to that as my cue card.
John McAllister: (laughter)
Kitty Cooper: He was a fine player; he was a wonderful player, but he loved to just slash and dash in the bidding. Science was not his thing. One time he’s playing with Robb Gordon who wanted to play this transfer over one club thing.
John McAllister: Was this Henry or Steve?
Kitty Cooper: Steve. Henry had a super memory, super analyst – he just didn’t have the right temperament to make it to the very top. I mean, to be a top player you have to be really good under pressure, you have to not feel it, or at least be able to deal with it. The national I won with Henry, the last match, we were in second and we really didn’t have much chance to win. It seemed we were playing the people who were leading and we just had this dream match at my table. Most of the decisions were in my seat, so that was good. And then our teammates came back and said, “we had a great set,” and I said, “so did we.” We were playing with the Truscotts. I don’t know if you’re too young to have known who Alan Truscott was, or Dorothy Truscott, but Dorothy was one of my heroes. She’s one of the few women who played in the open trials. She played with B.J. Becker in her day, and she had a marvelous temperament and a marvelous way of being and I really admired her, and I tried to model myself a little on that and even when she was old she played pretty well. We had her for our captain when we went to the Venice Cup and won it. She and Alan were Henry and my good couple-friends – we used to summer with them up in the Adirondacks and so we were just like a social team and – whoa – we won. But I really like the Truscotts. Alan was so funny! I mean, he could turn a pun. He invented this home team game where we’d all sit down and it was an individual and you could announce what your bid was, so you could say, “I’m opening a Roman two diamonds.” And so, you didn’t have to know your system and it was really fun and we still do that to some extent although not the crazy bits in the home team games at Lynn’s house here in San Diego.
The other person I really admired was Edgar. I don’t know if you ever knew Edgar Kaplan, but he was utterly amazing. If it weren’t for Edgar, I wouldn’t be a world champion. Why is that? I had played for Britain. Henry’s job took us to England and there wasn’t a lot of choices there. My company was willing to transfer me, but he said because he was making so much money and his company was paying for the house and the education, we didn’t need the $0.10 on the dollar that I would have for my salary so I said, “OK. I’ll play rubber bridge.” And in all honesty, if you wanna become a player, a really good player, you must play full time for at least a year of your life. Better two or three. And that’s what happened. A friend of mine recently said, “You went to England, and you came back a player.” But it’s because I was stuck, I had nothing better to do than play rubber bridge. Zia occasionally slummed and played in my game; he taught me a few sharp lessons, one of which I applied in a mixed pairs I won. He rushed with the queen of trump so I knew I could come back to my hand ruffing because he was out of trump now, right? And now he ruffed with the deuce. So, I’m playing this mixed pairs, dummy has A–Q–J–fifth of spades, which is trump, and I had K–10–third and declarer had taken the hook so I was known to have the king and he ruffed something from dummy which I can ruff so I ruffed with the king! Now the king and the 10 were equal to his trumps in his hand, and he thought he could ruff another one! So, I credit Zia with that win. Such a cool false card!
I played with and against Victor Mollo, Jeremy Flint, all the old greats in England. I thought I was a good player, but I think I was just a card rack. I always had good cards; I was surprised if I didn’t have an opening bid. So, I was a steady winner in this game.
John McAllister: What about Reese? Terence Reese?
Kitty Cooper: Yeah, boy. He didn’t play in my rubber bridge game; he was pretty old and retired although I played on a team with Boris Shapiro while I was there that David Burns set up. Reese would come to the meetings of the administration and rail about screens. I mean, he would just go on about how terrible screens were for journalists, and I always felt like saying, “And aren’t they terrible for cheating, dear?” But I never said that. I knew Boris and his wife, but I didn’t particularly know Reese, he only turned up to these meetings to complain. It was a hard sell, letting me play for Britain, you know, but they had these trials – the Paris trials – for the women, and my partner was also American, a lady named Eliza Shaw, but she was a permanent resident whereas I was a few-years resident. She was also a rubber bridge player and so we won that trials but that didn’t mean anything because, what it was, they watched you play, and I could just see the guy who was watching me flinch when I under-led ace-king-queen-fifth to try to get a ruff against a slam. Dummy had jack-third, the idiot declarer played low, my partner won the 10 and I got my ruff, but it’s like – you’re showing off for the selectors … it’s not real. Winning doesn’t mean anything.
John McAllister: What was the postmortem on that hand, were they congratulatory about that or did they bring it up?
Kitty Cooper: “You idiot! How could you underlead the ace-king-queen? You idiot! How could they not play the jack?”
John McAllister: That’s pretty sexy.
Kitty Cooper: Yeah, wasn’t that sexy?
John McAllister: Absolutely.
Kitty Cooper: Very sexy play. So, what they did is they created a squad of like I think six pairs that they were considering. The British ladies team had two pairs that were marvelous: Sandra Landy playing with Sally Horton, one of the best female pairs in the world at the time, and Nicola Gardner Smith, one of the best players in the world at the time playing with Pat Davies and they’d already won, I think, two World Championships for England but they kept looking for a new third pair and I think it was kind of a hard sell that the new third pair would be American but we were just so much better than the other pairs. So, what they did to finally decide among these pairs was they took the other three best pairs and put them on a team together to play in the common market championships. Now, how’s that going to work? These three pairs are competing with each other! Are they gonna be good teammates? No! They sent me and Liza to go play in the mixed teams and I was playing with Barry Rigal, who I had a partnership with at the time, and she was playing with Peter Chernksi (sp?), who was Barry’s regular partner, so we went to some warm-up event in the Netherlands, and we won that and won a lot of money and that was fun. We were counting our money on the train and we won the mixed teams and they finished like 9th. So, what could the selectors do? But do you know, when I stood on the stage to get my medal, they played “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.” Who knew that was the same tune as “God Save the Queen”? Did you know that? I didn’t know that. It was kind of a shock.
John McAllister: So, you won the Venice Cup on an American team, right?
Kitty Cooper: Yes. And that was the problem. We played on the British ladies’ team in the 1987 European Championships. In those days, only the top two teams qualified and we finished third, so we didn’t qualify.
John McAllister: You played on those English teams with Nicola and Sandra Landy and …
Kitty Cooper: Right, and me and Liza were the third pair, which is called “the third pair,” and we, oh, gosh, that’s another horrible story. With three days to go, or with 2 1/2 days to go, our captain came to me and said, “OK, the lead pairs are rested enough. You’re out for the rest of the event.” Now how do you think that made me feel? So, we went out to dinner, and I think I had an entire bottle of wine, and we’re sitting there in the window of this lovely little restaurant, drinking wine and having a wonderful time and along comes our coach, Gus Calderwood, rapping on the window. “Pat Davies has a migraine, you have to play.” I just drunk almost an entire bottle of wine; this was not a good idea! And we were playing Iceland, we needed to – now I know Iceland has good players now, but back then they were – we needed the blitz to stay involved in the event. And there I was, I was going to have to play! I was very drunk! I was! And I made several doubles I probably wouldn’t have made sober. Fortunately, they all resulted in plus scores, but it was, I was kind of loose. I had two women, one of them was Boris Shapiro’s wife, on each side of me holding me upright in my seat, and coffees were being delivered to my table the whole time as I’m trying to play bridge. Now, it might have made more sense for Nicola to have played with Liza considering the condition I was in, but we actually did OK. But it was scary, and I’ve never gone out drinking assuming I wouldn’t play again, because you never know what might happen. It was a rude shock, I don’t think I played my best, but I don’t remember. I just remember saying, double and double and double, and most of those numbers were good, some of them were not as good as 620, but we’re rubber bridge players, we like numbers!
John McAllister: So, let’s zoom out a little bit. You do have a dog there, what kind of dog do you have?
Kitty Cooper: A mutt. Oh, I forgot to say: That’s why I wasn’t eligible to play for my own country.
John McAllister: Because of the dog?
Kitty Cooper: The rules back then were 2 1/2 years between playing. Because I played the summer of ‘87 for Britain, I could not play in the fall of ‘89 for the USA, by the letter of the law.
John McAllister: But you won the Venice Cup in 1989, didn’t you?
Kitty Cooper: Yes, because Edgar Kaplan knew all the people to [talk to] and he said, “Don’t ever tell I did this.” Of course, now that he’s gone, I can tell. I mean, he wrote, he called, he really went to bat for me. I mean, wow. Because the second-place team – we qualified in the last event; in those days, only four teams qualified for the trials. My friend Karen, Karen McCallum’s been my best friend on and off for like 40 years, maybe 50, anyway and she was my first serious partner and that was going to be her – she was playing her first tournament with Kerry and she was really nervous about it, so she asked me if Margie and I – my regular partner Margie Gwozdzinsky –would team up with them for the women’s Swiss and we did and we won it, so now we were eligible for the trials, except we weren’t because I wasn’t eligible.
John McAllister: And when was when did you win the Swiss?
Kitty Cooper: It was the spring nationals. They used to have a women’s Swiss at the spring nationals. I’m pretty sure it was the spring. I didn’t have a lot of time, so we had to appeal to the executive committee and it was all very exciting
John McAllister: Of the WBF?
Kitty Cooper: Of the WBF. So, the ACBL said, “Oh, it’s not our jurisdiction.” So we had to appeal to the WBF and we won on appeal and I think then the second place team tried to sue the ACBL, which is a tactic that often works, but somehow we were still allowed to play.
John McAllister: Because it was only USA1 at that time?
Kitty Cooper: Only USA1. And so, I think Kerry was at the Southeasterns and Lynn Deas and Beth Palmer were there, and she said, “Well, it looks like we’re going to get to play the trials.” And they weren’t on one of the other three teams, so, “Do you want to join our team?” And they said, “Sure.” And the secret to winning a world championship, John: great teammates! And a good partnership and good team spirit. Everybody has to really be rooting for each other, right? I mean, not competing with each other, but, “Oh, I would have done that same dumb thing.” Just sympathetic and caring. This was just the most wonderful team; it was a dream team. I was very lucky that that all happened.
But there I was, 39 years old, and my ambition in bridge was achieved. So what was I going to do? And women’s bridge was a cesspool back then. The backbiting, the stuff that went on behind the scenes. I was on a team in 1995 where we changed partnerships three times.
John McAllister: In the course of an event?
Kitty Cooper: No, in the course of the team qualifying for the trials. We played the women’s knockout and afterwards Karen said, “I’m not playing another board with that woman.” That was Carol Simon, and I was playing with Sue Picus, so we re-lined up and I think they played with Roseanne in another event so we had to all be a team to qualify for the trials, the way it worked. So I said, “Fine, I’ll play with Carol.” No, I think I played with Karen next. I played with Karen. Carol played with Sue Picus and Judi Radin joined our team to play with Roseanne because she didn’t want Kathy Wei’s team to win the trials. It was going to be in China, and I really wanted to go to China. That was the first time I played women’s bridge again because I really wanted to go to China. I had totally quit cold turkey playing women’s, because I was gonna succeed in open bridge. Well … that didn’t quite happen. I mean, I had small successes but no majors, and then after the trials I said, “I can’t play another board with that woman!”
Now what happened then, Judi dropped off the team because she didn’t want to go to China – she was afraid Kathy would have her murdered or something. Really the reason she played was to keep Kathy from winning, that’s all that mattered.
John McAllister: Why would she have such a, why would she have such a …
Kitty Cooper: They had not parted on amicable terms.
John McAllister: They used to play together.
Kitty Cooper: There was an article … Oh yeah, Judi was her pro and there was an article that insinuated there was more to their relationship – that there was a prenup – I mean, it was really, it was not good publicity for bridge. And a lot of anger between the two of them, so naturally, the team wanted to replace Judi with Kerry …
John McAllister: Sanborn.
Kitty Cooper: Yeah, because she had a partnership with Karen. And Karen wasn’t sure she wanted to do that, she wanted to play with Lynn Deas, who she’d never played with. We just said, “No! You have a partnership with Kerry.” And so, she played with Kerry, and we re-lined up yet again. But all these partnership changes – that is not good for a team – and we only finished second. We lost to the Germans in the final. Part of that was because Karen had pneumonia, and we didn’t know that. She got really sick and so she hardly played. That was our lead pair, really, and to have her sick, that wasn’t a good thing.
John McAllister: Was Sabine on the German team?
Kitty Cooper: Yes. I played against her.
John McAllister: She’s had a lot of success in open bridge.
Kitty Cooper: I first met her in Australia. There was this famous hand where they played like in a doubled cuebid and lost in the semis, but they were like children then. I got to know them a little, and then in China they played really, really well.
I think one of the keys to having success in open bridge as a woman is being (A) willing to play open bridge, (B) having a good partnership, (C) having the killer instinct. It’s a way of being that women are not trained into, we’re not socialized to be winning bridge players, in my opinion. That’s just my opinion.
John McAllister: It’s interesting, because I was talking to somebody recently about finishing fourth in the Mixed Swiss and I was saying that, because half the field is women, that it levels the playing field. I was explaining to that person that the best pairs, generally speaking, in bridge are male partnerships with other males. Like, those are the strongest pairs, generally speaking. The person was asking me why that is, and I couldn’t really articulate it in a way, but I know it’s true. I know that it’s hard to say without disparaging women, so I appreciate what you’re saying.
Kitty Cooper: One of the reasons is because the other the top players – before everything became pro – they wouldn’t play with a mixed pair on their team. Back when Kerry and Barry Crane were one of the best pairs in the country, they couldn’t get good teammates. I mean, there’s incredible sexism in bridge.
And now that everybody’s playing pro, if the client doesn’t think that having a mixed is a good idea, you’re out of luck. I mean, the pro team that I played on, I was in luck because Binsky’s girlfriend at the time thought the world of my game and so convinced him to hire me and Larry. We were one finesse away from getting into the semis, getting a medal.
John McAllister: So, in some sense, it really is the lack of opportunity. Women haven’t had the same opportunity, like, not even close to the same opportunities as men in terms of getting to play with and against the best players.
Kitty Cooper: Yes and no. I mean, we have opportunities to play with the best players, but they’re usually fleeting. In the old days, the Master Mixed Teams were the first weekend and I’ve played with some of the very best. I remember one time when Henry, my first husband, told me last minute he couldn’t make it for the Friday start, and I’m wandering around moping and then Bob Rosen says to me, “Would you be willing to play with Meckstroth and not get paid? You only play the evening sessions.” And so I said, “I think I could manage that.” So Meckstroth, I mean, he paid me with his time. He went through my card with Margie, that was 1989, the year that I won the Venice Cup and I was playing the summer nationals in Chicago and he went through my card with Margie. He made a few little adjustments and he loved the fact that Margie and I played a three-diamond response to Jacoby – in other words if it’s one of a major, 2NT Jacoby; three diamonds took control and it was an immediate key card Blackwood, after which you could make asking bids and he thought that was cool. He said, “Well, Eric and I play something similar.” The third board out, he opened one spade, I bid 2NT, he bid three diamonds. 15 asking bids later, he was able to bid 7NT and win the board; the other table played in seven spades. I was really impressed.
John McAllister: Which didn’t make?
Kitty Cooper: Oh, it was cold; they were both cold, but it’s board-a-match. So, I was really impressed. Then the next night, about halfway through, he said, “Gee, you played a whole lot better last night.” And I said, “Last night our teammates had a nine and I wanted another session with you.”
John McAllister: Wait, what do you mean, last time our teammates had a nine? What do you mean?
Kitty Cooper: The first day they had nine in the afternoon, this is a board-a-match qualifying, so they had nine in the afternoon, so we piled on I think 20 or whatever, I mean Jeff and I were just fabulous, mainly Jeff. I just sat there with my catcher’s mitt and did all the things I was supposed to do. But the second night, they had a 12 so now they’re really hopeful we’ll do well in this event the second day, but I wasn’t as good.
John McAllister: I know, what was, “I didn’t want another session with you”?
Kitty Cooper: No, I wanted another session. He said in the middle, I think he was trying to get me to play better in the middle of the second session. Remember, I’m only playing the evening session with him. The client plays the afternoon with him and he said, “You played a lot better last night.” And I said, “Yeah, I wanted to play with you again.”
John McAllister: Oh, I see. I see, got it now.
Kitty Cooper: So back when the Master Mixed Teams was either the first or the last weekend, I got to play with some of the greatest players in the world. I played with Helgemo, this is one of was one of Steve’s favorite stories about me. My team had just won the women’s knockout and then Robson comes up to me, he’s an old friend from England, and says they just lost in the Spingold or whatever and said, “Well, would you like to play with Forrester or Helgemo?” I said, “Helgemo.” So I joined their team for the Master Mixed.
John McAllister: What does Master Mixed mean?
Kitty Cooper: You have to have 100 points. First Master Mixed Teams, I had just won my hundredth point and I’m so excited that I could play it, right? And it’s a board-a-match and it was a premier event back in the day. So, I’m playing with Helgemo, and after about the third round he says, “Kitty, when you play with me, you don’t have to hog all the hands.”
John McAllister: If you could play with Helgemo or Meckstroth again, who would you play with?
Kitty Cooper: Meckstroth. I understood his carding. Helgemo likes to play attitude attitude attitude except in a cash out and I just got a few defenses wrong, it was just too hard. Then I played with P.O. Sundelin one year and he plays count count count and I said to myself, no wonder he’s such a slow player! If you have to figure everything out from count, that’s misery. I like to play attitudes, suit preference, count – whatever is right in the situation – which means my partner has to be thinking the way I’m thinking. In fact, I’m leaning more and more to suit preference these days, there’s just many more suit preference situations than people realize. I give almost no count. I mean, count, OK, she needs to duck her ace, I’ll tell her how many I have, or dummy is entry-less, I’ll tell her how many I have. But that was hard. I think of all the players I’ve played with, he’s the best. Now I’ve never played with Hammond. Oh, I played with Robson and he’s also wonderful, I would play with him anytime. Who else? I mean I’ve got to play with a lot of great players in these events. But it’s not the same as playing in the Spingold or the Vanderbilt or in the case of where I actually played on a pro team in the Rosenblum, I mean, they don’t take you seriously.
John McAllister: What do you mean they don’t take you seriously?
Kitty Cooper: “You’re good, for a woman.” When I started playing bridge, I mean, I was young and cute; I was in Boston, there were all these MIT guys who were helping me learn to play and a lot of them had ulterior motives, but I had been playing kitchen bridge since I was 12. Fortunately for me, I didn’t discover duplicate until I graduated college. My first job, I was a programmer, a systems programmer, and all these guys were MIT guys and they played bridge at lunch, so of course I played. Then one of them invited me down to his fraternity and there was this really cute guy there and he asked me to go play at the Boston chess club. I thought it was a date, I was so excited. No, he was looking for a new bridge partner and thought I had talent. So, I think the third time I played with him along comes this hand and I’m in like two diamonds and I can see that if this finesse loses, they’re going to have to give me a trick and that will get me to 110. So everything came to pass, I said, “Did you see that? It was so cool, he had to give me a trick!” And I knew that, unless the suit was 3–3, in which case, fine. And he said, “Yes, dear. That’s an end play.” And then he started dating me and gave me Bridge Worlds to read and so forth, but I was kind of a natural with the card play initially because I’ve been playing longer. Because I could see positions, it’s just a visual thing. A couple of these MIT guys then had a bet – I could also read fast – that I couldn’t read the chapter on double squeezes in Love. I don’t recommend Love for squeezes, read Kelsey.
John McAllister: Why Kelsey over Love?
Kitty Cooper: Better writing, easier to understand for most people. Everybody thinks differently, but I think Kelsey’s squeeze books are much easier to understand. And this “blue thing” and Love was the Bible back then on squeezes. So the bet was, could I read it in under 15 minutes and understand it? So, the person who bet in my favor won. Now they said, “OK, but you won’t be able to do the problems.” So, they gave me the problems, I got them all, no problem. “All right, now we have to play with her until one comes up at the table.” Now that was good for me, right? So there I am, I’m playing in this regional with Steve Sion, who was one of the people who taught me to play, and along comes this hand and I said, “Oh, that’s a double squeeze.” So at the end he criticizes me, he said, “You shouldn’t come down to the ace-jack, what if the king and queen hadn’t been split? You should come down to ace-deuce to make sure that the middle suit works as a double squeeze.” In other words, the middle suit, the double squeeze, if the king and queen hadn’t been separated it wouldn’t have operated as a double because I’d kept the ace and the jack. But if I’d kept ace-deuce, then it wouldn’t matter, neither of them could hold on to that suit because they each had to guard these other suits.
John McAllister: Wow, I don’t understand. So, your options, in a double-squeeze suit, are to keep the ace and the deuce or the ace and the jack?
Kitty Cooper: Right, that’s the middle suit. In other words, let’s say that was spades, my left hand opponent is guarding diamonds, which I have the diamond threat in my hand, my right hand opponent is guarding clubs and the club threat is in dummy and I lead my last winner, I think I did that backwards, I think lefty is guarding the dummy and neither of them, each of them has to hold the suit they’re holding so neither of them can hold spades, but if I’d come down to ace-deuce for sure it would work, you see. If I came down to ace-jack and one of them had king-queen, then it wouldn’t have been a double, that’s all. It would have still worked; it just wouldn’t have been a double. It would have been perfection.
John McAllister: It would have just been a simple squeeze.
Kitty Cooper: Exactly, you got it.
John McAllister: So, if one of them had both the king and the queen, it’s not a double squeeze.
Kitty Cooper: No, it would just be a simple played as a double. We’ve all had many of those.
John McAllister: Well, some more than others.
Kitty Cooper: I like end plays better than squeezes because they’re just so unhappy when you endplay them. I mean, I endplayed one of those cute young Swedish guys in the board-a-match and he’s just looking sadly and I’m saying, “Yeah.” I was in some stupid doubled contract, and I got out for down one only, 100, I think we won the board, but I could be wrong.
John McAllister: So, what do you tell people when you’re meeting people for the first time? What do you tell them when they ask about bridge, like, how do you wrap that up for people that you’re meeting for the first time? What do you say about your bridge, like, maybe a recent example where you’ve been in the situation where you met somebody, or somebody said you were a bridge player, like, how does that go? We’ve talked a lot about your playing career so far, but you’ve written an entire curriculum for teaching bridge to kids.
Kitty Cooper: That was really rewarding, we did that in Albuquerque and the whole thing was how to teach kids bridge without touching bidding for a while. One of our teachers came back from a national saying, “Oh, there’s this thing called minibridge.” So, then we designed a curriculum where there was no bidding for six lessons, and it was based on minibridge and we used some of the hands from the club series and I wrote a whole lot of worksheets and it was really a marvelous success. It was so much fun. Some of those kids still play, but even if they don’t still play, they might come back to it when they retire. I used to refer to it as “planting a seed.” We got into some of the schools there but our most successful program was at the bridge club in Albuquerque because kids came for the summer and their grandparents played, so we got all these people and their motivation with these kids was, “I wanna be able to play this game with my grandparents,” and we had a really fun time.
So I don’t tell them any of this because my other world, the genealogy world, doesn’t have very many bridge players, which is surprising considering how many old people, right? But I just say, “Yeah, I’m a champion bridge player. It’s a wonderful game, it really exercises your mind.” And I don’t go into a lot of detail. I mean, look, I can be kind of intimidating. I have too many things in my resume: graduated Harvard cum laude, I was a vice president of bank, there’s all this stuff I’ve done. I’m old. I’ve had a lot of time to do it.
John McAllister: Did you tell anybody about finishing second in the Mixed Swiss?
Kitty Cooper: It’s been a while since I’ve done anything. I mean, my late husband, I loved him dearly, but about four years ago he was told he had five years to live, and it turned out to be two. It was 2019 when he was told he had five years to live and that’s not a lot of fun to learn that. So, I just didn’t play bridge at all really, and then came the pandemic. The rest of you worried about being isolated and playing online; I’m worried about getting into ERs with my husband. I’m worried about getting him the care he needs because he’s dying, right? That’s not fun. I mean, one time, the day after Christmas, we used to do the Saturday crossword in the Wall Street Journal and he couldn’t get a single word, so I knew we were in trouble. I mean, I know how to bully my way in saying, “He can’t speak for himself.” It’s really fun when you go into the ER and they ask him, “Well, who’s president?”
“Reagan!”
“What year is it?”
“1920.”
OK, yeah, I guess we’re not all there.
John McAllister: Was that (unintelligble)?
Kitty Cooper: That was just, that was on his brain. Had gone to his skull. And the other problem was it had gone to his bone marrow so a blood transfusion would always fix him for a while but I don’t think [they liked that], they got tired of that, I mean, because he was dying. I don’t recommend watching a loved one deteriorate, it is not something, it’s a tough experience. So, bridge just didn’t matter. I mean, I had given up serious playing internationally pretty much after I married him because I like playing with him and I’d achieved my goals already and it just didn’t seem important. And he wouldn’t fly, it does cause problems. We did play in Philadelphia; but he wouldn’t fly anymore, not after 9/11. I did go to Norway to play the Europeans there because it was an opportunity to go to the farms of my ancestors and meet my cousins and being a genealogist, I’ve done all this work and I know my third, fourth and fifth cousins in Norway. It was really a wonderful trip.
John McAllister: Did he go with you on that trip?
Kitty Cooper: He didn’t fly. I went without him. That was before he got so sick, that was in like 2015.
John McAllister: Can you talk to me more about; you met him at a bridge tournament? You’d met him before, maybe in the ‘70s or something? But then you got married in 2000?
Kitty Cooper: I knew him in the ‘70s. He was playing with my friend Karen McCallum. They played some bridge, and they’d shout at each other. You could hear all the way across the room. In those days, there was no ZT and we all shouted and yelled and behaved horribly. I mean, those are the days of Al Roth, the things he said to Barbara would without ZT would get him barred occasionally. He was such a character. I knew him vaguely, but he wasn’t part of my crowd. He was part of the west side bridge crowd and I was the east side bridge crowd.
John McAllister: So, New York City we’re talking about here?
Kitty Cooper: Very good. Yes, we were both in New York City and I was engaged to marry Henry anyway and then did marry him, so I didn’t really know Steve. And then Steve won novice player of the year in New York the same year I won it in Boston, so that was kind of a cool thing.
John McAllister: That’s like a Mini-McKenney sort of thing?
Kitty Cooper: Yeah, he would have won the Mini-McKenney nationwide, I think. I won it in my local area and there was this big trophy, and it was cool. I just had a whole group of wonderful people in Boston who … I didn’t realize how lucky I was. We had this nexus of wonderful players, many of whom are quite famous today like Chip Martel and Mark Jacobus and Bart Bramley and Mark Feldman.
John McAllister: Did Martel go to MIT?
Kitty Cooper: Of course.
John McAllister: Mark Jacobus didn’t go to MIT, did he?
Kitty Cooper: He went to BU with Sion. Steve Sion. They were the BU part of the crowd, but we all played at the chess club. But Bramley Lou Reich, Chip, Mark Feldman, they were all MIT guys and there were other MIT guys, Kenny Lebensohl, most of whom were gone by the time I was getting started. So, I had tremendously good influences, it was fun. I always had a regular job and a career except for that time in England.
John McAllister: What kind of stakes were you playing in England?
Kitty Cooper: I played in the five-pound game. Now that’s £5 per 100, so that was not a small gain, but I got cards, I won, so what did it matter, right? Sometimes somebody would wanna play for £10, and then your partner would have to take your action. So, I’m playing with Jeremy Flint, and someone cuts in, the other pair wants to play for £10, and Jeremy’s hemming and hawing because he’s never played with me before and his wife at the other table, Honor, who had played with me the day before said, “I’ll take her action.” So, Jeremy perked up because if Honor thought I could play, then obviously I could play, so he was much happier. Oh yeah, Victor Mollo, was there. I mean there were some people. I remember when I finally met Kelsey and he just wasn’t anything like I imagined him. I mean, to read his books he’s just brilliant, erudite and wonderful and then in person, he was kind of, well, maybe he’d gotten older.
John McAllister: What about Victor Mollo?
Kitty Cooper: He was very amusing. I didn’t know him well; Karen knew him pretty well. You really should do Karen McCallum sometime, she lived in England for a while too.
John McAllister: I agree. I’ve had dinner with her. I had dinner with her in Providence with my teammates and she’s good buddies with Jovi and Sasha who were my teammates in Phoenix as well. I really like her.
Kitty Cooper: We were really close friends. She was my first serious partner. I remember, I’m playing with her in a women’s pairs in New York when each were still very newcomers. Somebody comes to kibbitz us with like two rounds to go and I said, “Don’t bother, we’ve already won this.” I was right. And Karen said, “So, we can get four zeros?” I said, “I think so.” So, she promptly got one just to see if she could prove me wrong. We had a love/hate relationship. I mean, we loved each other but we would fight like sisters.
John McAllister: When you say serious partnership what does that entail for you?
Kitty Cooper: Notes. Discussions. Agreements. We played my first women’s knockout; she was my partner. I had no idea how competitive we were in the world of women’s bridge, and we kept beating these good teams and finally there we are in the semifinals on a four-person team falling asleep. We had this famous one spade, pass, one spade hand which was written up in Truscott’s Grand Slam book. She didn’t see my one spade, so she opened one spade and I think it was the first time we’d ever played behind screens. There was a big brouhaha and the director was called and he made apparently a bad ruling because the other team appealed and Karen was told she had to bid so she finally shrugged her shoulders and bid seven spades because she had to bid spades, right? So she bid seven spades and she puts down this 5–4–3–1 17-count with a stiff club, right? And they lead the ace of clubs so now she’s going [noises like stressed out/crazy] and meanwhile Helen (?) on my right says, “Well maybe,” – who’s looking at 8 clubs – says, “maybe she’s ruffing it.” Now at this point, I hadn’t looked at my hand in 20 minutes, so finally I pick up my hand, I’m smoking a cigarette – back then we did that – and I had a club void so I ruffed it and she has never forgiven me for taking that long to ruff it! She is still mad about that. But I didn’t remember that was my void, I knew I was 5–5 with the marginal opening bid and a void somewhere. So, they went to committee and Helen said, “Well, if she’d been allowed to bid two spades and Kitty could have been allowed to know that she had a one spade opener, I’d have been six clubs.” I said, “I could have made a forcing pass.” A friend of mine was on that committee and recently reminded me they decided that we shouldn’t be punished any further for not knowing what we were doing or whatever. Anyway, so that was my first serious outing with Karen and we discovered we were very competitive in the world of women’s bridge, but the problem with having a love/hate relationship is you scream at each other at the table. This is not conducive to good bridge; you need to have a much more harmonious relationship. We were just too volatile together and so we broke up, I guess.
John McAllister: You wrote an obit for your husband Steve on Bridge Winners and my favorite comment was from Bobby Levin. He said, “Really nice tribute, Kitty. I will miss the times Stevo and I would play you guys and we always had a bet how many boards it would take for the ‘sweeties’ and ‘darlings’ to stop. Your Steve always wanted to know what our over/under was. He had a good sense of humor – even when the number was two. Rest in peace.”
Kitty Cooper: Yes, he did. But I did eventually learn just to not say anything. It was hard. I mean, I remember one time I’m explaining something to Steve and he’s telling me I’m wrong. Then two days later, I heard him explain the same thing to somebody else so that’s when I realized, he does hear what I say and he does learn from it. I just have to accept that he’s gonna argue with me at the time.
John McAllister: My favorite current partner, we’ve dated on and off, so it’s interesting to have that dynamic. Bridge really is a huge part of our relationship, and we played in the mixed teams together …
Kitty Cooper: OK! And how did that go?
John McAllister: It went really well. We had a very good teammates, Jovi and Sasha who are a natural mixed pair and I mean, to finish fourth in that event playing with Lilly, who just started playing bridge in the last five years, that was really exciting.
Kitty Cooper: That’s amazing. That’s really good. Good work. Absolutely.
John McAllister: But sometimes when you’re playing with the person who’s closest to you …
Kitty Cooper: If they don’t give you your ruff, they don’t love you.
John McAllister: Yeah. So many times, on Bridge Base when you can see your partner’s hand and you’re like, oh my. But she does things too that I don’t see so … she does things where I’m like, oh I didn’t see that play. It’s better than what I saw. So, it’s exciting to have that type of relationship with another person.
Kitty Cooper: It’s wonderful because it’s a love you share, but it’s difficult because there are other emotions involved when you play with each other; if you let the other one down, there’s a whole different thing. My first husband, as I said, we switched to upside down, it was this new thing, upside down carding, right? So I played in the afternoon – in the old days, the afternoon at a sectional was a women’s and men’s pairs, in the evening was a mixed pairs and the next day was a two-session open, so I played in the afternoon with my girlfriend and I think we may have won the women’s, I don’t remember, and then in the evening I’m playing the mixed pairs with my husband, he’s just come from work. And like, three or four boards in, we’ve just switched to upside down, I’ve been playing normal all afternoon, so I lead the king of a side suit. I have ace-king-fourth, right? And he plays the deuce. So, I’ve forgotten, naturally, I shift. Then we’re discussing this hand in quiet tones out in the hall and I discovered he had queen-jack-deuce!! Couldn’t play the queen for me? No, he was testing me!
John McAllister: When did Henry die?
Kitty Cooper: He died maybe six years ago.
John McAllister: I never met him. I don’t remember ever meeting Steve, either actually. But I didn’t start playing nationals until 2012.
Kitty Cooper: Henry wouldn’t give up smoking. He promised that after I’d given up for a year, he would give it up and three years later, when he still hadn’t given it up, I left. Hard to live with a smoker when you’ve given it up. But it did kill him. I mean he died of it, it’s what killed him. Emphysema, heart failure. Let’s see, he was 71. I guess it’s about 8 years ago. I could look it up. But it was tough, it was tough for our son. I was surprised at how upset I was, but we were always very amicable. My first Thanksgiving with Steve at a nationals we had me and Steve and Henry and our son, Paul, we all had Thanksgiving dinner together. And he [son Paul] was a fine player but he sort of quit, he’s been teaching the other Googlers how to play at lunchtime, he plays a little bit locally but he doesn’t play seriously anymore. He played junior bridge; he played with Jason Feldman in Brazil and it’s funny because I play with Lynn Feldman now and I had the same accident with Lynn that he had with Jason. Apparently on the West Coast, when you play upside down carding, it’s original count but on the East Coast, when you play upside down carding, it’s current count. So, there my son is in the semifinals and they misdefend something and Paul said, “But I gave you the 8 of whatever.” And that’s when they discovered that one of them played original and the other played current, so, good discussion to have. Don’t just say you play upside down carding. It’s good to know whether you play original count or current count. I had the same accident with Lynn.
John McAllister: Do you teach bridge students?
Kitty Cooper: I did a lot of teaching back in New York and then in Albuquerque. Classes. I had a wonderful set of classes in New York. I love teaching but life got in the way; went back to work and people pay me to go do genealogy things. I don’t know, I think I’ll do some more teaching again. I started teaching a few private clients, but I haven’t taught classes in a long time.
John McAllister: When you teach a private client, what does that look like?
Kitty Cooper: I’d play a local duplicate with them and go through all the boards and show them where they might have done better. Now that I don’t have Steve, I don’t have that many partners so it’s OK for me to play pro with various people. I’m going to do that in New Orleans.
John McAllister: What’s on your schedule for New Orleans?
Kitty Cooper: I have a genealogy conference the first weekend, so I won’t be coming in till Monday. I’m playing professionally in the Mixed Pairs. I don’t have a date for the women’s, my partner Lynn is going to be on a cruise or she’s not going, and I don’t have a date for the fast pairs but I assume I’ll find something. If I’m up around something will turn up.
John McAllister: Who do you take your bidding problems to?
Kitty Cooper: I don’t have anybody I currently take them to although it’s possible that I’ll start taking them to my new boyfriend, we’ll see. Not gonna talk about that, it’s too new.
John McAllister: But Steve, would you take things to Steve before?
Kitty Cooper: Not a bidding problem. At tournaments, we’d go to Mike Passell and let him adjudicate. He is really nice to both of us and he would almost always agree with me but make Steve feel good about Steve’s choice.
John McAllister: How would you present the bidding problem to Mike Passell, the two of you.
Kitty Cooper: “You hold …”
John McAllister: But who’s hand would you give?
Kitty Cooper: Whoever we thought did the wrong thing. Or, so, that’s me if I wasn’t sure what the right call was. So, yeah Mike Passell was our go-to guy because he was really nice with both of us and he really explains things easily and well.
John McAllister: Yeah, that’s important. I had a bidding problem that I gave to Bob Hammond yesterday. I had: stiff king, ten-fifth, ace-third, jack-fourth. So, you transfer and your partner bids two hearts: your bid.
Kitty Cooper: Well, I play in my partnership I can bid my four-card suit now and that’s only forcing one round to three hearts because I don’t like bidding 2NT on unbalanced hands but you do have a stiff king, so I guess I’d bid 2NT. I mean, my hearts suck but I am 5–4–3–1.
John McAllister: Well, you did better than me because I passed.
Kitty Cooper: Passed?
John McAllister: Yes, I did. And we make four hearts.
Kitty Cooper: Passed?
John McAllister: It’s stiff king!
Kitty Cooper: Are you playing 14 to 16, is that why you passed?
John McAllister: No, 14 plus to 17.
Kitty Cooper: Hmm, well the thing to remember is that Meckwell can make game with 24, but if 24 is the maximum on the two hands, you probably don’t want to make a try. But if you could have 24 or 25 and you’re not ashamed of your hand. I mean, not every eight count is an invitation if you’re 4–3–3–3, no. It depends where your cards are. I mean, the stiff king doesn’t look so great.
John McAllister: So, I gave the hand to some other players, this was in the GNT qualifying. I gave the hand to two other players and one of them bid 2NT and the other passed. And so I explained that my partner had a 17-count with queen-jack-third of hearts and I said he could have super accepted.
Kitty Cooper: No, he only has three hearts.
John McAllister: Well, so one of the guys goes, “I don’t super accept with three hearts.” And I said, “Well, I do.”
Kitty Cooper: Ack!
John McAllister: I know. And so now, Bob Hammond had called me about something so I gave him the hand and I explained to him, and he said, “Well, you could have 15 and two small.” So, I feel like I won that argument.
Kitty Cooper: [laughing] Yeah.
John McAllister: And maybe that person will find this out on this podcast or maybe never, but …
Kitty Cooper: Well, I used to play that you could super accept with three trump when you had two of the top three honors and that’s what 2NT shows. And that’s a Karen McCallum thing. Because sometimes there are nine tricks when there are not 10, because now there are five tricks in that suit. And that’s actually not a bad way to play it. I know, your partners always have minimums.
John McAllister: No, I mean, I think I could tell when my partner saw the dummy. It went king of diamonds lead, ace; heart to the jack and king, and now they led a diamond, and my partner won the king and now played the ace of spades and the queen of spades, pitching the diamond, now he played another heart, I mean it was …yeah. He made five, I think. Wait, no. Yeah, he made five – he lost two hearts; pitched all the clubs on the good spades. King of spades was magic. Teach me.
Kitty Cooper: Well, sometimes I’d give a bidding problem to Lynn Feldman, who’s my regular partner out here in San Diego. And then we have Claude Vogel living here for the winter, but we don’t really have a great collection of players here, which is surprising considering how beautiful it is. I mean, it’s true Peter Weichsel lives in Carlsbad, but we never see him at any of our tournaments and we don’t have a nexus of top players here like I did when I started playing in Boston.
John McAllister: What about Jason?
Kitty Cooper: Oh, we have Jason. Yeah, we have Jason. But he doesn’t play locally at all, he’s got small children. So, I don’t think many kids are taking up the game. When I was in college, there was always a game going on in the dorm. We didn’t have video games, we didn’t have computers, we didn’t have smartphones, so we played cards. We played Risk, we played Diplomacy. Yes, if you’ve ever played Risk, you cannot hold Ukraine. That was actually a line in Wall Street Journal the other day and I said, “Absolutely, you can’t hold Ukraine!” So, I loved games from the time I was little. Mainly in college I played poker because I needed the money. I was the only girl in the game, it was a huge edge, huge. But it meant I couldn’t bluff so often because they just couldn’t let me win the pot. They would call me when they shouldn’t at a table stakes game. It was a lot of fun. There was actually an article in the Harvard Crimson saying, “the best player at Harvard might be a woman.” Best poker player: “Kitten plays for keeps in the big game.” I was not the best player; Al Adams was the best player by a mile. But I did well enough, and it made for a good story. After college when I was working, poker just lost appeal for me because I didn’t need the money and I just didn’t play as well and bridge was so much more interesting.
John McAllister: Yeah. Yeah, I played in a poker game a year ago and I was like, this is not interesting at all. I wanna take some tricks! I need to play some cards!
Kitty Cooper: I wanna endplay somebody! I wanna squeeze somebody!
John McAllister: Yeah. Yeah. When did you last play bridge?
Kitty Cooper: Saturday. Lynn has these wonderful home team games where everybody brings food and we just play bridge. You cut for teams and then you pick partners and you play. No money involved, lots of food and she has a beautiful place with a great view and it’s really nice.
John McAllister: You had eight people?
Kitty Cooper: Yes, I claimed on a squeeze because I’d forgotten a card. That’s when I realized I really wasn’t feeling well and everybody accepted my squeeze and then later I said, “Wait a minute. You had to keep the spade guard.” He said, “But I did.” I said, “Oh, yeah.”
John McAllister: So, it’s a bad claim.
Kitty Cooper: It was a bad claim. I was really more out of it than I realized. I had this horrible accident in 2010, and the first time I played bridge afterwards, I mean, I hit my head, OK, and I had a bleed on my brain. I was in the ICU for like, three days. The doctor said if it had been like an inch away, I’d be dead. I’m lucky I survived this. And the first time I played bridge after that, I counted a suit for 14 cards twice, so I realized it was going to take a while to get that back. But at least we got money out of it and bought a house in San Diego, so not all terrible, although it took me a long time to recover.
John McAllister: What happened?
Kitty Cooper: Oh, I was thrown from a golf cart at the Palm Springs regional and it was being driven by an intern, a high school kid.
John McAllister: Oh, my God.
Kitty Cooper: He did a really fast turn, and I went flying and hit my head on the pavement. Yeah, so we got a big settlement from the hotel. I had decided I wasn’t doing winter anymore, so we moved to San Diego. What we were going to do, Steve and I were going to spend our winters here in the RV, but he had such a wonderful time, and it was – house prices were down –this was like 2012, so we bought a house. I couldn’t do cold weather anymore. It took me six months. I had to have speech therapy; I couldn’t retrieve words. I mean, it’s happening again now because I’m getting old, but it’s like I couldn’t think of a word for like, bookcase or I’d have to describe something. It’s like all these things were disconnected and I lost like two years of memories but fortunately, I write these yearly newsletters so I was able to read my own newsletters and recover a lot of my memories, but it really makes you realize how important your brain is. You do not want to damage your brain. This is not good. So it was a slow recovery and I don’t think I played very well for a while. I was very excited the next time I won a nationals which was the creaky old Senior Mixed Pairs which Steve and I won. But it was hard going for me. I didn’t have the stamina anymore and I had to watch out for counting suits for 14 cards. There is a game that has 14 cards in a suit, but it’s not bridge. Anyway, so yeah, I’m old. I remember things people don’t remember, but I don’t think of myself as old. I have this vision of myself as still in my 30s, it’s really weird. Still pretty hale and hearty, other than that accident.
John McAllister: Do you think bridge is dorky?
Kitty Cooper: Maybe. Bridge, it’s a really interesting beautiful game, so how do we get that across? Most of the young people who take up the game seem to be from bridge families. So, we need to get into the schools. In China, they’re in the schools; in the Netherlands, they’re in the schools. And the selling point to get into the schools is it teaches critical thinking and that their test scores will go up. So, if that’s important to a school, to have their kids get good test scores, I mean, the way I’d go in, I would get a math teacher or a science teacher – best a math teacher – to sponsor you, and they let you teach a class or you teach the first class and the kids have a wonderful time and the math teacher doesn’t have to teach that class. Usually towards the end of the year when they finish, the the smart kids or whatever and they worked pretty well. Maybe I’ll get back to it. It makes me feel good when people come up to me and say they use my materials still.
John McAllister: I’ve lost my mojo for teaching people bridge. I mean, I want them to learn, believe me. I can’t even begin to tell you but it’s like … [frustrated sound].
Kitty Cooper: Yeah. You have to celebrate the little triumphs.
John McAllister: I will tell you that “Double Dummy,” the film that I made that you asked me about over e-mail, you had posted about the film on Bridge Winners a long time ago; I was going through some of your Bridge Winners articles …
Kitty Cooper: Oh, I did? OK.
John McAllister: You had posted about the film, maybe that we were looking for the title. “Lost in the Shuffle” was the working title, and you made a post maybe asking for a name and anyway the reason I’m bringing this up is it’s gonna be available for anybody on the PBS website starting on the 14th.
Kitty Cooper: Awesome. I will put that in my blog. Thank you for doing that.
John McAllister: I just hope … I just want people to see it. Thank you, it’s exciting.
Kitty Cooper: Well, I don’t want to see our game die, so I want to do my part to keep it going. Already you young people have forgotten some of the great players that I know. I mean, bridge is such a harsh mistress. It’s always, what did you do yesterday? If you haven’t done anything in a while, they forget you. I think that’s why I was happy about the second in the Mixed Swiss, as pathetic as it might be to be happy about that, because it had been a while since I’ve done anything because I’ve been busy taking care of my husband and whatever and we haven’t had live bridge. When I went to Providence, so that hand that I wrote up from the Mixed Swiss, I did something ridiculous. OK. I had void, king-jack-seventh, ace-third, king-third. My partner opened a diamond, it went two spades on my right, I bid four hearts. It went four spades, and he said double. Now obviously, I should have sat, but I couldn’t help myself. I bid five hearts. My partners will all tell you, just like Helgemo did, I love to play the hands! Dummy comes down and I’m sick to my stomach, I’ve got three losers. So, I start playing the hand and then suddenly the light dawns on me … Oh my God! Look at this hand. If Righty has honor-doubleton in diamonds, I have a Morton’s Fork coup! Yes! And all came to pass, so I wrote it up, but that’s what I love about bridge, is a really cool hand. Everybody has different things they love – oh, alright! I love to win, but more than that I think I love the cool hand. That’s what I love the best. So, then, in the bar, I’m telling Andy Robson and Bart Bramley that I had a pseudo–Morton’s Fork coup so I couldn’t wait to send the message on Bridge Winners it was real, and I wrote it up.
John McAllister: All right, well, that’s how we’re going to finish this, that’s it …
Kitty Cooper I love a good hand, that’s it.
John McAllister: …loves a good hand; that’s the title of the podcast: Kitty Cooper loves a good hand.
Kitty Cooper: Thanks, John. I hope this was fun for you.
John McAllister: I enjoyed it and I look forward to connecting in-person in New Orleans.
Kitty Cooper: Yea. See you there.