Bonnie Gellas – Finally a Teacher

The North American Bridge Championships are truly an experience that brings people together. Walt Shafer, who runs an eponymous, invitation-only game online, hosted a party for the participants at the Atlanta NABC. John, who plays in the game, attended and met Bonnie Gellas, who was there because her partner, Erez Hendelman, plays in the game. The two hit it off and now Bonnie, who is a bridge teacher, is a guest on the show.

Bonnie lives in NYC and is responsible for teaching bridge to hundreds of players.

1:10 What Bonnie loves about teaching.

4:26 “Feeder programs” and Bonnie’s methods for teaching.

10:12 Bonnie has made up bridge songs to help people remember things.

12:00 John can sing, too.

15:49 What Bonnie does when a student doesn’t get it.

23:38 Some new players are surprised they have to count at bridge.

28:26 Everybody’s topic: if bridge is going to survive, we need more younger players.

33:21 Bonnie’s playing schedule and her “dirty little secret.”

40:45 Discussing personal bridge aspirations.

45:52 Bonnie’s – and John’s – favorite things about bridge.

49:56 Commiserating on mutual failings as bridge players.

52:46 Appearing in the New York Times bridge column.

58:01 Outro.

Alder article in NYT

Truscott article in NYT

Transcript 

John McAllister: I am here with a new friend that I made in Atlanta at a cocktail party for people that participate in the Schafer game. Bonnie Gellas from New York City, welcome to The Setting Trick.

Bonnie Gellas: Thank you. It's great to be here, and flattering.

John McAllister: Well, we kind of hit it off at that cocktail party and you said something in particular that really caught my ear, and so I just wanted to elaborate on what as a good start. I think you said that you teach beginners in the city and you said that you talked about it as a service doing that. Am I getting that right?

Bonnie Gellas: I'm not sure I would use the word service. I love teaching bridge to people who are interested in learning the game, who know nothing about it, because it's so wonderful to see the light bulbs go off in their heads when they begin to understand the concepts and begin to see how much fun playing bridge can be. As many people as I can spread that to, I'm happy to do it.

I get a lot of enjoyment from it. I get positive feedback from people that I'm very clear in my explanations and they get it, and they want to go forward, and they keep moving forward. I'm trying to think. I guess I started teaching bridge at the club maybe eight or nine years ago. I was transitioning from my professional career to finding something else. I told the club owner, "You need me to teach, and my mother would love for you to hire me because she always wanted me to be a teacher."

When I graduated college, I became a teacher, and I hated every minute of it. And as I've matured in life, I find that I am a good teacher in teaching people how to do something. I am not a good teacher of facts of history. So teaching bridge, to me, is teaching a skill and I love doing it and I see it as a process of teaching people a skill. So yeah, I look around the Bridge Club and I look around tournaments now and I go, "Oh, they were in my beginner class. They were in my beginner class. They came up through beginner class." It's a great feeling. Believe me, I'm not saying I'm the only one. Anyone who teaches beginners feels this way and the pride of seeing their students progressing into the 750 game or to the open game or a national event, so it's great. It's very rewarding, and I find it very creative.

John McAllister: Are you teaching currently?

Bonnie Gellas: I am teaching privately, currently. I'm not teaching at the club. At the club, I'm running a game for players with fewer than 300 points. Before the pandemic, I had started with a 0 to 5 game that grew to a 0 to 20, that became a 49er game that became a 99er game. Up until the time of the pandemic, I had grown, I think to a 199er game. We would have anywhere between 12 and 16 tables at the club on Wednesday afternoons when I ran the game.

It's fallen apart and people haven't really all come back yet, but it was a strong game that people looked forward to playing in. They didn't feel the pressure,"I don't want to go into the other room. The people there aren't nice and they're too hard and they're going to cream me. I just want to stay here." So that's also very rewarding, so we're trying to build the game up now and get it back.

John McAllister: What did you do when people would have too many points to play in that game?

Bonnie Gellas: They would beg me to raise the Masterpoint limit, and if there were enough, we did, but a lot of them by that time were ready to move into... The structure at the club, there was the 199er game and then there was a 750 game, and then there was an easy section and a hard section in the open game. So, they weren't thrown from my game into playing against national level players. It was a good feeder program for the club and that's what we need in bridge - feeders.

John McAllister: So you said you're teaching privately now?

Bonnie Gellas: Yes.

John McAllister: What does that look like?

Bonnie Gellas: During the pandemic, I taught online. At the time I started Swan and I'm trying to think of what the other bridge ones are that had the video part of it. I used BBO and Zoom running in the background so we could all see each other. I have uploaded I don't know how many sets of files of lesson hands.

And so we talk about whatever the topic is for the day and they get a handout... I call it your weekly cheat sheet... that helps prompt them through understanding what it is, and then we physically play the hands online. I am starting now to go back to live lessons at people's apartments and it'll basically the same format. We chat about what the topic is. We drink coffee. We tell jokes. We go over the information and then we play hands. Each week that we do a topic, it builds on what went before. This is going to sound not advanced to you, but to them basic cue bidding structure to show a decent hand. This is not the beginner beginners, obviously. If we have also been working on defensive card play and signaling, they have to do that. They can't just say, "Oh, it's not my hand to play. I don't have to do anything." So we review everything building up as we go along. It's fun.

John McAllister: And you teach people from scratch?

Bonnie Gellas: I do teach people from scratch. Last fall, I was contacted by a private social club in the city to come and teach absolute beginners at their club. I did that in the fall. And when I say absolute beginners, when I start teaching absolute beginners, we start by playing war, which also is not rocket science to people to just get the idea of taking tricks. And then we play war with a partner and then they play war, but then they have a dummy, so they get a sense for the mechanics of how the game works.

Some of these people had a problem with war. I really had my work cut out for me, so we had a lot of repetition. It was an eight-week session and then the holidays came along and the manager of the club called me and she said, "Everybody loves you, they want you to come back, but could you start from the beginning again?" So I'm just going to repeat everything. But to me, they could say, "All right, no, this is too much. I don't get it. I'm never going to get it." They want to learn it and they want to do it again, so I think that's great. It's fun and I try and make it fun.

John McAllister: I just came from a lunch and there were two people at the lunch who expressed interest in learning bridge. Should I put them in touch with you? They live in Charlottesville though. You're in New York. They live in Charlottesville.

Bonnie Gellas: Well, I actually have students in San Francisco too. Yes, you can put them in touch with me. I'm getting booked up quickly for the new year, so they can certainly contact me. We can see if it works, or they might want to join a group that I already have that's online or something maybe.

John McAllister: So you do one-on-one, but you also do groups?

Bonnie Gellas: Usually, I do a group of four or five. I do have some that are one-on-one. For example, this guy California, it's one-on-one and when we go to BBO, I seat myself at three seats and he's at one seat. We move around depending on who's going to play and stuff like that. It seems to work. People like it and it's fun. It's playing bridge. They're like, "Oh, wow. Wow, how did you know that?" I try and make it fun for them. I'm hesitating here because I know what the next question is going to be, but I've made up a lot of bridge songs to help people. Well, remember, bridge ideas and bridge conventions and it really helps them to remember.

John McAllister: Let it rip.

Bonnie Gellas: Let it rip. All right.

(singing).

Crazy, right? They're stupid, but people know the melody and they remember the words and they go, "Oh yeah, take out doubles." It's certainly not part of the ACBL curriculum, but it's the Bonnie Gellas curriculum. I have people say, "What was that song you sang about opening two clubs or what was that transfer song? Tell me that song again."

So they like it. I think especially for new players, I don't want them to feel intimidated, so if they can laugh and have a good time and not get the concept but still want to come back, that's a win. That's a win and that's my approach. I like to be happy.

John McAllister: I think that's great. It sounds like it sounds you're doing a great job. I mean, that's fun.

Bonnie Gellas: I would like to think so.

John McAllister: A song to help remember? That's totally my speed. I think we talked about that you've listened to some of the podcast episodes. You know the song that we have on this? That's a song that I wrote. It's called (singing). And that's where that whole melody that we also use in the beginning of double dummy, that's from that.

Bonnie Gellas: Well, day one of bridge-

John McAllister: But it's a new song. It's not the “take me out to the ball game,” but I would love for you to use that. I'm happy to send you the words.

Bonnie Gellas: Please do.

John McAllister: Absolutely.

Bonnie Gellas: On day one, they get (singing). They know the rank of the suits. They learn the ranking of the suits.

John McAllister: And what percentage of these people are singing along?

Bonnie Gellas: Many of them. They come back and they say, "Write those words down." They really like It. It works with adults. It works with kids. It lightens up the whole at atmosphere of learning a game that is really overwhelming, and it's my creative outlet. So there, so that's what I do.

John McAllister: What's your first lesson? Like you do the war...

Bonnie Gellas: We do war, then we work on bidding, no trump. Because no-trump bidding is easily quantifiable, and they can get the concept of finding out through this conversation of no trump. They teach them points and a target that they're looking for to be able to make a certain number of tricks, and the math of no-trump makes it easy for them to do that.

So we spend the first couple of weeks bidding and playing one no trump, one no trump, pass, one no trump, two no trump, one no trump, three no trump, and that gets them going. So then they feel like they're geniuses because they can bid and they can play a bridge hand. And then we get to opening major suits and they're like, "What?" because it's such a different reality, but no trump is where we start and they get it. They get it.

John McAllister: What's an example of a recent example you can think of where a student got what you were saying, like the light bulb?

Bonnie Gellas: At this social club where I was teaching, it had to do with notrump. It seemed so obvious to me, but it was such a revelation that she said, "Oh, I get it now. In bidding, I know how many points my partner has when she says, 'Pass.' And when she says, 'Two notrump,' I just add that to my points to know how close I'm getting to this." It was a revelation to her that that's all you really are trying to do and that's what the language of bridge was. And she was like, "I'm so excited. I get this, I get this." I said, "Great. You're going to be a bridge star."

John McAllister: What do you do when somebody doesn't get it?

Bonnie Gellas: I try and approach it from a different angle. As I said, this entire group that I was teaching, they were just feeling very confused about everything. And I said, "All right, well, we're going to take a step back and review and try and look at this from a different angle and try and figure out where the confusion is."

The reality is some people just are not going to get it, try as they may. They want it to be something that it's not. And so as much as I will go over the structure of one heart, two hearts, one heart, three hearts, one heart, four hearts, they don't understand, "Well, why wouldn't I just say... and why does my partner play it? I was the one who said four hearts." And I said, "Well, it's the first person." It's stuff that we take so for granted that they see it differently like, "Well, why does it have to be like that?"

And also, helping them to understand that bridge is a set of protocols and they are protocols that everybody follows in the bidding, and whether there's an exception that's not standard, you need to tell people about it. "Well, why do you have to do that? Wouldn't it be better if you could do stuff that they didn't know?" "Yes, it would, but that's not what bridge is. It's a very ethical game. Everybody's allowed to know what everybody else is doing and we still get it wrong, so it's fine." But those are hard concepts for people who don't play cards to understand.

John McAllister: I know you wanted, for your mom's sake, to be hard to be a teacher, but how did you get into teaching bridge proper as it were?

Bonnie Gellas: I was looking for something to do as I was winding down my professional career. I approached the owner of the Bridge Club and said, "I know you have a curriculum that you teach here." I said, "I don't think, I know I will be an excellent bridge teacher." I said, "It's just I am very good at teaching people how to do things, and it would be to your benefit to give me a try." I think I had to run back at it three or four times before they finally caved in and said, "Okay, okay, okay." And then, I'm going to just brag and say, when they did surveys of teachers, I was always ranked the highest of the teacher staff that they had, so my mother was so proud.

John McAllister: She was still alive?

Bonnie Gellas: No.

John McAllister: In heaven.

Bonnie Gellas: In heaven.

John McAllister: In heaven, she was shining down. Did you use their curriculum?

Bonnie Gellas: I did. I did. I've tweaked it for my benefit and for how I've seen that people respond and the amount of time that they need to absorb a concept. The original curriculum that I was teaching, each week was a new topic and it just was too much for people to absorb that quickly. So I've slowed it down and put in more playing time, practice hands, rather than trying each week to say, "Okay, now we're going to add another concept here, and now you're going to do this. Before we start today, let's play some review hands and see what we remember and build from there." That seems to be working better for me.

John McAllister: I played bridge yesterday with some friends who are enthusiastic but relatively inexperienced. They don't play duplicate, so we were just playing at one of their houses. We were just playing social bridge with a pseudo rubber scoring, but not really even really scoring. I opened the bidding a heart and my partner bid one notrump, and I bid three notrump. I had Ace-King to six hearts and she had Queen third of hearts. And so, she needed to take six heart tricks. She had nine tricks. She had the Ace-King of Clubs and the Ace of Diamonds and she needed to take six hearts. And so, she won the opening lead in dummy, and then she played a heart to the Queen, and they both followed. And now she played two more rounds. No, then she played... I forget what she did, but eventually, she never took all of the hearts.

Bonnie Gellas: Did she block the suit?

John McAllister: No.

Bonnie Gellas: No?

John McAllister: It was Ace-King ten six opposite Queen third, so she played heart to the Queen and then a heart to the Ace, and my lefty showed out. And so, I attempted to explain to her what she needed to do. The way that I distilled it, I was like, "It was hard to know that all those hearts were good. It was hard for you to know that the ten, the eight and the four, or whatever, were good." So I said that; she seemed like she was following. And then I said, "Because you have six in the dummy and three in your hand, you just need for... If everybody follows one time, it's all going to be set up."

I think at that point I had lost her. Maybe I shouldn't be so emotional, but it was really like I really felt the depth of her confusion and I didn't know what to do. I regretted that I even went there and I didn't know how to... And then I was thinking about it afterwards and I was thinking, "What if I had said..." Maybe taking the suit in isolation because we were keeping our own cards, so we weren't throwing them all in the muck. And what if I had said, "Now, how many cards are there between us?" I feel like maybe I did too much of the work for her. I took some shortcuts: six and nine, thirteen, all that, and I feel like maybe that's where I lost her, but I just want to know how would you...

It was really tough. I hated it. I hated that she seemed confused. Maybe I should have backed up and said, "Okay, let's start over," but I didn't know what to do in the moment. She wasn't upset, but I could tell that she wasn't following me.

Bonnie Gellas: Right, right. Well, I think one of the... I'm not going to say one of the hardest. One of the things new players are surprised about is that they have to count how many cards have been played in a suit. I've heard people say to me, "Well, how many times have you played..." To the Declarer, "How many times have you played this suit?" "I don't know." I said, "Okay. So one of the things we have to start working on is there's 13 cards in every suit, and every time a card gets played and everybody follows, four are gone, and four from thirteen are nine."

I've run into the same situation where people say, "Well, I don't know how many there are." And I said, "All right, well a basic thing of bridge is being able to count to thirteen, and we all know we can do that. So when you play from now on, I don't care how long it takes you, I want you to count how many cards are in the suit. And when you look at a suit contract, how many do you and your partner have? How many are left in the opponent's hands? And before you play anything, try and figure out how many cards the opponents have in each suit."

I don't even go to the math of splitting three–two, and four–one. And I said, "You need to at least try to remember how many cards have been played in the suit, and that will help you make more tricks because you're going to know where the extra things are." It takes them a really long time to get that. I thought what you were going to say was that she totally blocked the suit by playing the ace and the king, and then to the queen, and couldn't get back to the hearts for the rest of them because they do that all the time, but it's hard.

I don't think there's a magic bullet for doing that other than to say, "All right, let's back up and how many cards did you have? So how many do they have? And all you need to do when there are nine is count for four missing cards. You don't even have to count to thirteen. You just find four missing cards." That's probably how I would approach it.

John McAllister: I imagine you get some resistance when you tell people that they have to count. People are like, "Whoa, no way."

Bonnie Gellas: "What do you mean I have to count? Don't you just play cards?" I said, "Well, yes you can. You can play bridge at any level and enjoy it, but if you ever expect to play with me, you need to count how many cards have been played in each suit, at least just start with the trump suit. If we're playing trump hands, just start with the trump suit. That's the most dangerous one, and eventually it's going to become second nature to you." And when they start doing that and seeing it and saying, "Oh, yeah. Oh now I know all the trump has gone. I'm safe. I'm safe." It's cute.

What's interesting is most of the people I'm teaching now are probably in their 50s, maybe some in their 40s, but there are also people who are taking the game up in their 60s. That can be very challenging with the memory issues and trying to remember all the rules and how you do things. It's not like teaching an eight-year-old kid who soaks everything up like a sponge, so there's a lot of repetition and it's fine. It doesn't bother me.

If they don't get it, I'm like, "All right, plan B, how am I going to approach it this time?" I never take it personally. I never think that they're stupid. I was like, "Okay, it's a hard game. There's a reason why you're struggling. It's just not easy. It's fun, but it's not necessarily easy and you can enjoy it at any level that you want. You don't need to become a national champion. If you and your friends want to play kitchen bridge, and have coffee, and eat pretzels, and gossip and play bridge, and I give you the mechanics to be able to do that, I'm happy because you found something that you enjoy doing. If you want to get better, I'll help you do that too."

John McAllister: But you like to see people at the club playing in the duplicate games. Is that a goal for you?

Bonnie Gellas: Yes. This is everybody's topic. If bridge is going to survive, we need more new players and we need more younger players. It's great that older people are learning the game, but there's a short tail on that dog, so we need to get more people involved.

I was just communicating with the club. I run the 299er game and I'm having trouble building it. I'm not exactly sure why right now, but I do know that the people who come to play are on the older side. It's not younger people. The private club that I'm teaching at, I would say it's mostly mothers in their late 40s and early 50s. That's different than the demographic who's playing in the game. They're months away from playing in a bridge game, so I'm not really sure what the solution is. I think that the ACBL has a monumental task ahead of them in keeping bridge going.

John McAllister: How do you know when-

Bonnie Gellas: Oh, isn't that a Debbie Downer?

John McAllister: ... somebody's ready to play a club game? How do you know when-

Bonnie Gellas: I'm sorry. I didn't-

John McAllister: ... somebody's ready to play in a club game?

Bonnie Gellas: They say to me, "Am I going to feel stupid if I come to play in your newcomer game?" And I say, "No. Bridge is a game of mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. You're going to learn a lot by playing against people who are maybe better than you, and you're going to feel great when you sit at a table and you go, 'Oh, I know they did that wrong. I know better than that.' I said, so the worst that happens is you spent the afternoon at the club. Why not just try it?"

There are several people who run the supervised play at the local bridge club. I'm in contact with them because they will say to me, "I think I have a couple of players from Supervised Play who are ready for bridge. Should they come?" I'm like, "Yeah, send them over. Send them over." So that's really the feeder is the Supervised Play, and I'm not been doing that.

John McAllister: How many ACBL members do you think you're responsible currently that you have under your wing?

Bonnie Gellas: Several hundred, I would think.

John McAllister: Several hundred?

Bonnie Gellas: Maybe several hundred. I'm trying to think because I'm going back to all the beginner lessons that I did, and then people who came to play who were not members of the ACBL who joined the ACBL because they liked playing in the game and got hooked on Masterpoints. Maybe it's not several hundred, but it's well over 100, well over 100.

John McAllister: Did you teach Ben Klauder who recently came 6th in the Life Master Pairs?

Bonnie Gellas: No.

John McAllister: You didn't?

Bonnie Gellas: No, I did not.

John McAllister: No, he wasn't one of your... Oh, that's too bad because he probably took a bridge around the time that you were doing this.

Bonnie Gellas: But most of my teaching is during the day, and if somebody is working, they're taking classes at night and I wouldn't necessarily be teaching at night. So I'm sure he came through the club, but it wasn't through me.

John McAllister: I know Joe did some of his beginner lessons. What's Joe's last name?

Bonnie Gellas: Joe Burns? Joe Grue?

John McAllister: Yes, yeah. Joe Burns.

Bonnie Gellas: Joe Burns?

John McAllister: No, Joe Burns. I'm pretty sure.

Bonnie Gellas: Joe Burns.

John McAllister: Joe Burns. Yeah.

Bonnie Gellas: Yes. Joe has a huge following of students. He teaches more advanced levels than I generally teach, so I don't even know if Joe does beginner beginners anymore. When I see his schedule of classes advertised from the club, they're generally more advanced topics, but he has a huge following.

John McAllister: How much do you actually play at the club, for example?

Bonnie Gellas: I am going to admit that I have not gone back to the club to play, and I'm not sure why. I've played live bridge at private clubs, but I haven't gone back to the club. I'm not really sure why.

How much bridge do I play? I'm going to let you in on my dirty little secret. My routine for the past 10 or 11 years has been get up in the morning, make a cup of coffee, play 12 hands with the robots, and then start my day. So I was an early adopter of BBO way, way, way, way before the pandemic. And so transitioning to online bridge was very easy for me, and I like it a lot. I get to play with people that I wouldn't see at the club because they're not in New York, so that's been great. I've made a lot of friends outside of New York doing that. I think you probably know who Yoko Sobel is, right? Yoko?

John McAllister: Yep. Yeah, yeah.

Bonnie Gellas: Okay. So Yoko does run a game at the club on Wednesday evenings, which is a fun game. It's a real game. It's a social game. It's a serious game, but it's younger people and there might be some beer and wine involved. Probably, that would be my return to the club, going to that game. I just haven't done it yet. I like going to tournaments and I like playing online, so why not?

John McAllister: So did you play in Atlanta?

Bonnie Gellas: I did. I qualified for two national event finals and came in second in a Flight A Swiss, so I'm happy.

John McAllister: That's not bad at all.

Bonnie Gellas: No. Nope.

John McAllister: A Flight A Swiss. What day was the Flight A Swiss?

Bonnie Gellas: It was one of the days that I wasn't playing in the finals of another national event. It was not Flight A, Top-Flight Swiss. Maybe it was the first... I think it was the Monday.

John McAllister: So what events did you play?

Bonnie Gellas: I don't remember. Monday. I played in the Life Master Pairs and it just didn't work. Nothing was working. So then we played teams. And then I took... Oh. I was going to take two days off because I have some childhood friends who live in the Atlanta area who I had reconnected with through Facebook. We had made plans to go out to lunch, but somebody asked me to play on a team and that was it. So it was at that Sunday that we came in second in the Top-Flight Swiss. And then, I took Tuesday off, and then I played the Blue Ribbons. Let's get rid of the plural. I played a Blue Ribbon and then I played a different event I played the Senior Mixed and the Mixed Swiss. It was a lot of bridge. A lot of bridge.

John McAllister: Did you make the finals of the Mixed Swiss?

Bonnie Gellas: Yes. I made the finals of the Mixed Swiss, and I made the finals of the Mixed Senior Pairs. So, happy with that. Would've been a lot happier making it into the overalls the second day. I've had better tournaments, but I'm not complaining. My partner was like, "What do you mean? We made it to the finals of two national events. Stop beating yourself up." So I did.

John McAllister: You played with the same partner? Same partner for both events that made the finals?

Bonnie Gellas: For those events, yes. For those events, I did.

John McAllister: So what do you tell your students when you get back then? You tell them what you just told me, I guess.

Bonnie Gellas: They say, "How did you do?" And I said, "I'm pretty proud of myself. I could have done a lot better." "How many Masterpoints did you get?" And then I give them a number and they're like, "Wow". That's really all they want to know. "Wow."

John McAllister: Did you tell they were platinum?

Bonnie Gellas: "In one week?" Yeah, they don't know. They said, "What's a platinum point?" And I said, "You can only get it at the Nationals. It's like a dodo bird. It's very rare, goes extinct." They're like, "Wow."

But you talk about being proud of students. I have a woman who came up through my beginner classes, played in my 99er and 199er game, and has moved on to play in the 750 games. She started going to the Nationals. I guess two in Providence? I think in Providence was her first Nationals. I said to her, "You should try playing Swiss teams. It's a lot more fun. In many ways, it's a lot less pressure and you can really rack up points."

So she and her partner found people to play with, and the first time they played they were like, "This is horrible." I said, "No, it's not horrible. Now that you understand the mechanics." And I am pleased to say at this last tournament, she played in three different bracketed Swiss, came in first or second in all of them, and went home with eight-and-a-half gold points, and you would've thought that she had been given the Hope Diamond.

I think it's wonderful. I was so proud of her. She was like, "Wow! I said, "So are you convinced now that teams is what you need to do?" She said, "Yeah, that's great." So she has almost all her gold now just because she's been playing in the teams.

John McAllister: How many Life Masters do you think you have?

Bonnie Gellas: I don't know. A lot. A lot. I see them at the Nationals. They're all starting to come back to bridge again, but I don't know that I could actually quantify the total number, but a lot. You can tell when you have students who get it and students who are just going to have fun. I had one class of six students, five of whom were like, "Got it, got it, got it," and they are all playing everything and became Life Masters and, "Oh, Bonnie, guess what we did." They still come back to me and they go, "You taught us that and we remembered it, and now we're doing..." It's like being somebody's kindergarten teacher. They always remember how loving you were to them and how kind and how you encourage them. They just keep coming back and telling me how much they appreciated it. So, my life is not bad.

John McAllister: What's your aspiration for your own bridge play?

Bonnie Gellas: I would like to win a national event. The closest I came, I think it was in Austin. No, it was after Austin. I came in 14th overall in an event, which was... I can't even remember what event it was, but I was like, "Okay, I'll take that. That's not too shabby." So I think I can get there, but then there are days when I play and I'm like, "Who am I kidding? This is never going to happen." My partner doesn't like when I say that, but it's okay. It's all fine.

John McAllister: How many Masterpoints do you have?

Bonnie Gellas: I am closing in on 5,000. That's my Masterpoint goal for next year - finish that off. I'm one of those people who played bridge for years and years and years and years just because I liked the social aspect of bridge. I would go to the Nationals and never play in a national event. I would play in Regional Swiss, Regional Pair. It's like, "Oh, I could never play in Nationals," so I'm late to the party for the length of time I've been playing. It feels like I should have way more points, but it was so unimportant to me.

I think I told you, when we had our conversation in Atlanta, that I used Bridge as a social outlet in business when I traveled for business, which was every week, if I didn't have a client dinner or a company function, I would find the local bridge club and go pick up somebody and play bridge. So I met people around the country, which was great, but there was no aspiration of, "Well, let's fill out a card and if you play a wrong card, I'll never speak to you." It was purely social, and so it took me a long time to transition into being more competitive. And now I'm still working on being more competitive. There's a part of me that's just, "Oh, sit back," which is not going to get me a national title.

John McAllister: I think maybe you were playing with a pro on some days in Atlanta. Were you?

Bonnie Gellas: I did. I play quite frequently with Erez Hendelman who is also a really, really good friend and I enjoy playing with him. He enjoys playing with me. We just have a lot of fun at the bridge table. We've had a lot of good results and they keep getting better, but it's just nice. It's nice. I like playing with him. He very easy at the table. He makes it possible for me to play my best bridge by not giving me snake eyes or raised eyebrows. It's just very even keel and it's wonderful. So yes, I play with him. We play in every Nationals.

John McAllister: But he plays in the Shafer game, but you don't play in the Shafer game with him?

Bonnie Gellas: I don't. When the Shafer game started, it was for stars. I don't have a star, so at this point I believe that the participation is much more relaxed. I probably could play, but I haven't. I don't know. Do you think I should?

John McAllister: Oh, I don't know, maybe. I'm grateful that you're at the party. I'm going to send some-

Bonnie Gellas: Why thank you. That's very nice.

John McAllister: I'm going to send some students your way. I'm going to send some students your way. Yeah, absolutely, 100%.

Bonnie Gellas: Sounds cool. Maybe I will. I don't know.

John McAllister: We should play on Bridge Base. Maybe you and I should play sometime.

Bonnie Gellas: I would love to do that. I love speedballs. I love BBO. I'm sorry. I'm a BBO person and have been for a long time. I'm becoming addicted to the instant tournaments because you play against 100 people. It's an easy way to get Masterpoints and when you're trying to...

I used to tell my partner, "Okay, great, it's a new month. You know what the goal is? As many points as there are days in the month." He used to laugh and I would say, "I'm serious. I'm totally serious." That's my goal every month, but I would love to play it with you, John. That would be fun.

John McAllister: What's your favorite thing about bridge? I think you've probably touched on this some, but if you had to say?

Bonnie Gellas: So my favorite things about bridge are it's challenging, mind-stimulating experience. It's also a very creative experience. Not every bid is rote. You really have to think and come up with ways around things to get communicated what you want to communicate. And so, in that respect, it's like a puzzle as well, and that intrigues me. That's what I love about the game.

I like meeting new people. I would say 90% of my adult friends are bridge players at this point. My family has no clue what I do with my life because none of them play bridge or cards and they're like, "Well, where'd you go again? What are you doing?" So that's an important part of it, but I think the thing that keeps bringing me back to the table is the mind game aspect of it. I try and tell people, "If you like puzzles and you like communication, it's not all math. It's not all probability. It's being able to communicate as well and that's fun." What about you? What's-

John McAllister: My favorite thing about bridge?

Bonnie Gellas: Yeah.

John McAllister: I just think it's endlessly fascinating. There was a hand that I played in a Swiss teams in Atlanta where I knew that-

Bonnie Gellas: The Mixed Swiss that you won?

John McAllister: No. No, no, no, no, no. Thank you. Thank you. No, this is a downstairs basement Swiss, and I was in a partscore. I think I was in two spades and I knew that my left-hand opponent only had two spades. And so it was possible that if they didn't have the ten of spades, I could make my contract. And I got to a point late in the hand where I knew that I could ruff with the eight or something, because dummy had... I don't remember exactly what it was, but if they were going to overruff, I needed to crossruff the hand at this point in order to make it. But if they could overruff, I knew they didn't have any more spades, so I was always going to be down one. But if they didn't have the higher spade spot, I was going to be able to make it because then I was going to score a trump trick en passant at the end.

And so, my partner, God bless him, Matt Brown from New Zealand, he's an excellent bridge player. He's had some great results on the New Zealand open team, but I saw on his face some horrors throughout our week of playing together. I saw some horrors on his face-

Bonnie Gellas: I recognize that look.

John McAllister: ... that I hated seeing. It was just a part score. I was in two spades. I told him about the position afterwards. He was like, "Oh, that..." like he got it. He understood it immediately and he's like, "That's cool." It's like just even that, it's not a slam. It's not a game. It's just like I'm just trying to make this part score. I had to really think about it though because one of my things, one of my failings as a bridge player, is I play too fast.

Bonnie Gellas: Join the club.

John McAllister: I don't count. I don't do all the work and I was really felt called to push myself, push my edges, at this tournament, to do more of the work. Even though it didn't actually work out, just seeing the position and playing for it was really its own reward. I've talked to you about this for five minutes almost and it didn't even come true, but I saw it. I just think that aspect of the game-

Bonnie Gellas: That's the magic of bridge. All of a sudden you see something and you go, "Oh, wow," but playing too fast is the bane of my existence. And my partner actually said to me, "I saw a different Bonnie Gellas at the table in this event." He said, "You were excruciatingly slow, excruciatingly slow but I prefer that."

John McAllister: Was that Erez that said that?

Bonnie Gellas: Yeah, of course, of course. But we also wound up 6th overall going into the second day of the Mixed Swiss. Not Mixed Swiss, Mixed Senior Pairs, which that was an accomplishment. And then, I forget, and I Speedy Gonzalez and see a line, and I don't consider the others, and I just go for it. That's why I'm not a national champion.

John McAllister: Not yet.

Bonnie Gellas: Someday. Not yet, not yet.

John McAllister: It's also North American champion. It's different. It's better than National. It's North American. Everybody calls it National, but it's actually North American.

Bonnie Gellas: Well, that's because we have to include Canada and Mexico.

John McAllister: Which is great because it's better than a national champion [inaudible 00:51:56] continental title.

Bonnie Gellas: Yes, it's much broader. So-

John McAllister: I got the... Go ahead.

Bonnie Gellas: No, no.

John McAllister: I was going to say I got the impression that maybe you were concerned I wasn't going to have any good questions for you. Do you feel like this has been worth your time?

Bonnie Gellas: So honesty, I couldn't imagine why you want to be in this podcast. So I was like, "What are you are going to talk about?" I said, "I'm afraid to ask him." Anyway, it's been great. It was fun.

John McAllister: Same. Same. Anything else? Any more closing thoughts? Greatest accomplishment as a bridge player, we covered that before. I saw that you were in The New York Times bridge column for winning an event at Pro-Am...

Bonnie Gellas: Yes. And if you read the article-

John McAllister: ... in 2012?

Bonnie Gellas: ... carefully, you could hear the sarcasm and Phil Alder's mind in his writing about a specious bid that I made. It did not go unnoticed or unforgotten.

John McAllister: Is that framed? Do you have that framed at your house?

Bonnie Gellas: I do not. I do not. Oh, please. I was in The New York Times bridge column many times.

John McAllister: Oh really?

Bonnie Gellas: Yeah. The first time... New York used to have a double knockout event called the von Zedtwitz. And then, for new players, it was called the Harter Cup and my team won the Harter Cup. I don't know, did you ever know Steve Nellison?

John McAllister: No.

Bonnie Gellas: He passed away-

John McAllister: Well, the name sounds familiar actually.

Bonnie Gellas: ... but he was a New York, New Jersey bridge player who passed away. One part of his business was making things. Anyway, he had this article imprinted on a piece of brass and mounted on a plaque and gave it to me as my first mention in The New York Times, which I thought was very much nicer than Phil Alder. So yeah, I don't have it. I don't have him.

John McAllister: You'll have to send me a photo of that for the show notes.

Bonnie Gellas: I don't even know if I have it anymore. It's like every time I move-

John McAllister: Oh my gosh.

Bonnie Gellas: ... I throw things away and downsize, downsize, downsize, but no, the Harder Cup was a nice article. It wasn't a, "She made a stupid bid," and they got away with it article.

John McAllister: And how did you get into bridge originally?

Bonnie Gellas: My mother played bridge with the ladies in the neighborhood, and they had a bridge teacher who came to the house. This is a very long time ago that this was happening - nothing new under the sun. I would sit and listen to what they were doing, and I was fascinated by it. And so the other kids in the neighborhood, we all would go out in the backyard and play our own version of bridge not really knowing too much about it, but I was always interested.

When I got to college, the women in my dorm wanted to play bridge. And so we started playing and I knew that they were wrong, so I switched to pinochle and I played pinochle for four years.

When I graduated, I got into a kitchen bridge game with people from work, and I realized very quickly that I was the weakest player and I needed to start taking lessons. There was this... It's not a company. I don't know what it was. It was called The Learning Annex and they published a newspaper and it was all things that you could take lessons about or things that you could do in New York. Bridge lessons were listed in there, so I signed up and I started to take lessons. I would say of my adult friends, 85% of them took lessons from the same person and had my eyes opened to a whole new world.

And then, there was this room full of bridge tables and people playing cards and stuff. The instructor would say, "Someday you'll be in there," and I'm like, "Well, I don't think so," and then there I was, so that was it. It was just because I felt not good enough to play with this group from work that I started taking lessons, and then I was totally hooked, totally hooked. It was like, "This is fascinating. It makes sense to me. It's logical, it's fun, it's creative. I'm meeting a lot of new people. It was great." I don't see that happening anymore anywhere. I don't know how to get it started again.

John McAllister: Did you surpass all the work people? All these work people?

Bonnie Gellas: Yes. Yes, yes. Because especially now, I'm playing a lot more tournaments. I don't even know if they're playing. Life gets in the way. We were all-

John McAllister: Absolutely.

Bonnie Gellas: ... young and carefree, and didn't have responsibilities. People then got married and had children and it pulls you away from the game. So being me, unmarried, I got to keep playing, so it was fine. It worked for me, but that's how I got into it. It was early. And the irony is my mother would never play with me. "You're too good. You'll be too good. I'll be afraid." I'm like, "Okay," so we never played. It's funny, right?

John McAllister: Do you have a song you can sing us out with?

Bonnie Gellas: Well, here's one that's in keeping with the season.

(singing).

It's a gift, John. It's a gift. It's a gift.

John McAllister: What is?

Bonnie Gellas: I entertain myself immensely doing this. And people would, "Sing that Hanukkah song for us."

John McAllister: Is that the Hanukkah song?

Bonnie Gellas: (singing). No, it's not Hanukkah, but it's a Jewish folk song/dance that they all... You hear it at every wedding you go to on the planet. People dance the horah and sing [foreign language 00:59:25]. That's how I learned it: going to weddings. And that's what I do.

John McAllister: All right. Well, it's been a pleasure to have this conversation. I look forward to sharing it with all those people who are going to be fired up to hear... You're going to need to put out an album I think.

Bonnie Gellas: That would be fun, wouldn't it?

John McAllister: How many songs do you think you have? I would be happy to help you. I've recorded some songs of my own.

Bonnie Gellas: I'm sure I have about 10 or 15. All kinds of bridge topics.

John McAllister: I think maybe we should do that. I think maybe that's our next project together.

Bonnie Gellas: Okay, okay. My students used to say to me, "Can we tape you?" "No, you may not tape me," so you are very special to have me recorded here, and hopefully I was not off-key. And if I was, too bad.

John McAllister: All right, Bonnie 212, I'll be in touch.

Bonnie Gellas: Okay. Thank you, John. This was delightful.