Between the intern of Juntos por el Cambio and Boca, Mauricio Macri aims to qualify for the bridge World Cup

Maurizio Macri he is on guard duty in two trenches. On the one hand, after stepping aside in the presidential race, fights within Together for the change increasingly divided ahead of national elections. On the other hand, does everything to return to Boca as part of your dolphin list Andres Ibarra under the premise of addressing Juan Roman Riquelme and company and reclaim the political power of the club that decades ago served as a stepping stone into the arenas of politics.

However, for these hours, the head of the former president (of the Nation and of Boca) is concentrated on the South American zonal bridge championship which will deliver two seats for the World Cup in Marrakech, Morocco, to be held next August.

After the first six rounds of a draw, which takes place at Palace of Peacein the Retiro district of Buenos Aires, in front of Plaza San Martín, Macri had at least one reason to smile, given that Argentina, in the senior category, leads the positions, followed by Colombia, Chile and Brazil

Macri, who appears 207 in the world ranking of this card game, is paired with Pablo Lambardi, who is also her personal trainer. Two other pairs represent the national team. They are supplemented by Walter Fornasari AND louis palace and from Ernesto Muzio AND Hector Cameros.

The captain of Argentina is Ezekiel the Good Old Manpolitical cousin of Macri, accompanied by him SOCMAthe family business, and also during his tenure as president of Boca. Kelo, as everyone knows him, is an expert bridge player and master. The coach is Debra Hyatt.

It will be a busy week for Macri, who continues in his role as head of the FIFA Foundation, in the world of bridge. It is that this Thursday will be the awards ceremony and it will be known if Argentina will go to the World Cup in Marrakech. And the next day, Friday 13, an international tournament will begin here in the country in which the 20 best teams in the world arrive, including Switzerland, the last champion of the free category. Obviously Macri and company have already signed up to participate among the seniors.

Mauricio Macri and bridge

It was known during the early days of the pandemic that the former Boca strongman had renewed his passion for bridge. Forced by the mandatory isolation that Alberto Fernández decreed when vaccines were not yet circulating, Macri trained hard and also through online platforms while confined to his country house Los Abrojos, in the small town of Malvinas Argentinas in Buenos Aires. His goal, therefore, was to play in the Copa América, where he reached the semifinals with the MM team. Afterwards he played in a South American championship. The last stop was the World Cup which was held in Parma, Italy where he played a big part, but Argentina didn’t make it to the finals.

His father, Franco, also enjoyed this pastime with friends which, until recently, he knew was an almost exclusive recreational activity for men and women of high society.

However, this passion of Mauritius is far from new. There is an anecdote told in the book “The Dynasty, Life, Passion and Decline of the Macri” (2001), by the journalist Ana Alewhich reflects the family tradition for this game that combines mental strength, memory and a lot of discipline.

remembered Franco Macridied in March 2019, in that book: “We were with our usual friends playing bridge. Mauricio arrived and wanted to join the game. ‘But you don’t know how to play!’, I replied.”

Sit me down and you’ll see if I know or don’t know.

“Friends said ‘show him what he does’.

A bit of history

To find the origins of the bridge, we have to go back about five centuries. Documentation has been found confirming the existence of a game called Triumphus Hispanicus, way back in 1526, which is something like the great-great-grandfather of the popular tute and which would be the starting point of a family tree whose most illustrious family member is the first chief entertainment of the president. .

In between, as history goes and as a product of the distortions of oral traditions -Gutemberg and his heirs must have had other priorities than printing the rules for board games-, other card games appear such as the French quadrille, the Russian vint and the English whist. Following the familiar analogy, the latter would be like the older brother of bridge.

He whist, under his old name of Triumph, Trump or Ruff appears mentioned, for example, in “Anthony and Cleopatra”, the tragedy written by William Shakespeare in the early 17th century. This is poetic license, an anachronism, from the father of English literature, who regularly played this game as a young man. The Romans and Egyptians never knew of his existence.

From Spain to England. From England to France – biographers say Napoleon was another fan of whist – and the rest of the world. The game thus became one of the favorite pastimes of kings, nobles and courtiers. And, like the British Empire and its expansionist policy, it reached almost every corner of the globe as its colonies.

In the late 19th century whist found a variant in bridge and, within a few years, became the most popular card game, what a contradiction, among the elite.

Reconstructs Encyclopædia Britannica: “The origin of whist bridge is not known with certainty, but a similar game appeared in Constantinople before 1870 under the name of khedive, whose name for some reason became biritch (…) In 1887 a pamphlet was published in London titled ‘Biritch or Russian Whist’, in which the game was described.It is said that Ludovic Halévy, in 1893, tried to persuade some whist-playing friends in Paris to play bridge with him, but in the same year, however, it was played at the Whist Club in New York City. In 1894 Lord Brougham, penalized for failing to deliver the last card (trump) in a game of whist at the Portland Club in London, apologized on the grounds that he had forgotten not to play bridge, ‘ the greatest card game ever introduced'”.

The game found its current form at the hands of Harold Vanderbilt, another millionaire with a passion for bridge. It was this wealthy railroad merchant, one of the most powerful men in the industry in the first half of the last century, who gave the definitive form to the rules of bridge, known as contract bridge.

Bridge is organized by the World Bridge Federation, the FIFA of this card game, founded on August 18, 1958 in Oslo, Norway. Its first president was Baron Robert de Nexon, an aristocrat who was, among his many occupations, an executive at Coty, the French perfume giant, and owner of a successful racehorse farm.

Since 1999 it has been a discipline that has Olympic rank -like chess-, in addition to never having been part of the Games program -as happened with polo until Berlin 1936 or with the exotic hot air balloon races that were practiced as an exhibition in Paris 1900-.

Being covered by the IOC umbrella, the game is not only strictly regulated, but the competitor must pass the same anti-doping controls as other high-performance athletes, again under the rules of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA for its acronym in English). .

Like chess and poker, bridge has found an excellent ally in online platforms, where millions of people play it without having to share a table or a room, just like it happened in high society gentlemen’s clubs, the ones they were used to men like Vanderbilt participate.

It is estimated that more than 80 million fans practice it worldwide and around 125 countries have their own national federation. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, among other celebrities and millionaires, are great bridge players.

How to play bridge

To play bridge you need four players and a deck of French cards, the same used for poker -52 cards with spades, clubs, hearts and diamonds as different suits-. But it is far from easy to learn. Each pair sits facing each other and the seats the players occupy represent the points of the compass (North, South, East, West). The rounds always follow each other in a clockwise direction and everyone receives 13 cards – aces are the highest value up to 2 – in descending order.

Before starting, each couple establishes their role through “contracts,” just as Vanderbilt established nearly 100 years ago. Thus begins the first phase, ie when it is established how many tricks -turns- will be needed to win after thirteen -one per card- of each game. The declaring team sets the goal and must achieve it. The opponent, or defender, must avoid it to win.

The second phase, called the game phase, begins when one of the players, the one to the dealer’s left, throws a card. The others must roll one of the same suit. Whoever throws the card with the highest value, keeps the trick.

Since the maximum number of rounds is 13 – since in each round the player throws a card per trick – the minimum number of rounds already established is 6 and at least one more is needed to win the game. However, a pair can raise the bet and establish that they are able to win 9 of the 13 game rounds and also establish a trump card.

An example: if a 3 of hearts is thrown, it means that, in addition to the 6 established tricks, the objective is to win three more and the winning suit will be that of hearts.

If the bidding pair wins the tricks that have been raised, they will take a certain number of runs. If not, the defending duo will score. Among the beginners, on the other hand, it is played to the best of 5 or 7 hands but without counting the points.

The game, between professionals, with multiple variations becomes very complex. It requires knowing and analyzing multiple variations and taking into account an innumerable number of conventions, very difficult to summarize in a simple newspaper article. Chance, unlike other table games, doesn’t have much impact once the cards are dealt.

Bridge involves planning, a long memory, and a mental discipline that comes with hours and hours of practice.