21:32 29 January 2014 by GS Jade Barrett CsbNews correspondent
Harvey Mackay
“Fatigue makes fools of us all. It robs you of your skills and your judgment, and it blinds you to creative solutions. It’s the best-conditioned athlete, not the most talented, who generally wins when the going gets tough” – Harvey Mackay
Playing tournament bridge takes its toll on athletes of all levels. Your mind is always racing, calculating and recalculating thousands upon thousands of options every minute that you sit at a table. [ilink url=”http://www.greatbridgelinks.com/gblIND/Baze.html”]Grant Baze[/ilink] once said that he continued smoking more out of the need to escape the playing arena than anything else, and when you play almost every hand in less than 4 minutes, you certainly have plenty of time on our hands. Grant Baze
The pressures experienced by high level bridge actually diminish with practice, as more bidding sequences and card plays become routine – if not fully automatic.
Therefore the hours of thinking about the game add to the improvement of my performance, as I am yet unsatisfied with every aspect of my vocation. It is through this constant effort that I seek to reduce my errors and increase the opportunity to discover techniques that as of yet are not well-honed enough, or even unknown to me.
While this self evaluation may seem harsh, it does serve as an excellent motivator, for what bridge competitor does not wish to perform at the highest level possible to themselves? For if I learn all I can, perhaps I may find the path to learning even more.
Only then, will fatigue no longer become a roadblock to success.
