Uncertainty and Obligations

Sadly, I must reiterate that the state of the world today remains dreadful. The economy is tottering, exchange rates are unstable and terrorism is still rife.

For all that, should we give up and allow ourselves to be submerged by the prevailing pessimism? Or, on the contrary, should we react vigorously and show that we are prepared to fight to overcome the undeniable difficulties that we face?

For my part, I would like to believe that, even if World Bridge is suffering from this harmful climate, our proactive approach will bear fruit eventually, provided that everyone becomes aware of the need for solidarity.

More than ever, we must accept our differences but smooth them over as much as possible in order to attain our common objectives. We will continue to fight to enable our National Bridge
Organisations to gain admission to their National Olympic Committees. This is no dream, as nearly half of them have already succeeded, as have two-thirds of the Chess federations. The International Olympic Committee and its President, Jacques Rogge, favours this strategy.

At the same time, the IOC continues to examine the feasibility and medal structure of the Intellympics (so called by our great friend Marc Hodler), a project comprising Bridge, Chess, Draughts and Go that the WBF and GAISF suggested to the IOC. These efforts will confirm that we are doing our part to make
Bridge even more popular.

In order to do this, I cannot repeat often enough how vital it is to teach bridge to children in school and to young people in college and university. In this way we will not only gain our future players for the generations to come but also we will immediately capture the attention of parents and public authorities. For these reasons it is of the utmost importance to participate in the next Olympiad in all categories – Open, Women and Seniors – as well as in the Universities Championships under the aegis of FISU
(Fédération Internationale de Sports Universitaires).

We also need more exposure in the media. In this regard, good news came from our last World Championships in Monaco where, at last, it appears that the finals (and indeed the entire Bermuda Bowl and Venice Cup) were widely followed on the Internet on the Bridge Base Online (BBO) and e-bridge sites in particular.

Today we are negotiating contracts that will link broadcasts on the Web to televised programs (on B-Sky-B in particular).

This is why the question of the understanding of Bridge is crucial and must overcome the controversy surrounding the use of highly unusual methods (HUM) and unfamiliar, largely obstructive (Brown Sticker) conventions, which can destroy Bridge and ruin all our efforts.

Thus, we do not consider that we are dogs chasing our tail. We do our bit – the other actors on the World Bridge stage should do theirs.

José Damiani
President, World Bridge Federation