On Oct 17, 4:01?am, gaze..._at_shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack)

wrote:

> In article <j7fvjj$su..._at_dont-email.me>, jonathan23 ?<campb..._at_yahoo.ca> wrote:

> >On Sat, 15 Oct 2011 12:54:33 +0000, Kenny McCormack wrote:

>

> ><SNIP>

>

> >> P.S. ?One could also speculate on how/why masterpoint inflation

> >> occurred. Comments?

>

> >Here's a snippet from an article from Sports Illustrated in 1960 that

> >gives a bit of a view of the times and what was considered to be the cost

> >of masterpoint-chasing back then:

> ...

> >saves them from paying league dues, $2 a year. It is a modest saving at

> >best, since it is estimated that entry fees and travel costs cause even

> >the best players to spend at least $20 for every point they win."

>

> Cool! ?Thanks for posting this. ?I remember when - when SI considered bridge

> a sport.

You're welcome.

>

> Considering that inflation from 1960 to present is probably about 10X, this

> would get us to $200/point today - and that's for "even the best players"..

> Surely, that would make the overall average considerably higher than that..

I wouldn't be surprised if serious masterpoint hunting cost that much

or more.  Someplace else in this article there's mention of the cost

of hiring a pro at that time as $25-100 per session.

>

> P.S. ?How did you get that article in? ?Were you able to scan in the text,

> or (horror of horrors!) did you have to type it all in? ?(In any case,

> thanks again)

>

You can search and read everything in the Sports Illustrated vault,

every issue from #1 in the 50s on up to...I'm not sure where the vault

ends but I think it might be pretty recently.  Each article can be

viewed as a HTML page (which can be copied and pasted if desired, as I

did with the above), or as scans of the original magazine in a viewer

just as if you're leafing through it.  The HTML seems to be scanned

and might have a couple glitches in it, however they didn't do the

bridge diagrams properly so looking at the scans is better for reading

the hands.

Anyway, there lots of bridge content from the 50s-70s when Goren had a

regular column (I believe it was ghostwritten by Dick Frey, who was an

excellent writer, at least for some of Goren's tenure in SI).  There

are articles by other writers too on the Dallas Aces and national/

world championships of that era.  Ray Cave (later managing editor of

TIME) wrote the article I quoted above.  There are other articles on

bridge by Walter Bingham (sportswriter), Thomas Thompson (who covered

the JFK assassination for Life magazine), Robert Cantwell (novelist

and onetime associate editor of TIME).

You can also find some bridge content from magazines like Life in

Google Books if you search for it.

The SI vault site is at: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/

--

- Jon Campbell

Ottawa Canada