Player Profile #3:
Dennis Ford
The Player Profile series, prepared by club member Vicki Williamson, explores the stories and experiences of being a bridge player in the Clarence Valley.
Dennis Ford Australian Bridge Federation (ABF) ranking: Bronze State Master ABF Masterpoints: 187.35 (as at May 2024)
Dennis’s loves the competitive nature of bridge. He describes himself as “extremely competitive by nature”. A dedicated sports person early in life, Dennis is also a longtime card player. “I had too many sports, hobbies and things. I was quite good at a lot of them, but never a champion at any of them”.
Early experiences of card play include many of the usual card games played by children with their grandparents. Some games, like Cribbage, he still enjoys playing today. Graduating to play Five Hundred brought Dennis many a Friday night playing cards late and into the early hours of Saturday and having a lot of fun. That card playing experience led Dennis to seek out a Five Hundred card playing club in Grafton. He was not successful in this endeavour, instead, a with the help of friends, he found Geoffrey Hiatt, then President of the Grafton Bridge Club, who offered to teach Dennis how to play bridge. Lessons began but serious ill health intervened and after only one lesson, Dennis spent the next year or so fully focused on recovering his health.
Something of a consistent presence in the Dennis bridge story is fellow Grafton Bridge Club member, Fred Sherriff. Dennis has known Fred for a long time having enjoyed many Friday night games of 500 together, sometimes as partners and other times as opponents. It was Fred who joined Dennis in that first bridge lesson too. When Dennis turned his attention to recovering his health, Fred pursued other things. These days Fred and Dennis see each other weekly at the bridge table, again sometimes as partners and other times as opponents, during club competitions.
With good health regained, Dennis resumed bridge lessons, found a card playing partner and progressed to competitive club play in around 2006. Dennis recalls at this stage of his bridge playing “you think you know everything, but discover there’s plenty of stuff you still don’t know and that’s still happening”.
Over the years, Dennis has made many and varied contributions to his local club, including roles as office holder, teacher, mentor to other players, tournament director and as an active and regular player. Dennis has experience in giving bridge lessons, supporting new players and providing guidance to players generally. He reflects while “I don’t have any formal qualifications as a teacher, I just took the job on because I was asked to”. Dennis sees his knowledge of standard bidding and correct bidding procedures as something he can share with others to help them learn the basics of bridge playing.
Dennis says “one of the frustrations in teaching is convincing people to read the text and do the practice exercises. Old 500 players can be a particular challenge (just show me the rank of the cards and how to score and I’ll be fine)”. While Dennis always tries to accommodate different learning styles, he maintains learning to play bridge “still takes time and effort - a bit like a musician who decides to learn a new instrument.”
Dennis is something of a lifelong learner himself recalling, in the first few years of playing, he did not know a lot about standard bidding and correct bidding procedures, so along the way that became a special learning focus for him. Then he realised “I’ve been spending all this time learning to bid properly; I’ve got to learn how to play a bit better”. It was time to invest in some bridge books.
Like many other bridge players, the COVID pandemic was an opportunity for Dennis to transition to online bridge playing. Dennis likes the online format as “it doesn’t take up all your day”. However, he has always enjoyed the social aspect of face-to-face club play.
Dennis has experience as a tournament director, overseeing the set-up of playing movements and adjudicating when called by other players to decide the correct application of bidding and playing rules. He has also played in a number of bridge congresses, mostly those arranged by local and regional clubs. “You get a range of good, medium and beginner players all in one room, so that is what makes congresses interesting”.
When asked what is the best thing about playing bridge, without hesitation, Dennis replies: “Oh, it's the competitive challenge of it and the actual challenge of getting better”. Dennis observes it’s like “golfers talk about their handicap, how to bounce from 10 to 9, an achievement, things like that. It's a bit like that at bridge, you learn more and you feel a satisfaction in improving”.
The photo is Dennis, as he was, in his 500 playing days.
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