Chris Hasney played a bit of bridge in college in the early 1970s but did not develop a keen interest in the game until the mid-1980s when he met Bob Jones at the Thunder Mountain Bridge Club in Sierra Vista, Arizona. Unfortunately, Chris was working full time as a stockbroker for Dean Witter Reynolds Inc. and engaged in hobbies such as community theater which limited his time at the bridge table and made his studies of the game under Bob’s tutelage spotty, at best. In addition, Chris contracted Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS) in late 1986, and suffered a gradual worsening of that condition. Eventually the effects of the disease became so pronounced that Chris reluctantly left the securities business on long term disability in early 1995.
Chris grabbed bridge as a therapeutic lifeline. It allowed him to remain in the company of other people and to combat the “Brain Fog” which is one of the classic symptoms of advanced CFIDS which is also known by the names Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.). Unfortunately Bob Jones died of a heart attack in 1995, and so Chris began taking bridge lessons from Jerry Pottier and Billy Miller. At the same time, Chris began to transcribe Bob Jones’ old lesson plans in an effort to learn a bit more and to save Bob’s work for posterity. Volumes I and II of The American Bridge Series sprouted from this project.
Another therapy was the Internet. Despite frequent CFIDS relapses Chris began learning e-mail and HTML and became somewhat adept at basic website design. He also began playing bridge on the Internet via OK Bridge, which he found to fit better with CFIDS since he was not committed to a 3 1/2 hour duplicate session One of the things he noticed was a huge inconsistency between what he learned from Bob, what he learned from Jerry and Billy, what he was reading in bridge texts, and what was being played as SAYC or “Standard” on OK Bridge. The Intermediate American Bidding System (Volume II of The American Bridge Series) addresses those inconsistencies.
With Jerry as partner at the El Paso Regional and playing The Advanced American Bidding System (Volume III), Chris won the Flight A Unmixed Pairs event, which led to a Blue Ribbon Pairs entry at the San Francisco Nationals. After the afternoon session Chris and Jerry were 17th in section and needed only to play average in the evening session to qualify for the semi-finals. Unfortunately CFIDS brain fog reared its ugly head in the second session, and board after board was tossed away. They missed qualifying by 1/2 point out of 1250 or so. Poor Jerry, he had to sit opposite a partner who couldn’t think. It is to Jerry’s credit that he maintained his composure and did his dead-level best on every board, despite what was going on. Billy Miller has experienced this as well, playing with Chris in San Diego and Reno regional events. On a good day, Chris can bid and play reasonably well, but you don’t want to partner him during a CFIDS relapse.
Chris lives in Sierra Vista, Arizona where he is building a Nutrition For Life International business with a goal of Presidential Platinum. He also does web page design and website hosting for bridge pros, schools, and organizations via The River’s Bridge Suites, which he created and manages. He is webmaster of The Contract Bridge World Wide Website and is Coordinating Webmaster for the CFIDS CFS ME FMS GWS Directory project, an attempt to catalog CFIDS, Fibromyalgia, and Gulf War Syndrome support group links worldwide in one website.
Jerry Pottier began learning bridge at the age of 32 from Bill August at the Springfield Bridge Club in Massachusetts. Initially mentored by Bill and by Lucile Hastings, Jerry went on to run the club for Bill for two years. Jerry played on the Club’s K-S Team and remembers that the most fun he ever had in bridge was defending the Flight B Rye, New York regional knockout title in 1980 with the K-S Team.
Jerry became a Certified Regional Director in 1978 and was trained as a National Director under Maury Braunstein in 1981. For personal reasons Jerry resigned from the ACBL that year but he continued to play bridge and work on bidding theory.
Jerry holds a national and 13 regional wins in such varied events as men's pairs, open pairs, mixed and unmixed pairs, and teams. Many of these were wins were unrecorded, since he had resigned from the ACBL prior to the event and played as a non-member. Thus, although Jerry has won somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,200 masterpoints, most Gold, he has recorded very few of them and never attained a Life Master rating. However, he plays exclusively in Flight A at the few tournaments he attends.
Jerry is quite a bridge theoretician, having designed both the Advanced and Expert American bidding systems (Volumes III and IV of the American Bridge Series) which blend K-S, Standard American, Acol, and new things which Jerry created to glue them all together in a way which makes sense. Some of Jerry’s conventional creations which are taught in Volumes III and IV are: TEAS, OhNo, 3-Way Stayman, Advanced Responsive Doubles, Flexible Negative Doubles, Advanced Mathe over a strong 1C opening, 3-card Support Mini-Splinters, and the Pottier convention. He taught some of this material to a team in San Diego, CA which put them into practice in winning a Flight B team event at the Nationals.
In real life Jerry is a High Tech Headhunter and volunteers his time as a Deacon in the First Baptist Church in Sierra Vista, where he teaches advanced Bible classes in English and Greek. He is building a Nutrition For Life direct response international network marketing organization to the Presidential Platinum level so that he can achieve a residual income which will allow him and his wife Cher to have more free time and money for travel and support of church activities. Jerry and Cher reside in Sierra Vista, Arizona.