A long time member of the Twin City bridge community died this past week: Dennis Saliny.
Our thanks to Dennis' very close friend and bridge buddy, Ron DeHarpporte, for a remembrance of Dennis.
Many of our members probably did not know Dennis Saliny as well as they know other top players in our unit. Dennis did not play very often and almost never travelled to tournaments. But he was one the best bridge players in our area. Dennis died a few days ago from the aftereffects of a fall on the ice suffered two years ago.
Dennis had a different view of duplicate bridge than most of the rest of us. He refused to join the ACBL for many years because he said that he could not be part of an organization that ranked the skill of it's members as the League did. He thought that master points were more of a reward for attendance than for knowledge of the game.
Dennis was a rubber bridge player! He learned to play, like so many others of his generation, at the card room of the University of Minnesota in the late 1950's. He played many other games, always for money, like Pitch, Klabiash (a two handed Hungarian game played mostly by Jews where the best player almost always won), Gin Rummy, Casino, and especially Poker. He was also a top ranking pool player and won a lot of money playing that game. Dennis, from the 60's through the 80's, played in the biggest poker games in town and often in Las Vegas. He won tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of dollars over the years. When Texas Hold'em took over poker, however, he gave it up. He always believed that you had to learn a game when you were young or you could not become a top player.
During the 60's, Dennis and I played a lot of rubber bridge with and against each other. We played for years with the top players of an earlier era like Dave Clarren, Morrie Frier, Newt Dockman and others now familiar to only few people. We once spent several weeks in Los Angeles playing bridge at The Santa Monica Bridge Club with and against players like Lew Mathe, Eddie Kantar, and Don Krauss. We even played a few sessions in Australia at the Sydney Bridge Club. For many years Dennis spent the month of March in the Miami/Boca Raton area playing rubber bridge at the local clubs.
It was difficult for Dennis, after years of playing high stakes rubber bridge, to adapt to duplicate. He could never really bring himself to risk his contract to try for an overtrick. But he did play more and more duplicate and won many Regionals. His best game was IMPs. Still, he won a number of Pair Games playing with me and others. He did not have an ACBL membership even thought he was known as a top player. Finally, because his membership on any team skewed the stratification of whatever team he was on, the League insisted that he get a ACBL number and awarded him 1000 master points. Of course, this was under protest from Dennis.
There are many stories about Dennis. The one that best shows his rubber bridge background goes like this. Dennis was given a hand that had one of our top players on lead against 7 NT doubled with the Ace of one suit and the King, Queen of another. When Dennis was asked what he would lead I thought he was going to become ill. "Do you mean some idiot actually led the King instead of cashing his Ace?" he asked with amazement. When told it was so, he nearly fell off the chair laughing and of course asked the name of the idiot. The idiot shall remain nameless but the declarer was Terry Beckman who proceeded to squeeze the doubler and make 7 doubled.
Dennis was a person of great character. His loyalty to his very many friends and his personal integrity was the highest of any person that I have ever known.
Ron DeHarpporte