The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [385]
Bridge and Osberg accomplished what even Bill Gates had not. Buffett had the Blumkins send someone over from the Furniture Mart to hook up a computer. He stopped the Indefensible in some Midwestern city where Osberg was playing in a tournament and ferried her to Omaha. They arrived at the house, she got acquainted with Astrid, then taught Buffett how to navigate the Internet and use a mouse. “And he was fearless, just fearless,” Osberg says. “He wanted to play bridge.” And only bridge. “Just write down the things I need to know to get in to play bridge,” he told her. “I don’t want to know anything about anything else. Don’t try to explain to me what this thing is doing.”36 Buffett adopted the moniker “tbone” and began playing on the Internet four or five nights a week with Osberg (“sharono”) and other partners. Astrid would fix him an early dinner before he logged on to his bridge game.
Before long, Buffett was so engrossed in Internet bridge that nothing could disturb him. When a bat got into the house and flapped around the TV room, banging into the walls and entangling itself in the curtains, Astrid shrieked, “Warren, there’s a bat in here!” Sitting across the room in his frayed terry-cloth bathrobe, staring at his bridge hand, he never moved his eyes from the screen as he said, “It’s not bothering me any.”37 Astrid called the pest-control people and they removed the bat, all without disturbing his bridge game.
Buffett felt his skills had improved so much under Osberg’s tutelage that he wanted to play in a serious tournament. “Why not start at the top?” she said. They signed up for the mixed pairs at the World Bridge Championships. The Albuquerque convention center was filled with hundreds of people sitting around bridge tables and kibitzers wandering around watching the players. Murmurs and stares flew through the room when the richest man in the United States and two-time world champion Sharon Osberg strolled into the World Bridge Championships together. By now, enough people recognized Buffett’s lanky frame and thatch of gray hair that he caused a stir. For an unranked amateur to show up at the world championships as his first tournament was an unusual thing. For Warren Buffett to do it was shocking.
Osberg expected that they would lose in short order, so the point was to have fun and get some experience. Instead, Buffett sat down at the table and seemed to shut out everything. It was as if there was nobody else in the room. His bridge skills were not close to the level of most other players, but he was able to focus as calmly as if he were playing in his living room. “My defense is better with Sharon,” he says. “It’s almost like I can feel what she’s doing. And you can trust that everything she’s doing has meaning.” Somehow his intensity overcame the weakness of his game. Osberg was amazed when they qualified for the finals. “We were just good enough,” she says.
But after a day and a half of playing to get to this point, Buffett was exhausted and wrung out. The only breaks had been an hour here and there to slip out for a hamburger. He looked like he had run a marathon. In the break before the finals he told Osberg, “I can’t do it.”
“What?!” she said.
“I can’t do it. Tell them we’re not going to play in the finals. Tell them I had a business emergency,” he said. Now Osberg had the job of explaining this to the World Bridge Federation.
Nobody who qualified for the finals had ever decided not to play. The representatives of the World Bridge Federation were outraged that Warren Buffett would come to their tournament, endorse it by his famous and important presence, qualify for the finals, then try to leave. “You can’t do that!” they said. When Osberg insisted, they threatened to strip her of her ranking and