Bridge Blog 364: Last laps

          2010 is dwindling down, as are my chances for increasing my point count for the year. But like the year-end Santa Claus rallies on Wall Street, there’s a little uptick over the holidays.
          With June Feuerstein on Sunday in a three-table Howell game at the Airport Bridge Club, we finished with 54%, good for second in the B strat and 1.46 points. On Monday, Nadine Stein and I squeaked in second in B North-South with a wretched 45.65% and got .67 of a point.

          On Monday night, I visited the Whist Club in the Zion Church in the Town of Tonawanda – a familiar place made bizarre by all the sewer construction detours around it. The Whist Club is famous for attracting the best players in town and some of them indeed were present – Jim Mathis and Saleh Fetouh, who wound up coming in first. And then there were Bert Hargeshimer, Christy Kellogg, Art Morth and the Libbys, Barbara and Paul.

          I was paired with Unit 116 President Judie Bailey, which was not only rare, but a treat. What’s more, our games seemed to mesh pretty well, although the Fetouh-Mathis pair skunked us. We wound up third in a four-table Howell, first in the B strat, only a percent behind Hargeshimer and Rick Benstock. Our 55.56% game netted us .40 of a point.

          Back in the land of triple points at the Airport Bridge Club on Tuesday, I got to play with Janet Frisch. Scheduled partner Celine Murray called in with chest pains – too much activity over the holidays, apparently – and set me up with Janet in what turned out to be a big 10-table game. Among the players – Meg Klamp, still up from Florida, paired with Bev Cohen, who’s here for the first time since she moved to Ohio.

          It was a very agreeable partnership, but we had some resounding gaffes. In one, I made a weak 2 Diamond bid, forgetting that Janet and I were playing Mini-Roman. End result: a 2 NT contract down two.  In another, we allowed Meg Klamp a makeable contract when we could have made one in our own suit (See Blog 363). Nevertheless, there was more good than bad and we wound up first in the B strat East-West, fifth overall, with another 55.56% game. This one was worth 1.42 masterpoints.
          So what’s my December point standing? I have 7.59 black points at Airport, along with 5.85 silver. There’s .40 from the Whist Club and .40 from Delaware Wednesday last week. Plus 1.2 from the Unit meeting and game back in the beginning of the month. That’s a lot of math. Let’s turn on the computer calculator. OK. 15.44 overall. Plus those extra district points in the STaC, which Airport doesn’t include in its tabulations. As for Ace of Clubs, though, it’s quite a bit less. Looks like 8.39. With a measly total like that, fifth place in the nation could be hard to hold. Can I make it to 10 in the next two days?