Bridge Blog 408: Slow and steady

          Sometimes the race goes to the slow and steady and this was one those slow and steady weeks. It started off on Monday with a reunion with Marietta Kalman, with whom I played in the last week in March and had my worst round of the month. This time she informed me that I should not count my long suits for extra points, just high cards. I protested, but she was adamant and I restrained myself accordingly. We did better, but 46.6% wasn’t enough to win points.

          Tuesday brought me to sitting South at Table 1 with Marie Suprinick, so I had no idea who the people at the other eight tables were. Before my sub-40% round with Marietta last week, I believe my previous worst game was with Marie. Not only that, she professed to be on a losing streak. We started off with her showing why this is so when she failed to make a balancing bid over the opponents’ 1 Heart opener. Nevertheless, it turned out to be one of our better boards. We needed a few more of those than we got, though, and finished just out of the money with 48.56%.

          My regular Wednesday partner Celine Murray was healthy again this week and – although I had one of my best recent games without her the previous week – we profited from renewing our alliance. Our 57.27% game felt good (very good in places, see Blog 407) and left us second in our direction, third overall. We took home 1.18 points.

          Thursday found me with one of the better players – Vince Pesce’s wife, Christine, who asked me for a game out of the blue a couple weeks ago. We were under the handicap, however, of having played together maybe only once in the distant past. She doesn’t use a lot of conventions and we stuck to a basic game that kept us from having too many misunderstandings. We finished third in our direction, fifth overall, with a 55.04% game for 1.15 points. And, best of all, we beat Vince and his partner.

          The challenge was greater on Friday, when I played for the first time with Sharon Chang. Sharon is new enough at this game so that our masterpoints averaged down to put us in the C stratification. Good thing, too, because that gave us points for our 50.30% game. Or rather, .74 point. Nevertheless, it’s 3.07 points for the week, 7.68 for the month.