Bridge Blog 564: Labor Day labor of love

Even though the Airport Bridge Club’s monthly chicken barbecue game is a bodacious bargain – two games plus lunch for $14 (lunch all by itself often runs that much) – I wasn’t so sure I could attend the Labor Day edition. My better half could have plans for us. Plus, there’s another double session on Tuesday, so it would amount to four games in two days.

But there were no plans afoot at home. And, after rising early and watering and cleaning up one of my garden plots, the prospect of sweltering all day – a day that hit 90 degrees – was  appalling. By 9:40, I was calling club manager Bill Finkelstein to tell him I was coming and needed a partner.

Finkelstein met me in the hallway to inform me that, one, I was playing the morning session with Gaurang Sheth, a first-time partnership, and two, that I should ask Carlton Stone if he needed a partner for the afternoon. That might as well be a first-time partnership, since we haven’t played together in more than a year.

As it turned out, both arrangements were amenable. Gaurang, a pediatrician, is solid and plays a sensible, aggressive, uncomplicated game. Given a bunch of biddable hands, we ran roughshod over the North-Souths and played 18 out of 26 contracts. We finished with 55.68%, second East-West, third overall, first in the B strat for 1.57 points.

In the afternoon, Carlton was his genial self and, although we played more defense than offense (we took 10 of 24 contracts and Carlton got to play only two of them, one a top board), we didn’t make too many mistakes. Few enough, in fact, to wind up first overall with 61.73% for 2.10 points. With another double session Tuesday, I’m starting to have visions of averaging a point per day in September.