Thursday, September 27, 2012

Bridge Blog 581: Swan song

The days are dwindling down to a precious few and, amazingly, the point-a-day dream is still alive. On Wednesday, Celine Murray and I manage a 52% game and collect almost  another full point.
Then on Thursday, there’s a double session with me sleep-deprived from a late night at work and feeling a bit scratchy in the wake of a flu shot on Wednesday and partner Alicia Kolipinski only wanting to play the morning session and feeling bridged out in general.
It doesn’t help that Paul and Barbara Libby bid and make a 6 Spade slam against us on the very first board, starting us off with a big fat zero. We crawl from that wreckage through a series of wildly distributional hands, winning the auction on 17 out of 25 of them. On two occasions we send opponents down two for minus 200 on 1 Spade contracts. We finish with 53.71%, fifth overall, third in the B strat, for 0.83 of a point. Alicia leaves happy.
The afternoon finds me with Sharon Chang in a four-table Howell game. We haven’t had a game together in months and things are a little tentative at first. Plus after all those exciting morning hands, these are flat and not very inspiring. We’re declarers on only seven of the 21 boards, but become  bulldogs on defense. We emerge second overall, first in B, with 57.14% and 1.21 master points. Total for 27 days of September – 28.91.
          I’m spending Saturday away from the tables, but was counting on the Swiss team game Sunday as my 30 for 30 guarantee. It was going to be a reunion of our winning Swiss team from three Sundays ago – Carlton Stone, Eleanor Whelan, Celine and me. Then, on Wednesday, the team vaporized in a flash. Carlton tells me that Eleanor can’t do it and he’s decided he won’t either. Then Celine, overhearing this, drops out. Suddenly all guarantees are off.

No comments:

Post a Comment