In the back of my mind, I figured if I hit 30 points for the month on Friday, I could skip my rainy-day plan, i.e., playing in the Swiss team event on Sunday at the Airport Bridge Club. Especially since my team evaporated (see Blog 581). Having 28.91 points meant that a win wasn’t necessary Friday with partner Marilyn Sultz, just a good finish.
After our starting round against Mike Mesirov and Barbara Libby, our finish was severely in doubt and it was entirely my fault. The first hand was wildly unbalanced, but having a stopper in the suit they bid, I went to 3 No Trump instead of sticking to our 11-card suit Clubs. Mike had six Spades. Down two. Then I bid 3 Spades to thwart what looked like a certain game contract by the opponents and went down five for an absolute bottom board. They couldn’t make more than 3 Hearts. On the third board, we let them take the bid at 4 Diamonds, down three, but better scores could have been had if we ignored the sting of the first two hands and pressed on to a makeable 4 Hearts. Out of a possible 21 game points, we had 1.5. That’s less than 10%.
It turned out to be a day of more bottom boards and a lot of offsetting tops. On eight out of 24 hands, we had at least 6 game points out of 7. (Our best – a successful 3 Diamond contract where everyone else let the opponents play and make 2 Spades, and a wicked defensive whammy that put an opponent down four at 3 No Trump, while others went down two.) On eight other hands, including those first three, we had 1 game point or less. It all evened out – final score of 51.19%, second in the B strat North-South, fourth in B overall. Our reward – 0.66 of a point. September total? 29.57. Weather forecast for Sunday: Rain.
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