Bridge Blog 583: Over the top

Judy Kaprove greets me just inside the door at the Airport Bridge Club with the news. We’re partners Sunday in this last-day-of-the-month Swiss team game. Terrific! Judy and I haven’t played together in a long time, but we always have fun together. The rest of the team? Mike Kisiel and Paul Ganley, good players and a well-established pair. I’m feeling better about my 30-30 goal already.

That feeling doesn’t last. Our first opponents – Janet Frisch and her social bridge friend Barb Hill, who I haven’t encountered in ages – take us directly to the cleaners, shutting us down by a 27-8 IMP margin. We recoup against Chuck Schorr and Sushil Amlami, 20-13, and sit in third place at the lunch break. Then, after pizza, we lose, 25-18, to Liz Clark and John Ziemer (their team goes undefeated) and save our bacon with a 33-21 win over Carolyn Siracuse and Bob Olin, thanks to a pair of bid-and-won games in the final two hands.

The Clark-Ziemer team finishes way in front and the rest of us are bunched so closely that we don’t know if we’ll finish better or worse than third until the final score is posted. The team that could have come in second has a horrible final round, however, and so we’re second by a two victory-point margin, first in the B strat. Needing only about half a point, I got 1.83.

Add the 3.78 from the sectional and it’s roughly 35 points for the month. How does this stack up against other Septembers? Let’s go to the history books.

Last September (Blog 450) was “modest” – 11.33 club points, 1.11 in the Fall Sectional. Totals for the year were 111.25 Ace of Clubs, 121.65 overall. Going back further, September almost always has been modest. First time it surpassed 10 points was 2009 (16.53). The best (20.71) was in 2010.

Biggest months overall? March 2010 (43.76) and August 2009 (42.38), the heyday of triple point games at the Airport Bridge Club. So not only was this a superior September, but it’s also my winningest month in more than two years.