Bridge Blog 587: Heat persists

With success comes over-confidence and I’ve been feeling enough of it to start worrying. I saw the danger signs Wednesday at the end of an extraordinarily breezy game (see Blog 586) with Celine Murray at the Airport Bridge Club.

With two rounds to go, we were flying along at nearly 66%, then ran into bad tables back-to-back.

Doing poorly against Paul Ganley and Mike Kisiel is not a total surprise – Mike pulled a 3 NT bid out the air and took all 13 tricks for a top board – but I wasn’t ready to do just as bad against Sandra Silverberg and Pat Kilbury, who are C strat players. We did, though, with Celine failing to transfer me into her six-card Heart suit on one hand and me failing to take the winning Spade finesse on another.

As a result, we wound up tied for first overall with Sandy and Pat at 59.03%. I thought that was just fine. First is first, even if it’s a tie, but Celine thought we should have the top spot all to ourselves. It gave us another 2.19 points, also a good thing. Three days, 5.07 points.

With Marietta Kalman on Thursday, I tried to play a more grounded game for a couple of reasons. First of all, my luck had to run out sooner or later and, second, I didn’t want to alarm her, although I couldn’t resist taking her 3 NT opener up to 6 NT with a six-point hand. My reasoning – everybody else would stop at 3 NT and, if the slam was there, we’d get it. Not! Missing the Ace of Spades, Marietta needed to finesse the King of Hearts to make it and the King was off-side. She ended up down two.

Even playing carefully, we ran into problems. I misunderstood her bidding over 1 NT openers (she plays systems off if the opponents bid) and messed up the bidding on a couple of hands that should have turned out better. It wasn’t a total disaster, though. We finished second North-South in the B strat with 51.15%, earning 0.97 of a point. Four days, 6.04 points.

This winning streak could come to a halt on Friday, though. I’ve promised to play with my neighbor, Char Caprino, and fond as I am of her, she’s not a strong player. Can I lift her into master point territory? We’ll see.