Bridge Blog 618: Climb every mountain

How I wish last Sunday’s Swiss team had played in the final installment of STaC week the way this Sunday's Swiss team did, when less was at stake. Last week at the Airport Bridge Club, Sharon Chang and I were teamed with Gaurang Sheth and Richard Cramer-Benjamin, decent players both, and were shut out in our first two rounds. Fortunately, we rallied to win three of the next six, collecting 0.69 for our efforts and salvaging our pride.

This week was a whole different story. My partner was the savvy and aggressive Selina Volpatti. Our teammates were the supremely steady Mike Silverman and Nancy Wolstoncroft. Things went well right from the start, beginning when I made a 5 Diamonds doubled contract against two of the best players in the room, Harry Cheung and Liz Clark. We won every round, six of them in all.

Club manager Bill Finkelstein, seeing an opportunity to maximize the point awards, declared at the start that the four competing teams would play two sessions – six boards a round against the other three, once before lunch, once after lunch, so there would be a morning winner and an afternoon winner, along with a runner-up. That winner was us. We netted 1.63 master points each time.