Bridge Blog 682: STaCking up

            Selina Volpatti and I always think we’re doing better at the bridge table that we actually are. That came up again Friday a the Airport Bridge Club when she came over from Canada for the double-session Sectional Tournament at the Clubs (STaC) games. Although we blew a couple game attempts in the morning session and underbid a couple others, we were still pretty satisfied until the preliminary results were posted. Next to last. Barely over 40%. The final tally showed a slight improvement, to 47.52%.

            We  seemed to be bolder and better focused in the afternoon, so when our final score came in at 47.08%, worse than the morning session, it was a profound disappointment. Nevertheless, we got silver points, or rather 0.69 of a silver point, because we were second in the B strat. “A miracle of stratification,” club manager Bill Finkelstein declared. Wait a minute, I protested. There aren’t any miracles of stratification in the STaC. He insisted that indeed there could be.

            But a more tangible miracle turned up on my game summary, scoring errors on not one, but two hands. Once our match points were corrected, things looked a lot brighter – 51.67%, first in the B strat, second in A in our direction, for 0.98 of a silver point.

            That’s still way below what you need to earn bonus points on the district level, like I did the previous three days. Now that the District 5 website has a complete tally for Thursday, I see that my best game of the week, the 58.26% with Dianne Bloom, has gotten a bump. We were fourth in the B strat district-wide, which means that instead of 1.11 silver points, we get 2.31.