Bridge Blog 690-C: Buffalo Regional, Day 4

I was waiting to get a cracked exhaust pipe repaired Thursday morning when the cell phone rang. I almost didn’t recognize the voice. It was Selina Volpatti, my Canadian partner. We were supposed to play morning and afternoon pairs Friday and Saturday, then finish together with the Swiss teams on Sunday. She can’t do it, she said. That back injury she got playing golf earlier in the week was so painful that she couldn’t sit for extended periods. The doctor advised her to recline.

So I checked in with partnership chairwoman Faith Perry at the tournament. By late Thursday afternoon, she lined up former Unit 116 president Betty Metz to play with me in the Friday morning pairs. More to come later.

I’d never played with Betty, but we decided to stick with the basic game, few conventions, and got off to what felt like a good start. Indeed, it was. In the first two rounds, the scoring summary shows that we had 25.5 out of a possible 42 match points. We maintained that pace all the way through, notching a 60.50% game, my best in a while. It gave us second place overall (winner had 62.54%) and 2.27 red points. Betty and I agreed to play together again Saturday morning. This time perhaps we’ll get some gold.

Eva Schmidt asked me to play in the afternoon and our luck wasn’t as good – a 50.83% game, fourth overall out of seven tables in our side game, but within hailing distance of the pair who got points in third place with 51.25%. If only I hadn’t risen with the Ace of trumps and taken Eva’s King on Board 14. If only I had taken the safer trump option in our 6 Heart slam on Board 4 (who knew that West also had a singleton Spade???).