Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Bridge Blog 736: Accumulating

Maybe the hard luck of late 2013 is over. The scores are getting better, aside from a disastrous doubleheader a week ago, and the master points have been dribbling in.
        The disaster was the two-session Martin Luther King Day chicken barbecue game at the Airport Bridge Club. After registering a miserable 35.65% game and coming in dead last in the morning half, I assured partner Marilyn Sultz during the lunch break that we were certain to do better in the afternoon. Wrong. Nothing worked. We were deader and laster with an even more miserable 31.25%.
        Things perked up the next day with Florence Boyd, but 46.72% was not enough to earn points. Wednesday partner Celine Murray helped bring in the best game of the week – 55.68% – first overall for .80 of a point.
        Dianne Bloom had a sick friend in the hospital Thursday, so given a choice between a game with club manager Bill Finkelstein and Janet Frisch, I chose Janet and we managed 49.58%, second in the B strat for .22 of a point. Friday in a 13 ½ table game St. Catharines, Selina Volpatti and I fumbled our final two-board round but nevertheless salvaged 51.49%, fifth in A North-South, third in B for .40 of a point.
        Saturday would have been point-producing, but weather shrank the turnout at the Airport Club to a mere two tables. Bill Boardman and I tied for first with 55.56%, winning the first of three nine-board rounds and tying the other two. Fun, but too small a game for points.
        Sunday promised to make up for it with a Swiss team of Celine Murray, Judy Kaprove and Chuck Schorr. The joy of Swiss, aside from its change of pace, is the likelihood of winning at least fractional points by winning a round or two. We won two in the morning session, scoring enough victory points to come in second in B for 1.43 points. After pizza for lunch, however, we fell entirely on our faces and didn’t win anything else.
        Maybe it would have been better if Judy and I had been partners in Swiss (though Celine would probably never play with Chuck). We had a chance to find out as partners on Monday and came through with a 54.76% effort, third overall, first in B, 0.40 of a point.
Could I possibly do as well with Marietta Kalman on Tuesday? Well, it felt like a pretty solid game (Marietta and I seemed to understand each other for a change, see Blog 736-A) and, because there were runaway winners with a 76% score, we were third North-South in a nine-table game and first in B with 50.53%, good for 0.48 of a point.
What do all these January bits and pieces add up to? There’s 1.68 from the sectional tournament, 0.88 from St. Catharines and 4.95 from the Airport Bridge Club. Three days to go. Doesn’t look like a double-digit kind of month.

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