Bridge Blog 844: Bright day, dismal night

“I didn’t have you in my book,” partner Celine Murray said more than once Monday at the Airport Bridge Club.

“I didn’t either,” I explained. “(Club manager) Bill Finkelstein told me to call you.”

He also tracked her down after I left a message for her at 9 a.m. and didn’t get a reply. She’d been out. Still, she managed to arrive in time for us to play three of the four boards in our first round and was brilliant pretty much for the rest of the day. We were rewarded for an aggressive game with a 60.65% finish, best I’ve had in a while, and came in first overall, bagging 3.19 master points. A nice month-ending surprise.

Actually, my month had one more installment to go. I paired up with Judy Kaprove to play the newly-inaugurated Monday night game at the Bridge Center of Buffalo, part of my tour of night games in the area before I go back to working nights full time next week.

At any rate, words can hardly describe how miserably Judy and I fared. For instance, against master players Bud Seidenberg and Chris Urbanek, we managed just 1 match point out of a possible 24. With one round to go, we were dead last with 29%, not as pathetic as the all-time 24.48% low Judy and I registered once upon a time, but pretty darn close. A rally in the final three hands (17 out of a possible 24) perked us up slightly, but that could hardly compensate for six absolute bottom boards. Final score: 33.80%.