Bridge Blog 921: STaC me

What a big nasty cloud that 36.50% at the Unit 116 party on Saturday cast over my approach to the Winter Sectional Tournament at the Clubs, which started Monday. Happily that cloud has had plenty of breaks in it.

The morning and afternoon sessions with Dottie May on Monday at the Airport Bridge Club turned out to be mostly bright. Our morning 56.84% placed us third overall in the A and B strats, good for 0.94 of a silver point at the club level. It takes a better percentage than that, however, to catch those bonus points on the district level. In this case, an even 60%.

Despite fatigue setting in, we got brighter in the afternoon session – 58.50%, first overall in A and B, 1.59 points on the club level. Not quite bright enough for the district level, though, where the seventh spot in B was 58.93%.

Clouds rolled back in Tuesday after a two-filling 9 a.m. visit to the dentist when I played with the ever-agreeable Nadine Stein. Or rather, misplayed.

The worst was a 2 Heart Michaels bid by Nadine, where I should have bid my three-card Spade suit (it made 2 Spades) instead of a brain-dead 2 No Trump, which prompted her to quite properly bid her long Diamonds. Down one. 

It was with great relief that I yielded my seat to Florence Boyd at noon so I could run my health care forms down to personnel office at The News to beat the deadline. She took it the rest of the way for the final eight hands. Looking at the score sheet now, I calculate that we were at 34.04% when I left. Final score: 35.85%.

Could the afternoon be any more dreary? My previous outing with the equally agreeable Sandy Scheff – 39.58% last Wednesday – didn’t forecast much. But where we weren’t good, we were lucky, capped off in the final round with me making a 3 No Trump doubled contract that should have gone down two. 

The result: 62.50%. Second in A (hard on the heels of Judi Marshall and Jerry Geiger with 62.92%), first in B. 1.11 points at the club level and, better yet, 2.39 on the district level (where the seven-table Airport Club session was the only afternoon game). STaC week winnings so far: 4.92.