Bridge Blog 957-A: Living It Up, Living It Down

Stumble at the start Monday with Art Matthies. 46.04%. Art’s a good player, a serious player. We should have done better. Immediately regret not being able to stay for the afternoon session.

Better with Dorothy May on Tuesday. 53.12%. Third East-West in a 12-table game. 1.03 silver points. Not enough for district bonus points, though.

Back Wednesday morning with Art, who admonishes me for my freewheeling bidding. “No more 800s,” he says. Whereupon I engineer an 1,100. Plus 1,100. I double opponents (I'm keeping my promise that they go unnamed) after they stumble into a 3 Diamond contract on a difficult hand to bid. They go down 5.

Board 17. I’m North. I’m dealer. Nobody vulnerable.

North

Spades: 10-9-4; Hearts: none; Diamonds: K-J-5-2; Clubs: A-J-10-9-5-2.

East

Spades: K-Q-5; Hearts: Q-9-7-5; Diamonds: Q-10-8-7; Clubs: Q-6.

South (Art)

Spades: A-J-2; Hearts: J-8-6-4-3-2; Diamonds: A-9-3; Clubs: 8.

West

Spades: 8-7-6-3; Hearts: A-K-10; Diamonds: 6-5; Clubs: K-7-4-3.

East is declarer. Art leads his singleton Club and a cross-ruff ensues. Hand record says we should take eight tricks in Diamonds. We take nine. Otherwise, it’s our hand and we should make 2 Spades or 3 Clubs.

Hey, now that I look at my copy of the game summary, there’s an error in scoring this hand. We're credited with plus 100, only 3 match points instead of 4. OK, let's look at the posted scores (which I photographed Friday on my phone to transcribe into the newspaper bridge news column). It’s been corrected. We now have our extra match point, 50.52% instead of 49.52%. No silver points, but at least we salvage some pride.

No compunctions about wild bidding with Selina Volpatti on Thursday. The morning hands agree with our freewheeling style and we sail to a stellar 63.08%, second overall at the club and fourth overall in the district: 4.51 points.

The magnificent morning then turns sour in the afternoon. Our 46.14% is last North-South.

Friday morning begins with more high hopes for a partnership with Bob Linn, a far more experienced player than I am, but once again we fail to live up to our potential. 44.91%. Ninth out of 11 pairs.

Bob can’t stay for the afternoon and I wind up playing with director Bill Finkelstein, who is even less forgiving of my misplays that Bob is. Despite my duly noted bidding and defensive errors, we come in third overall, second in B, with a 53.85% game. 0.85 silver points.

A check just now with the e-mailed STaC summary (it’s pretty prompt) brings more good news. Third in the club also is third in the district for small games. That 0.85 is bumped up to 1.48.

Total for the week so far: 7.02. Hey, I’ve made my goal, and then some. The two Saturday sessions with Denise Slattery will be gravy. Or better yet, whipped cream on top.