Bridge Blog 966: TWTWTW: July 31 - Aug. 5

Monday: Three top boards, four bottom boards, but Art Matthies and I manage to rise above the 50% mark. 51.53%, to be exact. Fourth North-South. 0.93 of a master point is not enough to break the 20-point mark for the month, but it's close.

Tuesday: I neglect to tell club manager Bill Finkelstein that I don't have a partner until 9 a.m. I think he pairs me with novice Ted May as punishment. He also makes us the bumping pair in a 9½ table game. But I stick to a basic game with Ted, don't take too many chances and we bring it home at 53.25%. First in B. 1.33 points. Only August points this week.

Meanwhile, on Board 12, I pick up what may be my worst hand ever. An ultra Yarborough.

Spades: 7-3; Hearts: 8-6-2; Diamonds: 8-6-4-2; Clubs: 8-4-3-2. 
(The odds of picking up a Yarborough turn out to be pretty slim [see the mathematical formula for it here]. One in which the highest card is an 8 must be even more rarified.) 

Ted, on the other hand, has a 19-pointer. He bids the opponents up to 3 Spades, they go down one, it's an average board.

Wednesday: June Feuerstein and I always have a good time, but we don't always have a good game. 43.92%. Almost, but not quite, last.

Thursday: Like my partnership with Art Matthies, my games with Marietta Kalman never quite live up to their potential. This time we come close to 50%, but fall short at 48.38%.

Friday: A change of pace over at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont., at the start of their civic holiday weekend. Sometimes Selina Volpatti and I are up, sometimes we're down. This time we take the bid on 17 of the 26 hands, but we go down on 13 of them and most of the scores are on the opponents' side of the line. We finish 15th out of 17 North-Souths with 44.59%.

Worst moment: An ill-advised 3 Heart bid where I go down 5 vulnerable and should have gone down 2, according to the hand record. Miraculously, it's not a bottom board. Three other pairs went to 4 Hearts, got doubled. Two of them went down 3, one went down 6. Best moment: Doubling the opponents' 4 Spade bid and seeing them go down 4 vulnerable. That one was a top. We needed more of those. 
In retrospect, a downer kind of week. I'll need better real soon to reach that 15-point-per-month goal.