Bridge Blog 981: You cannot win

          The Steve Forbert song, echoing an old saying, goes: “You cannot win if you do not play.” That’s certainly the case while I’ve been on companion duty with my pussycat for the past two weeks while he recovers from a leg amputation.

          And it was also the case on the one day, last Saturday, Sept. 30, when I did play. Far from repeating our string of Saturday successes, Denise Slattery and I had a bad game. Although we knew it all along, we still harbored some hope right up to the last round of that three-table Howell session at the Airport Bridge Club.

          Not that we really expected to make much headway in those final five boards against Gladys and Ken Hardcastle. Regular visitors from Georgia (their son plays in the Buffalo Philharmonic), they are no slouches. Going into the round with a running score of 40%, we’d need a miracle to hit 50.

          On the other hand, we weren’t expecting to get slam-dunked so hard. Four bottom boards, taking us down to 35%. Were we that bad?

Well, on one board, yes. The Hardcastles bid and made 5 Diamonds on a hand where they should have taken only 10 tricks. Perhaps we gave one away with Denise’s opening lead of the 7 of Hearts. Here are the hands. East is dealer and declarer. East-West is vulnerable.

East (Gladys)

Spades: A-K-Q-7-6; Hearts: A-J-2; Diamonds: 8-6-5-4-2; Clubs: none.

South (Denise)

Spades: 8-3; Hearts: 10-9-7-5; Diamonds: K-J-9; Clubs: J-6-4-2.

West (Ken)

Spades: J-5; Hearts: Q-8-4; Diamonds: Q-7-3; Clubs: A-9-8-5-3.

North (me)

Spades: 10-9-4-2; Hearts: K-6-3; Diamonds: A-10; Clubs: K-Q-10-7.

Hand record says it’s East-West all the way, making 2 NT, 3 Spades, 1 Heart, 4 Diamonds or 1 Club. Don't think Denise and I did any bidding, but the Hardcastles found their way to 5 Diamonds anyway.

As for the other three bottom boards, we were losers no matter what we did. On one of them, they bid game when apparently nobody else did. On the other two, we sacrificed to keep them away from contracts they would have won, but other East-Wests apparently weren’t that competitive.

The upshot was that my point count for September stayed at 15.55 – right where it was at the beginning of the week, when I stopped playing. Thank god I made my monthly goal early.