Bridge Blog 1011: Buffalo Winter Sectional Day 3

It was a first. Never before have I gone in on an A team in a Swiss team event at a sectional or regional tournament. On Sunday, however, we were solidly, resolutely A: two players with more points than me – Barbara Libby (3,312) and Liz Clark (3,350) – plus Ron Henrikson (887), who punches above his weight.

We were good getting out of the gate, too, smacking down the Abate team – Larry Abate, Bob Sommerstein, Gay Simpson and Denise Slattery – by 19 International Match Points. Sure, this would put us up against the better players, but hey, we’re A!

Second round saw our pride taking a fall at the feet of some folks from Rochester who had been around all weekend, the Weiss team. They put us in our place by a margin of 12 IMPs, though we might have made it closer if Barbara and Liz had bid 3 No Trump like Jerome Weiss and Michael Carney did on a hand where we lost 10 of those IMPs. The Weiss team went on to be the big winners, outpacing even Martha and John Welte’s team, which started off with three straight 30-0 shutouts.

Chastened, we went up against the Miranda team in the third round – Joe Miranda and Usha Khurana at our table, Sandi England and JoAnne LaFay against Liz and Barb – and tasted success again by a whopping 24 IMPs. We were definitely back on track.

The round before the lunch break faced us off against the Ryan team, Mike Ryan and Judy Graf at our table, Eugene Harvey and Jim Gullo at the other table. It would have been a standoff if, on a crucial hand, I had given Ron a 4 Diamond bid instead of 3 Diamonds, showing stronger support. We could have made game, since we took 11 tricks. At the other table, it was a 6 Diamond slam, which should have gone down. At the end, the Ryan team came in third.

We still had hopes as we consumed our Firehouse subs for lunch, but an encounter with Christy Kellogg and Bert Hargeshimer in round five put an end to those. They slam dunked us by 22 IMPs, a margin we could have reduced on a pivotal unbalanced hand. I fumbled with the double card when Burt bumped Christy’s 3 Diamond pre-empt to 5 Diamonds over our 4 Spade bid, but I was void in Diamonds and unsure if they’d go down. Turns out it made 5 Spades. That cost us 11 of those 22 IMPs. We wouldn’t have won that round, but we could have been 4 victory points better. Those 4 VPs clinched fourth place for them ultimately.

With two rounds to go, I’m thinking, well, easier opponents, so how about sweeping them both 30-0? That would put us into the bonus points in the final tally. The Wortzman team didn’t cooperate. They beat us by 22-15 IMPs, though we might have won it had we persevered to 4 Hearts on a hand we let them play at 3 Spades. Or-r-r-r-r, if Jim Easton hadn’t defied convention and found the winning lead against my 6 No Trump slam, putting out his King of Clubs from a King-Queen holding instead of leading low like he should have, allowing the singleton Jack in the dummy to win the first trick. That’s what happened at the other table, where East-West took 12 tricks, even though they didn’t bid the slam.

The end of the day found us commiserating with a C team, the Bava team – John Bava and Rajat Basu at our table, Margaret Zhou and Ed Morgan at the other table. We should have steamrolled them, but three of the hands were draws and the others were offsetting minor triumphs. We finished in a 6-6 tie.

Our sorry tally of 92 Victory Points was the worst of any A team (ninth out of nine of us in this 20-team field, a meager 16th overall). We needed to be sixth overall to catch bonus points and it would have required at least 126 VPs to do it.

At least we didn’t go home empty-handed. Our 2½ wins netted each of us 0.65 of a master point, not enough to surpass my biggest-ever Buffalo sectional back in Spring 2012, but still pumping up the second-best to 6.88 silver points.