For a guy who’s
counting on this tournament for a big boost toward Gold Life Master, I’ve
totally failed at planning. Until I get a call from David Colligan looking for
a partner for Thursday, I’ve lined up nobody to play with except for the Swiss
teams on Sunday.
Clutching a fresh mug
of iced coffee and only too aware of my pathetic position, I get to the hotel
formerly (and still mostly) known as Adam’s Mark just about half an hour before
the morning game starts at 10 a.m. Tuesday, a major effort for a night owl like
me, having worked the previous evening.
Partnership chairman
Dian Petrov says a guy from Rochester
Yet despite a couple
times when Jim misreads my bidding card or mistakes one suit for another, he
plays very well – he even manages to make a 6 No Trump slam that I stuck him
with – and we have a respectable morning in the pairs game. 57.81%, fourth out of
17 North-Souths in our section, 1.43 red points.
But can we do it again
in the afternoon? Jim’s hurting worse, no one has Tylenol to lend him, and I’m making
wretched mistakes, sometimes back to back. On one hand, not only do I miss Jim’s
signal to shift to a new suit, but I also fail to take a winning trump trick,
allowing our opponents to make game with an overtrick instead of perhaps going
down one.
The cards add to our
miseries. In the morning, we’re all offense. Now we’re all defense. In the
first 20 boards, we take the bid only six times. I don’t know how we manage to
finish with 51.44%, but we do. Our combined morning and afternoon scores place
us eighth in the A stratification (Jim has more points than me, hence we’re A).
We get 2.62 gold points.
Just to keep things
in perspective, my regular Saturday partner Denise Slattery, playing with Bob
Linn, an old hand at this game, comes in eleventh overall in the pairs, but
they are in the B strat. There they’re fourth. They get 3.04 gold points.
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