Bridge Blog 1080: Still remembering the Buffalo Spring Sectional

Paul Zittel brought it all back today (Saturday, May 11) at the Airport Bridge Club. He told today’s partner, Selina Volpatti, about his bad habit of inadvertently showing the cards he is holding. And he recalled how he mentioned that on Saturday afternoon (April 6) at the Buffalo Spring Sectional, put his hand on my partner’s arm and got a sudden “Don’t touch me!”

Not the first time that day my partner rankled our opponents and it left me wondering what to do. I don’t want to upbraid this partner, since we’ve always had good relations, but I also don’t condone creating hard feelings.

The bridge? Far less memorable. I had high hopes for my all-Scandinavian partnership with Ron Henrikson on Friday in the single session side game, but we fell short in the morning (44.64%) and even shorter in the afternoon (43.75%).

Saturday morning's side game started with higher hopes, but still no success (49.50%). But our afternoon (44% even) was sunk from the moment we sat down. I blame myself for what happened – getting shunted into the main game, the double session pairs, with all the top-level players.

I bet that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t returned last-minute from lunch (wanted the Restaurant Week special at the Irishman in downtown Williamsville and, despite their promises, the food came way late). Because a double-session pair had scratched after the morning game (Dan Gerstman’s partner disappeared), we were the ones pressed into the breach.

Complaint! With no food truck for this tournament, organizers moved the morning start ahead 15 minutes (to 10:15 a.m.) and left the afternoon start at 2:30 p.m. Once upon a time, starts were at 10:30 and 3 p.m. 90 minutes is time enough to go out for lunch. 75 minutes? Too tight.

Reunited with Ron Henrikson on Sunday, I figured our Swiss team with Gay Simpson and Denise Slattery would be a force in the B strat. Even after losing the first two rounds, we had great potential. We hadn’t lost by much. In the home stretch, with two big wins and three small losses, we still were contenders.

But then in the last two rounds we hit two A-strat teams that apparently were down on their luck. They trounced us. With 90 victory points, we were far from last – other teams with fewer vps won three rounds. Had we won three rounds, we’d be fourth or fifth in the B strat, collecting a couple silver points. As it was, our two wins returned only 0.52 – my take for the entire three days.