Bridge Blog 1103: Buffalo Fall Sectional, Days I and II

         “How’d we do this morning?” I ask partner Art Matthies as he returns to the event room at the Main-Transit Fire Hall in Amherst during the lunch break Friday. “We were within hailing distance,” he declares.

         Hailing distance turns out to be half a match point, a mere 0.30% behind Dotty May and Joe Rooney, who are third in the A stratification in the morning side game. One more trick somewhere – or maybe less of a bumpy start to the day – and we’d be the ones winning 1.07 silver master points.

         Nevertheless, our 54.46% is more than respectable. We have high hopes for the afternoon.

         It’s a drastically smaller side game after lunch – 3½ tables instead of the eight in the morning session – and Art and I get the final sit-out. So although it feels like a good game, we don’t stick around to see how we did. It isn’t until late in the evening that I get to check my e-mail and discover we’re head and shoulders above the rest – 58.75%. 2.57 silver points.

         I hope to repeat Friday’s good fortune Saturday with Judie Bailey, but we fail in our first strategy. We don’t get into the side game. Judie’s late. Director Brian Meyer is ready to start things rolling when she arrives. Adding us to the side game would create half a table. And the big double-session open game is half a table short. We could create two problems, he says, or no problems.

         It’s Judie’s birthday and I try mightily to stifle negativity, but we’re having a bad day, a really bad day – both of us. We don’t take all the tricks we should. We forget how many trumps we’ve drawn. We fail to find our maximum contracts. 

Plus we are playing extraordinarily slowly. We get admonitions from Brian Meyer. We test the patience of Bud Seidenberg and Jay Levy, who are following us East-West. They wait at the change of every round. (Their reward comes later – they’re first overall for the day.)

         We finish the game so late that we get only a half hour for lunch. Judie wants a birthday lunch at Anderson’s, the frozen custard and roast beef place a couple minutes down Main Street. When we return, seconds after the afternoon session begins, I catch a quick look at the morning scores. 37.18%. Miraculously, we’re not last. Just within hailing distance.

         Vowing to do better in the afternoon, we actually do, but we don’t raise any ripples. 43.11%, 10th out of 13 pairs.

         At least Sunday should provide some sort of salvation. It’s rare to get shut out entirely at Swiss teams, although it can happen. Plus I get reunited with partner Denise Slattery, who’s moved away to the countryside south of Rochester. “I don’t come back to Buffalo for just anybody,” she says Saturday morning.