Bridge Blog 1104: Buffalo Fall Sectional Day III

In his considerable wisdom, teammate Jim Gullo summed up our Sunday Swiss team experience this way – there’s always one hand that makes the difference between winning and losing.

In the first match, against the estimable Christy Kellogg and Bert Hargeshimer, that was a 6 No Trump slam, bid and made at the other table. Partner Denise Slattery and I signed off at 3 NT and to make matters worse, I opted to avoid the winning Heart finesse and won only 10 tricks. That cost us 11 International Match Points. Take that away and we wouldn’t have lost the match, 25-19.

But Christy and Bert are A-list players (as are Jim Gullo and myself). Match 2 pitted us against Sue Neubecker and Jo Nasoff-Finton, B players with no shortage of experience, but B players nevertheless. Instead of having our way with them, however, we suffered our worst defeat of the day, 38-11. It wasn’t just one hand that made the difference. There were three. Jim and his partner, Elaine Kurasiewicz, spent the interval between matches disputing each others’ bidding methods.

Match 3 found us sitting opposite another good team down on its luck – an even better B-rated bunch that included Allen Beroza and Bob Sommerstein. Unclear in retrospect whether we should have defeated their 3 NT contract on Board 3 or whether our teammates should have made it, but that was the big one. To succeed completely, though, Denise and I needed to stop bidding on Board 6, where we went down 3 vulnerable at a mere 2 Spades. Those two boards cost us 11 and 5 IMPs, respectively. We lost 20-8.

Winless going into Match 4, we met the Bradford, Pa., ladies – Maxine Davis and Bonnie Smith – who had driven 2 hours Sunday morning to play with us. Here we gave away a 13 IMP board – Elaine and Jim let their opponents make a slam – but won all the others. The margin was 27-13, our first victory of the day, just in time for the lunch break.

We should have won Match 5 against a C-rated team that, at our table, included Mary Ball and Joyce Frayer, but these adorable ladies nailed us, thanks to Board 17. Mary opened 1 NT, Denise overcalled 2 Hearts. Cappelletti, I concluded. Hearts and a minor suit. I had the minors and only a singleton Heart. I bid 2 NT to ask Denise which one. She left me there. Down 4. An 11 IMP setback. We lost the match, 17-15.

For Match 6, we met another down-in-the-depths team in the persons of Judy and Bob Kaprove. We might have given them their first victory of the day had Denise not bid us up to an inspired 6 Spade slam, which I brought home. At the other table, they didn’t bid the slam and they didn’t take 12 tricks. We really needed those 12 IMPs. Our margin of victory was only 15-7.

We could have won Match 7, too, had Denise not abandoned what had been a day of consistency and self-control on Board 27, a severely distributional hand. Denise challenged opponents Florence Boyd and Ruth Wurster with a high-level Diamond overbid, then upped the ante even further with a 5 Heart bid, which was promptly doubled. I had three low Hearts, three Diamonds with the Ace, maybe 7 high-card points total. Do I bid 6 Diamonds, which also will be doubled? The axiom stipulates: Don’t save your partner. But in this case, partner needed saving. 5 Hearts went down 8 for a minus 2,000 score, a number you never want to see in Swiss teams. Six Diamonds doubled? Down three perhaps. We gave away 18 IMPs and lost 30-17.

Our reward for the day – two wins worth 0.26 silver points apiece. Add that what Art Matthies and I accumulated Friday afternoon and I came away with 3.09 points for the tournament.

Meanwhile, Swiss teams weren’t as rewarding this time as they have been at other sectionals. There were only 18 teams, continuing the blight on attendance that began on Friday (the Canadians who usually come to our sectionals stayed away). The winning foursome – local expert Jay Levy, his protégé Ethan Xie and two out-of-towners – collected just 7.70 silver points.