Bridge Blog 1144: A return to the tables (Buffalo Fall Sectional Tournament)

Nine reflections on the Buffalo Fall Sectional Tournament Sept. 16 to 18 in the Main-Transit Fire Hall social hall:

1.   What do you do with real cards? After playing online bridge for 2½ years, I’m a little surprised to re-encounter the mechanics of the game – dealing, sorting the hand, giving the cards that little shuffle before they’re put back into the slots in the board and passed along to the next table. That all used to be automatic. 

2.   Am I still capable of playing with someone else? This must be what it’s like to start dating again after a long marriage. I’ve been monogamous with my Canadian partner Selina Volpatti since March 2020. The most unsettling thing about playing with Mike Silverman is that he doesn’t do Cappelletti against an opponent’s 1 No Trump opener. The second most unsettling thing is that after holding back on bidding a couple times and falling short of our best contract, I get impatient, bid more aggressively and wind up giving opponent John Ziemer the top score of 1,100 he always loves to get from me. With Selina, who’s a pushy competitor, that’s never an issue.

3.   What about Covid? Everybody has to be vaxxed. Director Brian Meyer wears face protection. So does Mike Silverman. So do I. In fact, I pull out those weird duck billed N95 models for the occasion to be extra safe. But not many other players do. When our opponents are uncovered, sometimes they ask if we prefer that they be masked. No problem, I say at first. But after the third inquiry, I change my tune. They mask up.  

4.   Can I win against real people? Mike Silverman and I can’t. Our 48.08% in the Friday morning session fell just short of getting us some fraction of a master point. Disappointing, but respectable. The afternoon feels better as we play it, but it isn’t. 43.35%. Not quite dead last.

5.   Can we hold our own against those sharks in the Swiss team game on Sunday? We have high hopes – Mike is paired with Larry Abate and Selina has crossed the border to play with me – but we’re crushed in the first two rounds. A comeback seems out of the question – instead of seven rounds of seven boards, we ‘re playing five rounds of 10 boards. Our next opponents are some other bottom dwellers and I feel guilty about how badly we trounce them. I don’t think I’ve ever won a game by 68 International Match Points before. Our final rounds are a wash – we lose to the Unit 116 whiz kids Tiger Li and Darwin Skalski by a single IMP and have the same squeak-by margin when we win the day-ending match.

6.   So was it a lost weekend? Thought so, but miracles still happen. We scratch after all. Our Swiss team effort is just good enough to come in second in the B stratification. 2.21 silver points.

7.   Was it just like it was before Covid? In a word, no. Fifteen tables in the big game Friday, half a dozen more in the novice game at the far end of the big room. Saturday had fewer, but I wasn’t there to see it. Sunday Swiss, which used to attract 20 or more teams, had only 12.

8.   Super spreader?  Airport Bridge Club manager Bill Finkelstein thought so before it happened and now, 10 days later, he’s confirming it. He tells me that two players were sent home in the middle of the day Friday with Covid symptoms. Another player who was there Friday had to bow out Saturday for the same reason. No mention of this at all by the folks running the tournament. Is this not a major breach of basic public health precautions? We should have been told.

9. Will I do another tournament? Two regionals are coming up – Buffalo in October, St. Catharines in November. Not every day – I don’t have enough vacation time left. Maybe not at all. But Canada has dropped its border restrictions and I’ll have my next booster shot by then. We’ll see.