Finally hale and hearty again, I text Selina to see if
she's available to play Wednesday, Jan. 14, at BCON. She's already partnered
up, she replies. Why don't I try Rod Sumner? Sure enough, Rod can do it.
Nevertheless, this is only the second time that Rod
and I have played. He reviews my convention card, but it doesn't tell him that
I like to use the modified Mini-Roman bid – 2 Diamonds to show 4-4-4-1
distribution, 4-4 in both major suits, with 11 to 15 high card points. Sure
enough, it comes up in the second round, when we're up against two of the
better players – Marg Dykstra and Christine Pentesco. I'm dealer, we're
vulnerable, and I do the magic 2 Diamond bid with this hand:
Spades: K-J-8-7; Hearts: Q-J-4-3; Diamonds: A-J-7-3;
Clubs: 4.
Pass-pass to Christine, who's South and has a 14-point
hand with five Diamonds. She doubles. To escape, I bid up the line to 2 Hearts.
The opponents take over and wind up at 3 No Trump. They ask Rod what the 2
Diamond bid was. He says he thinks it was weak. Then we play it. Down two. When we finish, I
explain what I meant and then there's a director call. The
ruling: Average-minus. Instead of a top board of 8 match points, we get 3.20.
Rod and I finish third overall East-West and first in
the B strat with 55.74%. (Talk about being steady, we also were third overall
and first in the B strat the first time we played together in the NOTL
Christmas party game back on Dec. 9.) Our Mini-Roman escapade didn’t make a difference one way or the other.
We're almost 13 match points behind the second-place pair. As for Marg and
Chris, they're hopelessly mired in last place.
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