How badly did Florence Boyd and I crash and burn in the monthly special game at the Buffalo Bridge Center on Sunday, March 22? Let us count the ways.
First of all, we were dead last, not just East-West, but for entire field of 12 pairs. Our 35.14% was a full 10 percentage points below the next lowest E-W, Julie Mitchell and Brian Fleming, and nearly six points beneath the bottom North-South, Barb Landree and Betty Metz. To actually win master points as B strat players, we needed at least 47% in our direction.
God knows we were rusty. Neither Flo nor I had played competitively in more than a month. Plus she was in pain with a nasty crimp in her back. So we had our excuses. Lots of them.
Take that passed-out hand on Board 16 in the very first round against Barb and Betty. The ACBL Live for Clubs recap showed that nobody else passed it out. Though West had only nine high card points, there was a six-card Spade suit, A-K-Q-10-4-3, a perfect pre-emptive 2 Spade opening bid. Four other Wests played it at 2 Spades, making two overtricks.
And then there was Board 20, one of my infamous minus 1,100 games, which was a big help in boosting Davis Heussler and Linda Burroughsford to the top of the North-South pairs. After Flo opened with a pass, Davis bid 1 Diamond. Holding A-10-7-6-4-2 in Clubs and 11 high card points, I promptly raised to 2 Clubs. Linda immediately doubled. Little did I suspect that Linda's Clubs were K-Q-8-5-3. Davis passed. Down four doubled vulnerable. North-South can take nine or 10 tricks in No Trump, but only one of them bid it. Most of them played it in Diamonds, which is good for at least nine tricks.
Bidding those two correctly wouldn't have gotten us out of our deep hole, though. We repeatedly missed going to game when we should have and failed to take all the tricks we were entitled to. And sometimes the really good players hit home runs against us, like Chris Urbanek and Kamil Bishara, who were the only ones to bid a small slam in Clubs on Board 10. Less perceptive North-Souths simply made game at 3 No Trump or 5 Clubs.
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