Bridge Blog 374: Potholes

It’s been a bumpy road to masterpoints the past few days. One day I’m up – an all-around first in some careful play with Mike Silverman on Friday, yielding a 64.17% game and 1.87 points. The next few days I’m down. On Saturday, partner Fenton Harrison and I traded minus 1100 games and had a good time, but not good results. On Sunday, the game ran a little late and I left without even seeing what Lorna Brewer and I had accomplished – the incomplete dead last score was enough for me.

With Marie Suprinick in Monday’s double-point double session and chicken barbecue, I wasn’t sure what to expect. A double win would brighten things up considerably, but that hope dimmed in the morning as we continually turned in bad boards and wound up dead last with 34.82%. Marie, I realized, is even more of a compulsive overbidder than I am. In the afternoon session, we seemed to find a balance and the cards seemed more agreeable. Sure enough, it was a 54.38% effort, second North-South in a five-table game, bringing home 0.65 point. Total for the month now – 4.57 black points, 2.13 silver.

Bridge Blog 371: Buffalo Winter Sectional Day 3

It was bad, bad right from the beginning. It took our Swiss team of Faith Perry, Ginny Panaro, Flo Boyd and me four rounds to break into victory point double digits. At that point, some of the leaders were in triple digits. Nevertheless, we were a C team and after lunch we rebounded, winning two straight rounds and reaching a somewhat respectable position. “You guys are doing goood,” Judy Kaprove cooed, coming back from a glance at the scoreboard.  Not really, but better than her team, I guess.

We lost our final round, though. Even if we won, we’d have been about 20 points short of coming in third in C. Even if I hadn’t screwed up those four hands that cost us about 15 International Match Points, we still wouldn’t have cut it. To match the team that actually did come in third in C (1.96 points) – Paul and Linda Zittel, Joe Rooney and Bill Boardman – we needed 111 points. As it was, we collected .52 silver points for our two victorious rounds. Total for the tournament – 2.13.

“Who’s that woman?” somebody asked during the lunch break, indicating a rather trim and attractive brunette in a purple sleeveless vest. Dunno, I said, but I think she’s Canadian. Sure enough, there she is in the picture of the winning A team on the Unit 116 website. The Gordon team. Her team. She’s Diane K.M. Gordon from St. David’s, Ont.

Bridge Blog 367: Where's our results?

I just checked the ACBL website for scores in the Inter Club Championship Game on Monday (Blog 365) and the Airport Bridge Club isn’t there. Club manager Bill Finkelstein must have submitted them. Did they reject him because he played Boards 13 to 36 instead of starting with Board 1? There are no scores at all for Boards 35 and 36 in the tabulation tables.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the scores we would have gotten and added them up. Sure enough, there were a couple tops where I expected them, but our overall percentage is just a hair over 50% without Boards 35 and 36.

Bridge Blog 366: New Year's resolutions

Four things that I promise not to do the next time I play with Judy Kaprove, which will be on Friday in the Buffalo Winter Sectional Tournament.

1.                          Don’t pre-empt if you’re the dealer, especially if you have a seven-card Spade suit that starts out A-K-Q-J.

2.                          Don’t delay in leading a singleton Ace in defense.

3.                          Don’t forget how to signal point count when partner makes a take-out double. 

4.                          Don’t push to 3 No Trump when partner is showing 10 points or less.

       I did all of these things when I played with Judy at the Airport Bridge Club on Tuesday, but it was good to get them out and identified. All of them resulted in bottom boards, or near bottoms. Without those mistakes, we would have broken over 50%. As it was, we were 45.64%, 10th out of 12 North-Souths.

Bridge Blog 362: Teachable moment II

          I can do better with Marietta Kalman. I know I can. I’ve done it. But I didn’t do it Thursday at the Airport Bridge Club. Our day was the flipside of the high spirits that Robert Alan Davis and I enjoyed the night before at the Delaware Wednesday club.

Certainly my bidding leaves much to be desired, but our problems are compounded because we don’t seem to understand one another. Again and again, we ran into little snags where what she picked up from lessons at the Bridge Center of Buffalo ran contrary to what I seem to have absorbed from Bill Finkelstein’s classes at Airport. Here’s an example:

It’s Board 23, end of the day. We’re sitting North-South. Our opponents are Sharon Chang, sitting West opposite her daughter, Jacqueline, up from New York City for the holidays. Jacqueline plays at the big Manhattan bridge club. Anyway, South – Marietta – is dealer. East-West is vulnerable. Marietta bids 1 No Trump. Sharon passes. I’m sitting with a big hand:

Spades: K-Q-9-6-2; Hearts: A; Diamonds: 9-8; Clubs: A-K-9-8-3.

Sixteen high card points, add two or three more for the two five-card suits. We’ve got slam, either in Spades or No Trump. But how do I get us there? I decide to go with 2 Hearts for a transfer to Spades, then bid 4 No Trump, showing strength, asking for Aces or both. But Marietta passes. Sharon leads a Diamond and Marietta proceeds to take all the tricks, thanks to Sharon throwing away a winning long Spade, to an aggravated look on Jacqueline’s face. It’s a next-to-bottom board for us. Almost everyone else bid the slam at 6 NT, making 6 or 7.  Here are the other hands:

South:

Spades: A-3; Hearts: Q-9-5-3; Diamonds: A-K-J-6; Clubs: Q-7-5.

West:

Spades: J-8-5-4; Hearts: K-4; Diamonds: Q-10-7-3-2; Clubs: J-8-5-4.

East:

Spades: 10-7; Hearts: J-10-8-7-6-2; Diamonds: 5-4; Clubs: 6-4-2.

Marietta said I should have bid 4 Clubs, asking for Aces. She thought that 4 NT asked if she was at the top of her 1 NT bid. That was the way she was taught, she said. When we put this hand out for analysis after the game, Bill Finkelstein said my transfer bid was useless – I should have gone straight to 6 NT – but that my 4 NT should have considered an inquiry about Aces. That, he said, is the way he teaches it.

Bridge Blog 361: Teachable moment I

Here’s a hand Marietta Kalman and I encountered relatively early in the game at the Airport Bridge Club on Thursday. It was Board 9. East-West vulnerable. I’m North and I’m the dealer. I need only a quick look at this hand to know what to bid first:

Spades: K-Q-7-5; Hearts: 8-7-6-4-2; Diamonds: 9; Clubs: Q-7-2.

I pass. East – Nancy Kessler – passes. Marietta bids 1 Diamond. West – Carlton Stone – doubles. I bid my five-card suit – 1 Heart. Nancy passes. Marietta jumps to 3 Diamonds and we all pass. Carlton leads the King of Hearts. In the end, we take only 8 tricks – down one. It turns out to be a low middle board.

Although other Diamond bidders suffer bigger shellackings, a couple of them make 3 or 4 Diamonds. The best result, however, comes from the 3 No Trump contracts. In one instance, North bid the No Trump. I couldn’t quite see doing it, but maybe it was in response to the 3 Diamond bid. In the other (Judy Padgug, playing with newly-back-from-Florida Meg Klamp), South, Judy, bid a Diamond, got a double from West and a Heart bid from Meg, then went straight to 3 NT. She had 8 tricks off the top, she said, and expected her partner would give her one more. Here are the other hands:

South:

Spades: J; Hearts: A-J; Diamonds: A-K-Q-J-10-7-5; Clubs: 9-5-4.

East:

Spades: A-9-8-3-2; Hearts, 5; Diamonds: 9-4-3; Clubs: A-J-8-3.

West:

Spades: 10-6-4; Hearts: K-Q-10-9-3; Diamonds: 6-2; Clubs: K-9.

Bridge Blog 360: Breaking the pattern

          Lately I’ve started thinking that I’m failing more proficiently. Maybe it’s because there have been so many near-misses for points. Back from a long weekend in New York City, I had another one on Tuesday with Helen Panza – just shy of 48%, which seems to be the current benchmark.

Then, on Wednesday, the benchmark broke. Teamed with novice Lynn Witmer (looking very Spanish royal in black, silver and rhinestones), we didn’t make any major mistakes, but seemed to bring out the best in our opponents. When the game was over at the Airport Bridge Club, we finished just over 40%, dead last in both directions.

Undeterred, I used my Wednesday night off to renew my acquaintance with the Delaware Wednesday group, where I was for sure the youngest person in the room. Paired with Robert Alan Davis, with whom I had a horrible game not so long ago, everything seemed to be going our way in this five-table Mitchell game – cards, bidding, finesses, opponents not discovering the killer defense.

We posted a stellar 66.13%, tops East-West and only a quarter of a percent behind the top North-South pair. It’s the first time I’ve scratched at Delaware Wednesday. The reward, as it turns out, isn’t so much in points – winning yielded only 0.40 – but rather a little piece of paper entitling me, as a winner, to a free play.