Bridge Blog 492: Quiet exit

          I should thank Pawan Matta for taking my bridge year out on a small positive note when she stopped back in Buffalo to play on Tuesday between her trip to see her daughter in Florida and her trip to see her son in New York City. Although I played most of our contracts, she brought home three small slams, bidding one of them boldly and making another one that most pairs didn’t bid and didn’t take 12 tricks. The result was a 49.77% game, not my finest effort during these last two weeks of 2011, but worth half a point for coming in fourth in the B strat.

          So it was a muted finale to a couple relatively stellar months – November, when I finally became a Life Master, and December, when I had a big week in the Sectional Tournament at the Clubs (STaC). Nevertheless, the past two weeks reminded me of the shortcomings of my game and suggested a few goals for 2012. First goal – 200 points for the year at least, a mark I didn’t reach in 2011. Sobering thought – at 200 points a year, it will take me until 2018 to become a Gold Life Master.

Bridge Blog 491: Sour patch

          Mike Silverman and I have done well together in the past and something in me thinks we always should do well together. Even so, we knew we were having a sour day Friday in the 11½ table game at the Bridge Center of Buffalo. It started in the first hand against Bob Feasley and Elaine Universal. Declarer at 4 Spades, I went down one on a bad break in trump, which I could have avoided by finessing Elaine. Then again, I’d stand a better chance in No Trump. So 2.5 points out of a possible 8. Then Mike allows an extra trick to get away in a 3 Heart contract on the third hand. Down two. An absolute bottom board. Out of a possible 24 points in the first round, we get 4.

          We never recover. I cap it off in the final round against Harry Cheung and Liz Clark by pushing Mike’s weak 2 Spade bid to 4 Spades, doubled not vulnerable, rightly figuring that Harry and Liz will make 3 No Trump vulnerable. Trouble is, I have only a singleton Ace of Spades and the rest of the trump breaks 5-1. Down four. Another bottom board. We also had two slams bid and made against us. We finish with 40.74%, not last North-South, but just barely, thanks to Betty Bronstein and Christy Kellogg, who have 40.37%. Only one East-West did worse than us – Joyce Greenspan and Nadine Stein, who posted the lowest score I’ve ever seen in a club match: 21.30%. Mike and I did our part. We got 18.5 out of a possible 24 game points against them.

Bridge Blog 490: Joel II

          I got to play Thursday after all. Kathy Pollock decided to append an open pairs game to the Thursday Non-Life Master session at the Bridge Center of Buffalo and, sure enough, the experienced players came out – the ACBL Player of the Year among them.

          Joel Wooldridge was in a different section when he and his mother, Jill, won Sunday’s Unit Game, but Thursday’s match was a four-table Howell. Everybody would have to face him and his mom for a four-board round. As for me, I came without a partner. Originally I was playing with Usha Khurana at the Airport Bridge Club, but that’s closed, so she found a Non-Life Master to play with.

          So I was paired with another newly-minted Life Master, Tova Reinhorn. Tova and I hadn’t played together in years and I don’t recall us doing well, but no matter. Aside from the fact that I don’t play two-over-one, we seemed to be pretty much in sync.

          We met Joel and his mom at the turnaround table in the second round. Two things about them – they seem to bid really well and they take a long, long time to think over their next moves. So what happens on the first hand? I’m in one of my patented sacrifice situations. If I recall correctly, I bid Diamonds over Tova’s take-out double. Sure enough, it was down one for a minus 50, but it was better than the previous pair, which had gone down three at the same contract.

          The second board found Jill at 3 Clubs, just making it. The other score on the slip was 50 for the North-South pair. Bottom board. Board three found Jill as declarer again at 4 Hearts. I think I had three High Card Points. She blew us away by making two overtricks. The previous pairs had played it a 3 No Trump, making three overtricks.

          Board four found Joel as declarer at 5 Diamonds after a convoluted bidding sequence which involved all the suits. The previous players had stopped at 3 Diamonds, making two overtricks. Top board, Joel, but at least we didn’t disgrace ourselves. In fact, it seemed like we played 50% against them. Looking at the summary sheet, I see that up until that fourth board, we were a little better than 50%. After it, we were 41.67%.

          Still, Tova and I kept feeling like this was a good game, good enough that I was disappointed when the preliminary scores showed us only a fraction over 50%. In the final tally, we came in at 51.79%, winning no master points at fifth out of the eight pairs but, amazingly, one notch ahead of the Wooldridges.

          Then Tova found a scoring error, a rather odd one where the totals were reversed. I dismissed it, thinking it would make no difference to us. But half an hour later, as I was walking into Talking Leaves Books on Elmwood Avenue to pick up the latest issue of Artvoice, my cell phone rings. It’s Kathy Pollock. She readjusted the scores to correct the error. Our score remained the same, as I had suspected, but John Kirsits and Ken Meier had gone from a top to a bottom. They fell behind us. Now we were fourth overall and second in B for a grand .28 of a master point – first time I’ve scratched in a week.

Bridge Blog 489: Not enough mojo in our so-so

          One of my favorite Olaf Fub quotes in the Reporter’s Notebook column I compile for The Buffalo News goes something like this – the good thing about mediocre people is that they always live up to their potential.

          I’ve certainly been living up to my potential this week in my excursion into Buffalo’s other bridge club. In the big 14.5-table game Monday at Bridge Club Meridian – in a field that included both Meg Klamp and Bud Seidenberg – me and Marilyn Sultz managed to hold our heads up with a 46% game, but not much more. Back at Meridian on Tuesday, the field was smaller – 10 tables – but my result with Marietta Kalman was no better, just 47.07%, which tied us with club director Dian Petrov, who was playing at the next table.

          I had higher hopes for Wednesday at the Bridge Center of Buffalo, teaming up with my regular Wednesday partner, Celine Murray. She and I do better than 50% at least half of the time. This was not one of those times. The partial results in this 9½ table game with one round to go showed us with a 39% score, with only one North-South pair more pathetic than that. We finished with 43.29%. No reward for that, even though we were in the C strat. We’d need to be better at so-so, at least 48%. 

Bridge Blog 488: Joel

          My colleague Jane Kwiatkowski tells me that Bud Seidenberg told her that the New York Times wrote up a nice article about Joel Wooldridge. Turns out it’s one of bridge writer Philip Alder’s columns, from Sunday, Dec. 11. Check it out here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/crosswords/bridge/the-winning-strategy-of-the-player-of-the-year.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=wooldridge&st=cse_

Bridge Blog 487: Unit united

          Had Bill Finkelstein not gone on the ailing list, I would have been severely conflicted about Sunday’s choice between the annual Unit 116 game and meeting and Bill’s competing holiday party. Without the holiday party, the unit affair was fine – a full house in the Bridge Center of Buffalo. They would have been hard pressed to hold more than 20 tables full of players. As it was, director Dian Petrov had to snake the two sections of tables through each other. Any bigger and maybe they should move it to St. Catharines.

          At any rate, it ran smoothly and the food – roast beef sandwiches, salad, scalloped potatoes, a ton of desserts – was fine. The business meeting seemed pretty much to the point – it was especially sad to hear the list of bridge players who had passed away this year (so many of them). There was even a death on the board – Franklin Kidd, who was chairman of Sunday’s event.

When the winners in the election to the board were announced – Paul Zittel, Tova Reinhorn and Betty Metz – Betty, who is president, announced that the new board would name a replacement for Frank. Bill Finkelstein, when he heard about this, pulled out the unit by-laws and cited a paragraph that covers the filling of vacant seats on the board. The board used to make the appointments, but that led to a lot of cronyism and it’s no longer kosher. They have to take the next-highest vote-getter in the election.

          A surprise to me was the presence of Joel Wooldridge – announced as the ACBL Player of the Year. He was unprepared to speak, but they pressed him to say a few unprepared words anyway. He went on to play with his mother, Jill (in the other section from Bob Kaprove and me), and cruised to the highest percentage – 70.16% -- in a room that included some of the best players in town (Jim Mathis, Saleh Fetouh, Bud Seidenberg and Dan Gerstman, to name some of them). Hmm, one top player missing was Chris Urbanek. And Bev Cohen, announced as a Diamond (5,000 point) Life Master, was out of town. Hmm again, no Judi Marshall or Jerry Geiger, either.

          Gerstman, to whom I’d never before spoken, buttonholed me in the front hallway after the game and expressed the wish for a bridge hero in this town, preferably in the newspaper. I explained that I couldn't assume that role, even if I were qualified for it, because The News has many other things they want me to do and little interest in bridge (they rejected this blog for their website), despite owner Warren Buffett's fondness for the game. Gerstman, for his part, noted that he was one of the guys that the New York Times bridge columnist consults with. I’m impressed.

Bridge Blog 486: Change of complexion

          It’s such a game of highs and lows. A week ago I felt great, coming off a super STaC (Sectional Tournament at the Clubs) week with nearly 14 silver points. This week it’s the opposite. I’ve collected fractional points in only three of my seven games since last Monday, adding up to less than a full point. A week ago, 200 points total for the year seemed attainable, if I could pick up 13 additional points in regular club play. But half of them needed to come this week. At this point, I won’t make 200. I’m only playing five more times before year-end.