Bridge Blog 641: Stealth streak

            I hadn’t noticed, but I’ve been on a little streak here. I’ve been bagging points every day since my game with the lovely Diane Bloom last Thursday – fractional points each day at the sectional tournament, that big score with Marilyn Steffan on Monday, then low-grade increments with Celine Murray on Tuesday (52.40%, 0.34 point) and with Doug Dean on Wednesday (51.04%, 0.86 point).

          My aim with Diane Bloom is to have a relaxed and enjoyable game, and to bring our score up from the baseline of 42% in our first game together three weeks ago. But last week that didn’t happen. And this week it took a couple rounds to rein in that giddy feeling inspired by her black leather skirt and thigh-high black boots. Indeed, after our first two tables, we were at 26.08%.

          Then equilibrium arrived and, aside from a stumble or two – a poor round against her mentor, Jerry Geiger, and Jim Mathis – we had a respectable game. Take away those first couple tables and we were playing at 56%. But you can’t take those away. Our final tally was 44.39%, an incremental improvement at least. Diane was out the door before the results were announced, so she didn’t hear that score or the additional fact that, amazingly enough, we won a fraction of a point – 0.60 for coming in second in C East-West, third in C overall.

          That should bring my club total for the month to just over 15 and overall total to around 17. That’s double my total for last January and puts me within 10 points of 1,500.

Bridge Blog 640: Buffalo Winter Sectional Tournament Day 3 & Wrap-Up

          Our team of Faith Perry, Florence Boyd, Jane Larcom and myself looked like winners for the first two rounds of the Swiss team event on Sunday. We dispatched our first two opponents quite handily and were sitting in sixth place overall among 25 teams. But we all know what happens in these affairs when you win too much too soon.

          In the third round, who should show up at our table but Saleh Fetouh and David Hemmer, two of the best players in the room. Although it didn’t seem like we disgraced ourselves, the score tally said otherwise. They picked up International Match Points against us on all seven boards, shutting us out 41-0 en route to what would be a second-place finish.

          Our lucky streak shattered, best we could manage after that was a 15-15 tie in the final round. We wound up 20th overall, collecting .65 of a silver point for our 2½ victories. When it was over, Faith and Florence suggested that, since my nearly 1,500 points put them in the B strat in Swiss team competition, they’d like to find someone with fewer points for the Spring Sectional so they could stay in the C division. I’m disappointed, but not too much. I’ve wondered what would happen if I hooked up with B players, say someone like Mike Silverman.

My total take for the tournament was 1.70 points, which put me 93rd on a list of 162 players who won points. Last year I accumulated just 0.93 and was 106th out of 145.

          (Meanwhile, playing with Marilyn Steffan in a unit-rated game Monday at the Airport Bridge Club, I fared far better than I did at the tournament – 57.82% -- first in the B and C strats, earning 1.93 points.)

          Saleh Fetouh was the point champ at the tournament, bringing home 19.04 silver. The other leading point winners were Chris Urbanek, 17.28; John Toy, 14.51; Dian Petrov, 14.16; Jay Costello, 12.48; Judy Padgug, 12.09; David Hemmer, 11.76; Fred Yellen, 11.10; Joan Rose, 10.97; and Donna Steffan, 10.14.

Bridge Blog 639: Buffalo Winter Sectional Tournament Day 2

It was much steadier playing two sessions with Judy Kaprove on Saturday. Very, very steady. Maybe it had something to do with sitting in the same place at the same table in the morning and afternoon.

In the morning, with 26 tables playing, we finished with 51.08%, thanks to some torrid final two-hand rounds. That was 10th overall North-South, fifth in the B strat, netting us 0.47 of a silver point. In the afternoon, with 22 tables, we were almost as good, bringing home 50.11%, which was sixth in B, earning 0.32 silver. Add that to the 0.26 I collected playing with Celine Murray on  Friday and my silver point shavings now surpass one full point.

Though Judy and I had few complaints about one another’s efforts, we didn’t win the Kaprove strat. Her husband Bob, playing with Gaurang Sheth, was in the high 50% range East-West in both sessions. Meanwhile, Celine, playing with her daughter, Kathy Stamm, was one of the leaders in the morning session in the B and C strats East-West, earning around 2.5 points. Up there with them were my Sunday Swiss team teammates, Faith Perry and Florence Boyd. Here’s hoping some of that magic is contagious in Sunday’s finale.  

Bridge Blog 638: Buffalo Winter Sectional Tournament Day 1

            We like attending tournaments in the Main-Transit Fire Hall. It’s infinitely superior to the dimly-lit, irregularly heated social room in the Wick Center at Daemen College, which is where Unit 116 traditionally has held its winter sectional. It’s also incrementally better than the site of the fall tournament – the Father Justin Knights of Columbus Hall on Union Road in Cheektowaga – in that it’s brighter and newer.

            Plus there seems to be plenty of room for the number of players it attracts. Twenty-five and a half tables in the morning, split into two sections. Twenty-three and a half (or was it 24?) in the afternoon, also divided in two.

            Hospitality was agreeable too, as long as you didn’t pour yourself a cup of the coffee, which was wretched. I gave away a couple packets of Starbucks Via instant to disgruntled java-drinkers in the morning session. That’s what I was drinking. No complaints about the pastries, though. I heaped a couple slices of the blueberry bread and pumpkin-raisin bread on my plate for breakfast and they were delicious. I found out later that they were the work of Carol Bedell. Brava, Carol!

            The morning game, however, was so-so. Partner Celine Murray and I were alternately hot and cold on the hands, unable to match our stellar 62% game on Wednesday at the Airport Bridge Club. For every one of our finest hands – like the 4 Heart bid I shouldn’t have made – there was a disaster – like my down-two performance on another 4 Heart contract that would have succeeded with a couple makeable finesses. We pulled in at 50.80%, eighth in the B stratification, earning a fraction of a silver point – 0.26.

            The afternoon will be better, we vowed. But it wasn’t. We ran afoul of transfers over 1 No Trump bids, of all things. On one hand, where the opponents doubled over my 1 NT bid, Celine bid 2 Hearts, I transferred to 2 Spades and we wound up at 3 NT, going down two. We aren’t playing transfers, she contended. Yes, we are, I said. Everybody plays transfers. Later she bid 3 Hearts over my 1 NT and I’m wondering just what this is all about. Is it Hearts or what? She gives a little exclamation that provokes a director call from the opponents. I decide the honorable thing to do is give it a pass. No, she says as I lay my hand down as dummy, that was a transfer. Celine!!! Transfer on the 3 level??? Why not 2 Hearts??? She’s only got 9 high card points and a singleton Heart. Needless to say, it’s another disaster. It makes 4 Spades, but in Hearts we’re down two. We’re way worse than we were in the morning – 42.20% – dead last in our section. Next time Celine asks to fill out our convention card before the game, I’m going to take her up on the offer. Then maybe we’ll stay on the same page. Saturday shouldn’t see that kind of problem. I’m with Judy Kaprove for both sessions. Although we haven’t played together in a while, we should be better attuned.

            Problem hand of the day Friday was Board 7 in the morning session. We should have been in slam, but we messed up the bidding, winding up at 4 Hearts and taking 12 tricks, winning only 8.5 out of a possible 24 game points. Here are our hands:

            North (me)

            Spades: J-9-8; Hearts: A-J-8-6-3; Diamonds: A-Q-7; Clubs: 9-7

            South (Celine)

            Spades: Q; Hearts: K-Q-10-2; Diamonds: K-J-10-4; Clubs: A-K-J-5

            Celine’s the dealer and opens a Diamond. I bid a Heart. She bids 4 Hearts. Game. A shut-out bid as far as I’m concerned. She says later that she’s got 19-20 points and I should have gone for slam, because if she bids 4 Hearts, she’s strong enough to do that even if I have as few as 6 high card points for my response. I contend that she should have bid something else that didn’t suggest a shut-out bid. Two Clubs, for instance, would have drawn a 2 NT from me.

It would have been better if we used New Minor Forcing (which we don’t). She’d bid 1 NT and I’d respond 2 Clubs, the unbid minor suit, indicating five Hearts and 10 high card points. Then she could bid 4 NT, asking for Aces. It’s a bit of a gamble for slam, with 31 high card points between us, but the hand record says we can make 6 Hearts (as indeed we do, losing only the Ace of Spades) or, amazingly, 6 Diamonds. But only 5 NT.      
 (Bill Finkelstein informs me on Monday that I'm completely off base here. Celine is right. Her bid showed exactly what she was holding and I was too dim-witted to realize what was going down. New Minor Forcing would be totally inappropriate.)

Bridge Blog 637: Escaping the clutches

            Sometimes it’s just too depressing to blog about things like last week at the bridge tables. I began the week with the Mark of the Beast upon me – a total of 6.66 master points for 2013 – and I was stuck there. I couldn’t get out.

          The week's results may have been mediocre, but for the most part they weren’t beyond the reach of a miracle of stratification. There was a 47.63% with Usha Khurana on Monday, a 48.67% with Marietta Kalman on Tuesday, a 51.56% with Wednesday partner Celine Murray, which should have produced at least a fraction of a point. Even the 43.48% I had on my first partnership with the lovely Diane Bloom on Thursday wasn’t overly dismal – seventh out of 10 pairs.

          It took until Friday, however, when I came to the Airport Bridge Club without a partner and hooked up with Ruth Wurster, for one of those mediocre games to pay off. We had 47.50%, my second-lowest score of the week, but it was  fourth in the B strat and good for 0.63 of a point.

          Freed from the grip of the Beast, I spent the weekend away from the tables – waiting for a television satellite dish installer on Saturday (he couldn’t put one up, our North-facing house is blocked from the Southern sky by neighbors and our giant oak tree), going to hear octogenarian jazz pianist Boyd Lee Dunlop on Sunday.

          Monday, while President Obama was being re-inaugurated, I played a Martin Luther King Day double session chicken barbecue game at the Airport Bridge Club and found success in both sessions. In the morning, partner Marilyn Sultz and I came in at 49.07%, tops in the C strat in our direction and good for 0.86 point. After chicken, we came back and tied for first in B overall with a much improved 53.57%, winning 1.14 point. Total for the month and year now is 9.29.

          A 42.59% game with Florence Boyd on Tuesday did nothing to improve it. Florence confessed to not having a very good day, and I didn't have one either, which was reflected in the summary sheet – five top boards or tied for top, five bottoms or tied for bottom, and not enough above-average boards in the middle. Now that the bad bridge is out of our systems, we’ll do better when we partner for Swiss teams on Sunday at the Buffalo Winter Sectional, won't we?

          I felt a whole lot better about the sectional after Wednesday’s game with Celine Murray. Celine also is my partner for both sessions Friday at the tournament and, with any luck, she’ll be like she was Wednesday – on fire. Actually, both of us were hot, winning the extra trick on defense, bidding and making game where others settled for part-scores, keeping our mistakes to a minimum. Final tally was 62.85%, second overall and first East-West. This being a double-point week, the 1.63 points we won put me into double digits for the month -- 10.92. Hallelujah!

Bridge Blog 636: No, not much

   If I have to be stuck at any point count for the month, does it have to be 6.66? The Mark of the Beast has stayed with me for two days now as I've struck out, point-wise.
   Monday's game with Usha Khurana was 47.63%, which left us fourth out of five North-Souths. Tuesday with Marietta Kalman was plagued by hands with bad trump breaks and we finished in the middle of the pack with 48.67%.
   Meanwhile, John Ziemer points out that he does indeed appear in the national Top 100 in the 2012 Mini-McKenney race in the 1,000 to 2,500 point division. His 363.76 put him in 70th place. (See Blog 331 corrected.)

Bridge Blog 635: Full of holes

Our Swiss team was Swiss cheese Sunday at the Airport Bridge Club. Partner Marilyn Steffan and I took a couple rounds to get accustomed to each other, which could be expected, but we were having trouble finding game contracts and I was bidding and playing horribly. I was unable to cash tricks, miscommunicated my holdings more than usual and defended poorly. Our teammates, Larry and Dotty Soong, usually are sharp, but Larry was having an off day and they weren’t able to make up for our shortcomings.

We won just one of the four rounds before the break for lunch, so our fate was pretty much sealed by then. And we won only one of the three rounds after lunch. In both cases, our victories were at the expense of the two teams that finished below us.

Winning teams for the day, the two A teams and the top B team, got 2 and 3 points. We collected 0.23 for each of our successful rounds. Total for the month now – 6.66 points.