Bridge Blog 1199: The long and short of it

 

The Longest Day was too long already after only about a dozen hands at the Bridge Center of Buffalo for my Sunday morning partner Judie Bailey. Only 15 more boards to go, I reassured her.

She thought it was the air conditioning, or rather the lack of it, that was sapping her energy. It didn't help that we were playing in an 11-pair Howell movement, which disoriented us and everybody else by taking most of us to a different table for every round. Plus we were one of the pairs that didn’t get a sit-out.

Nevertheless, Judie soldiered on through. When cool breezes began to reach us in the final round, she started feeling better, just in time for a total drubbing by Mike Ryan and Judy Graf, who gave us three straight bottom boards. We were at 56.77% when we arrived at their table and 50.93% when we walked away.

Amazingly, that calamity took us down only one peg in the final standings, from first in the B stratification to second. This being part of the District 5 Sectional Tournament at the Clubs (STaC), I was grateful to collect some fraction – 0.83 – of a silver point.

For the six-table afternoon session, fresh partner Florence Boyd and I sat North-South for the entire game and started out like demons. In our first set of four hands against Ruth Nawotniak and Joyce Frayer, we won 14.5 out of a possible 20 match points.

The thrill of that victory didn't last long. Next visitors to our table – Joyce Greenspan and Jo Nasoff-Finton – slapped us down with two bottom boards. One of the other hands was a pass-out. We never bounced back. Our final score was 44.17%, second from the bottom North-South, ninth out of 12 pairs overall.

Bridge Blog 1198: Bottoms up! (with an addition)

 

In this week's episode of NPR's "Hidden Brain," the guest, psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis, proposes a riddle to host Shankar Vedantam that sort of goes like this: If there is one lily pad in a pond (or lake) at the beginning of spring and the number of lily pads doubles every day, when does the pond (or lake) fill up completely with lily pads? 

Added note: What I forgot to say when I originally posted this was that finding an answer often involves looking at the question from a different direction. The discussion revolved around how the subconscious mind knows things that the conscious mind doesn't and that sometimes it takes stepping away from thinking about the original question so that the subconscious mind has a chance to take a fresh view. One example: Sleeping on a decision before making a final choice. Further example: I realized that I needed to add this explanatory note after I woke up this morning. 

About 16 hours earlier, I saw how thinking applied from a different direction could be applied to the final results of the Friday afternoon game at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Duplicate Bridge Club in Canada. Checking our final scores on the BridgeMate, our opponents said, "Oh, you're fourth." To which my first-time partner Harold Nash replied that he preferred to look at it as third ... from the bottom.

Harold is the oldest player at the game – he's 96 – and I marveled at how sharp and delightful he is. Like in Monday's game, another first-time partnership for me (see Blog 1197), we started out with the blessing of bad hands, which let us get used to each other while playing defense.

Unfortunately, the blessing didn't do us much good this time. We were 45% after the first round and 45.42% at the end of the day. In the final tally, when everybody finished playing, we had advanced to second ... from the bottom.

Bridge Blog 1197: Answering the call

 

"Canada," the screen flashed when the phone rang shortly before 10 a.m. Monday, just as I was getting ready to roll out of bed and mulling what to do after that. The woman on the other end of the line said that Myrna Mackey needed a partner today at the Bridge Centre of Niagara. Was I available to play?

On one hand, I could do yard work. Or else I could spend an afternoon at the tables in St. Catharine's. The choice was clear. Not only is Myrna quietly sweet, she's also one of the better players at the club. We'd never partnered up before, but I figured we’d work things out.

What helped, especially in the early rounds, were the cards. They were awful. With nothing to bid on (in our first three hands, one or the other of us had high card points in the low single digits), we passed a lot. What also helped was we were in tune defensively. Our opponents didn't get any tricks they didn't deserve.

We breezed along until the final round, when we ran up against Jane Jennings and Donna Fettes and won just six of 24 possible match points. Did that take the bloom off our afternoon? Not much. 61.34%. Second overall. We begin the new month with 2.48 master points.

Bridge Blog 1196-A: Back to the tables -- Under the radar

 

But at least not under the tables on Thursday morning at the Anchor Bar at Maple and Sweet Home Roads in Amherst, my first game in nearly two weeks after a trip to Washington, D.C., for a wedding.

This was Third Thursdays, a non-ACBL-sanctioned game directed by my dear friend and sometimes partner Judie Bailey that I never expected to play in. Back when it met at a country club, it was ladies only. Lately, however, a gentleman has been invited to fill out an empty chair and on Wednesday, while I was homeward bound and stopped at a Starbucks in Clark's Summit, Pa., Judie texted an invitation to me.

Indeed, I was not the only gentleman who helped fill up four tables in the side dining room at the Anchor Bar. There were three of us. Entry fee was $1. Judie told me to sit anywhere East-West. I'd never met the attractive white-haired woman across from me, Judy McDermid, one of three Judys present, but we quickly determined that we could do things like 14-30, asking for key cards in a slam attempt.

Before play, a waitress took orders for lunch and when food came out, we took a break after the second round. Music from the restaurant's sound system sifted into our area. Elsewhere sports channels played on flat-screen TVs, a few patrons sat at the main bar and, in the regular dining room, there was a group of Red Hat ladies having lunch.

In all, we played 16 boards in four rounds. Aggressive me, I took the bid on at least half of them and was nailed for minus 1,100 on the second hand when I went after a 5 Spade sacrifice. Sitting North and doubling was Paula Kotowski, who reminded me how I kept her from getting her final points for Ruby Life Master 17 years ago when I failed to return a card for her to trump. She was delighted to inflict some revenge. Down 5. But was it a bottom board? The scoring slips later showed that North-South could take 12 tricks.

Even so, this was not a slam-bidding crowd. Mostly, they were social players familiar with some of the modern bridge basics. Nevertheless, there were a few that I know from the clubs – the aforementioned Paula Kotowski, Florence Boyd, Dorothy May, Judy Kaprove and Paula Salamone. I hadn't seen Paula Salamone since before the pandemic. We greeted each other with a hug.

No results right away. Judie let me know with an email on Friday and it turned out that we club players carried the day. Judy McDermid and I tied for first with Paula Kotowski and her partner with a 29. Figuring a maximum of three match points on 16 hands, that would translate to 60.41%. Paula Salamone and Flo Boyd and their respective partners tied for second with 28, or 58.33%.

Bridge Blog 1196-B: Back to the tables -- Switcheroo!

 

Having warmed up from my layoff at the Third Thursday game, I was ready, ready, ready to reunite on Friday with my Canadian partner, Selina Volpatti, at the ACBL-sanctioned game in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont. But surprise! When I walked in, Selina, who was directing, announced that I would be playing with her son-in-law, John Beck, who unexpectedly found himself with the day off from his thriving construction business.

John is a bit of a novice, having followed his wife Laura into the game, but no problem. Selina not only transferred her love of bridge to John and Laura, but she also taught them to play. Essentially, it was like playing with Selina. Plus, not only did John cover my entry fee, he also has an easy sense of humor and an upbeat attitude. I'd be happy to hang with him even if we didn't have cards in our hands. Turns out we're OK with cards, too. Second North-South with 59.58%.

Bridge Blog 1195: Shot at the Buzzer

"That dbl (double) on Board 4 may have put us over the top," partner Selina Volpatti texted me after our first place showing Friday at the Niagara on the Lake Duplicate Bridge Club. "... that gave us the point over the Tremblays." 

It's a great day whenever we beat Claude and Muriel Tremblay, the perennial top pair at the club. On this occasion, they were second. We outdistanced them in match points, 74.18 to 71.45. Translated into percentages, that's 61.82% to 59.54%. 

True, Selina's double on Board 4, our last deal of the day, earned us one match point more than the Tremblays, who had the second-best score on that hand, where East-West took only six tricks at 3 Hearts. Same thing happened at the Tremblays' table, but they didn't double. As it turns out, though, that only gave us a break-even against Claude and Muriel in that round. Board 4 was a feel-good finale, the frosting on the cake. We already had piled up our advantage elsewhere. 

It wasn't in the first round, where we played Boards 5 through 8. The Tremblays roared to a four match-point lead there, even though we were second-best on each hand. 

The crucial difference came during the two rounds that followed, Boards 10 to 14, where we grabbed 10.5 more match points than they did. We won No. 10 on defense, holding a 2 Spade contract by East-West to one fewer overtrick than they did. No. 11 found me down one at 3 Spades, for a score of minus 50, while they let East-West play and make 3 Diamonds for minus 110. On No. 13, the opponents helped us out. East went to 4 Spades with a seven-card trump fit, which we set by one trick, while Claude and Muriel saw West play it at a much more solid 3 Hearts, where they had a 10-card fit and made an overtrick.

No. 14 was a top board for us, again thanks to our opponents. They passed after Selina boldly bid it up to 3 Spades. She made an overtrick, despite our deficiency in high card points (she had 14, I had just two Jacks). At Claude and Muriel's table, West took the bid at 3 No Trump and took an overtrick.  

Bridge Blog 1194: April shower

Once upon a time, when I was playing bridge five or six days a week, it was a bad month if I didn't pile up at least 15 master points. Now I'm lucky to play twice a week and the rewards have dried up so much that 5.63 points in April feels like manna from heaven. It more than doubles my total for the year so far.

But no luck juicing up my monthly master point total even more on Wednesday at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont. Partner Rod Sumner and I wound up dead last East-West.

I kicked myself more than once over Aces I failed to cash and leads I should have made to Rod, but now that I’m reviewing the hand records, it would have taken much more than those to reach the winners' circle. In fact, if we hadn't broken out of our funk with a stellar final round, we'd be truly wretched – four percentage points below our eventual 40.74%.