Bridge Blog 1164-A: Buffalo Fall Sectional Part I. Underachievers.

At least we had a good time, Judie Bailey and I console ourselves after Friday's sessions end at the Buffalo Fall Sectional Tournament at the Bridge Center of Buffalo. 

We could shrug off our less-than-stellar 44.01% in the morning session as rustiness and unfamiliarity with one another. We certainly would do better in the afternoon. But noooooo! We come in at 38.20%, dead last North-South. Only pair more miserable is the East-West combo of Rajat Basu and Sushil Amlani with 37.08%. They didn't deserve that, either. In the morning, they had been first in B. 

The afternoon had such bright spots too, like Board 1, where I was the only one to bid and make a 6 Diamond contract. Doubled. For that I have to thank to Mary Terrana and Gordon Crone bidding us up there with their good Spades. At most of the other tables, North-South made the same 12 tricks, but stopped at 5 Diamonds. 

Bridge Blog 1164-B: Buffalo Fall Sectional Part II. Bumps in the road.

The Buffalo Fall Sectional was like a car with more than 75,000 miles on the odometer. Little breakdowns kept slowing things down or bringing them to a halt. On Friday morning, it was a mixup in Boards 1 and 2, which somehow had the afternoon cards in them, if I understood the problem correctly. That also messed up the afternoon cards. No hand records, as a result. 

Then, on Saturday morning, the Bridge Mates, the electronic scoring gizmos, stopped communicating with the director's computer. Director Brian Meyer (pictured) explained later that 1990s ACBL technology was messing things up. For a couple rounds, scores were entered the old-fashioned way, handwritten on pickup slips, then Brian managed to get things resolved. Nonetheless, the morning game finished late. Brian started the afternoon game late. The day lasted about 20 minutes longer than usual. Evening plans had to be adjusted accordingly. 

Bridge Blog 1164-C: Buffalo Fall Sectional Part III. The old gray mare.

Sectional tournaments in Buffalo ain't what they used to be, I reflected as I looked around the cramped rooms at the Bridge Center of Buffalo. They used to fill the social hall at the Main Transit Fire Hall in Amherst, big enough to divide into two sections, with an extra row of tables for novices or single-session players along one wall. 

No more. Friday saw 13 tables in the morning, 10½ in the afternoon. Saturday had 12½ in the morning, 10½ again after lunch. I wasn't there on Sunday for Swiss teams, but only six teams played. In the old days, there would be 20 plus, even if there was a Bills game. Back then, there also would be a contingent of Canadians. Nobody from St. Catharines came over. With the exception of a couple from Royal Oak, Mich., who happened to be in town and a pair from Rochester on Saturday (that's one of them, Anthony Auriemma, in the photo), it was only us Buffalo players. 

Bridge Blog 1163: 3,000!

Bridge Blog 1163: 3000! 

    To my mind, 3,000 has always been a magic number. Back in the 1980s, when I was reading Barron's, it used to be the impossible dream for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. And it's one of those milestones that baseball players aspire to. According to Wikipedia, only 33 batters are in the 3,000-hit club. When I was a kid, there were only eight. Roberto Clemente had exactly 3,000 hits when his chartered plane went down on New Year's Eve 1972.

    In the world of duplicate bridge, 3,000 is more of a dividing line. To become a Gold Life Master, the magic master point number is 2,500. Next step up is Sapphire Life Master and that's 3,500. 

    With 3,000, the difference it makes shows up when you sign in at tournaments. Less than 3,000, you play in the B stratification. More than 3,000, you're up against the big kids in the A strat. 

    When I became a Gold Life Master several years ago, I was playing five days a week and accumulating more than 100 master points every year. Since the pandemic, that's all ground to a crawl. These days there are only two games a week for experienced players here in Buffalo and I'm working on one of those days. Mostly I play Fridays, one of my days off, in Canada, where there's more tables in St. Catharines and Niagara-on-the-Lake. I haven't sought out an online game at all this year. 

    I expected the milestone to arrive at one of those games in Canada, but I've been stuck at 2,998.16 for a month. It took the Buffalo Fall Sectional this weekend to cross over. 

    In the Saturday morning session, Florence Boyd and I squeaked to 51.44%, second in the B strat and a surprising 2.01 silver points, but the news didn't get to ACBL central right away. I was still a B for the afternoon session. Could we capitalize on it? Hell, no. We wound up at 47.46%, seventh out of 10 North-Souths. 

Bridge Blog 1162: Picking up where we left off

    Nothing sharpens the senses like a long layoff. When I walk into the Niagara-on-the-Lake Duplicate Bridge Club on Friday, Sept. 5, I haven't played since the middle of August. I feel such a rush of happiness that I give my Canadian partner Selina Volpatti a huge hug and she gives one back.

    It feels good to hold the cards again too, but what to do with them? Especially when the first hand, Board 1, gives me six Diamonds to the A-J-10 and all four Aces. When Selina opens the bidding with a Heart, my singleton, I respond 2 Diamonds, just to see what she'll bid next. When she goes 2 Spades, I do a little math and figure her for at least three Kings and couple other honors. I go straight to 6 No Trump.

    Unfortunately, she has a penchant for opening light. The dummy comes down with just 10 high card points. Kings of Diamonds and Hearts, Queens of Hearts and Spades. I still might make it if the Hearts break in my favor, but West has five of them to the Jack. Even after the Diamond finesse works, best I can see is 11 tricks. Six Diamonds, three other Aces, King-Queen of Hearts. What I don't see is West with the King-Jack of Spades. Leading a low Spade through her to Selina's Queen would nail it. Then again, the hand record says it's only good for 5 No Trump. 

    At any rate, here we are with a bottom board. Familiar ground. At the other four tables, somebody stops at 2 No Trump and makes 12 tricks. Everybody else plays it at 3 Diamonds, making one or two overtricks.

    We go on to one of our overwhelmingly aggressive days, winning the auctions on 17 out of 24 boards, winding up fourth out of five North-Souths with 46%.

    Actually, we finish that first round with 8.5 out of 16 match points, which is 53.12%. Since I'm declarer on all four boards, guess I haven't lost my touch. Or have I? As declarer on seven more hands during the rest of the afternoon, I contribute three more bottom boards and pick up only 9.5 out of 28 possible match points.

Bridge Blog 1161: First date

 

With my usual Canadian teammate, Selina Volpatti, unavailable for the game Friday at the Bridge Club of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont., it seems like a good time to take my friend Judy Zeckhauser up on her desire to play there together one of these days.

But Judy hasn't been at this game as long as I have – she has fewer than 500 master points and I have nearly 3,000. As we review conventions at 140 kilometers per hour on the Queen Elizabeth Way, it becomes clear that we should avoid anything exotic.

The folks at BCON are gracious to Judy, but competitive, as usual, in a 7½-table game. After four boards with our first opponents, Kathy Morrison and Sandy Smee, we emerge with a mere 8.5 match points out of a possible 24.

Then, as East-West, we’re off to face John Mackay and Clyde Paul, the eventual winners Friday. Even so, we find our footing, holding them to four average boards for 12.5 points out of 24.

That delivers us to Marg Dykstra and Donna Fettes, who immediately slam-dunk us, bidding and making a 4 Heart contract that others make but don’t bid. They go on to drub us worse than Kathy and Sandy, 17 points to 7, though I’m still kicking myself for not grabbing that Queen of Hearts trick against Marg's 1 No Trump contract on Board 16 and holding her to eight tricks, or maybe seven, since that happened at three other tables. A quick hit of the calculator shows us at that point with a paltry 38.88%.

Then we meet up with perennial partners Joan Soifert and John Marksell. Joan declares that they're having a terrible day and, despite our expressions of sympathy, we extend their bad luck further on the first board when their overly ambitious 4 Spade contact makes only eight tricks, like every other North-South does. We sink them again on the next two boards. Discouraged, they fail to bid the makeable game on the fourth board. We depart for the next table with 19.5 out of 24 match points. Our overall fortunes have suddenly brightened to 48.43%.

We could have done better than a flat 12 out of 24 points against our next opponents, Susan Messer (whom I often see at Niagara-on-the-Lake) and Barbara Staples, another toughie. Here's how we miss a slam on Board 3, mostly because I just didn't think we could bid it:  

Three passes to me and I’m holding the best hand I’ve had all day – six Spades, five Hearts, singleton Ace of Clubs and Queen of Diamonds, 21 high card points. Wham! I simply slam down a 4 Spade bid. Would 2 Clubs, showing huge strength, be better? Hard to say. Judy has a six-point hand, three Hearts to the Queen, two small Spades. Hand analysis shows 11 tricks in Spades, which I make, and 12 in Hearts. Nobody bid the Heart slam, but one East-West took all 13 tricks playing Hearts, obviously because North didn't grab their Ace of Diamonds when they had the chance.

We meet the roving pair – Chris Loat and Don Munroe – on the next round and we nail them. I make an iffy 2 Spade contract to tie for a top board, then Judy, holding four trump, a void and a couple Aces, delivers a knock-out punch by doubling Chris' 3 Spades, Down three vulnerable. Total top board.

Another double by me against a 4 Club contract gives us another top as we join Jan Andreychuk and Pat Braun, two more seasoned players, at the final table. Looking at the Ace-King of Clubs and two other Aces, I can't not double. Down three, thanks to Judy chipping in with the Queen of Clubs and King of Hearts. But then they get it back when a mistake Judy confesses to puts her down two on a makeable 1 No Trump contract.

It doesn't feel like a great day for us, so the final tally is a surprise. 54.49%. Fourth overall. Second in the B strat. Our reward: 0.61 of a black point and 0.31 of a red point. It’s a happy ride back to Buffalo.

Bridge Blog 1160: Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

What’s the difference between earning master points and finishing dead last? Near as I can figure from reviewing the 24 boards in Friday’s game at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Bridge Club, it took just five of those 24 boards to seal our fate at the bottom. With 51.5 match points in a seven-table game, we came in at 42.92%. Had those five boards turned out differently, by my estimate, we could have collected an extra 15 match points or so and wound up in second place North-South.

Board 4. Selina doesn’t like to rebid her six-card suits, which cooked us here. She’s got Diamonds. I have six Hearts, five Spades. High cards in both those suits are Jacks. At 3 No Trump, she’s down four. At 3 Diamonds, it’s down one, which would have given us 2.5 more match points.

Board 9. Bad sacrifice on my part, pushing Selina to 4 Spades, which opponent Susan Hawes doubles because she’s holding five of them (her partner is void). If they play at 4 Hearts, they’re down one. Plus 4 match points for us if I pass.

Board 14. Selina opens 1 Diamond, I bid 2 Clubs with six of them, she bids 2 Spades. I’m holding A-J-9-2 in Spades. Why don’t I raise to 3 Spades? She would go to 4. It makes 5 Spades and would give us an extra 1.5 match points.

Board 20. Another bottom at 5 Hearts doubled vulnerable, down three. Blame me for the bad minus 800 sacrifice. Down two, minus 500, would have been a top. Down three also would have been a top if any of the other East-Wests had bid their 6 Diamond or 6 Spade slams. So it could've been 5 match points for us instead of zero if the stars aligned.

Board 24. I open 1 Diamond. Selina responds 1 Heart. Holding 4 Spades and a relatively balanced 13-point hand, I go 1 No Trump. Selina has 10 high card points and A-Q-4 in Spades and can’t resist raising to 3 No Trump. The math is not in our favor. Her cards come down and I see 3 Spade tricks, 2 Club tricks, a Diamond and a Heart. There's no way to expand on that. Down two. We’re 2.5 match points better at 1 No Trump.