Bridge Blog 1177: Hot hand, cold contract

"Did you play Board 6?" partner Rod Sumner asks our North-South opponents at the final table Wednesday at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont. 

Yes, John Stevens and Laiqing Luo say. At their table, East-West bid 3 Spades, made 7. Aha! We did better. We not only took all the tricks, but we also bid game. 

That was our third hand of the day and the memory of it warmed us all afternoon. After all, how many times do you pick up a 10-card suit? 

Spades: A-J-10-9-8-7-5-4-3-2. 

Hearts: Void. 

Diamonds: 9. 

Clubs: A-8. 

South, Donna Fettes, was dealer and maybe she passed, maybe she bid 1 Club. At any rate, I jumped right away to 4 Spades, which was passed all around. Bob Jarvis, sitting North, led the 4 of Diamonds and Rod laid down the dummy: 

Spades: K.

Hearts: A-6-3.

Diamonds: A-8-7-2.

Clubs: J-10-6-5-3. 

Rod's Ace won it. Then I tossed a my losing Club on the Ace of Hearts. The dummy's singleton King of Spades brought out the other two Spades. 

But how do we get to slam? If West opens 1 Spade, what's East's bid if South opened a Club? Somehow East or West has to get to 4 No Trump to ask for Aces. Then, once it's clear that we have all of them, no problem. 6 Spades! 

According to the scoring rundown on ACBL's Live for Clubs, two East-Wests went there and made an overtrick. Two others stopped at 5 Spades doubled and collected two overtricks. We were among four who gave up at 4 Spades. And then there were the unfortunates who helped John and Laiqing pile up their overall top score of 75%. 

Nailing this one would have netted an extra 4.5 match points. Not enough, though, to win us master points. Our 50.46% was sixth out of 10 East-Wests. Somewhere in the other 26 hands, we'd need another memorable board.

P.S.: Did we at least outpoint my regular partner Selina Volpatti and her Wednesday playmate, Sandra Felton? First hand with them, Board 16: Average board. Almost all North-Souths made 4 Spades. Board 17 saw Selina go down two at 1 No Trump. Same thing happened at six other tables. Board 18 they're down two at 1 No Trump. A tie for top board for us. Amazingly, they wound up at only 44.53%, but they still won 0.34 of a master point. 

Bridge Blog 1176: Fun, fun, fun

The main thing was we had a good time, partner Florence Boyd declares at the end of Saturday's special game and annual meeting at the Buffalo Bridge Center. No doubt about it, fun was had. For one thing, Florence said, this is the first time she bid a slam and made it. 

Nevertheless, we're next-to-last North-South in a 10-table event and we couldn't even muster 40%. We're 39.37% and, as denizens of the A strat, we need at least 56%, or 28 more match points, to beat Martha Welte and Howard Foster (55.83%) to go home with master points. 

How many hands would it take to turn around to close that massive gap? We can't do it, not without some gifts from our opponents. And how did the first-place North-South pair, Jay Levy and Kamil Bishara (66.29%), fare on those same boards? 

Board 10. First cards of the day. Davis Heussler and David Colligan, the eventual East-West champs, wind up at 2 No Trump, making three. No overtrick at the other table where NT was bid. Possible gain: 0.5 match point. Jay and Kamil bid 2 Spades, despite having just 20 high card points between them, and make 2 overtricks. Possible match point gain if we do that: 5. 

Board 11. David plays it at 1 NT and goes down two. Jay and Kamil, along with two other North-Souths, take this bid at 2 Hearts with just 16 high card points between them, and make 2 overtricks,  (North has a six-card suit.) Possible match point gain if Florence bid it: 2.5. 

Board 12. Davis and David, with 10 Hearts between them, go all the way up to 5 Hearts. I have a 7-card Spade suit, King-Queen-Jack, etc., and I climb the ladder with them to 5 Spades. Florence shows her hand and, if a Diamond finesse works (Florence has Q-J-10, I have three to the Ace), we have just two losers -- Ace of Spades and Ace of Clubs. But no, West (David) has the King. Should we let them play it at 5 Hearts? That's down three. Double them and possible point gain is 3.5. Jay and Bishara get to play it at 4 Spades. 

Board 13. Florence plays it at 3 NT, makes two overtricks. So do Jay and Kamil. Can't do better than that. 

Board 14. Not vulnerable, with J-10-7-4-2 in Spades, I open a Spade, even though my hand falls one point short of the Rule of 15 and the Rule of 20. Florence, with three Spades and 16 high card points, bids 2 Spades. We take three overtricks. If North bids a five-card Heart suit instead of giving me a simple raise, we wind up in game and take 10 tricks. Possible match point gain: 2.5 in No Trump, 3.5 if it's Spades. Jay and Kamil also make three overtricks at 2 Spades. 

Board 15. Florence's 6 NT slam with an overtrick. Five other pairs, including Jay and Kamil, do the same thing. 

Board 16. Larry Abate and Jim Lanzo bid 3 NT, make one more overtrick than the one other 3 NT bidder. Every other East-West, including the pair at Jay and Kamil's table, bids 4 Hearts and makes it with no overtricks. Possible match point gain if I get my Queen of Hearts trick: 0.5.

Board 17. We pass it out. Third best score out of eight. North has an opening 1 Diamond bid, though, and we can take 10 or 11 tricks in Hearts. Possible match point gain: 1. 

Board 18 1 NT by South. In all, five North-Souths, including Jay and Kamil, bid that and make it. 

Board 19. I blow a 4 Spade contract against Julie Mitchell and Brian Fleming. Everybody else makes it, some with overtricks. Bottom board. Minimum match point gain: 3. Jay and Kamil don't play Boards 19, 20 and 21. 

Board 20. We stop at 3 Spades despite having 27 high card points between us, make an overtrick. Another bottom board. Most other North-Souths play it at 3 NT with overtricks. Minimum match point gain: 4.5. 

Board 21. In a display of great defensive bidding, Julie and Brian take the bid at 4 Spades and go down one. Had they left us at 4 Hearts, we make it. Possible match point gain: 1.5.

Board 22. We both have opening hands. I push Florence to 3 NT, but we don't have a stopper in Hearts. At a couple tables, East-Wests don't discover that and North-South run off five Club tricks and four Diamonds. Our opponents, Linda Marsh and Art Ziller, find it, take five Hearts and the A-K of Spades. No Jay and Kamil for Boards 22, 23 and 24 either. 

Board 25. Opponents Walt Olszewski and Sushil Amlani shouldn't make an overtrick at 4 Hearts, but they do. We get the Ace of Diamonds, Queen of Hearts and ought to get a trick with Florence's Jack of Spades or Queen of Clubs. Possible match point gain: 1. Jay and Kamil do better, thanks to their opponents, who play 3 NT, no overtricks. 

Board 26. I play it at 2 Hearts, so does Kamil. I make one overtrick, he makes three. Possible match point gain: 2.5.

Board 27. Walt and Sushil bid and make 5 Diamonds. Jay and Kamil get a gift from their opponents. Their East-Wests take 12 tricks, but only bid 3 Spades.

Board 28. I take 11 tricks in a 3 Diamond contract. So do Jay and Kamil, who bid 4 Diamonds. 

Board 29. Pretty much all of the East-Wests bid 4 Spades and make 4 Spades. Same with us and Jay-Bishara. 

Board 30. This time I'm at 5 Diamonds, opening 3 Diamonds with seven of them headed A-K-Q. Tova and Andrei Reinhorn go to 4 Spades vulnerable, which they can make. Down 2. Bottom board avoided. Jay and Bishara are down 1 at 4 Diamonds. 

Board 1. Jay and Bishara are at 4 Hearts, down one. So are we, except Bill and Nathan Kross double us. Possible match point gain if they don't: 1.5.

Board 2. We set Bill and Nathan by one trick at 4 Hearts. Same with Jay and Kamil against a 3 NT contract. 

Board 3. I bid 3 NT, make 3 overtricks. So do Jay and Kamil.  

Bridge Blog 1175: Four takeaways from the Buffalo Bridge Center annual meeting

 

1. Betty Metz reports that the club's Monday morning supervised play games and Tuesday morning social bridge games are great successes. Several players from each of those sessions have become full club members. 

2. Speaking of memberships, the count is up to 80. More are expected, Betty says, when the snowbirds come back North when the winter's over. (That's still way below the Bridge Centre of Niagara over in St. Catharines, Ont., where membership is more than 300.)

3. The club is in the black, which is good news when bridge organizations everywhere are depressed financially. It finished the year with $3,000 more in the bank than it had 12 months earlier. 

4. Virtual play is in a big decline. Revenues from games on Bridge Base Online and elsewhere were down to $11 in December.

Bridge Blog 1174: Now you see it, now you don't

The screen on the Bridge Mate says we're third out of eight pairs when we finish our last hand in the four-table Howell game Friday at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Bridge Club, but when the email arrives from ACBL Live for Clubs with the final results, we're fourth. We miss collecting 0.53 of a point by just one-tenth of 1%. 

Although partner Selina Volpatti and I defrosted from this frigid, windblown day (the car said it was 8 above on the ride up) with a kickoff 6 Heart slam and an overtrick, we veered off the winning path on many occasions en route to our 52.40%.

My deepest chagrin came in the final round on Board 20, where a 2 Club contract turned improbably into 12 tricks. I took just 11, thanks to a losing finesse I immediately recognized that I didn't need to take. 

Without that fumble, we'd be third. Had Selina succeeded on a pair of game contracts that may or may not have been makeable, we'd be second. Had we kept up the torrid pace we set in the first round, where we won 10 out of a possible 12 match points, we'd be seeing our names in next month's ACBL Bridge Bulletin. 

At any rate, it was a fitting end for a day of fiendishly unbalanced hands. Six-, 7- and 8-card suits were not unusual. Furthermore, in this Howell movement, we switched sides of the table repeatedly and seemed to zig-zag into more than our share of good cards. We bid accordingly. In the 24 boards we played, we let our opponents take the bid only 25% of the time. 

Bridge Blog 1173: It’s all in the numbers

 

"Hi Dale," the email subject line declares, "Welcome to your Bridge Wrapped report!" How about that? A year-in-review from the ACBL. It certainly sucks this bridge nut a little deeper into the statistics-mad world of sports and pastimes.

And right on top are my total points for the year: 38.04. I feel pretty good about that – it's my best year since the pandemic – but a pittance compared to Buffalo's premier point collector, Saleh Fetouh, who raked in more than 1,000 in 2025.

The statistics pop up in cold precision, but suddenly one of them – Best Day, the day when I earned the most points – warms up a memory. That was Nov. 14, two days after I was officially severed from The Buffalo News, ending my 57-year career there. I was still in a state of existential shell shock when Selina Volpatti and I came in second in our section in the Swiss team game at the Niagara Regional Tournament in St. Catharines, Ont. We hauled in 8.69 gold points and my existence suddenly started to have meaning again. That also made November my Best Month, the report noted, with 11.83 points overall.

The report goes on to recount my Best Pair Game – 68.15% – but I don't remember how it happened and it doesn't say when. For that, it’s over to the ACBL website for a search of my results on MyACBL. There, I discover, it was on Feb. 21 with Selina in the Niagara-on-the-Lake Bridge Club. First overall, we collected 1.47 points. My first-ever visit to the club on Jan. 10 resulted in my second-best game of the year – 66.82% – but that was only good for second place.

Back to the report, which next is tracking my wayward whereabouts. Unique Days Played? 61. Total face-to-face club sessions? 48. Largest club game? 16.5 tables. Tournament events? 14. Sectionals? 4. Regionals? 1. Nationals? Zero. Tournament cities? 2. And that's all, folks. In-ter-est-ing, but I have a sneaky feeling these stats are fodder for what really matters more to the number-crunchers at ACBL Central – trends.

Bridge Blog 1172-A: Bridgeless

 

The new year started the same way the old one ended – no bridge. Until the Wednesday, Jan. 14, game at Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont., I hadn't played in month. Not since the special game at the Bridge Center of Buffalo on Saturday, Dec. 13.

That big holiday break was not my idea. I would have played Friday, Dec. 19, at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Bridge Club, but hardly anybody else did except for partner Selina Volpatti. They called it off and sent an email over the holidays warning that if players didn't come, they'd have to call things off completely.

Then I got Covid and the flu at the same time over Christmas. On Dec. 26, I could barely climb out of bed. A game in St. Catharines was out of the question. A week later I was still testing positive for the coronavirus. And the Friday after that was the postponed date for our big New Year's Eve party, so no go then either.

Without me to sit in the South chair, did Selina find a substitute? I combed the results on the ACBL website and didn't see her name. Turns out she had Covid too.

Bridge Blog 1172-B: Second verse, same as the first.

 

Finally hale and hearty again, I text Selina to see if she's available to play Wednesday, Jan. 14, at BCON. She's already partnered up, she replies. Why don't I try Rod Sumner? Sure enough, Rod can do it.

Nevertheless, this is only the second time that Rod and I have played. He reviews my convention card, but it doesn't tell him that I like to use the modified Mini-Roman bid – 2 Diamonds to show 4-4-4-1 distribution, 4-4 in both major suits, with 11 to 15 high card points. Sure enough, it comes up in the second round, when we're up against two of the better players – Marg Dykstra and Christine Pentesco. I'm dealer, we're vulnerable, and I do the magic 2 Diamond bid with this hand:

Spades: K-J-8-7; Hearts: Q-J-4-3; Diamonds: A-J-7-3; Clubs: 4.

Pass-pass to Christine, who's South and has a 14-point hand with five Diamonds. She doubles. To escape, I bid up the line to 2 Hearts. The opponents take over and wind up at 3 No Trump. They ask Rod what the 2 Diamond bid was. He says he thinks it was weak. Then we play it. Down two. When we finish, I explain what I meant and then there's a director call. The ruling: Average-minus. Instead of a top board of 8 match points, we get 3.20.

Rod and I finish third overall East-West and first in the B strat with 55.74%. (Talk about being steady, we also were third overall and first in the B strat the first time we played together in the NOTL Christmas party game back on Dec. 9.) Our Mini-Roman escapade didn’t make a difference one way or the other. We're almost 13 match points behind the second-place pair. As for Marg and Chris, they're hopelessly mired in last place.