Bridge Blog 1158-A: Cruel, crueler, cruelest

When I'm updating the totals in the masterpoint races in the Duplicate Bridge column for The Buffalo News, I routinely assume that if somebody doesn't bump their numbers up during a particular month, then they just haven't played. Could be sick, could have better things to do. 

Now April has come along and crushed that assumption. Unless I've forgotten some small sliver of success somewhere, I've finished with no points whatsoever, even though I've played weekly in Canada and even had an extra day for the Unit 255 special game at the beginning of the month. I give up, T.S. Eliot. You're right. It's cruel.

Bridge Blog 1158-B: Howdy, stranger!

I never know what to expect when I'm playing with an unfamiliar partner. Not that I mind, really. It's fun to get to know somebody new from a bridge perspective and I've had that chance three times in the past month or so.

I should have done well with Sue Bergman when I enticed her to join me in the Swiss team game at the Buffalo Spring Sectional at the end of March. She's been playing competitively twice as long as I have, even though she has fewer master points. She was a perfectly pleasant partner and wasn't distressed when a couple communication problems turned up. It felt like a good game, but it wasn't. We weren't able to lift up our less experienced teammates and won only one round out of five. 

For that special Unit 255 game in St. Catharines, Ont., on April 5, it was a Saturday, so I could play, but Canadian partner Selina Volpatti already had someone. She could arrange for someone for me, she said, and she did. Her choice turned out to be the supremely accomplished Ginger Grant, who coincidentally is the grant-writing master at a college in Toronto. Ginger and I got along great, but the results didn't reflect it. We wound up out of the money at 45%. Selina was first North-South. 

Last Friday at the game in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., I found myself sitting across a tan, wiry gentleman named Paul Roy, who had come without a partner. Selina paired us up so she could devote full attention to directing the game, which she needed. Paul, just back from Florida, where he golfs and bridges all winter, played smoothly, perhaps because we were on defense most of the time. In the end, we were sixth out of eight North-Souths, another 45%. If I'm sitting across from him again this week, we certainly have room for improvement.

Bridge Blog 1157: Bragging rights

I didn't want to prolong the conversation with the American customs guy at the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge on Friday afternoon – after all, I'd waited a @*#^&! hour in line to get there – but when he asked if there was money involved in my bridge game in Niagara-on-the-Lake, I was tempted to elaborate about how, no, it was just for master points and bragging rights. 

On this particular Friday, though, there was plenty to brag about. My Canadian partner Selina Volpatti and I had our finest game in a long, long time, maybe our best ever – 68.15% with eight top boards –  and collected 1.47 of those black master points, ending a month-long drought. Too bad we weren't this sharp a week earlier, when the winners were getting gold points. 

Bridge Blog 1156: Slack-a-bed?

Should we be sending get-well cards to the scorekeepers who keep track of the master point races at the ACBL or should we just be giving them a big, loud wake-up call. Because if they aren't on extended sick leave, they must be in hibernation. There's no update on the website, which should have been done more than two weeks ago, by Feb. 6. What it shows instead are last year's final totals. 

Bridge Blog 1155: Have cards, won't travel

Don't we Buffalo bridge players travel any more? Just a precious of us got to the Niagara Winter Sectional in St. Catharines last weekend. 

I only spotted Jay Levy on Friday. Jay won 15.96 silver points at the tournament and was fourth overall. Davis Heussler and David Colligan were there Friday afternoon, according to the results, but they were in the other section and somehow I missed seeing them.

Jay was back on Saturday, along with John Ziemer and Mike Ryan. I kept looking around for Saleh Fetouh, who is attracted to these silver-point affairs like a cat to tuna, but no Saleh. 

Bridge Blog 1154: Experts in a dying field

One of the topics that came up in a pre-game chat with longtime Bridge Center of Niagara mainstay and current ACBL District 2 chairman Wybren "Webe" Hoogland at the Niagara Winter Sectional in St. Catharines was the sorry state of bridge in Buffalo. Just one fulltime sanctioned club, the Buffalo Bridge Center, and the only open games there, the ones on Wednesdays and Fridays, attract barely enough players to fill three tables. By comparison, the Friday games in Niagara-on-the-Lake usually have six or seven tables and the ones in St. Catharines routinely have nine. 

At the Bridge Center's annual meeting and game a couple weeks ago, the issue of low attendance came up, partly because of another issue: low revenue. Promises were made to try to attract some of the newer players to those games. Voila! There was a fourth table last Friday. Could it be that it's beginning to work? 

Bridge Blog 1153: Jinxed

Are the bridge gods punishing me for that minus 1,100 scoring error  two weeks ago at Niagara-on-the-Lake? I'm starting to have my suspicions. Not only did the mistake take me and Selina down from 52% to 48% in that game, but we've been descending deep into misery ever since.

Our sojourn at the Niagara Winter Sectional in St. Catharines, Ont., last weekend began with another minus 1,100 and it didn't get any better. We played only the afternoon session on Friday and our 40.02% barely kept us from settling in dead last. 

Morning and afternoon sessions on Saturday gave us two chances to escape, but our 45.67% in the morning didn't even come close. Third from last north-south in our section. Then again, we needed 60% to scratch. Tough crowd. 

Us? Not even tough enough to muster even 50% against Selina's delightful daughter, Maria Cerenzia, who has only five master points, and she was at the bottom east-west. 

In the afternoon, we were the ones who sank to the bottom. Actually, a three-way tie for the last place in our section at 40.74%. Well, if we're going to be that miserable, it's good to know we have company.