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.

Bridge Blog 1159-A: Way Overdue

A week ago, at the Buffalo Summer Sectional Tournament, none other than one of my bridge idols, Saleh Fetouh, remarked that I hadn't posted anything here on the Bridge Blog in a long time. 

I had to concede that he's right, though not from a lack of bridge thoughts bouncing around my brain. There just hasn't been enough of a break in the parade of other obligations to write them out. 

By maybe here, having taken off from work for the past seven days for my Birthday Week, there's a window of opportunity. Let's start with the one that's the longest overdue and most nagging.

Bridge Blog 1159-B: A sure thing

It's the Longest Day game on Saturday, June 21, at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont. Board 12. The opponents are our old friends Chandi Jayawardena and Wybren "Weeb" Hoogland. We manage to drive Chandi, sitting West, up to 4 Diamonds, thanks to a Heart bid by my partner, Selina, which I boosted to the 3-level.

I have a flat and mediocre hand, three three-card suits topped by Jacks, but my Diamonds are sparkling: K-Q-J-10. I've got three tricks in Diamonds. Partner surely has one more somewhere for that bid of hers. I double. Hearts are led, but the Ace belongs to Weeb and it's a singleton. 

We get nothing more than my three Diamonds. Plus 510 for the opponents. Bottom board for us. When I mention it to Saleh Fetouh, he shrugs. "It happens," he says.

Bridge Blog 1159-C: Busted bonanza

That Longest Day game would have paid off handsomely in master points if we had been on the ball. We're in the B strat, so all we needed to collect 2.30 points for the top of B was 55%, which is well within our wheelhouse on our good days. 

Not this time. Even if we'd succeeded in the busted double, we wouldn't have come close to scratching. As it was, we were next to last North-South with 38.19%, one of our most wretched recent results.

Bridge Blog 1159-D: No regrets? Well, not too many

Despite our sorry showing on The Longest Day, club play on shorter days has given Selina and me a string of successes lately. Since the beginning of June, our record looks like this:

June 6. 61.25%. First N/S at Niagara-on-the-Lake Bridge Club. Also notable as one of the rare occasions where we managed to beat genial game director Claude Tremblay and his wife Muriel. They almost always win.

June 13. 56.97%. Second N/S at NOTL, behind Claude and Muriel.

June 27. 45% with Lynn Hale, 11th out of 15 pairs in a Howell game at NOTL.

July 4. 48.50%. Fifth N/S at NOTL.

July 16. 55.21%. Second N/S at Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines. Missed first by 0.52%.

July 18. 55%. Third N/S at NOTL. 

Bridge Blog 1159-E: Let there be cake!

This year I revived my annual gift of paying the day's entry fees for fellow players at bridge clubs for the first time since the pandemic. And since I took the entire week off from work, I was free to treat the players to a free game at St. Catharines on Wednesday, July 16, which ordinarily would be a work day, and the folks at Niagara-on-the-Lake on my actual birthday, Friday, July 18. 

On Wednesday, there were 9 1/2 tables and the director presented me with a slip that said $342. For Friday's 7 1/2-table game, where due to a late start from home and an unexpectedly long line into Canada at the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge, I arrived a minute before play was supposed to start, the tariff was just $140. That's Canadian bucks. 

So in St. Catharines, that was about $250 US, less than I anted up for some of those birthday games in Buffalo before the pandemic. At NOTL, it was $102. To my mind, not a bad price for a pair of happy afternoons.

Bridge Blog 1159-F: Do the Bridge Gods give birthday presents? Yes, they do.

On the very first board we played on Wednesday, July 16, at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, I was dealt this hand.

Spades K 9 3

Hearts A J 9 4

Diamonds A K Q 8 7 6

Clubs ----- (void)

It's Board 7. All vulnerable. I'm sitting South, as usual, and I'm the dealer. I open 1 Diamond, although a 2 Club bid, signaling a killer hand, might be more appropriate. Mary House, sitting West, passes. Selina may or may not have bid 1 Spade with this hand.

Spades Q 6 5 2

Hearts Q 8 3

Diamonds J 10 9 5

Clubs 10 5

Don Pratt, sitting East, does not hesitate to bid 2 Clubs. He's got six of them and 13 high card points. I rebid my Diamonds. Mary raises Don's Clubs. Selina raises my Diamonds. Don plunges ahead to 5 Clubs. I go 5 Diamonds. Don doubles. Feisty and full of myself on this occasion, I do not hesitate for a second. Redouble!

Mary leads the Ace of Clubs and I nail it with a trump. I draw Diamonds in two rounds. I lose the Ace of Spades (Don obligingly playing his Ace the first time they go around) and one Heart. The score? A nice round 1,000. Top board to start the day. 

In the rest of the room, three other North-Souths bid 5 Diamonds. One of them made an overtrick. They must have double-finessed East's Hearts. Another was down one trick. I'll bet West held up on the Ace of Spades, which I was fearing. At one unfortunate table, North-South wound up at 3 No Trump by North. East-West ran their Clubs. Down three.