Bridge Blog 1183: Star-crossed

 

Uh-oh, I just saw something that may alter my attitude toward this game in the horoscope column in The Buffalo News for Friday, Feb. 13, ("Royal Stars" by Georgia Nicols, a Vancouver-based Buddhist who used to be a movie and theater critic). Here's what she says:

"Today Neptune moves to the top of your chart to stay for the next decade. This means you might begin to question what you're doing in your life."

Actually, I've been asking that question since my 57-year career with The News ended back in November. So far, one of the answers is to play more bridge.

Bridge Blog 1182: Cover story

 

OMG, there's a Buffalo guy on the cover of the latest issue of the Bridge Bulletin – Joel Wooldridge, smiling and looking good with his salt and pepper beard. What put him there? He's the 2025 Player of the Year, second time he's had the honor. He took home 705.87 Platinum Points. When he won the first time in 2011, he had 666.67.

Joel got 405 of those platinum points by finishing first in three top-end tournaments. A second in the North American pairs brought in 75 more. The rest he collected at nine other tournaments.

Joel comes from bridge royalty here in Buffalo. His father and mother, Powhatan and Jill, were top players locally before they moved away in 2016. His father, whose mother’s brother was world chess champion Jose Capablanca, was an associate professor of nursing and a research methodologist at the University at Buffalo. Joel himself left town sometime in the 2000s and now lives in New York City. The Bridge Bulletin article includes three examples of his bidding prowess, but no mention of his hometown.

Bridge Blog 1181: The incredible shrinking weekend

 

It looked like a great weekend at the Niagara Winter Sectional Tournament in St. Catharines, Ont. But, uh-oh, have to skip the Friday evening session. It's opening night for the new play at the Irish Classical Theatre Company and we've got tickets.

No big loss, really. There's still the afternoon pairs game with Rod Sumner. Plus two pairs games on Saturday with frequent partner Selina Volpatti and the Swiss team matches with Selina on Sunday.

Then along comes a text from a long-lost friend. She's coming to town Friday night, leaving Sunday noon. Can we get together? Sure, Saturday night for dinner. Bye-bye, Saturday afternoon game. It wouldn’t end till 6. Can we just play the morning game Saturday, I ask Selina. Let's just do Sunday, she says.

Well, there's still Friday afternoon, too. See you at the tournament, I say to Rod at the BCON game on Wednesday. Oh no, he says, I forgot. He can't play. Funny how these big weekends just melt away.

Bridge Blog 1180: To pass, or not to pass ...

 

That was the question that dogged us after folding up the cards on Board 12 Wednesday afternoon at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines,Ont.

We're vulnerable. West is the dealer. Newly minted Diamond Life Master Danny Ioannidis passes. Partner Rod Sumner is North and passes with this hand in the second seat:

Spades: K-8-5-4.

Hearts: K-J-8-6-2.

Diamonds: K-9.

Clubs: Q-8.

Jane Jennings, East, passes too and it comes to me.

Spades: A-Q-2. 

Hearts: Q-7-4-3. 

Diamonds: 7-4-3.

Clubs: K-10-4.

As a gambling man, I'd love to risk a bid, but ... 

1. We're vulnerable. 

2. I have just 11 high card points and no five-card suit. 

3. And this bunch of cards doesn't pass the Rule of 15 or the Rule of 20.

Rod's hand does, but ...

1. He has no aces.

2. As far as he's concerned, his two doubletons are worthless. 

Seven of the eight other Norths didn't see it that way, though. They bid their Hearts. If Rod did that, I’d go 3 Hearts, inviting to game. Nobody dared to go to 4 Hearts, but they all took 10 tricks. 

The penalty for our timidity – a tie for a bottom board with the other North-South that passed it out.

How bad was the damage? At least four match points. Did that make a difference? Sure did. Instead of tying for third in the B strat with 51.16% and 0.36 of a master point, we could have leapfrogged over three other pairs into second overall North-South with an extra 0.59 of a master point.

Bridge Blog 1179: Shine on, Danny Diamond

 

Good spirits abounded Monday at Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont. It was a full house –  9½ tables for the open game in the main room, nine tables for the 499er contest in the smaller area. Plus there was a celebration for one of the regular players, Danny Ioannidis, who just reached 5,000 master points and became a Diamond Life Master, quite a few of those points at BCON.

In the remarks congratulating him, we found out a few things that we might not have learned at the tables. For instance, his ancestry is not Greek, it's Macedonian (a very important distinction there). Also he's a retired teacher – high school math and then art for the lower grades in the Brampton, Ont., schools, even though he knew nothing about art when he started teaching it. And then there was something we suspected all along, that he's a very good partner, as attested by his frequent collaborator, Jane Jennings (pictured). Not only does he play well, she said, but he's a nice guy.

When Monday's play finished 27 boards later, Danny had another 1.69 points for his collection, his 58.86% good for second place North-South. He was well ahead of me and Selina Volpatti, sitting in eighth place at 45.57%. To win something in the B strat, we needed 15 more match points to outdistance Muriel Tremblay and Kathy Morrison's 52.55%. To surpass Danny and his partner, Laiqing Luo, it would take twice as many.

Given some luck, we could catch up. On Board 1, Danny and partner had a top score when his opponents didn't go to game in Spades. Ours did. That accounts for seven of those match points.

On Board 3, he got a 7 match point gift when his opponents let him play and make 3 No Trump, while ours pushed us to 5 Clubs doubled, down one. If we let East-West win the bidding at 4 Hearts, they go down one or more.

On Board 5, however, they recognized this 6 Diamond slam for another 7 match point advantage, while I only bid 5 Clubs and made an overtrick. All the other North-Souths stopped at 3 NT, with at least one overtrick, and got better scores.

South

Spades: 6

Hearts: 10.

Diamonds: J-10-6-5-4.

Clubs: A-K-9-8-6-5.

North

Spades: J-9-7-5.

Hearts: A-J-3.

Diamonds: A-K-Q.

Clubs: Q-10-3.

Bridge Blog 1178: I never learn

 

People were still talking on Friday, Jan. 30, at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Bridge Club game about that hand with the 10 Spades that turned up two days earlier at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont., the one I write about in Blog 1177.

The challenge there was to bid the slam. The best route, which I didn't take,  seemed to be a 2 Club opening bid, indicating a very strong hand without designating a suit. So did that teach me anything? The test turned up on Board 23 in the final round on Friday, and I flunked it:

Spades: 8.

Hearts: 6.

Diamonds: A-K-Q-J-9-8-6-3-2.

Clubs: A-K.

We're vulnerable, I'm dealer, sitting South, and I bid first. Five Diamonds. It's a slam-dunk. I've got 11 tricks. Everybody passes. West leads the Ace of Hearts. Here's partner Selina Volpatti's dummy:

Spades: A-Q-7-5-2.

Hearts: K-J.

Diamonds: 10-4.

Clubs: 9-7-4-2.

When West leads a second card, I lay down my hand and claim all the rest of the tricks. I ask Muriel Trembley, who has the final sit-out and is kibbitzing, how she and her husband, Claude, who's directing, bid on this hand. She said she didn't remember.

ACBL's Live for Clubs has the answer, though. They played it at 6 NT, making an overtrick because Claude, sitting North, was the declarer. East, not West, would make the opening lead and the natural play would not be a Heart, but rather the top of her sequence in Clubs, the Queen. Claude shouldn't necessarily take all 13 tricks – that Ace of Hearts is out there – but I'll bet he did a squeeze with those nine Diamonds and, once they all were played, exited with South's singleton Spade. West, wanting to preserve his Ace of Hearts, had probably whittled the rest of his hand down to the King of Spades, which crashed down in front of Claude’s Ace-Queen.

The miniscule match point margin we might have gained by bidding a 6 Diamond or 6 NT slam here, however, wouldn't have given us much of a lift. We needed several better boards to reach the charmed circle of master point winners. Our 49.21% put us sixth among nine pairs in this Howell game. To cross the magic threshold at fourth place, we need at least 53.20%, which would require an extra three match points. To catch Claude and Muriel, we'd need a lot more. Perennially the best pair in the room at NOTL, they finished on top again with 65.35%.

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.