Bridge Blog 1211: Right or wrong?

 

Rod Sumner and I reverted to the low 40s percentage-wise Wednesday at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont. We shouldn't have. I marked six hands on my score sheet and drove home wondering what would have happened if things had gone our way.

First round. Board 15. I'm holding eight Hearts. David Reed opens a Spade and Carol Boyer pushes him to a vulnerable game. We're not vulnerable, so 5 Hearts. They go 5 Spades. I think a moment. Six Hearts. David doubles. Most Souths make 4 Spades. All Wests make 5 Hearts. Pass 5 Spades and we get 5.5 match points. Instead, we get 2. My bad.

Second round. Board 19. Joyce Reger winds up at 2 Spades after her daughter Michelle doubles my 1 Heart opening bid and Rod raises to 2 Hearts. My Spades? K-Q-J-10. I also have Aces in the red suits. I see five tricks on defense. I double, figuring Rod is good for at least one trick. He isn't. Hand analysis says N/S makes 2 Spades and that's what Joyce does. Bottom board for us. We can make 5 Hearts. If I bid 3 Hearts, we get 5.5 match points. If I bid game, we get 8.5. My bad again.

Second round. Board 20. I open a Diamond with 12 high card points, and six Diamonds to the 10. Rod bids 2 Diamonds, indicating support and some kind of strength. Timid after Board 19, I stop there and take 11 tricks. Turns out Rod is holding a No Trump opener. Why not a NT bid from one of us? We have all the Aces. We make at least 3 NT, maybe 5. Only 1 match point for us. At 5 Diamonds, we'd get 3. At 3 NT, we'd collect 6.5. 

Seventh round. Board 16. Should I play it at 4 Hearts instead of 3 NT? I take nine tricks and make my game. Hand analysis says 4H takes 10 tricks, but only one E/W makes that many and they didn't bid it. Nobody else bids game in NT either. Top board for us.

Eighth round. Board 22. Rod opens 1 Club against Jerry Smee and Clyde Paul, two of the best players in the room. I bid my 4-card major – Hearts. They bid a Spade, Rod raises to 2 Hearts, but he only has a singleton. We're hopelessly outgunned in trump. Down one. I'm holding five Diamonds, K-9-7-6-4, but don't get to show them. Rod has A-Q-5-3 in Diamonds and six Clubs to the J-10-9, which he doesn't rebid. Hand analysis says we should take 11 tricks in Diamonds, but only six tricks in Hearts. So I played it well by taking seven, but we're still a bottom board. Nobody wins 11 tricks in Diamonds, but seven E/Ws take 10. That would have given us 5.5 match points.

Ninth round. Board 2. Harold Nash and Dianne Kunselman bid 2 Diamonds, Rod doubles, looking for a major suit. I have six Clubs and four Diamonds, so I let it stand. After all, they're vulnerable. Hand analysis says they take only seven tricks in Diamonds. If that happens, we tie for top board. Nine match points. Rod leads his Ace of Hearts, but then fails to lead a second Heart, which I could have trumped. Then I would return the Queen of Spades. If Harold puts up his King, Rod gets it with the Ace, returns a Heart for my second ruff, wins my Spade return with his Jack and returns a Spade or a Heart and gives me a third ruff. Later on we maybe even win a Club. But none of that happens. Harold makes two overtricks. Bottom board. And if I bid Clubs, we take 10 tricks, which would be 8 match points.

Looks like I need to psych out Rod and think harder myself, too. So what's the damage? We had 44.39%. Without screwing up, we're over 50% at least. Maxxing out on any of those what-if hands, we're grabbing master points.

Bridge Blog 1210: Nothing succeeds like success

 

I've pretty much resigned myself to adding to my career total of master points in dribs and drabs, a fraction at a time. Will I ever accumulate 3,500 of them reach the next plateau – Emerald Life Master?

OK, I could try harder. Now that I'm not working, there's more time to play bridge and I've been doing that, frequently adding an extra game a week. And I could play better, even though I’ve gotten pretty set in my ways.

So I don't know quite what to make of my fortunes in October.

I was shocked, shocked, to finish second East-West in my first game of the month Oct. 7 at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont. Wednesday partner Rod Sumner and I have been mired in the 40s percentage wise for so long that we’ve forgotten what winning feels like. But here we were with 59.93%, nipping at the heels of first-place John Stevens and Rocky Laiqing. What's more, since this was a Club Appreciation Game, it awarded extra points. We got 2.61.

Our returns were much more modest a week later. Tied for fourth-overall in the B strat with 51.85%, our winnings were fractional, 0.64. Two days later, however, on Friday, Oct. 16, at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Duplicate Bridge Club, Selina Volpatti and I came up with one of our infrequent good days in a Club Championship game. We weren't first overall with our 62.28%, but second place was good for a mighty return of 2.37 points.

A peculiar AC/BC Team Game at BCON on Monday, Oct. 19, didn't produce much for our thrown-together ensemble of one A player (moi), a B player (the adept and well-organized Suzanne Haber) and two C players (Deanna Guzda, who was my partner, and Yvonne Stevenson). We won only one of our four Swiss team matches, the first one, but at least it was something – 0.23 of a point, 0.01 of it being a Gold point.

Then a road trip to see family in Ohio kept me away from the tables until Wednesday, Oct. 28. Rod Sumner and I thought we had a decent game at BCON, but it was just our imagination. Eighth east-west, 45.06%.

But then Selina and I were triumphant in another Club Appreciation game at NOTL on Friday, Oct. 30. Our percentage wasn't as good as it was two weeks earlier, just 59.26%, but this time we were first overall and 2.39 points richer. Total for the month: 8.24. All in increments in club play. Usually it takes a good day at a tournament to finish a month with that many.

Bridge Blog 1209: The Curse of the Final Round

 

For five rounds, it felt like Selina Volpatti and I were having an incredibly good game today, Friday, Oct. 16, at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Duplicate Bridge Club. How good was it? For starters, we began with two top boards and two hands that tied for top. It was so good that after a while I felt giddy and guilty about it at the same time.

Then along came the Curse of the Final Round – the hex that almost always descends upon Selina and me in the last hands of the day. It's so bad that, more often than not, it ruins our chances of earning master points.

This time our East-West opponents were Jean and John Roynon. I was wary of them. Under their modest demeanors, they're very good players. They've nailed us before and they could nail us again.

Sure enough, on our first board, John arrived at a 3 No Trump contract and made two overtricks. The Live for Clubs analysis confirms that, yes, the hand should be good for 5 NT, but only one of the other five E/W pairs did that. Others made just one overtrick and one of them actually went down one at 5 Clubs, of all things. Bottom board. Nothing we could do about it.

The next one I was faced with an iffy call. After three passes to Selina, she opened 1 Club. With 10 high card points and five Diamonds, I bid 1 Diamond. She went to 1 No Trump. Fearing weakness in the major suits, I passed. Turns out it can make 10 tricks in No Trump. Selina made 11. Only one North-South bid game in No Trump. We were tied for second-best. Maybe we broke the curse. 

I confess that I chickened out on the third board. With 14 high card points and no Aces, I opened 1 Club, having five of them. Selina answered 1 Spade. Jean, sitting East, put in 2 Hearts. With three Hearts to the J-10, I didn't dare go to 2 NT without a guaranteed stopper, so I ventured a 2 Spade bid, even though I had just the Q-J. When Selina bid 3 Spades, I passed. She made 4 Spades, just like the hand analysis says she could. And sure enough, every other N/S bid 4 Spades. But somehow they all made overtricks. One North won all 13 of them. So even if we bid game, we'd still have a bottom score.

On our final board, Jean bid 2 Clubs, showing a powerful hand. She had all the Aces and a five-card Spade suit. She wound up at 4 Spades and made the overtrick that the hand analysis says she was entitled to. Nevertheless, Selina and I were in a three-way tie for bottom board. Even though every East took 11 tricks, not every table had the same outcome. One East went to slam and failed. Two others stopped bidding short of game. Once again, jinxed. Out of a possible 20 match points, we got only five. We went into the round flying high, a fraction over 77%. When we came out of it, we were in second place with 62.28%. Sigh-h-h-h! Nevertheless, I managed to carve out a bit of consolation. This was my very best percentage all year.

Bridge Blog 1208: Feeling good, finishing bad

 

Sometimes you have a bad day and you know it. But how come sometimes things seem to be pretty much going your way and you still wind up down around the bottom of the field?

That's what I was wondering last Wednesday, Sept. 30, at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont. Partner Rod Sumner and I were congratulating one another on our good play. And I wound up putting only a few question marks on my scorecard. Yet we finished 10th out of 12 North-Souths with a mere 45.43%.

So it's time for a double take on Wednesday's Live for Clubs results in the order we played the hands. I'll compare how we fared next to the hand analysis and then look at Sandy Smee and Kathy Morrison, who had a 67.79% game and finished first North-South.

Board 13. I bid 3 Hearts, make an overtrick. Plus 170. Hand analysis: South makes 5 Diamonds, 4 Hearts, 5 NT. S&K: 3 NT, two overtricks. Match points: 8.5 for us, 10 for S&K. Shoulda bid game. NT succeeds only because two finesses work.

Board 14. Rod bids 2 Spades, down two. Minus 100. Hand analysis: Makes 4 Spades. S&K: 2 Spades, two overtricks. Match points: 0 for us, 8.5 for S&K. Rod apologized.

Board 15. Opps bid 3 Hearts, make an overtrick. Minus 170. Hand analysis: E/W makes 3 Hearts, N/S makes 2 Spades. S&K: Opps bid 4 Hearts, down two. Match points: 4.5 for us and five other N/S, 10 for S&K. For the round: 13 of 30, 43.33%.

Board 10. Opps bid 3 Spades, make 2 overtricks. Minus 200. Hand analysis: E/W makes 4 Spades and 3 NT. S&K: Opps bid 3 NT, make an overtrick. Match points: 9 for us, 5.5 for S&K.

Board 11. I bid 3 NT on a gamble, down one. Minus 50. Hand analysis: Makes 2 NT and 4 Clubs. S&K: Bid 3 Clubs, make 2 overtricks. Match points: 3 for us, 9 for S&K.

Board 12. Opps bid 4 Hearts, down one. Plus 50. Hand analysis: West makes 3 Hearts. S&K: Opps bid 4 H, make it. Match points: 10 for us, 4 for S&K. For the round: 22 of 30, 73.33%. Game to here: 35 of 60, 58.33%.

Board 7. I bid 2 Hearts, make two overtricks. Plus 170. Hand analysis: Good for 4 Hearts. Only one N/S bids game. S&K: 2 No Trump, one overtrick. Match points: 8 of 10 for us, 5 for S&K.

Board 8. Disaster. I bid 4 Diamonds, make one overtrick. Plus 150. Hand analysis: Good for 4 Diamonds, but also 5 Spades. S&K: 4 Spades, one overtrick, just like eight other N/S. Match points: 0 for us, 6 for S&K. Rod opened 1 Spade. I had five Spades, but bid my six-card suit first, Diamonds, and he raised them. Had he bid his four-card suit, Clubs, I'd go back to Spades.

Board 9. Opps bid 4 Spades, down three. Plus 300. Hand analysis: E/W makes 2 Spades, N/S makes 3 Clubs or 2 NT. S&K: 2 Hearts by opps, down two. Match points: 9 for us. 5.5 for S&K. For the round: 17 of 30, 56.67%. Game so far: 52 of 90, 57.78%.

Board 4. Opps bid 6 Heart slam, make an overtrick. Minus 1460. Hand analysis: Makes 7 Hearts and 7 Diamonds, but just 5 NT. S&K: Opps bid 4 Hearts, make two overtricks. Match points: 0.50 for us, 4 for S&K. Couldn't be helped.

Board 5. Opps bid 4 Hearts, make it. Minus 420. Hand analysis: E/W make 5 Hearts, 3 NT. S&K: Same as us. Match points: 2.50 both of us.

Board 6. John Stevens and Rocky Laiqing took so long bidding and playing the slam that the director took this one away from us. Hand analysis: N/S makes 3 Hearts. S&K: Bid 4 Hearts and made it. Match points: NP for us. 7.20 for S&K. For the round: 3 of 20, 15%. Game so far: 55 of 110, exactly 50%.

Board 1. Rod bids 3 Diamonds, makes two overtricks. Plus 150. Hand analysis: Makes 4 Diamonds. S&K: Opps bid 4 Hearts, down one. Match points: 6 for us, 1 for S&K.

Board 2. I bid 4 Hearts, make an overtrick. Plus 650. Hand analysis: Makes 5 Hearts, 4 Spades, 4 NT. S&K: Bid 4 Hearts, make it. Match points: 7 for us, 2.50 for S&K.

Board 3. Opps bid 3 Clubs, make it. Minus 110. Hand analysis: E/W makes 3 Clubs, 2 NT; N/S makes 2 Spades. S&K: Bid 2 Spades, down one. Match points: 3 for us, 5.50 for S&K. For the round: 16 of 30, 53.33%; Game so far: 71 of 140, 50.71%.

Board 25. Opps bid 4 Hearts, make it. Minus 620. Hand analysis: E/W makes 3 Hearts and 3 NT. S&K: Bid 3 Spades, down one. Match points: 0.50 for us, 8 for S&K.

Board 26. I bid 2 Spades, make an overtrick. Plus 140. Hand analysis: Makes just 2 Spades. S&K: Same as us. Match points: 8.50 for both of us.

Board 27. Opps bid 2 Hearts, make it. Minus 110. Hand analysis: Makes 1 Spade, 2 Diamonds. S&K: Opps bid 2 Hearts, down two. Match points: 0 for us, 9.50 for S&K. For the round: 9 of 30, 33.33%. Game so far: 80 of 170, 47.06%.

Board 22. Opps bid 3 Diamonds, make an overtrick. Minus 130. Hand analysis: E/W makes 4 Diamonds, N/S makes 4 Clubs, 3 Spades. S&K: Sit-out. Match points: 3.50 for us.

Board 23. Opps bid 2 Hearts, make it. Minus 110. Hand analysis: E/W make 1 Heart. N/S makes 4 Diamonds, 4 Spades. S&K: Sit-out. Match points: 0 for us. Rod has A-K-Q-10-2 in Spades and 14 high card points. I have six Diamonds, A-9, and six high card points. I answered Diamonds, but although Rod had 4 Diamonds, he let them have it at 2 Hearts.

Board 24. I bid 2 Spades, make it. Plus 110. Hand analysis: N/S makes 3 Spades, 2 NT. S&K: Sit-out. Match points: 2 for us. For the round: 5.50 of 30, 18.33%. Game so far: 85.5 out of 200, 42.75%.

Board 19. Opps bid 3 Spades, down two. Plus 200. Hand analysis: E/W takes only six tricks in Spades. N/S makes 3 Clubs, 2 Diamonds, 1 Spade, 1 NT. S&K: Opps bid 3 Hearts, down two. Match points: 6 for both of us.

Board 20. Opps bid 2 Hearts, down one. Plus 100. Hand analysis: E/W makes 1 Heart. S&K: Same as us. Match points: 7 for both of us.

Board 21. Rod bids 3 NT, makes it. Plus 600. Hand analysis: N/S makes 3 NT, 4 Hearts, 5 Spades and 6 Diamonds. S&K: Bid 3 NT, make an overtrick. Match points: 5 for us and seven other N/S, 10 for S&K. For the round: 18 of 30, 60%. Final for the game: 103.5 out of 230, an even 45%. Director must have given us something for the hand not played.

I marked Boards 1, 8, 10, 23 and 24 on my scorecard. Board 1 was good, Rod made an overtrick. Board 8 was a bottom, bad bidding, missed game in best suit. Board 10 was good, opponents didn't bid game. Board 23 was another bottom. Rod should have kept bidding. Board 24 I blew the overtrick. Five N/S pairs took even one more trick.

If we fix our mistakes on the three bad boards I marked, we're 12 more match points to the good. That gets us almost up to 50%. Cut out some of our two most grievous bidding errors and we’re better yet.

Bridge Blog 1207: Buffalo Fall Sectional -- Shuffled and played

 

There was such perplexity about how everybody supposed to move around for the Swiss teams game that concluded the Buffalo Fall Sectional Tournament on Sunday in the Buffalo Bridge Center, it took the better part of 15 minutes to sort it out.

In the usual arrangement, teams play head-to-head, but that only works if there's an even number of teams. On Sunday, there were nine. Director Brian Meyer might have sent three teams off into direct opposition and put the other three into a round-robin competition. But after thinking it over, Brian went entirely to the birds – three round robins on every round. He posted a huge diagram of directions to show how it would work (pictured, with Chris Urbanek sitting in front of it), but it only touched off universal confusion.

Then he explained it, breaking the bewilderment just enough to get us into the right seats after a couple minutes of fumbling around. The East-Wests on each team would play the North-Souths from the team with the next number above theirs, then they would take the boards containing the cards back to their home table and go on to play the North-Souths with the next number below theirs. For us folks in Team 9, we first met Team 1, two of the best players in the room, Jay Costello and Saleh Fetouh, then went on to Team 8, Larry Abate and Jim Lanzo. Eight rounds, six boards in a round. Everybody gets to play everybody else.

This was the first time I played with Rajat Basu, who I was hooked up to by the partnership chairman. Raj explained when we first talked that he needed only a few silver master points to reach the Ruby Life Master level and really hoped this would do it for him. That probably wouldn't happen against Jay and Saleh, but the next game against Larry and Jim should get us started. After all, they're B strat players, just like us.

As it turned out, our luck was better against the experts. Had our teammates, Florence Boyd and Ruth Wurster, bid game in a major where Saleh made a 5 Club contract and if Raj and I bid a slam instead of stopping at 3 No Trump, we might have done it. Instead, they beat us, 23-12 victory points. Larry and Jim, on the other hand, skunked us, 20-1, capped by my crash-outs at 1 Diamond (down two, minus 7 points) and 3 NT (down one, minus 10 points) in the two final hands.

The good thing about Swiss teams is that you're bound to earn some fraction of a master point each time you win a round. At the halfway point, however, we were shut out. Then our fortunes improved. Two wins against two of the less-experienced teams. Suddenly we dreamed of pulling ourselves up into bonus territory with wins in the final two rounds and picking up some extra points. No luck. Beaten twice, 17-9 and 16-8, despite what we thought was a perfectly good down-three set against a 5 Club bid by Sushil Amlani in the final round. It wasn't. Shoulda doubled.

Out of the nine teams, we wound up eighth with 0.46 of a silver point from our two good rounds. Small consolation. Raj and I both did better at last year's Fall Sectional. Back then, he won 6.12 silver points. And I got 2.01, just enough to put my career total over 3,000.

Bridge Blog 1206: Winners and losers

 

There was a Buffalo Bills theme at the Buffalo Bridge Center's party game on Saturday, Sept. 19, and like Bills fans these days, me and my partner Judie Bailey (pictured in her Bills regalia) came out smiling. We finished at 55.71% and collected 1.5 master points. Even though we were second North-South, it felt like a win.

What probably helped was that many of the top players weren't around. No Saleh Fetouh. No Chris Urbanek. No Jay Levy. In August, there were 8½ tables. This time only 6½. Were they all off at the Pittsburgh Regional? Jay Levy was, but not Chris or Saleh.

The Buffalo Bridge Center party game was my second straight game over 50%. Selina Volpatti and I had 55.29% on Friday at Niagara on the Lake Bridge Club, also second place North-South. But this mini-streak didn't last.

Rod Sumner agreed to play an extra day with me on Monday at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont., and we were dead last North-South in a nine-table game with 44.44%. On our regular date at BCON on Wednesday our percentage was lower, 42.62%, but we placed higher, eighth among 11 North-Souths.

After Wednesday’s Live for Clubs results arrived by email, I did a board-by-board analysis and determined that even if we maximized our bidding and corrected our mistakes in the play of the cards, we'd rightfully gain only 17.5 match points, not enough to break 50%. 

So here’s hoping the Bills keep their percentages up next Sunday against the Chargers. And here’s hoping my Swiss team can do the same that day in the Buffalo Fall Sectional.

Bridge Blog 1205: Slip-up

 

Want further proof that technology renders us helpless at simple tasks that used to be performed without a hitch by hand? Look no further than the annual Unit 116 picnic and game on Saturday, Aug. 29.

No hitches in the picnic part of the day. The food – roast chicken, potatoes, salads and the fabulous sweet corn picked that very morning from the fields at Paul Zittel's farm – was very much up to the standards set in previous years.

No, the breakdown didn't come until the game started, after some initial confusion about who was sitting where in a setup that spread 18 tables through all four playrooms at the Buffalo Bridge Center. The confusion over table assignments soon turned into confusion on the BridgeMates, the electronic scoring devices. After director Art Morth wasn't able to set them straight, he gave each table pick-up slips, little scoring cards for each round.

I hadn't seen a pick-up slip since before the pandemic, when director Bill Finkelstein favored them at the Airport Bridge Club. Since I was sitting East, I didn't have to deal with them. That challenge fell upon the players sitting North, since they’re in charge of scorekeeping, and many of them had forgotten how to fill the damn things out.

At one table, I coached North from start to finish on which figures went where. Several others also weren't sure what information went on which line. And forget about finding out how well or how badly you did when the game was over. There were no results right away.

There wasn't the usual email from the ACBL with results on Saturday night, either. There still wasn't one Sunday afternoon. It took until 9:52 p.m. Sunday for that familiar Live for Clubs message to show up. That was followed 15 minutes later by another email, this one from help@thecommongame.com. It read:

Dear Dale & Judy (sic),

Your reported score below looks highly unusual. Please do NOT reply to this email. IF this was scored on the wrong side or in error, please report this to your club director ASAP. ... While this might not impact your standing or masterpoint awards, it could affect someone else's.

 

Board #13

Score -600

Opponent #18

Your direction EW

 

The information for the Contract was blank, but the score suggests either a successful North-South bid of 3 No Trump vulnerable or us going down six vulnerable. According to the hand record that accompanied the email message, neither of those things was likely to happen. I dug out my personal tally of the hands and, sure enough, we didn't get minus 600 on Board 13. We got minus 200. How come?

I had snatched the bid from North-South, Pat Haynes and Agi Maisel, keeping them from playing it at 2 Spades. I went to 3 Diamonds – my opening bid was a Diamond, since I had four of them and no five-card major – and felt confident because my partner Judie Bailey had raised Diamonds. This was going to be a sacrifice. I fully expected to fall one trick short for a score of minus 100. On the other hand, if Pat and Agi made 2 Spades, and I reckoned they would, our score would be minus 110. This is why they say down one is good bridge.

When the dummy appeared, though, my heart sank. I saw only three Diamonds in Judie's hand. Didn't her bid promise four of them? Shouldn't she have mentioned her five-card Heart suit? In Hearts, according to the hand record, we win eight tricks. As the Diamonds stand, we're good for only seven. Draw all the Diamonds and play it like it's No Trump? Still good for only seven.

East (me)

Spades: J-10-5; Hearts: A-J-6; Diamonds: Q-6-5-2; Clubs: K-5-4.

South (Agi)

Spades: A-9-4; Hearts: Q-10-9-3; Diamonds: 8-7; Clubs: 9-8-7-3.

West (Judie)

Spades: 8-6; Hearts: K-8-7-5-2; Diamonds: K-J-10; Clubs: A-J-6.

North (Pat)

Spades: K-Q-7-3-2; Hearts: 4; Diamonds: A-9-4-3; Clubs: Q-10-2.

Minus 600 was an absolute bottom board. Minus 200 tied us for bottom with two other East-Wests and gave us about 1.25 more match points. Our final score went up from 44-something percent to 45.44%. I hoped it would at least take us from 14th place to 13th among the East-Wests, but no-o-o-o. Marilyn Wortzman and Jim Easton still were in front of us. By 0.06%.