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%.

Bridge Blog 1204: The power of positive thinking

 

No sooner had I rolled onto Richmond Avenue en route to St. Catharines, Ont., on Wednesday than I fielded a phone call from one of my oldest and dearest friends in Florida, who was brimming with positivity now that she's emerged from the complications that followed the death of her husband last winter. She was so upbeat that I was sure that the positivity would rub off on my bridge game with Rod Sumner.

Rod, however, was as low as I was high. He was in pain. He'd injured his hamstring muscle. Nevertheless, we both felt uplifted after our first round against two of the better players, Myrna Mackey and Dot Duchnicki.

First hand, Board 10, felt good even though it was a wash, a complete middle board. Myrna stopped at 2 No Trump and went down two after Rod got to unload a six-card Spade suit. Other, unluckier, players sitting East stopped at 2 NT and went down three.

Board 11, though, was a complete triumph. I opened a weak 2 Spades and when they went to 5 Clubs, Rod doubled. Down two. Top board. Board 12 also felt good but still was middle board. I made 3 No Trump, along with four other Norths. So far, so good. We sailed into the second round at 66.67%.

But our positivity lost its punch in the next round against Motaz Farag and Dena Jones. Two ties for bottom boards. When we emerged, we’d deflated to 40.63%. It took until the final round against John Stevens and Rocky Laiqing to find another bright spot. Rod, playing 3 Hearts doubled vulnerable, made two overtricks. 1,130 match points! How often do you see that score? As a result, we managed to stumble across the finish line in seventh place with 45.98%.

Bridge Blog 1203: The one you remember

 

Sometimes the contract that goes down sticks in your mind more than the one you make. Take this wildly distributional holding on Board 12 on Monday, Aug. 17, at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines:

Spades: 8-7-4.

Hearts: K.

Diamonds: 2.

Clubs: A-10-9-8-7-6-5-3.

West is declarer. We're North-South. We're vulnerable. They’re not. My partner Selina has 15 high card points and opens 1 No Trump. East, Adrian Buis, has an opener too, with five cards in each of the red suits. His bid is 2 Hearts, implying a good minor suit, obviously Diamonds. Well then, 3 Clubs. After all, I have eight of them. And so it goes until they bid 5 Hearts and I take it to 6 Clubs.

We have to lose a Heart – Selina doesn't have the Ace. Everything else looks tight, with one important exception. We're missing two of the Clubs and one of them is the King. I lead a Club from the dummy, Adrian plays low and I'm facing that classic quandary – is there a singleton King? Do I want to lose a trick to it?

So I play the Ace. West is void. The rest is a laydown. Elsewhere, two Souths guess the finesse correctly, though only one of them bids the slam. Even so, what seems like a setback still turns out to be a bit of a plus hand for us – 4.5 match points out of 8.

Bridge Blog 1202: While the cat's away

 

Monica is off touring Scandinavia and this mouse is playing a lot of bridge. How much bridge? Four straight days of face-to-face competition for the first time since the pandemic.

Friday, Aug. 14. Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont., with my usual Friday partner, Selina Volpatti. Ordinarily, we play in Niagara-on-the-Lake on Fridays, but this time around there was a sectional tournament for non-life masters there. Not such a good day for us. 41.35%. Third from last among 15 pairs.

Saturday, Aug. 15. Back at BCON to get my first look at the Saturday Night Live game, which I would never get to if my sweetie was around. Selina directed. Making it livelier was wine by the glass. Partnered with an agreeable novice, David Baker, who introduced himself by informing me that he has just 10 master points. We got along just fine, though. In a 3.5 table game, we managed 51.04%, fourth overall and just 0.21% short of earning master points. We agreed that not only did we play well for first-timers, but we also had a good time.

Sunday, Aug. 16. Judy Zeckhauser and I had a good time at the monthly Buffalo Bridge Center party game, even though we didn't play very well. Not dead last, but at 43.75% we were far away from the winners' circle. At Table 1 early in the game, we learned that Buffalo's foremost master point winner, Saleh Fetouh, is suffering from macular degeneration to the extent that he has trouble reading the bids and seeing the cards. Nevertheless, while we had to tell him what our bids were and which cards we were playing, his powers of concentration were unimpaired. They beat us in match points, 11.5 to 9.5. He and partner Jay Levy finished second North-South and earned 1.27 points.

Monday, Aug. 18. Back to BCON, this time in the company of two other Buffalo players – Mike Ryan, who topped the North-Souths on Sunday playing with Howard Foster, and my good friend Bill Finkelstein, who drove. Selina and I more or less held our own when Mike and Bill came to our table, limiting them to 13 match points out of a possible 24. They were more dominant elsewhere, finishing second East-West with 59.03%, collecting 1.69 master points. Selina and 1 did not go unrewarded, though. Fifth in the B stratification with 50.46%, happy to earn 0.42 of a master point.