Bridge Blog 1184: Dateless

Not all is lost, I consoled myself after plans fell through for playing the Friday and Saturday sessions at the Niagara Winter Section Tournament (see Blog 1181). There's always Swiss teams on Sunday.

Wrong-g-g-g!

Partner Selina Volpatti texts me Saturday night to report that our Swiss teammates came down sick at the tournament on Saturday.

So even though an old Ricky Nelson song is running through my head this morning, I have to look at the bright side.

I'm avoiding some godawful virus right before my significant other goes in for knee replacement surgery on Tuesday.

And, as a bonus, I got to sleep in till 11 a.m. instead of rising at the crack of dawn. Now I'm all coffee-ed up and ready for a leisurely day off, maybe even see if I can beat the Bridge Baron at his game. 

Musical interlude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgjrrJTjnbg

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. 

Bridge Blog 1176: Fun, fun, fun

The main thing was we had a good time, partner Florence Boyd declares at the end of Saturday's special game and annual meeting at the Buffalo Bridge Center. No doubt about it, fun was had. For one thing, Florence said, this is the first time she bid a slam and made it. 

Nevertheless, we're next-to-last North-South in a 10-table event and we couldn't even muster 40%. We're 39.37% and, as denizens of the A strat, we need at least 56%, or 28 more match points, to beat Martha Welte and Howard Foster (55.83%) to go home with master points. 

How many hands would it take to turn around to close that massive gap? We can't do it, not without some gifts from our opponents. And how did the first-place North-South pair, Jay Levy and Kamil Bishara (66.29%), fare on those same boards? 

Board 10. First cards of the day. Davis Heussler and David Colligan, the eventual East-West champs, wind up at 2 No Trump, making three. No overtrick at the other table where NT was bid. Possible gain: 0.5 match point. Jay and Kamil bid 2 Spades, despite having just 20 high card points between them, and make 2 overtricks. Possible match point gain if we do that: 5. 

Board 11. David plays it at 1 NT and goes down two. Jay and Kamil, along with two other North-Souths, take this bid at 2 Hearts with just 16 high card points between them, and make 2 overtricks,  (North has a six-card suit.) Possible match point gain if Florence bid it: 2.5. 

Board 12. Davis and David, with 10 Hearts between them, go all the way up to 5 Hearts. I have a 7-card Spade suit, King-Queen-Jack, etc., and I climb the ladder with them to 5 Spades. Florence shows her hand and, if a Diamond finesse works (Florence has Q-J-10, I have three to the Ace), we have just two losers -- Ace of Spades and Ace of Clubs. But no, West (David) has the King. Should we let them play it at 5 Hearts? That's down three. Double them and possible point gain is 3.5. Jay and Bishara get to play it at 4 Spades. 

Board 13. Florence plays it at 3 NT, makes two overtricks. So do Jay and Kamil. Can't do better than that. 

Board 14. Not vulnerable, with J-10-7-4-2 in Spades, I open a Spade, even though my hand falls one point short of the Rule of 15 and the Rule of 20. Florence, with three Spades and 16 high card points, bids 2 Spades. We take three overtricks. If North bids a five-card Heart suit instead of giving me a simple raise, we wind up in game and take 10 tricks. Possible match point gain: 2.5 in No Trump, 3.5 if it's Spades. Jay and Kamil also make three overtricks at 2 Spades. 

Board 15. Florence's 6 NT slam with an overtrick. Five other pairs, including Jay and Kamil, do the same thing. 

Board 16. Larry Abate and Jim Lanzo bid 3 NT, make one more overtrick than the one other 3 NT bidder. Every other East-West, including the pair at Jay and Kamil's table, bids 4 Hearts and makes it with no overtricks. Possible match point gain if I get my Queen of Hearts trick: 0.5.

Board 17. We pass it out. Third best score out of eight. North has an opening 1 Diamond bid, though, and we can take 10 or 11 tricks in Hearts. Possible match point gain: 1. 

Board 18 1 NT by South. In all, five North-Souths, including Jay and Kamil, bid that and make it. 

Board 19. I blow a 4 Spade contract against Julie Mitchell and Brian Fleming. Everybody else makes it, some with overtricks. Bottom board. Minimum match point gain: 3. Jay and Kamil don't play Boards 19, 20 and 21. 

Board 20. We stop at 3 Spades despite having 27 high card points between us, make an overtrick. Another bottom board. Most other North-Souths play it at 3 NT with overtricks. Minimum match point gain: 4.5. 

Board 21. In a display of great defensive bidding, Julie and Brian take the bid at 4 Spades and go down one. Had they left us at 4 Hearts, we make it. Possible match point gain: 1.5.

Board 22. We both have opening hands. I push Florence to 3 NT, but we don't have a stopper in Hearts. At a couple tables, East-Wests don't discover that and North-South run off five Club tricks and four Diamonds. Our opponents, Linda Marsh and Art Ziller, find it, take five Hearts and the A-K of Spades. No Jay and Kamil for Boards 22, 23 and 24 either. 

Board 25. Opponents Walt Olszewski and Sushil Amlani shouldn't make an overtrick at 4 Hearts, but they do. We get the Ace of Diamonds, Queen of Hearts and ought to get a trick with Florence's Jack of Spades or Queen of Clubs. Possible match point gain: 1. Jay and Kamil do better, thanks to their opponents, who play 3 NT, no overtricks. 

Board 26. I play it at 2 Hearts, so does Kamil. I make one overtrick, he makes three. Possible match point gain: 2.5.

Board 27. Walt and Sushil bid and make 5 Diamonds. Jay and Kamil get a gift from their opponents. Their East-Wests take 12 tricks, but only bid 3 Spades.

Board 28. I take 11 tricks in a 3 Diamond contract. So do Jay and Kamil, who bid 4 Diamonds. 

Board 29. Pretty much all of the East-Wests bid 4 Spades and make 4 Spades. Same with us and Jay-Bishara. 

Board 30. This time I'm at 5 Diamonds, opening 3 Diamonds with seven of them headed A-K-Q. Tova and Andrei Reinhorn go to 4 Spades vulnerable, which they can make. Down 2. Bottom board avoided. Jay and Bishara are down 1 at 4 Diamonds. 

Board 1. Jay and Bishara are at 4 Hearts, down one. So are we, except Bill and Nathan Kross double us. Possible match point gain if they don't: 1.5.

Board 2. We set Bill and Nathan by one trick at 4 Hearts. Same with Jay and Kamil against a 3 NT contract. 

Board 3. I bid 3 NT, make 3 overtricks. So do Jay and Kamil.  

Bridge Blog 1175: Four takeaways from the Buffalo Bridge Center annual meeting

 

1. Betty Metz reports that the club's Monday morning supervised play games and Tuesday morning social bridge games are great successes. Several players from each of those sessions have become full club members. 

2. Speaking of memberships, the count is up to 80. More are expected, Betty says, when the snowbirds come back North when the winter's over. (That's still way below the Bridge Centre of Niagara over in St. Catharines, Ont., where membership is more than 300.)

3. The club is in the black, which is good news when bridge organizations everywhere are depressed financially. It finished the year with $3,000 more in the bank than it had 12 months earlier. 

4. Virtual play is in a big decline. Revenues from games on Bridge Base Online and elsewhere were down to $11 in December.

Bridge Blog 1174: Now you see it, now you don't

The screen on the Bridge Mate says we're third out of eight pairs when we finish our last hand in the four-table Howell game Friday at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Bridge Club, but when the email arrives from ACBL Live for Clubs with the final results, we're fourth. We miss collecting 0.53 of a point by just one-tenth of 1%. 

Although partner Selina Volpatti and I defrosted from this frigid, windblown day (the car said it was 8 above on the ride up) with a kickoff 6 Heart slam and an overtrick, we veered off the winning path on many occasions en route to our 52.40%.

My deepest chagrin came in the final round on Board 20, where a 2 Club contract turned improbably into 12 tricks. I took just 11, thanks to a losing finesse I immediately recognized that I didn't need to take. 

Without that fumble, we'd be third. Had Selina succeeded on a pair of game contracts that may or may not have been makeable, we'd be second. Had we kept up the torrid pace we set in the first round, where we won 10 out of a possible 12 match points, we'd be seeing our names in next month's ACBL Bridge Bulletin. 

At any rate, it was a fitting end for a day of fiendishly unbalanced hands. Six-, 7- and 8-card suits were not unusual. Furthermore, in this Howell movement, we switched sides of the table repeatedly and seemed to zig-zag into more than our share of good cards. We bid accordingly. In the 24 boards we played, we let our opponents take the bid only 25% of the time. 

Bridge Blog 1173: It’s all in the numbers

 

"Hi Dale," the email subject line declares, "Welcome to your Bridge Wrapped report!" How about that? A year-in-review from the ACBL. It certainly sucks this bridge nut a little deeper into the statistics-mad world of sports and pastimes.

And right on top are my total points for the year: 38.04. I feel pretty good about that – it's my best year since the pandemic – but a pittance compared to Buffalo's premier point collector, Saleh Fetouh, who raked in more than 1,000 in 2025.

The statistics pop up in cold precision, but suddenly one of them – Best Day, the day when I earned the most points – warms up a memory. That was Nov. 14, two days after I was officially severed from The Buffalo News, ending my 57-year career there. I was still in a state of existential shell shock when Selina Volpatti and I came in second in our section in the Swiss team game at the Niagara Regional Tournament in St. Catharines, Ont. We hauled in 8.69 gold points and my existence suddenly started to have meaning again. That also made November my Best Month, the report noted, with 11.83 points overall.

The report goes on to recount my Best Pair Game – 68.15% – but I don't remember how it happened and it doesn't say when. For that, it’s over to the ACBL website for a search of my results on MyACBL. There, I discover, it was on Feb. 21 with Selina in the Niagara-on-the-Lake Bridge Club. First overall, we collected 1.47 points. My first-ever visit to the club on Jan. 10 resulted in my second-best game of the year – 66.82% – but that was only good for second place.

Back to the report, which next is tracking my wayward whereabouts. Unique Days Played? 61. Total face-to-face club sessions? 48. Largest club game? 16.5 tables. Tournament events? 14. Sectionals? 4. Regionals? 1. Nationals? Zero. Tournament cities? 2. And that's all, folks. In-ter-est-ing, but I have a sneaky feeling these stats are fodder for what really matters more to the number-crunchers at ACBL Central – trends.

Bridge Blog 1172-A: Bridgeless

 

The new year started the same way the old one ended – no bridge. Until the Wednesday, Jan. 14, game at Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont., I hadn't played in month. Not since the special game at the Bridge Center of Buffalo on Saturday, Dec. 13.

That big holiday break was not my idea. I would have played Friday, Dec. 19, at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Bridge Club, but hardly anybody else did except for partner Selina Volpatti. They called it off and sent an email over the holidays warning that if players didn't come, they'd have to call things off completely.

Then I got Covid and the flu at the same time over Christmas. On Dec. 26, I could barely climb out of bed. A game in St. Catharines was out of the question. A week later I was still testing positive for the coronavirus. And the Friday after that was the postponed date for our big New Year's Eve party, so no go then either.

Without me to sit in the South chair, did Selina find a substitute? I combed the results on the ACBL website and didn't see her name. Turns out she had Covid too.

Bridge Blog 1172-B: Second verse, same as the first.

 

Finally hale and hearty again, I text Selina to see if she's available to play Wednesday, Jan. 14, at BCON. She's already partnered up, she replies. Why don't I try Rod Sumner? Sure enough, Rod can do it.

Nevertheless, this is only the second time that Rod and I have played. He reviews my convention card, but it doesn't tell him that I like to use the modified Mini-Roman bid – 2 Diamonds to show 4-4-4-1 distribution, 4-4 in both major suits, with 11 to 15 high card points. Sure enough, it comes up in the second round, when we're up against two of the better players – Marg Dykstra and Christine Pentesco. I'm dealer, we're vulnerable, and I do the magic 2 Diamond bid with this hand:

Spades: K-J-8-7; Hearts: Q-J-4-3; Diamonds: A-J-7-3; Clubs: 4.

Pass-pass to Christine, who's South and has a 14-point hand with five Diamonds. She doubles. To escape, I bid up the line to 2 Hearts. The opponents take over and wind up at 3 No Trump. They ask Rod what the 2 Diamond bid was. He says he thinks it was weak. Then we play it. Down two. When we finish, I explain what I meant and then there's a director call. The ruling: Average-minus. Instead of a top board of 8 match points, we get 3.20.

Rod and I finish third overall East-West and first in the B strat with 55.74%. (Talk about being steady, we also were third overall and first in the B strat the first time we played together in the NOTL Christmas party game back on Dec. 9.) Our Mini-Roman escapade didn’t make a difference one way or the other. We're almost 13 match points behind the second-place pair. As for Marg and Chris, they're hopelessly mired in last place.

Bridge Blog 1172-C: The one that really matters

 

The big question, though, is how well are we going to fare against Selina, who’s playing North-South with Sandra Felton. We get to them in the last round.

Not well on Board 7. I go down one on a 3 Spade contract. I've got six of them. Rod's got one. Hand analysis says we should let them play it in Hearts or No Trump and let them go down. This way, they get 5.5 match points, we get 2.5.

Can we make it up on Board 8? I hold 5 Hearts, 6 Clubs and a void in Diamonds. I make an overtrick and it feels good, but 4 Hearts always makes an overtrick. It’s just average. Both sides get 4 match points. 

One more chance. Board 9. A wimpy 1 Spade contract. Sandra makes it. Hand analysis says East-West could make 2 Hearts, we don’t bid it and North-South have the better cards anyway. Drat! Average again. Meanwhile, Selina and Sandra come in first North-South.