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.

Bridge Blog 1201: Blind Dates

I was pleasantly surprised to be paired with Susan Hawes, whose partner didn't show up, at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Duplicate Bridge Club on Friday, Aug. 7. She's not only an attractive presence (think Jamie Lee Curtis), but also a seasoned player. When we hastily compared bidding and conventions, we seemed to be very much on the same wavelength.

We shrugged off the first boards. The opponents took most of the bids. But after a few rounds, it was clear that this was going to be a bad day, a very bad day. Maybe a day below 30%. When the rankings on the Bridge Mate showed us in last place at the end of the afternoon, I was gratified that we managed to crawl away with 34.17%.

How did it seem so right at first and go so wrong? Bottom board straight from the get-go on the first hand, but still, that one was unavoidable. They bid 2 Hearts, making two overtricks. Impatient with the gloom by Board 4, I pushed Susan's raise of my Spade opener to game. Susan had three low Spades and two Aces, but East held K-Q-J-10 in my suit. Ouch! Bottom board, but compared with down-one at 3 Spades, it cost us only one extra match point.

Same with Board 8, the next notation on my score sheet. With four Spades to the King and an Ace of Clubs, I should have answered Susan's fourth-seat 1 Spade opening bid. It's good for 11 tricks in Spades. Amazingly, nobody bid game, though Susan says she would have. We're in a five-way tie for top board. Bidding game, we’d be two match points better.

Little stumbles and setbacks like those kept happening. Still, it would have taken a major blessing from the bridge gods to win us some master points. The two pairs who scratched North-South were tied for first, almost 25% ahead of us.

A week earlier at NOTL, a different story. I was paired for the first time with another player without a partner, Mike Freeman, a Toronto attorney who's lately moved to Niagara-on-the-Lake. Among eight tables, we were third North-South with 53.87% for 0.53 of a master point. It was my best game for the entire month of July.