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.