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.
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