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. 

Bridge Blog 1200: Thou shalt not pass???

 

Rod Sumner and I were in a funk. We hadn't earned master points together in a coon's age and we sank to a new low – 30.21% – on June 17 at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont. But things finally took an upturn on the following Wednesday, June 24. Rod even sent me a celebratory text message of sorts: "Much better result. 1.62% out of second place."

Actually, if we added that 1.62% to our 51.02%, we would have been third overall and first in the B stratification. Nevertheless, we hauled in 0.42 of a master point and it made me wonder how we would have finished if we had gone ahead and bid on the two hands where we passed out.

The first one, Board 18 against two long-term partners, John Marskell and Joan Soifert, was not our hand at all. Just 17 high card points between us. At every other table, East-West took the bid and went down, mostly in No Trump. Nothing we can do about that.

No such excuse, though, for the other one, Board 3 on the final round of the day against Kathy Morrison and Keith Heckley, Sitting South, I'm declarer, but I have only nine high card points. Pass. So does Kathy, who's sitting West. Rod, on the other hand, has 12 hcp and we're not vulnerable. With his holding, I would open:

Spades: A-9-6-3. Hearts: 10-7. Diamonds: A-K-9-8. Clubs: J-9-5.

If he opens 1 Diamond, I go 1 Spade (I have K-Q-7-4 and 10 hcp) and we play it at 2 Spades. Most North-Souths did that and made an overtrick. That would give us six extra match points, enough to end up third overall and first in B.

Fortune smiled again Friday, June 26, with Selina Volpatti at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Bridge Club. We finished third North-South with 52.98% and got 0.53 of a master point. But once again there was a pass-out. Good? Or bad? This time, not so clear cut. We're vulnerable, Selina is the second seat for bidding and she's got 12 hcp:

Spades: K-9. Hearts: A-K-4. Diamonds: J-4-3. Clubs: J-10-7-5-2.

She passes. So does East. If Selina opens, I have a bid. But after three passes to me, I don't.

Spades: Q-10-8-6-3. Hearts: 8-5. Diamonds: A-9-8-5. Clubs: A-8.

Elsewhere, North-South played it in Clubs, Spades and No Trump. It makes 3 Spades. That would have given us an extra 2.5 match points. Enough to make a difference? Not quite. We needed 3 to overtake the second-place finishers, Harold Nash and my good friend Rod. They bid it and made 4 Clubs.

Bridge Blog 1199: The long and short of it

 

The Longest Day was too long already after only about a dozen hands at the Bridge Center of Buffalo for my Sunday morning partner Judie Bailey. Only 15 more boards to go, I reassured her.

She thought it was the air conditioning, or rather the lack of it, that was sapping her energy. It didn't help that we were playing in an 11-pair Howell movement, which disoriented us and everybody else by taking most of us to a different table for every round. Plus we were one of the pairs that didn’t get a sit-out.

Nevertheless, Judie soldiered on through. When cool breezes began to reach us in the final round, she started feeling better, just in time for a total drubbing by Mike Ryan and Judy Graf, who gave us three straight bottom boards. We were at 56.77% when we arrived at their table and 50.93% when we walked away.

Amazingly, that calamity took us down only one peg in the final standings, from first in the B stratification to second. This being part of the District 5 Sectional Tournament at the Clubs (STaC), I was grateful to collect some fraction – 0.83 – of a silver point.

For the six-table afternoon session, fresh partner Florence Boyd and I sat North-South for the entire game and started out like demons. In our first set of four hands against Ruth Nawotniak and Joyce Frayer, we won 14.5 out of a possible 20 match points.

The thrill of that victory didn't last long. Next visitors to our table – Joyce Greenspan and Jo Nasoff-Finton – slapped us down with two bottom boards. One of the other hands was a pass-out. We never bounced back. Our final score was 44.17%, second from the bottom North-South, ninth out of 12 pairs overall.

Bridge Blog 1198: Bottoms up! (with an addition)

 

In this week's episode of NPR's "Hidden Brain," the guest, psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis, proposes a riddle to host Shankar Vedantam that sort of goes like this: If there is one lily pad in a pond (or lake) at the beginning of spring and the number of lily pads doubles every day, when does the pond (or lake) fill up completely with lily pads? 

Added note: What I forgot to say when I originally posted this was that finding an answer often involves looking at the question from a different direction. The discussion revolved around how the subconscious mind knows things that the conscious mind doesn't and that sometimes it takes stepping away from thinking about the original question so that the subconscious mind has a chance to take a fresh view. One example: Sleeping on a decision before making a final choice. Further example: I realized that I needed to add this explanatory note after I woke up this morning. 

About 16 hours earlier, I saw how thinking applied from a different direction could be applied to the final results of the Friday afternoon game at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Duplicate Bridge Club in Canada. Checking our final scores on the BridgeMate, our opponents said, "Oh, you're fourth." To which my first-time partner Harold Nash replied that he preferred to look at it as third ... from the bottom.

Harold is the oldest player at the game – he's 96 – and I marveled at how sharp and delightful he is. Like in Monday's game, another first-time partnership for me (see Blog 1197), we started out with the blessing of bad hands, which let us get used to each other while playing defense.

Unfortunately, the blessing didn't do us much good this time. We were 45% after the first round and 45.42% at the end of the day. In the final tally, when everybody finished playing, we had advanced to second ... from the bottom.

Bridge Blog 1197: Answering the call

 

"Canada," the screen flashed when the phone rang shortly before 10 a.m. Monday, just as I was getting ready to roll out of bed and mulling what to do after that. The woman on the other end of the line said that Myrna Mackey needed a partner today at the Bridge Centre of Niagara. Was I available to play?

On one hand, I could do yard work. Or else I could spend an afternoon at the tables in St. Catharine's. The choice was clear. Not only is Myrna quietly sweet, she's also one of the better players at the club. We'd never partnered up before, but I figured we’d work things out.

What helped, especially in the early rounds, were the cards. They were awful. With nothing to bid on (in our first three hands, one or the other of us had high card points in the low single digits), we passed a lot. What also helped was we were in tune defensively. Our opponents didn't get any tricks they didn't deserve.

We breezed along until the final round, when we ran up against Jane Jennings and Donna Fettes and won just six of 24 possible match points. Did that take the bloom off our afternoon? Not much. 61.34%. Second overall. We begin the new month with 2.48 master points.

Bridge Blog 1196-A: Back to the tables -- Under the radar

 

But at least not under the tables on Thursday morning at the Anchor Bar at Maple and Sweet Home Roads in Amherst, my first game in nearly two weeks after a trip to Washington, D.C., for a wedding.

This was Third Thursdays, a non-ACBL-sanctioned game directed by my dear friend and sometimes partner Judie Bailey that I never expected to play in. Back when it met at a country club, it was ladies only. Lately, however, a gentleman has been invited to fill out an empty chair and on Wednesday, while I was homeward bound and stopped at a Starbucks in Clark's Summit, Pa., Judie texted an invitation to me.

Indeed, I was not the only gentleman who helped fill up four tables in the side dining room at the Anchor Bar. There were three of us. Entry fee was $1. Judie told me to sit anywhere East-West. I'd never met the attractive white-haired woman across from me, Judy McDermid, one of three Judys present, but we quickly determined that we could do things like 14-30, asking for key cards in a slam attempt.

Before play, a waitress took orders for lunch and when food came out, we took a break after the second round. Music from the restaurant's sound system sifted into our area. Elsewhere sports channels played on flat-screen TVs, a few patrons sat at the main bar and, in the regular dining room, there was a group of Red Hat ladies having lunch.

In all, we played 16 boards in four rounds. Aggressive me, I took the bid on at least half of them and was nailed for minus 1,100 on the second hand when I went after a 5 Spade sacrifice. Sitting North and doubling was Paula Kotowski, who reminded me how I kept her from getting her final points for Ruby Life Master 17 years ago when I failed to return a card for her to trump. She was delighted to inflict some revenge. Down 5. But was it a bottom board? The scoring slips later showed that North-South could take 12 tricks.

Even so, this was not a slam-bidding crowd. Mostly, they were social players familiar with some of the modern bridge basics. Nevertheless, there were a few that I know from the clubs – the aforementioned Paula Kotowski, Florence Boyd, Dorothy May, Judy Kaprove and Paula Salamone. I hadn't seen Paula Salamone since before the pandemic. We greeted each other with a hug.

No results right away. Judie let me know with an email on Friday and it turned out that we club players carried the day. Judy McDermid and I tied for first with Paula Kotowski and her partner with a 29. Figuring a maximum of three match points on 16 hands, that would translate to 60.41%. Paula Salamone and Flo Boyd and their respective partners tied for second with 28, or 58.33%.

Bridge Blog 1196-B: Back to the tables -- Switcheroo!

 

Having warmed up from my layoff at the Third Thursday game, I was ready, ready, ready to reunite on Friday with my Canadian partner, Selina Volpatti, at the ACBL-sanctioned game in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont. But surprise! When I walked in, Selina, who was directing, announced that I would be playing with her son-in-law, John Beck, who unexpectedly found himself with the day off from his thriving construction business.

John is a bit of a novice, having followed his wife Laura into the game, but no problem. Selina not only transferred her love of bridge to John and Laura, but she also taught them to play. Essentially, it was like playing with Selina. Plus, not only did John cover my entry fee, he also has an easy sense of humor and an upbeat attitude. I'd be happy to hang with him even if we didn't have cards in our hands. Turns out we're OK with cards, too. Second North-South with 59.58%.

Bridge Blog 1195: Shot at the Buzzer

"That dbl (double) on Board 4 may have put us over the top," partner Selina Volpatti texted me after our first place showing Friday at the Niagara on the Lake Duplicate Bridge Club. "... that gave us the point over the Tremblays." 

It's a great day whenever we beat Claude and Muriel Tremblay, the perennial top pair at the club. On this occasion, they were second. We outdistanced them in match points, 74.18 to 71.45. Translated into percentages, that's 61.82% to 59.54%. 

True, Selina's double on Board 4, our last deal of the day, earned us one match point more than the Tremblays, who had the second-best score on that hand, where East-West took only six tricks at 3 Hearts. Same thing happened at the Tremblays' table, but they didn't double. As it turns out, though, that only gave us a break-even against Claude and Muriel in that round. Board 4 was a feel-good finale, the frosting on the cake. We already had piled up our advantage elsewhere. 

It wasn't in the first round, where we played Boards 5 through 8. The Tremblays roared to a four match-point lead there, even though we were second-best on each hand. 

The crucial difference came during the two rounds that followed, Boards 10 to 14, where we grabbed 10.5 more match points than they did. We won No. 10 on defense, holding a 2 Spade contract by East-West to one fewer overtrick than they did. No. 11 found me down one at 3 Spades, for a score of minus 50, while they let East-West play and make 3 Diamonds for minus 110. On No. 13, the opponents helped us out. East went to 4 Spades with a seven-card trump fit, which we set by one trick, while Claude and Muriel saw West play it at a much more solid 3 Hearts, where they had a 10-card fit and made an overtrick.

No. 14 was a top board for us, again thanks to our opponents. They passed after Selina boldly bid it up to 3 Spades. She made an overtrick, despite our deficiency in high card points (she had 14, I had just two Jacks). At Claude and Muriel's table, West took the bid at 3 No Trump and took an overtrick.  

Bridge Blog 1194: April shower

Once upon a time, when I was playing bridge five or six days a week, it was a bad month if I didn't pile up at least 15 master points. Now I'm lucky to play twice a week and the rewards have dried up so much that 5.63 points in April feels like manna from heaven. It more than doubles my total for the year so far.

But no luck juicing up my monthly master point total even more on Wednesday at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont. Partner Rod Sumner and I wound up dead last East-West.

I kicked myself more than once over Aces I failed to cash and leads I should have made to Rod, but now that I’m reviewing the hand records, it would have taken much more than those to reach the winners' circle. In fact, if we hadn't broken out of our funk with a stellar final round, we'd be truly wretched – four percentage points below our eventual 40.74%. 

Bridge Blog 1193: New gear, old mistakes

 

Everyone admired the brand-new bidding boxes Wednesday in the 10-table open game at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont. Unfortunately, we didn't make the best use of them on Board 11, which we passed out. Hand analysis says we can make 5 Spades or 5 Clubs. I'm South and I'm dealer, nobody vulnerable.

South

Spades: K-J-5-4.

Hearts: A-9-8.

Diamonds: Q-3.

Clubs: J-7-5-2.

Eleven high card points. Fulfills the Rule of 15, but falls short on the Rule of 20. Should I open 1 Club in the first seat? I don’t. Partner Rod Sumner is North. Here's what he’s holding:

Spades: A-10-3-2.

Hearts: 4.

Diamonds: J-4-2.

Clubs: A-Q-8-6-4.

Also 11 high card points, also fulfills the Rule of 15. Rod also happens to meet the Rule of 20. Sitting in the third seat, he might open 1 Club, I would respond 1 Spade and we'd settle for at least a 2-bid. Result: Instead of 2 match points for the pass-out, we’d get 5.

That alone would boost our final 49.44% past the 50% mark, though it wouldn't improve on our 0.42 master point winnings. However, better performances on a couple other boards would have taken us there.

Board 19 was a defensive lapse that gave us a bottom board and cost us at least 7.5 match points. We let Myrna Mackey make an overtrick on a 3 No Trump contract, while two other 3 NTs went down. Hand analysis says E/W should only take 7 tricks in No Trump. The problem? After I lead the 9 from my Club holding of A-Q-10-9-7, Myrna, who has four Clubs, holds back on playing her King. So I take the trick and lead the 10, win again and switch to another suit. But then, when Rod gets in with his Ace of Spades, he doesn’t lead his remaining Jack of Clubs. 

Then there's Board 24. There’s a slam, 6 Clubs, 6 Diamonds or 6 NT, according to hand analysis. Rod plays it at 3 NT, making one overtrick instead of two or three. Two would win us 2 more match points, Three would reward us with 4.5 more.

Take away those fateful fluffs and we could be champs. Or at least silver medalists. We'd get at least 12 additional match points and second place overall North-South.

Nevertheless, we still can bask in our golden moment in the second round of the day on Board 23. Rod opened 2 Spades with a seven-card suit and everybody passed after Doug Newman, sitting West, doubled him, hoping his partner would show his best suit. Hand analysis says it should make 4 Spades and that's exactly what Rod did. Vulnerable. Plus 1,070. Top board.

Bridge Blog 1192: Thinking ahead

 

Partner Selina Volpatti proclaimed that it was the best hand she ever played as we shuffled our individual cards on Board 6 and put them back into the holder on Friday, April 17, at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Bridge Club.

        It was certainly our best hand of the day, a top board, one of the things that helped us do something we rarely do at NOTL, taking first place North-South away from perennial winners Claude and Muriel Tremblay, 57.44% to 56.55%.

        According to the ACBL results, Selina shouldn't have made it. Nobody else did on Friday. The analysis says that it's good for 3 Spades, but not 4. East-West has two Heart winners and a Diamond for sure. That fourth E/W trick probably comes when all the dummy's Spades are played before all of North's losing Diamonds can be trumped. Selina made sure she trumped them.

East:

Spades: 8

Hearts: K J 8

Diamonds: A Q J 9 7 6

Clubs: J 5 3

South (me):

Spades: Q J 6 2

Hearts: Q 7 5 2

Diamonds: 4

Clubs: A K 8 4

West:

Spades: 10 9 7

Hearts: A 9 4

Diamonds: K 8 2

Clubs: Q 10 9 6

North (Selina):

Spades: A K 5 4 3

Hearts: 10 6 3

Diamonds: 10 5 3

Clubs: 7 2

        How did we get to 4 Spades? East, as dealer, opened 1 Diamond. I doubled, asking for Selina to bid her best suit. She rose to the invitation with Spades. When they went to 4 Diamonds, she made the 4 Spade overcall. East led the 3 of Clubs. South's Ace won it, Selina cleared the dummy's singleton Diamond and got early ruffs on Clubs and Diamonds.

        Nobody else took more than nine tricks in Spades. At the Tremblay table, East won the auction at 4 Diamonds and made it.

Bridge Blog 1191: Buffalo Spring Sectional

 

I walked into the Buffalo Spring Sectional Tournament at the Buffalo Bridge Center on Friday morning, April 10, with a horrendous losing streak. How horrendous was it? So bad that my 37.13% in the morning pairs game was an improvement. Dead last, but still better than the 32% I had with Selina Volpatti and the 33% I had with Rod Sumner in Canada earlier that week. Also not so bad considering that partner Judy Zeckhauser (pictured) and I had played together only once before. Better attuned to each other in the afternoon round, we broke out of last place – eighth out of 11 pairs North-South with 43.19%.

        Things got even better for Judy and me on Saturday – 47.50% in the morning pairs. Two or three more good hands would have won us some master points. That raised our hopes for the afternoon game, which was interrupted after two rounds with 8½ tables by the sudden departure of one of the players to attend to his wife, who had suffered a bad fall. Instead of starting all over again, Brian Meyer showed his chops as a director by recasting it on the fly as an eight-table game and bringing it to a conclusion only a few minutes late. Meanwhile, Judy and I backslid to 42.54%. This time, though, we were only one percentage point behind the second-place North-South pair in the B strat.

         Despite four games with no master points, redemption was sure to come in the Swiss teams game on Sunday. All we had to do is win one round to win some little scrap of a point. Plus my Sunday partner, another Judy – Judie Bailey – was a more seasoned player. Our teammates, however, were unknowns, both to us and to each other. Gerry Steenberge, who had played in the tournament on Friday and Saturday, was from the Rochester area. His partner Aleksandar Ivanov, a last-minute pickup, was the Bulgarian-born brother-in-law of Diamond Life Master Dian Petrov. Aleks hadn’t gotten the details about playing in Sunday’s game and still was on his way from his home in East Aurora when things started, not arriving until after the first hand had been played.

        That didn’t hurt us, though. We romped to a 17-1 victory point win over one of the tougher teams -- Judy Graf, John Ziemer, Mike Ryan and Howard Foster. We also took the second match, 23-19, over another tough team – Kamil Bishara, Dian Petrov, Jay Levy and Fred Yellen – thanks to two of my efforts on doubled contracts, a 6-Heart sacrifice, down one vulnerable, that foiled an East-West slam, and a wildly distributional 5-Diamond-doubled overbid where I took 11 tricks in a lay-down.

        After that, our luck ran out. For the final two rounds, we were plunged into a round robin against two other low-riding teams. But as often happens in round robins, we got a worm. Beating one of the other teams gave us enough victory points to snag the bottommost rung among the stratification winners – second in B. What did we win? Brian Meyer said he couldn’t give us official scoring summaries right away because the results had to go through the ACBL first. It took until Monday to find out. 1.71 silver points.

        In all, the tournament had a total of 68 tables, with 292.48 master points earned by 67 players. The winningest – no surprise – was Saleh Fetouh with 15.10. Among his other achievements during the weekend, he was captain of the undefeated top place Swiss team. I was tied for 51st with Judie and Alexsandar. Gerry, who also had success in the pairs games, was 31st with 3.96.

        Sadly, it was further evidence of the declining state of bridge in Buffalo. It wasn't quite as well-attended as the 2025 Buffalo Spring Sectional, which had 71 tables and 74 players earning points. And it was a far cry from the 2024 Spring Sectional, which had 99 tables and 101 players earning points, and the pre-pandemic 2019 Buffalo Spring Sectional in the Main-Transit Fire Hall social hall in Amherst, which had 153 tables and 165 players earning points.

Bridge Blog 1190: Good Friday on the Titanic

I had that sinking feeling even before I saw the standings posted on the wall with one round to go on Good Friday afternoon at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont. Selina Volpatti and I were dead last with 29%.

Let's face it. Below 30% is just plain disgraceful. Nobody else was even under 40%. Believe it or not, I breathed a sigh of relief when I checked the final results on Live for Clubs and discovered that we wound up at a still pretty awful 32.08%, thanks to a 50-50 final round.

Our descent into the depths began right away with our first opponents, Ineke and John Bezuyen. First board we played, I should've pushed for the 4 Spade game. Second board, I doubled their 5 Club vulnerable bid (after all, I had their Ace and another one), but they made it. Minus 750. Amazingly, another N/S doubled a bid of 4 Clubs! Minus 910. 

After that, we flung our inhibitions aside. We took the bid on 16 of the other 22 boards. Red flags were everywhere. Doubles were thrown at us five times, every one of them good. Three times we went down three vulnerable and once we suffered the dreaded down four vulnerable for minus 1,100.

Yes, winning all those bids lost us the game. Out of a possible 85 match points in the hands where we were declarers, we collected only 22. That's a paltry 25.88%. On defense, we were more respectable – 16.5 match points out of a possible 35. That's 47.14%. 

Bridge Blog 1189: Down One reconsidered

 

"Bd 2 at 4D down 1 was top score 8 out of 8. Also no zeros. All in all, a good afternoon."

That was partner Rod Sumner's email assessment of our game Wednesday afternoon at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont. It was our only clear-and-away top board, though we tied for top on two other hands. Nevertheless, it got me wondering whether down one was good bridge this time around.

Well, no question about it on Board 2. Rod and I were East-West, North-South was vulnerable and, as dealer, I opened 1 Diamond with this hand:

Spades: 3.

Hearts: K-8-6-3.

Diamonds: A-Q-10-8-6-3.

Clubs: A-K.

Rod responded 1 Heart. After all, I could have had as few as three Diamonds. North, holding six Spades, bid them. (It was that kind of wildly distributional day, it seemed).

Curious about Rod's Hearts – did he have five of them? – I doubled, hoping he would give me a helpful response. South supported North's Spades and Rod, to my surprise, went to 3 Diamonds. North upped the Spade bid, then let me play it at 4 Diamonds.

According to Live for Clubs analysis, nine tricks is the best we could do. What made it a top board? N/S played it in Spades at five tables, making 10 tricks. Two of the E/Ws thwarted them by pushing up to 5 Diamonds and one of them was doubled. Another E/W played it at 4 Hearts, down two.

Unlike my Monday game with Selina, Rod and I avoided down-ones. We had just one other and it also was good. Board 15. N/S vulnerable. South was dealer. Three passes to me sitting East with this hand:

Spades: 7-3-2.

Hearts: A-K-Q-2.

Diamonds: A-J-3.

Clubs: Q-7-4.

I did the math. Of course, 1 No Trump. Everybody else passed. Rod, unfortunately, was at the bottom of his Pass:

Spades: 10-8-5-4.

Hearts: 9-8-5.

Diamonds: 9-8-2.

Clubs: J-10-8.

The math was definitely against us. South led the five of Diamonds and I took North's King with the Ace. Then I ran the Hearts, breathing a sigh of relief when they broke evenly. In fact, everything broke evenly. We got the five tricks we deserved – four Hearts and the Ace of Diamonds – plus a gift, either another Diamond or a Club, I don't remember which.

This one tied us for second-best with another E/W who went down one. Still another E/W actually made I NT (against the same guys that we nailed on Board 2). Hand analysis says I NT our way should go down two. Two other E/Ws went down two doubled.

Although we're a relatively new partnership and hadn’t played together for more than two months, Rod and I were respectable – third in our direction with 55.79%, with 0.75 of a master point. Great way to start off the new month.

Bridge Blog 1188: Is Down One really good bridge?

Although I didn't say it, that's what I was wondering after a while Monday afternoon at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont. Partner Selina Volpatti and I played what seemed like an extraordinary number of contracts that fell one trick short. In truth, there were only (only?) eight out of 27. 

Selina played six of them. Her first successful down-one effort was a 4 Heart contract on the second hand of the day and it was a good one. Top board. East-West can make 5 Spades and seven of them did. 

Then, in the final round, Selina went down one on a 4 Diamond bid when the opponents routinely make 4 Hearts with an overtrick. That one was good for 7 out of 8 match points. 

But the rest of our down-ones were duds. Two were middle boards, the others were bottoms or next to bottoms. 

So back to our original question: Is down one good bridge? Not for me and Selina on Monday. Our down-ones delivered only 24 out of a possible 64 match points. Had we broken even, 50-50, in the down-ones, we would have been first North-South. As it was, we finished second with 57.64%, winning 1.69 master points. 

Bridge Blog 1187: Crawling from the wreckage

How badly did Florence Boyd and I crash and burn in the monthly special game at the Buffalo Bridge Center on Sunday, March 22? Let us count the ways. 

First of all, we were dead last, not just East-West, but for entire field of 12 pairs. Our 35.14% was a full 10 percentage points below the next lowest E-W, Julie Mitchell and Brian Fleming, and nearly six points beneath the bottom North-South, Barb Landree and Betty Metz. To actually win master points as B strat players, we needed at least 47% in our direction. 

God knows we were rusty. Neither Flo nor I had played competitively in more than a month. Plus she was in pain with a nasty crimp in her back. So we had our excuses. Lots of them.  

Take that passed-out hand on Board 16 in the very first round against Barb and Betty. The ACBL Live for Clubs recap showed that nobody else passed it out. Though West had only nine high card points, there was a six-card Spade suit, A-K-Q-10-4-3, a perfect pre-emptive 2 Spade opening bid. Four other Wests played it at 2 Spades, making two overtricks. 

And then there was Board 20, one of my infamous minus 1,100 games, which was a big help in boosting Davis Heussler and Linda Burroughsford to the top of the North-South pairs. After Flo opened with a pass, Davis bid 1 Diamond. Holding A-10-7-6-4-2 in Clubs and 11 high card points, I promptly raised to 2 Clubs. Linda immediately doubled. Little did I suspect that Linda's Clubs were K-Q-8-5-3. Davis passed. Down four doubled vulnerable. North-South can take nine or 10 tricks in No Trump, but only one of them bid it. Most of them played it in Diamonds, which is good for at least nine tricks. 

Bidding those two correctly wouldn't have gotten us out of our deep hole, though. We repeatedly missed going to game when we should have and failed to take all the tricks we were entitled to. And sometimes the really good players hit home runs against us, like Chris Urbanek and Kamil Bishara, who were the only ones to bid a small slam in Clubs on Board 10. Less perceptive North-Souths simply made game at 3 No Trump or 5 Clubs. 

Bridge Blog 1186: Circumstances beyond my control

 

That's what's been keeping me from the tables since mid-February. My partner Monica had her right knee replaced on the 17th and I've been on caregiver duty ever since. She's recovering nicely, but here at the two-week mark there are quite a few tasks she can't yet accomplish by herself. 

So afternoons at the bridge clubs in Canada are out of the question for a while still. When new partner Rod Sumner called recently to see if I was available for a Wednesday at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, I estimated that I wouldn't be free to come back until at least St. Patrick's Day. But, I cautioned, it may take a little longer.