Bridge Blog 465: Yes-s-s-s!!!

          We did it! Our team has won a spot in the semi-finals in the Wednesday-Thursday knock-out game in the Niagara Falls, Ont., Regional Tournament. No matter what happens Thursday, we’re guaranteed 4.83 master points. Gold master points. All Selina Volpatti, Mike Silverman, Helen Panza and I have to do is show up at 1 p.m. and play. If we’re good enough to win our semi-final round, it’s 8-plus points. Go all the way in the finals and it’s 12.

          So congratulate me. I went to Niagara Falls this morning 2.8 gold points short of becoming a Life Master and now I’ve got ‘em. With more than 1,000 points overall, I get to skip right past the Bronze Life Master category and become a Silver Life Master. Hallelujah! Thank you, bridge gods.

          Thank you especially, bridge gods, for putting us in three-way contests in the first two knock-out rounds. In the three-way game, there are two teams that continue to the next round – much better odds than the head-to-head matchups. The afternoon round found us crushing one team by 63 points and losing to another by 35, so we got to play on.

        The evening three-way started out much tighter – we led one team by 5-1 International Match Points at the midway point and trailed the other one, 20-12. But we made up that deficit in the second half, thanks to a 6 Heart slam where our opponents went down three (Helen and Mike bid 3 Hearts and made an overtrick) and a 5 Hearts doubled contract that Selina brought home (Helen and Mike didn’t double). We happily paid the knock-out director $15 apiece for Thursday afternoon’s round. Life Master! At last!

Bridge Blog 464: Masterful?

          I feel good. By this time Thursday night, I could finally be Life Master. Not just Life Master, but Silver Life Master. That’s how overdue this process has gotten. If I’m not mistaken, all our knock-out team will have to do at the Niagara Falls, Ont., Regional Tournament is win the first two rounds to get the 2.8 gold points that I need.
          And it should be a very good knock-out team. I’ll be playing with Niagara Regional Counselor Selina Volpatti, with whom I usually have a great time and do quite well. Our teammates are Mike Silverman and Helen Panza, who cleaned up at last month’s regional tournament on Grand Island and earned Life Master status.

          Do I need further encouragement? Why not? I need look no further than my fruitful games with Pawan Matta Monday and Tuesday at the Airport Bridge Club. Monday was a 48.71% game, which nevertheless gave us first in the C strat for .77 of a master point. Tuesday, though it started badly, was much improved – 55.28%, first in B North-South, 1.13 master points. For the month, that’s 4.50 points.

Bridge Blog 463: Monthly roundup

          My big October was just a blip on the screen as far as the ACBL unit, district and national master point tallies were concerned. And let’s face it, in the grand scheme of things, 24 points ain’t much.

          Still, it maintained my position on the Unit 116 (Buffalo) level. My 128.29 Ace of Clubs points put me sixth. Mike Kisiel stays first with 212.32, followed by Liz Clark (166.07), John Ziemer (153.24), Carlton Stone (139.23) and Vince Pesce (129.13). After me, there’s Carolyn Siracuse (110.95), Judy Padgug (98.51), Paul Libby (95.51) and Jim Gullo (93.24).

          Mini-McKenney-wise, I’ve got 145.66 points, which puts me seventh on the Unit 116 list. Dian Petrov is first with 301.66, followed by Kisiel (222.43), Ziemer (211.40), Judy Padgug (203.10), Liz Clark (177.46) and Carlton (161 even). After me, there’s Vince Pesce (137.98), Kathy Pollock (135.90) and Jim Gullo (132.26).

          On the District 5 (Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh) level, I still register on the Ace of Clubs list – I’m eighth – but miss the Top 25 completely on the Mini-McKenney. The guy in 25th place has 160.43. On top of the heap once again is Hao Ge of Bay Village, Ohio, who was the big point winner in the Grand Island regional. He has 504.45. Dian Petrov is second. Mike Kisiel is eighth.

          Nationally, I don’t want to look, but I guess I will anyway. Ace of Clubs is still led by Zita Lechter of Sunny Isles, Fla. Now she has 320.83. Kisiel is tenth. To make the Top 100 list, you need 152.41.

          As for national Mini-McKenney, again it’s Louise Clark of Glencoe, Ill. She has 714.84. Next is Geeske Joel of Palo Alto, Calif., with 679.63. Hao Ge is eighth. Dian Petrov is 84 th. To make this Top 100, you need 291.58.

Bridge Blog 462: Bill Rieker

          Last time I saw Bill Rieker was at the Buffalo Fall Sectional Tournament and he looked a little diminished – more tired, not as crisp. I said it was good to see him and he kind of shrugged it off. He was that kind of guy, not one to dwell on personal matters, but it made me wonder how well he was getting along these days, a year after the death of his wife, Peg, with whom he’d run B&P Duplicate all those year. The answer came in a couple emails Thursday night – first from Marge Schomers, an old friend of his who runs the Lockport game – and then from Judie Bailey, mistress of Unit 116’s Bridge Buff. Bill had passed away on Wednesday. Carlton Stone provided a link to the notice on the Dietrich Funeral Home site a day later. No calling hours. Private services.

          A couple times I’d gotten to find out a few things about Bill. He had a contracting business before he retired. His wife, Peg, who was a big golfer and bridge player, had lured him into the game. He was always the gruff but genial director and she was gracious hostess, providing the snacks and pairing up the players who came without partners. Frequently from 2005 to 2008, I was one of them and was one of the stalwarts at their faltering, underattended Wednesday game.

Often I’d get paired with Peg, but sometimes Bill would get pulled in. He was a very steady player – and a good one, though not quite as good as Peg, who was very, very good – and unlike Peg he didn’t do much correcting of other people’s mistakes, although he might fix them with a disapproving stare.

As a director, he was similarly firm, but tolerant. After the first round was completed, he ran a kitchen timer to keep the subsequent rounds on time. I don’t recall him taking boards away from slow players, so it must have been infrequent. He used a microphone for announcements in the social hall of the Zion Church in Tonawanda, but it was so distorted that it was hard to tell what he was talking about. And among the computers used by bridge directors, his was the oldest. But he made it all work. That was his great talent. He could make anything work.

His is not the only death in the local bridge community this week, as it turned out. On Saturday night, I saw Judy Padgug at the theater and she asked if I had heard about Walter Majewski. I didn’t know Walter well, since he played mainly at the Bridge Center of Buffalo, where I have rarely played, but I saw his name frequently among the winners. Judy said she had played against him on Friday at the Bridge Center and then he apparently went home and suffered a heart attack. What a bad year this has been for deaths among bridge players, Judy and I commiserated. We’re greatly diminished.

Bridge Blog 461: Points in waiting

          Go to check my master point totals on the ACBL website and what pops up but a membership renewal. How efficient. Now that I’m renewed, I see that they still haven’t posted the totals yet in the unit, district or national master point races. OK, not so efficient, but it’s only the sixth. Maybe later tonight. In the meantime, I have 24.01 points pending from October. Could be the high monthly point gain for 2011 so far. That gives me 145.66 for the year and a lifetime total of 1,181.18.

Bridge Blog 460: More slammin'

          Highlights of the pair of 57% games I had this week (with Pawan Matta on Tuesday and Celine Murray on Wednesday) were a pair of slams. The first one, on Tuesday against Harry Cheung and Liz Clark, was a gamble and I shouldn’t have made it, except that Harry trumped a Club trick while he still had a Club in his hand. It was only good for 5 Spades, but I made 6, the only one to do that.

          On Wednesday with Celine, there was a totally deserved Grand Slam. All one had to do was bid it. It was Board 18, North-South vulnerable, East is dealer. I’m sitting North with this hand:

          Spades: 8-4. Hearts: K-Q-8.

          Diamonds: A-K-Q-10-9-6. Clubs: K-J.

          East passes, South – Celine – opens 1 Heart. Hey, I’ve got 18 points and a long suit that’s probably running. Might we take a ton of tricks at No Trump? I bid 2 Diamonds, she replies 3 Clubs. This is getting promising. We can probably make 5 Hearts or 5 Diamonds. I explore for Aces with a Blackwood bid of 4 No Trump. She bids 5 Spades – 3 Aces. OK, five Heart tricks, six Diamond tricks, 2 outside Aces. 7 No Trump. East leads the King of Spades and, sure enough, it’s a lay-down, and I don’t even need to run the Diamonds. There are sure four Club tricks.

          South

          Spades: A-J-6. Hearts: A-J-10-4-3.

          Diamonds: 4. Clubs: A-Q-9-7.

         

          East

          Spades: K-Q-10-9-8. Hearts: 7-6.

          Diamonds: 8-3-2. Clubs: 10-6-4.

          West

          Spades: 7-5-3. Hearts: 9-2.

          Diamonds: J-7-5. Clubs: 8-5-3-2.

          Amazingly, only one other pair out of 10 bid the 7 NT slam, but everyone took all 13 tricks. A couple of them bid 7 Hearts. One stopped at 6 NT. Three more were at 6 Hearts. The poor unfortunates were the ones who didn’t get to 6. One was at 4 NT and, sorriest of all, the one who wound up at 5 Clubs.

Bridge Blog 459: I am such a jerk

          Where is my brain? Friday’s scorecard has words like “Revoke” (where I doomed my maybe-makeable 3 NT contract by carelessly discarding a Heart instead of a Club) and on the very next hand, “Think!” (where I should have nailed an extra trick on my 4 Spade contract, but didn’t do the discard). June Feuerstein and I brought home a 36.9% game, my worst since that dismal 35.06% with Ruthie Kozower back on July 26.

          Even more unthinkable is my revoke on attending the Individual Game on Saturday at the Airport Bridge Club. I needed an excuse, however flimsy, to go play on a Saturday, and I started out with a perfect one – bringing friend Diana Sachs’ 92-year-old dad, Gerry, out to the game. But then Diana was going to be free to do something with her dad Saturday, so that excuse evaporated.

Except that Paula Salamone needed a ride. Fine. Excuse in place again. Until Paula calls Friday night to say she’ll have her car after all. So, at that point, I should have called club manager Bill Finkelstein to tell him I’d be a no-show. But I didn’t. And Paula didn’t tell him either. So at game time on Saturday, as I’m in the bathroom, an explosive phone call comes. Finkelstein is furious. The Individual Game needs a firm number of players for the set-up. What could I say? I knew better. Just brainless.