Bridge Blog 1150: Dual citizenship

I am now a member of two duplicate bridge clubs on the other side of the border -- the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, where I've been on the roster for many years, and now the Niagara-on-the-Lake Duplicate Club, where my Canadian partner, Selina Volpatti, is directing for the next couple months. 

When I went to give Selina the $7 fee to play last week as I checked in, she remarked, "Why don't you join?" It took only a second to do the math. It's $20 Canadian to join and members pay only $5 to play. I'll make my membership fee back in no time. 

The Bridge Centre of Niagara is a similar bargain, although it's pricier. Membership last year was $50 Canadian, but you get two free plays ($7 a game) and a discount on the fee. 

Joining the Buffalo Bridge Center on this side of the bridges probably would be the diplomatic thing to do, but at $80 US, it's no bargain. Members play for $4 less than non-members, so it would take 20 visits to recoup, but alas, the only games I could play would be Friday (often only three tables, a topic of discussion at the club's annual meeting last week) and special once-a-month games on Saturday or Sunday. Playing Sunday would mean burning a vacation day

Bridge Blog 1149: Did we fall or were we pushed?

We fell down in our final round, partner Selina Volpatti declared this Friday  afternoon after we came in second North-South and third overall in the six-table Club Championship game at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Duplicate Bridge Club across the bridge in Ontario. Out of a possible 20 match points in the round, we only got 7.5. 

That left us four match points behind the North-South winners, Claude and Muriel Trembley, but should we really be complaining? We still had a 57.92% game. We got go to bring home 1.62 master points. 

Plus, that last round against Darlene Menhennet and Leslie Nash (daughter of the recently departed Kit Nash, who was a petite force of nature) may have been sour, but it wasn't all that bad. It started out so sweetly, with me making 3 Spades, a top board. 

But then we were all left-footed. I should have sabotaged them when I bid 4 Diamonds to deny them a sure 3 Heart contract. Leslie doubled. Down 1, plus 100 for them. No problem. When they make 3 Hearts, they get plus 140. But I didn't count on how wimpy the East-Wests would be at the other tables. They gave up and let North-South play and make 3 Diamonds. 

Nothing we could do about the third hand, either. We take our two Aces and that's that. At some tables, the suit was Diamonds. Two Wests played and made a 5 Diamond bid. At our table, East played 4 Hearts and made an overtrick. Not as bad,  though, as the table where West played 3 No Trump and ran all 13 tricks -- seven Diamonds and six Hearts. With a Club lead, the one North should have made since it was his longest and strongest suit, 3 No Trump goes down two. Here it is: 

South (dealer) 

Spades A-9-4-3-2; Hearts 2; Diamonds 10-4; Clubs K-Q-10-6-5.

West

Spades Q; Hearts K-7; Diamonds K-Q-J-9-8-7-5; Clubs J-4-2. 

North

Spades J-10-5; Hearts 10-8-4-3; Diamonds 6-2; Clubs A-9-7-3.

East

Spades K-8-7-6; Hearts A-Q-J-9-6-5; Diamonds A-3; Clubs 8. 

To complete our knee-scraping, the round finished with East-West making two overtricks on a 3 No Trump contract. Bottom board. Nobody else in No Trump got overtricks. 

Actually, Selina forgot that we tripped up just as badly in the very first round. She opened a Spade and I was holding a 17-point No Trump hand. We arrived at 6 Spades, then wound up being the only North-South who bid the slam and didn't make it. 

Bridge Blog 1148: Points, schmoints!

 

At the Buffalo Fall Sectional last year, the good Dr. Saleh Fetouh greeted me with the news that he had just reached 10,000 master points. If all of his points are properly aligned, that would make him a Platinum Life Master. Or maybe a Grand Life Master, if he's won in a high-level event like the Bermuda Bowl. 

It's highly unlikely that I will ever reach that exalted level, even at the rate of 1,000 points per year, like Saleh in 2024. Even the next ACBL level, Sapphire Life Master, will take 3,500 points. And not just any points. It would take 700 silver, red, gold or platinum points, half of them gold or platinum. That's a tall order. I have only 102.89 gold points and no platinum points whatsoever. I'd have to become a tournament rat to get those. 

However, I'll give a little cheer when I reach a little bitty milestone this year – 3,000 points. In tournaments, that's the dividing line between the A and the B stratifications. Since I usually play with partners with fewer points, I might still be in B if those games where the directors average us out. If they don't, we'll be swimming with the barracudas. 

In truth, in my current state of skill and the time I can devote to playing this best-of-all-possible games, I'll be happy to chalk up a couple points a month, like I did in 2024. Lo and behold, that's happened already. At our first two Friday games at the Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., club, my Canadian partner Selina and I finished second and third overall, 66.82% and 58.68% respectively, good for 1.21 and 0.73 points. 

Add to that our single online excursion into Okbridge, where we saw all the same folks we saw last time we played there in October. It can be a tough crowd, so we were overjoyed to finish sixth out of 33 pairs in a 12-board ACBL game with 57.21%. That got us another 0.54 of a point.

Bridge Blog 1147: Resolute

 

Can New Year's resolutions really be resolute? We'll find out here in 2025 as I try to revive my posts on this-here bridge blog. 

First, let's consider one of my other resolutions – making it to the tables, real and virtual. It's a modest goal, an average of once a week. So far, so good – three times in three weeks, once virtual and twice face-to-face. 

Nevertheless, how often that happens depends on circumstances beyond my control, like medical appointments and whether I've got a partner. Fridays should be constant. That's when I venture across the border to join my Canadian partner at the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines or at the spiffy Community Centre in Niagara-on-the-Lake. But last year she had a lingering health crisis and that kept us apart for several months. 

If the fates allow, the next two weeks promise to be above par. I'm booked with my Canadian partner for all three days of the Niagara Sectional Tournament in St. Catharines on Super Bowl weekend. And next week there's Friday again at NOTL and Saturday at the monthly special game at the Buffalo Bridge Center. 

Somebody at NOTL asked me yesterday why I don't play more often in Buffalo. Alas, with nearly 3,000 master points, I can only do the open games and the Buffalo Bridge Center has just two of them – Wednesday and Friday. And Wednesday's out. I work. 

Bridge Blog 1146: MIA

 

Feb. 17, 2023

I can’t believe it. I just looked into the master point races on the ACBL website and nothing at all for me in January. Not that I arranged for all that many chances to collect them. I skipped the Buffalo Winter Sectional and didn’t look for other opportunities beyond my usual dates with Canadian partner Selina Volpatti. We’re playing online on Tuesdays and Fridays and we haven’t had a particularly rewarding year.

         (Hey, wait a minute! We actually did come away with something in January, but it was in those OKBridge games, which don’t count in the ACBL races.)

         At any rate, we finally managed to shine in the eyes of the ACBL last weekend in the St. Catharines Sectional, making the most of my lone opportunity to play on Friday. Since the games were at 1 and 7:30 p.m., I could only do the afternoon session with Selina. Not our finest hour, but our 48% finish was good enough to get us a fraction of a silver point – 0.84 of one. Thank you, miracle of stratification!

         O, Canada, how I’ve missed you. This was the first time I rolled across the Peace Bridge since March 13, 2020, after which the pandemic shut everything down, including the border. Seeing all the St. Catharines folks again after such a long hiatus was a great pleasure, even though we've had virtual contact in the online games. Unlike here in Buffalo, I wasn’t alone in masking up. Although the check-in table was making sure everyone had their Covid-19 shots, I still felt better taking the precaution.

Bridge Blog 1145: A dangerous game

Email to John Bava, president of Western New York Unit 116 ACBL, after I got a text from partner Selina Volpatti telling me that she had come down with what apparently is a mild case of Covid-19 Sunday night: 

Hi, John!

My partner in the Regional just texted me this morning to say that she's come down with Covid. Bill Finkelstein suggests that I let somebody know who's more or less in charge of things. Gay Simpson thought that would be Davis Heussler, but I don't have his email address. I have yours, though, so here are the particulars. 

My partner was Selina Volpatti and we only played on Friday in the big pairs game, which means we saw pretty much the same people as North-South in the morning and East-West in the afternoon. She didn't wear a mask -- aside from me, very few players did. And she wasn't symptomatic at the time. She started noticing it Sunday. 

Not sure of the protocol on this -- do people routinely check themselves for symptoms during and after tournaments these days? -- but it seems to me that folks should be alerted to the possibility of exposure. 

Thanks,

Dale

John noted that he contacted Davis and that Bill Finkelstein also had called him. As for me, results were negative on a home test earlier today and I feel fine, but I was unmasked with Selina during lunch on Friday at a pizza and salad restaurant (Pie O' Mine and Greens on Transit Road) and in the car. Since it was such a beautiful late October day, I'm pretty sure I had the sunroof and/or the windows open.

Bridge Blog 1144: A return to the tables (Buffalo Fall Sectional Tournament)

Nine reflections on the Buffalo Fall Sectional Tournament Sept. 16 to 18 in the Main-Transit Fire Hall social hall:

1.   What do you do with real cards? After playing online bridge for 2½ years, I’m a little surprised to re-encounter the mechanics of the game – dealing, sorting the hand, giving the cards that little shuffle before they’re put back into the slots in the board and passed along to the next table. That all used to be automatic. 

2.   Am I still capable of playing with someone else? This must be what it’s like to start dating again after a long marriage. I’ve been monogamous with my Canadian partner Selina Volpatti since March 2020. The most unsettling thing about playing with Mike Silverman is that he doesn’t do Cappelletti against an opponent’s 1 No Trump opener. The second most unsettling thing is that after holding back on bidding a couple times and falling short of our best contract, I get impatient, bid more aggressively and wind up giving opponent John Ziemer the top score of 1,100 he always loves to get from me. With Selina, who’s a pushy competitor, that’s never an issue.

3.   What about Covid? Everybody has to be vaxxed. Director Brian Meyer wears face protection. So does Mike Silverman. So do I. In fact, I pull out those weird duck billed N95 models for the occasion to be extra safe. But not many other players do. When our opponents are uncovered, sometimes they ask if we prefer that they be masked. No problem, I say at first. But after the third inquiry, I change my tune. They mask up.  

4.   Can I win against real people? Mike Silverman and I can’t. Our 48.08% in the Friday morning session fell just short of getting us some fraction of a master point. Disappointing, but respectable. The afternoon feels better as we play it, but it isn’t. 43.35%. Not quite dead last.

5.   Can we hold our own against those sharks in the Swiss team game on Sunday? We have high hopes – Mike is paired with Larry Abate and Selina has crossed the border to play with me – but we’re crushed in the first two rounds. A comeback seems out of the question – instead of seven rounds of seven boards, we ‘re playing five rounds of 10 boards. Our next opponents are some other bottom dwellers and I feel guilty about how badly we trounce them. I don’t think I’ve ever won a game by 68 International Match Points before. Our final rounds are a wash – we lose to the Unit 116 whiz kids Tiger Li and Darwin Skalski by a single IMP and have the same squeak-by margin when we win the day-ending match.

6.   So was it a lost weekend? Thought so, but miracles still happen. We scratch after all. Our Swiss team effort is just good enough to come in second in the B stratification. 2.21 silver points.

7.   Was it just like it was before Covid? In a word, no. Fifteen tables in the big game Friday, half a dozen more in the novice game at the far end of the big room. Saturday had fewer, but I wasn’t there to see it. Sunday Swiss, which used to attract 20 or more teams, had only 12.

8.   Super spreader?  Airport Bridge Club manager Bill Finkelstein thought so before it happened and now, 10 days later, he’s confirming it. He tells me that two players were sent home in the middle of the day Friday with Covid symptoms. Another player who was there Friday had to bow out Saturday for the same reason. No mention of this at all by the folks running the tournament. Is this not a major breach of basic public health precautions? We should have been told.

9. Will I do another tournament? Two regionals are coming up – Buffalo in October, St. Catharines in November. Not every day – I don’t have enough vacation time left. Maybe not at all. But Canada has dropped its border restrictions and I’ll have my next booster shot by then. We’ll see.