Bridge Blog 1014: Internationally Irresolute

Now my New Year’s resolution is twice broken, once on each side of the U.S.-Canada border. On my first visit this year to the Bridge Centre of Niagara in St. Catharines, Ont., on Friday, Selina Volpatti and I limped to a 38.37% finish, for me a new low for 2018. Hope we can pick up our socks in time for the St. Catharines Sectional Tournament in two weeks.

Set aside the backsliding, however, and it’s been a profitable week point-wise – 1.80 with Dotty May on Tuesday morning, 2.19 with Gay Simpson on Wednesday, 0.86 with Marietta Kalman for our 51.67% (fourth in the B strat) on Thursday and 0.65 with Denise Slattery for our 53% (first in C) on Saturday. Total for the week of 5.50 puts me over 20 for the month – 20.53, if my calculations are correct. Irresolute, but respectable. 

Bridge Blog 1013: Falling Off the Wagon

New Year's resolutions don't last forever. My vow to have no game below 40% held up for just 23 days. It fell during the ACBL-Wide Junior  Fund Game on Tuesday afternoon at the Airport Bridge Club.

Partner Dotty May and I turned in a miserable 39.32%, particularly unfortunate in a competition where points could be won on a district level. Doubly unfortunate, since the Airport Club was the only club in District 5 taking part in the game. The winners got something like 12 points.

And just when things were going so well. I just had my second-best-ever Buffalo Sectional Tournament and in the morning game at the Airport Bridge Club, Dotty and I had a 53.75% game, first in the B strat, for 1.80 points.

Wednesday saw a bounce-back with Gay Simpson, a last-minute substitute for my regular partner, June Feuerstein, who is ailing. Gay's a much more serious player than June and our combined focus turned out to be fortuitous – first overall with 64.58%, for 2.19 points. I'm now approaching 20 points for the month. 2018 is off to a good start. 

Bridge Blog 1012: Buffalo Winter Sectional Scoring Wrap Up

Fifteen players found their way into double digits in the Buffalo Winter Sectional Tournament Jan. 18 to Jan. 20 in the Main-Transit Fire Hall, led by Shakeel Ahmad and Manju Ceylony, partners in medicine, in life and at the tables. They took away 21.19 points apiece. Last year's leader, Liz Clark, got 19.97 points, and 13 players were in double digits.

Unlike most big point winners at the Buffalo Sectionals, Shakeel and Manju did not clean up in the Sunday Swiss team game, where they were second in the B strat and earned only 2.81 of their points. Their success was in the double session team games Friday and Saturday. On Friday, they were first overall, collecting 12.72 points. Saturday they were fourth overall, second in B, good for 5.66 more.

Other leading local players included Saleh Fetouh, 15.27; Ethan Xie and Chongmin Zhang, 13.41 each; Peter and Penny Shui, 13.24 each; John Ziemer, 12.89; Bert Hargeshimer and Christy Kellogg, 10.94 each; Kamil Bishara and Dian Petrov, 10.32 each; and Judi Marshall, 10.06.

My 6.88 points put me in 28th place. In all, 146 players earned points. For a full recap, click this link.

Total table count was 153. How does this compare with recent Winter Sectionals? Last year it was 145. And in 2016, it was 136. 

Bridge Blog 1011: Buffalo Winter Sectional Day 3

It was a first. Never before have I gone in on an A team in a Swiss team event at a sectional or regional tournament. On Sunday, however, we were solidly, resolutely A: two players with more points than me – Barbara Libby (3,312) and Liz Clark (3,350) – plus Ron Henrikson (887), who punches above his weight.

We were good getting out of the gate, too, smacking down the Abate team – Larry Abate, Bob Sommerstein, Gay Simpson and Denise Slattery – by 19 International Match Points. Sure, this would put us up against the better players, but hey, we’re A!

Second round saw our pride taking a fall at the feet of some folks from Rochester who had been around all weekend, the Weiss team. They put us in our place by a margin of 12 IMPs, though we might have made it closer if Barbara and Liz had bid 3 No Trump like Jerome Weiss and Michael Carney did on a hand where we lost 10 of those IMPs. The Weiss team went on to be the big winners, outpacing even Martha and John Welte’s team, which started off with three straight 30-0 shutouts.

Chastened, we went up against the Miranda team in the third round – Joe Miranda and Usha Khurana at our table, Sandi England and JoAnne LaFay against Liz and Barb – and tasted success again by a whopping 24 IMPs. We were definitely back on track.

The round before the lunch break faced us off against the Ryan team, Mike Ryan and Judy Graf at our table, Eugene Harvey and Jim Gullo at the other table. It would have been a standoff if, on a crucial hand, I had given Ron a 4 Diamond bid instead of 3 Diamonds, showing stronger support. We could have made game, since we took 11 tricks. At the other table, it was a 6 Diamond slam, which should have gone down. At the end, the Ryan team came in third.

We still had hopes as we consumed our Firehouse subs for lunch, but an encounter with Christy Kellogg and Bert Hargeshimer in round five put an end to those. They slam dunked us by 22 IMPs, a margin we could have reduced on a pivotal unbalanced hand. I fumbled with the double card when Burt bumped Christy’s 3 Diamond pre-empt to 5 Diamonds over our 4 Spade bid, but I was void in Diamonds and unsure if they’d go down. Turns out it made 5 Spades. That cost us 11 of those 22 IMPs. We wouldn’t have won that round, but we could have been 4 victory points better. Those 4 VPs clinched fourth place for them ultimately.

With two rounds to go, I’m thinking, well, easier opponents, so how about sweeping them both 30-0? That would put us into the bonus points in the final tally. The Wortzman team didn’t cooperate. They beat us by 22-15 IMPs, though we might have won it had we persevered to 4 Hearts on a hand we let them play at 3 Spades. Or-r-r-r-r, if Jim Easton hadn’t defied convention and found the winning lead against my 6 No Trump slam, putting out his King of Clubs from a King-Queen holding instead of leading low like he should have, allowing the singleton Jack in the dummy to win the first trick. That’s what happened at the other table, where East-West took 12 tricks, even though they didn’t bid the slam.

The end of the day found us commiserating with a C team, the Bava team – John Bava and Rajat Basu at our table, Margaret Zhou and Ed Morgan at the other table. We should have steamrolled them, but three of the hands were draws and the others were offsetting minor triumphs. We finished in a 6-6 tie.

Our sorry tally of 92 Victory Points was the worst of any A team (ninth out of nine of us in this 20-team field, a meager 16th overall). We needed to be sixth overall to catch bonus points and it would have required at least 126 VPs to do it.

At least we didn’t go home empty-handed. Our 2½ wins netted each of us 0.65 of a master point, not enough to surpass my biggest-ever Buffalo sectional back in Spring 2012, but still pumping up the second-best to 6.88 silver points. 

Bridge Blog 1011-A: Sectional Afterthoughts

The Bridge Mate electronic scoring devices were a little balky at the start on Friday and didn’t register names of players on their screens all day. Director Brian Meyer said at the start of the game that he needed to nip over to Best Buy to pick up something to fix the problem. They worked fine on Saturday.

Speaking of non-operational, one of the hands-free soap dispensers in the men’s room was inert all weekend. When I mentioned it to the maintenance guy on Saturday, he said it needed a battery and they didn’t have one.

The Bridge Mates weren’t needed Sunday. The Unit 116 board has decided to permanently abandon their experiment in pre-dealt hands for the Swiss team game. The caddies are back among us. Shuttling the cards around were Brian Meyer’s #2 and #3 daughters, who continue to be the best of caddies – quick and cheerful.

Once again, food trucks dropped by for lunch, different ones each day Friday and Saturday. Friday brought the Center Street BBQ Truck from Batavia, whose $10 pig plate was just what this piggy needed. Saturday saw the original Buffalo truck – Lloyd’s Tacos – which doesn’t round off its prices to the nearest buck like Center Street does. You’d think they’d get tired of pumping out nickels, dimes and quarters.

Sunday’s lunch was pre-ordered from Firehouse Subs and was accompanied by copious condiments (good mayonnaise from Duke’s, which is far superior to the Heinz mayo at Panera’s) and tickets for a free drink and bag of chips for anyone who comes to their shop and buys a sub. I’ll do it.

Attendance? There were 24 tables for Swiss teams last year, only 20 this year. The Friday-Saturday two-session games were a little bigger, though. No official totals yet, but the overall numbers should be pretty much the same.  

Bridge Blog 1010: Buffalo Winter Sectional Day 2

I began calling Saturday partner Art Matthies my chief strategy adviser, because he’s the one who wanted to play the side game, the single session pairs, a group that’s very much an appendix to the main event, lined up as they are against the wall furthest from the director’s table.

There aren’t as many points to be earned there. In the morning session, there were only eight tables, versus 20-plus in the big game. In the afternoon, there were only 4½. However, our chances of earning points there are much better. We’re big fish in a little pond, since most of the players are weaker. In the big game, we’re minnows swimming with the sharks.

Sure enough, we gobble up the field in the morning game. We roar to 66.67%, best score I’ve had in long, long time. We’re first overall and rake in 3.30 silver points.  

We fade in the afternoon, though. My mind drifts. Apparently Art’s mind does, too. On one hand, he fails to win a trick with his Ace of Hearts, playing low, then sees that Ace get trumped later, granting our opponents, Larry and Dottie Soong, a nice gift.

This time we don’t even clear 50%. We’re 49.31%, but it ties us with the Soongs for fourth place overall and third in the B strat. Miraculously, we earn points. 1.03. Total for the tournament so far – 6.23 silver points.

Over in the two-session pairs, the big winners were Chongmin Zhang and 12-year-old Ethan Xie, who gathered 13.41 points. Second were the morning winners, Judi Marshall and John Ziemer, with 10.06. Out of 46 pairs in the big game, only five of them earned more points than Art and I did.

Swiss teams coming up Sunday with Ron Henrikson as my partner again and Barbara Libby as a teammate. We’ll earn something, to be sure. This could be one of my best sectional tournaments ever.

How silvery are my sectionals? Let’s go to the history books.

Fall 2017 – 1.98.

Spring 2017 – 3.51.

Winter 2017 – 5.98.

Fall 2016 – 1.52.

Spring 2016 – 0.58.

Winter 2016 – 3.22.

Fall 2015 – 1.80.

Spring 2015 – 1.87.

Winter 2015 – 1.03.

Fall 2014 – 2.90.

Spring 2014 – 2.13.

Winter 2014 – 1.68.

Fall 2013 – 0.78.

Spring 2013 – 2.70.

Winter 2013 – 1.70.

Fall 2012 – 3.78.

Spring 2012 – 7.52!!!

Winter 2012 – 0.83.

Fall 2011 – 1.11.

Spring 2011 – 1.80.

Winter 2011 – 2.13.

So if Sunday Swiss pays off with more than 1.29 points, this will be personally historic. Meanwhile, I ran those totals through the calculator and divided the sum by 21, just to see what my average point count for a Buffalo Sectional Tournament has been for the past seven years. Turns out it’s a fraction under 2.41. 

Bridge Blog 1009: Buffalo Winter Sectional Day 1

Where are the Canadians? Aside from Vera Carpenter and Rashid Khan, who have come down from Toronto, the only other player from the Land of the Maple Leaf is Linda Burroughsford. Although she lives in Fort Erie, Ont., she always plays on our side of the bridge so we tend to think of her as one of our own.

On the other hand, several Rochesterians found their way to the Main-Transit Fire Hall. Partner Ron Henrikson and I encountered at least three pairs as we played East-West in the big two-session pairs game in the morning and a couple more when we were North-South in the afternoon.

No matter where they came from, the double session game had more than its share of heavy hitters and they did well. Saleh Fetouh and David Hemmer had 65.47% and won 3.55 silver points. Dian Petrov and Kamil Bishara were third with 52.78%. Shakeel Ahmad and Manju Ceylony were fourth overall, second in the B strat, with 60.15%.

Go down the list far enough and you find me and Ron – 14th overall, seventh in B with 53.14%, winning 0.93 of a point. Not a bad start at all. In our section, we’re sixth overall, third in B.

The afternoon doesn’t feel as good. In fact, it’s kind of dull. This time we’re third in B North-South in our section with 51.96% and our overall score for morning and afternoon boosts our point total to 1.90. We’re 13th overall, but didn’t get our points there. We made them from being sixth in B.

Satisfying, but hardly overwhelming. Dian Petrov and Kamil Bishara, who finished second overall, won 9.54 points. Shakeel Ahmad and Manju Ceylony, who were ahead of them, won 12.72.