I received my driver’s license on August 17, 1964, my sixteenth birthday. From then until May of 2025 I was involved as the driver in nine accidents. One accident occurred when the car was unoccupied.
I was somewhat shocked when I constructed the list that the number was so large. Have I been a terrible driver? I have never thought so. The total damage from the accidents was not very great. I have never received a ticket from the police for any kind of moving violation. No one was ever injured in any of them. Furthermore, I have driven a large number of miles in rental cars throughout the country, and I never had an accident in any of them.
The first accident on the list occurred within the first month or so of my legal driving. My mother let me take her white Oldsmobile 88 to a dental appointment. I don’t know what she was thinking. The office was about two miles from our house, but I was probably the youngest legal driver in the county, and I had no experience at entering and exiting narrow parking spaces. While I was maneuvering the Olds from the parking space its right bumper scraped the car in the adjoining space and caused a little damage to the other car but none on the Olds.
I drove very little for the next eight years. I did not have a car of my own, and I seldom borrowed my mother’s car. After I got out of the army in April of 1972 I purchased a Datsun 1200 that I called Greenie. I drove it to Connecticut.
I had two accidents with Greenie. The first one happened with my dad in the car a month or two after I arrived in Connecticut. I had stopped at a gasoline station in East Hartford. As Greenie pulled out of the station it ran into a car that I did not see. There was a little damage to both cars. Although I was clearly at fault, the policeman declined to give me a ticket. The damage was repaired, but the paint never quite matched, and the repairman did not notice that the tie rod on one wheel had been bent. That prevented Greenie from passing the safety inspection until a different repairman had bent it back while I waited as the only other person in the shop in the late hours of Christmas eve.
The other accident was a spinout in the snow on I-91 just south of the I-84 interchange in Hartford in the winter of 1972. Sue was in Greenie with me when I lost control of the vehicle. Its progress was terminated when it struck a guide rail. The guide rail had a small dent, but Greenie was not damaged. This was the scariest of all of the accidents.
Greenie later executed an impromptu 180-degree turn on an ice sheet on what was subsequently labeled I-384. On that occasion the car came to rest in the breakdown lane facing the wrong direction. Fortunately there was little traffic, and Greenie boasted a very tight turning radius.
There was only one accident during the time that we lived in Michigan. After Greenie and Sue’s Dodge Colt expired, Sue purchased a Plymouth Duster that was nearly as large as Greenie and the Colt put together. I called it “the tank”. We shared it until the early eighties.
The accident occurred on New Year’s morning, within an hour of midnight. The tank was parked directly outside of our house in Detroit. Sue and I were watching television. The people on TV were getting prepared to celebrate with Midwesterners when we heard a loud crash coming from the street. We hurried to the door and went outside. The young man who lived across the street also heard the crash. He identified a car slowly heading east on Chelsea as the culprit.
We found the Duster undamaged in some bushes in our neighbor’s front yard. I jogged after it and took note of its license plate number and the house into which the occupants had entered.
We called the police of course. The officer who responded to the call eventually went to the house that I identified. When he came back he told us that they had told him that our car had jumped out in front of them while they were peacefully driving on Chelsea. This was, of course, complete bullsh*t, and he knew it. However, although most of the people in the house were inebriated, but he said that he could not tell who was driving. This was typical of our encounters with the Detroit Police Department.
I also had a trivial accident while driving the tank across the Bulkeley (pronounced “Buckley” by the natives) Bridge after we moved back to Connecticut. In heavy traffic the Duster was stopped on the bridge. I felt a bump coming from the rear. I got out of the car and cautiously looked at the rear of my car. I told the other driver that there was no damage. Steam was pouring out of his vehicle’s engine, however. I just drove off and let him deal with it.
Sue and I were happy to replace the Duster with a pair of Toyota Celicas in the eighties. I did not trade blows with any other vehicles, but I did cause some damage to mine in a parking lot at Keiler Advertising in Farmington, CT. The incident has been described here.
In the nineties Sue and I traded in our Celicas for Saturns. I had an accident in mine in the parking lot of the Geissler’s grocery store in East Windsor, CT. Its current configuration is shown at the right.
The store is in the upper left corner of the image. I had finished shopping and was driving on the exit toward Bridge Street. Unbeknownst to me the lane in the lot that runs parallel to Bridge Street continued into the exit lane where it was later blocked by a tree. There should have at least been a stop sign there, but there wasn’t. I had been to Geissler’s many times; I had never seen anyone exit the parking lot from that lane. My attention was on the Bridge Street traffic, which sometimes makes the required left turn a little difficult.
On this occasion a Lincoln Continental suddenly appeared in front of me, and the front of my car struck its front panel. The driver was not injured, but his car definitely was. It was not drivable. Mine was not seriously damaged, but the hood was bent enough that it needed replacement. Once again the policeman opted not to give me a ticket. He said that there were often accidents at this spot because the visibility was not good, and there were no traffic signs.
President Trump recently voiced his interest in becoming the next Supreme Pontiff. He even posted a picture of himself in papal garb. Since I know as much about the history of the papacy1 as just about anyone in the United States, I decided to write a blog entry that answers questions that people might have about the feasibility and details of a Trump pontificate.
Definition
Il Papa and Il Duce are seated.
Who is the pope? This is an easy one. The pope is—and has always been—the Bishop of Rome. He is also the ruler of the Papal State, the smallest country in the world, by virtue of a treaty signed by Pope Pius XI, Benito Mussolini, and others on February 11, 1929.
From the ninth century through 1870 the Papal States consisted of a band of land that stretched from Italy’s western coast all the way to the Adriatic Sea. The popes ruled that entire area even in the seventy years in the fourteenth century in which they resided in France.
So, the pope officially has three jobs—Bishop of Rome, monarch of the world’s smallest country, and Supreme Pontiff of the Christian Church2.
How many popes have there been? The first name on the official list is St. Peter the apostle. Francis was #266. However, only 264 men have been pope before the newly elected Leo XIV. Benedict IX, my favorite pope3, is on the list three times.
Men? I heard that there was a Pope Joan. Almost certainly not. The first stories of Pope Joan started appearing half a millennium after she supposedly had been elected pope. They are inconsistent with one another and contradicted by more reliable accounts.
Election
How is the pope elected? Since 1150 the popes have been elected by the Sacred College of Cardinals. Previously the rules were quite loose. Often the local clergy and other nobles voted for the new pope. Occasionally he was appointed by an emperor or other ruler. The method used to select most of the popes of the first few centuries is unknown. Since 1256 the elections have been held in a “conclave”, which means that they occurred in a locked room.
Up until the end of the nineteenth century powerful European monarchs were allowed to exercise unofficial veto power over the conclave. Even Hitler attempted this, but he was unable to prevent Pope Pius XII’s election.
A pope can change the rules for the next conclave. Pope John Paul II limited the right to vote to cardinals who were under 80 years old. That effectively eliminated almost everyone appointed by his predecessors.
Is the Holy Spirit involved? The cardinals pray that God (in the “person” of the Holy Spirit) will inspire them to select the best person as Supreme Pontiff. Since the beginning of the twentieth century the popes have been relatively competent and good-hearted. There have been crises, but they were not as serious as what faced the popes of previous centuries, and the Church adapted. No one considers most of the popes who lived from the dark ages through 1900 as saintly. Very few have been canonized.
How long does the election take? One was completed in a day. The longest conclave lasted for over two years.
Who appoints the cardinals? The pope, and there are no restrictions on the number of appointments. 133 participated in the election of Leo XIV.
What is the term of office for cardinals? No limit. Most died in office after many years. A few have been murdered, and a few have resigned.
The pope’s throne does not look comfortable.
Who is eligible for the election? In theory, anyone can be elected. However, every bishop, including the Bishop of Rome, must be ordained as a priest. President Trump, in my understanding, could be voted in as the pope, but he would then need to go through a number of ceremonies before he could sit on the Cathedra Petri. In the first place he would need to be baptized. Adult baptisms require classes to make sure that the convert understands the Church’s Creed. He would need to receive the Eucharist, and before that he would need to confess his sins (if any) and receive absolution from a priest. This could be problematic since, to my knowledge, he never has admitted a mistake or flaw of any kind, and the priest will demand both contrition and “a firm purpose of amendment”.
I don’t know if he would need to receive the sacrament of Confirmation. It entails a slap on the cheek by a bishop. He would definitely need to be ordained as a priest, a ceremony that requires a commitment to chastity and obedience to the clerical hierarchy.
Trump’s marriages should not be a problem They did not occur within the sacrament of matrimony and were therefore never sanctioned by the Church. He would be considered single.
If he had been married to Melania in the Church, it still might be all right. St Peter was married and, according to the Bible, had daughters. Pope Adrian II’s wife and daughter lived with him in the Lateran Palace. That setup may sound ideal for a situation comedy, but in fact both his wife and daughter were abducted and murdered. All of this happened in the ninth century, and it barely made the top ten list of bizarre happenings in the pontificates of that era.
As far as I know, the thirty-four felony convictions will not be held against him. Several popes had impressive rap sheets.
Powers
What would his powers be? Almost unlimited. He could appoint cardinals and other prelates. He could also direct the Church’s riches in any direction that he wanted. Pope John Paul II secretly sent tens of millions of dollars from the Vatican Bank to help finance Lech Wałęsa’s political campaign against the Communists.
The pope also has unrestricted use of the popemobile, but he does not have a sidekick, a papal utility belt, or any super powers.
Pope Urban II’s call for the First Crusade at Clermont was perhaps the most effective speech ever.
Isn’t there anything special that only the pope could do? Well, yes. He could call a crusade. That was very popular in the first few centuries of the second millennium. In those days the nobility who had standing armies could be persuaded to fight the pope’s battles, and hoi polloi were responsive to the promise of indulgences that could be transferred to relatives. Hundreds of thousands of people undertook the long journey from Europe to the Levant, mostly on foot. A high percentage never made it back. It is hard to imagine how any pontiff could pull that off again.
Nemesis of Innocent III and Robin Hood.
I thought of another power. In the thirteenth century Pope Innocent III5, who called a few of those crusades, put the entire nation of England and Wales under interdict for six years. At the time Britain was a Christian, country, but the pope’s actions meant that none of its residents were allowed to receive any sacraments during that period. They were effectively damned. The tactic did not work as hoped; King John seized seized Church property and income.
I suppose that a pope could reinstate the inquisition, but that would require a great deal of p.r. work. The historical one was somewhat effective because the civil governments agreed to enforce the sentences of the inquisition’s tribunals.
What about infallibility? Since the First Vatican Council in 1869-71 the pope has been considered infallible when he makes official statements concerning faith and morals. That authority has been used very seldom. Pope Pius IX used it to confirm the doctrine of the “immaculate conception”, which asserts that Mary the mother of Jesus was born without Original Sin. Pope Pius X used it to confirm that Mary did not die; instead she was “assumed” into heaven while still alive. So, if archeologists ever claimed to find Mary’s bones, no Catholic could believe them. Pope John XXIII said that he would never use this authority, and he never did.
Restrictions
Would he need to live in Rome? Absolutely not. He could stay in Mar-a-Lago, the White House, or anywhere else. For seventy years the popes all lived in Avignon in the Provence region of France. None of them ever set foot in Italy.
Would he need to wear a cassock, a miter, and all that other stuff? I doubt it. Who would make him do it?
Would there be a conflict of interest with his presidential responsibilities? Is this a trick question? He could probably even work the crossed keys into the presidential seal.
Removal
How can the pope be removed from office? A few councils of bishops and other high-ranking clergy have successfully declared popes as illegitimate, but that approach has not been tried for many centuries. A few popes were also violently removed from office, but that has also not been attempted in recent centuries. Basically, it’s a lifetime gig, but the movie Godfather III insisted that John Paul I, who reigned for only thirty-three days, was assassinated.
1. I even addressed the subject in a very long book entitled Stupid Pope Tricks: What Sr. Mary Immaculata Never Revealed About the Papacy. It has never been published per se, but I have posted it here.
2. The Orthodox Church has not recognized this last role since the Great Schism of 1054. Of course the various protestant sects also call themselves Christians, but they do not recognize the pope’s religious authority.
3. I also wrote a first-person historical novel that featured Benedict IX. Ben 9 is posted here.
4. Adrian V is on the current list, but he died before being ordained a priest. I have never seen an explanation of this anomaly. He only lived 38 days after being consecrated in July of 1276.
5. As far as I know, Innocent III is the only pope with an action figure. I own one.
Still under construction. The first event of 2025 was a five-day mishmash scheduled for Mansfield, MA, from Tuesday February 18 through Saturday February 22. It featured a limited regional for non-Life Masters and a contemporaneous open sectional. I was not … Continue reading →
Still under construction.
The first event of 2025 was a five-day mishmash scheduled for Mansfield, MA, from Tuesday February 18 through Saturday February 22. It featured a limited regional for non-Life Masters and a contemporaneous open sectional. I was not eligible for the former and was not interested in the latter because of the length of the drive, the cost and location of the hotel, had the lack of interesting events.
It also included qualifying tournaments for each of the four divisions of the Grand National Teams event. I definitely would have been interested in putting together a team for the GNT if I could play in Flight B, which had always been limited to players with less than 2,500 masterpoints. At the last Executive Committee meeting in the fall Mark Aquino, the Regional Director, had announced that the limit would be raised to 3,000, but he emphasized that it had not officially been changed yet, and there was some opposition. So, I used Google to find the official Conditions of Contest. That led me to this website1, which clearly stated on page 4 that the limit was still 2,500. A few weeks before the event I learned that the CofC was erroneous. Evidently whoever was responsible for posting it never bothered to fix it. When I mentioned this to Sally Kirtley, the tournament manager, she was concerned. She told me that whoever was managing the partnerships could probably find a partner for me. I said that it was too late to put a reasonably good team together. I had no intention of driving all the way to Manchester to play in a one-day Swiss2 in which I had no chance of doing well. The worst imaginable situation for me would have been to be part of a team that, even if it did well, the other members might have no interest in representing the district at the North American Bridge Championships in the summer.
So, since I was no longer on either the Executive Committee or the Board of Delegates, I had no reason to attend the event in Mansfield.
The district’s first real regional tournament was scheduled for the Wellsworth Hotel in Southbridge, MA, from Tuesday, April 22, through Sunday, April 27. The 35-mile drive was by far the easiest of all the tournaments for me, and the schedule included plenty of team games (except for on Saturday. I was therefore very interested in playing there.
I learned more than a month before the event that Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider wanted to team up with me on every day except Thursday. That sounded like an excellent plan. The endurance of the 76-year-old me was much less than it had been earlier. A day for napping in the middle would be greatly appreciated.
I quickly enlisted Eric Vogel as a partner. He committed to play on Tuesday and Wednesday, but he was not available on the weekend. He later needed to rescind his commitment. I was, fortunately, able to get Abhi Dutta to fill in. Mike Heider told me that Helen Benson3, with whom he sometimes played at the Newtown Bridge Club, might be available. I contacted her, and she agreed. She played a much simpler convention card than most that I was accustomed to, but after a fairly lengthy exchange of ideas by email, we agreed upon a very limited set of conventions.
On Monday evening I had purchased a Caesar salad and a chicken wrap at Big Y in Enfield. My recollection was that the hotel’s luncheon buffet was not that good, and I was not enthusiastic about standing in line. On Tuesday morning I left the house at about 8:10. I did not anticipate a lot of traffic, but I was ready to go, and so I left. I listened to Hector Berlioz’s epic opera, Les Troyens. As usual, I stopped at McDonald’s in West Stafford for a sausage biscuit with egg. It cost almost a dollar more than I paid in Hartford, but it was quick and tasty. I arrived at the Wellsworth a little after 9 o’clock. Jim, Mike, and Eric all arrived a few minutes later.
We were scheduled to play in the Open Swiss on both days. On Tuesday we had a very unfortunate draw in the morning. We began by playing against the wunderkinds, Eric and Jeff Xiao and their formidable partners, professional David Caprera4, and another fine player, Max Siline. We lost by 18 victory points, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Our schedule in the rest of the matches was relatively easy. We did not face any of the other top teams, and in the last two rounds we even faced teams from Flight C. In the end we as a B team finished in second place behind only the Xiao team. We were award 6.3 gold points. I was in a good mood for the drive home, but I had started well at regional tournaments before and too often had seen poor results later.
The drive to Southbridge on Wednesday was nearly identical to the drive on Tuesday. The only difference was that I listened to the part of the opera set in Carthage, and it featured Dido rather than Cassandra.
Abhi arrived only a few minutes before nine, but we had played together enough that we only had to review a few items.
Because there were two Swiss events on Wednesday (Open and under 2500), I expected the number of teams in the Open event to be smaller than on Tuesday. I was wrong. There were seventeen, three more than on the previous day. The format was seven rounds of seven-board matches. We were in the lowest strat, which was labeled Y. We won our first match against an A team, but we then lost to Sheila Gabay’s team, but only by four imps. In the third round we tied a team that we had defeated on Tuesday. We had a win, a loss, and a tie, but our total victory points was above average.
We won the next three rounds. In the last round we played against two old friends of mine, Chris Apitz and Ellen Dilbert. We lost the match by 18, but it would have been a lot closer if I had not made a defensive error.on the second-to-last hand. Ellen was playing a doubled 5♦ contract. She had one trump and ♣9 on the board as well as some hearts and spades. Clubs had never been led. She led low to the 9. I had the ace and a small one. Thinking that my partner could beat the 9, I ducked, and it held the trick. We set them 500, but if it had been 800, we would have only lost the match by 4.
As it was we finished with the very respectable score of 74 victory points, which placed us third in X and second in Y. If I had played that ace, we would have finished second in X and first in Y. Still, we earned another 5.94 gold points.
The most amazing match of the event occurred in the seventh round. The Xiao team had lapped the field with an incredible total of 105 victory points (out of a possible 120) in the first six matches. However, in the last round they faced Sheila Gabay’s team. Sheila’s team won the last match by an astounding 42 imps and vaulted into second place.
On the way home I stopped at the Big Y near the McDonald’s in West Stafford to pick up a salad and a wrap for lunches on Friday and Saturday. I was shocked to discover that all of the other stores in that strip mall were unoccupied.
I stayed home on Thursday and took a few naps. I also walked four miles.
The only differences between the journey on Friday morning and the first two trips were the fact that Dido had stepped onto the pyre and I narrowly avoided having the torture of trailing a NETTS truck before it turned onto Route 83 in Somers.
Helen and her husband, who works in ecology.
I finally got to meet Helen Benson in the hotel’s ballroom. We had only a few items left to discuss before we got the horrendous news that we were in the top bracket of the knockout. Worse yet was the news that we were the lowest seeded of the seven teams, which necessitated that we play in three consecutive three-ways. We never even got to change tables. We sat at table C5 for the entire day.
In the last round we were forced to play Mark Aquino and Bill Braucher. It was more enjoyable to talk with them than to get pounded at the bridge table.
It was not a total loss. We won one match. It was against the Luo team that we had defeated once and tied once.
I went home discouraged, but I was hopeful about our chances in the Bracketed Pairs event on Friday. Surely we would not be in the top bracket. There were no other events scheduled that day.
The difference between Friday and Saturday was striking. Helen and I were East-West during both sessions, and we started at table 1 in both sessions. Our opponents on both occasion were Judy McNutt and Eli Jolley. The most amazing hand for me was Board #2 in the afternoon session.
We were bidding clubs, and they were bidding spades. We bid them all the way up to the five level before we gave up. After the hand I mentioned that the LAW of total Tricks predicted that we should be able to take ten tricks in clubs. If so, we should have bid 6♣. We would have only gone down two, and even if they doubled us, that would be better for us than the 650 that we lost for their vulnerable game.
However, it is quite obvious that East-West cannot come close to taking ten tricks with clubs as trumps. There is no way to avoid losing one spade, two hearts, and three diamonds. The LAW is off by three tricks! Eli said that the law tends to break down at the six level, but that has never been my experience. Furthermore, the East-West holdings do not seem to be exceptionally “impure”. It is true that the two honors in spades could just as well have been spot cards. Neither of South’s singletons produce any tricks on defense. Maybe the abundance of worthless shortness is the answer.
Helen did not participate in the discussion. I think that she might not be familiar with the workings of the LAW. She said that she had not read Larry Cohen’s classic book, To Bid or Not to Bid.
We were the top East-West team in the morning and second in the afternoon. That was good, but it was not as good as the performance of Pete Matthews and his partner, who won the event while sitting North-South both sessions. Still, we won over 13 masterpoints.
Jim and Mike had a bad morning, but they improved in the afternoon. We were all in pretty good spirits about the last event of the tournament, the Bracketed Swiss on Sunday.
I was the captain of our team. We were in the second bracket, as I hoped, but I was quite surprised that six of the other seven teams had more points than we did. So, we could expect a lot of tough matches. The format was six rounds of eight-board matches. We would therefore not play one of the other teams.
We actually won four of our six matches. That would ordinarily be good enough to allow us to squeak into the overall awards, but these results were unusual. One team lost all its matches. Unfortunately we were beaten badly in the last match by a team that was well behind us. I was very tired at that point, and I struggled mightily to maintain my concentration. Jim and Mike said that six days of bridge—they did not take Thursday off—had taken the toll on them as well.
We ended up with 60 victory points—exactly average. I was surprised to discover that we had defeated both the first- and second-place teams. We were mired in the next group. It was small consolation that we won a slightly larger match award than any of them.
All in all, this was one of my most successful regional tournaments. I had a pretty good time. I would play with Helen again if I had the chance.
Newton
Warwick
Norwich
1. The erroneous CofC was still available through Google as of April of 2025.
2. Prior to 2020 the GNT Flight B qualifier always was spread over two days. The second day was a four-team knockout. There was no GNT in 2020. In 2021 through 2024 it had been held online using a format that I tolerated in 2021. I planned to play in 2022, but the pair that had agreed to play with Ken Leopold and me reneged on the agreement. I was not eligible for Flight B in 2023 and 2024.
3. She went by Helen, but her real name was Elena DiBissi Benson. She was born in the Abruzzo region of Italy. I told her that I had been there. It was true, but on the South Italy bus tour that Sue and I took in 2011 we only drove through the southern part of the region on our way from Tivoli to Vieste.
4. I happened to overhear David, while he was talking with Eric and Jeff about the card that they would be playing, mention that he was born and raised in Southbridge, and his father was the town attorney.
The first year of my three-year term on the Hartford Bridge Club’s Board of Trustees has been posted here.
Ben Bishop.
The officers for fiscal 2023 were John Willoughby (president), Ben Bishop (vice-president), Eric Vogel (treasurer), and Ann Lohrand (secretary). The first three were new. The new trustees were Rob Stillman and Diane Tracy. The returning trustees were Nancy Calderbank, Carole Amaio, Bill Wininger, and myself.
I was unable to attend the first meeting on November 15, 2022, because I had committed to play in the first Spectacle Regional in Southbridge, MA, with Sally Kirtley. It was a pretty big mistake to schedule the meeting for the first day of the nearest regional tournament.
A new computer was purchased for the office. Ben installed it.
The mentoring program was again active. The Sunday High-Low game has been a successful adjunct to it.
The club decided to investigate holding a limited sectional in the Spring. Linda Starr was running it. I told her that I would help with publicity. The board also approved her idea for a game with a celebratory aspect on the afternoon of December 31.
December
1. My adventures at this tournament have been recorded here.
The first tournament of the year was held in Johnston, RI, on the weekend of February1-2. I had no interest in playing in the pairs game on Saturday. Abhi Dutta asked me to team up with him and his partner, Vipin Mayar. I was pretty certain that Eric Vogel would not want to play on Sunday, and so I asked John Lloyd again. The four of us had played in a sectional at the same location in September 2024. That adventure has been described here.
John and I again agreed to meet at the Park and Ride lot on Route 32 near I-84, this time at 8:45. Since John had driven from there to Johnston in September, I volunteered to drive this time. I was a little worried about the return trip. My cataracts had recently been diagnosed, and some kind of precipitation was expected.
I arrived at the lot seven minutes late. It was completely my fault, and I apologized. I left a minute or two after I planned. I planned on stopping at the McDonald’s in the Scitico shopping center, but I missed the turn from Taylor Rd., and when I passed it on Route 190 there was a line. So, I decided to keep going and stop at the one in West Stafford.
A feared sight in Somers and Enfield.
Unfortunately, I found myself two cars behind a NETTTS truck2. We only followed it as far as Somers, but its still cost us another five minutes or so as it poked along at 25-30 mph on Route 190.
There was also a slow-moving line at the West Stafford McDonald’s as well. I lost at least another five or ten minutes there.
No, thanks.
The worse news was that they messed up my order. Instead of the sausage biscuit with egg that I always ordered, they gave me a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit. The bacon was tasteless, I don’t like McD’s cheese, and the biscuit had been hardened by time under the heat lamp.
I drove as fast as I reasonably could the rest of the way, but I did not arrive at the parking lot until 8:52. The rest of the trip was uneventful, but it was 9:55 by the time that we reached the Johnston Senior Center. I gave my credit card to John and parked the car. I then got my materials from the back seat. The lunch that I had prepared was there, but I could not find my convention card holder, which contained our convention card, old scoresheets, and my mechanical pencil. I was almost certain that I had remembered to place it there, but I could not find it, and I had no time to spend searching.
We were, of course, the last of the twenty-four teams to register. After a fair amount of effort I found our table, which was U12. John gave me back my credit card, and I then went back to the registration area to obtain a scoresheet and little golf pencil.
One opponent informed us that he had only played in one or two previous team games. His partner did not even know how to keep score. We were scheduled to play eight rounds of six boards. In the first round they bid and made several games that seemed unremarkable to me. Afterwards I told John to compare without me; I intended to search for my convention card holder. My scoresheet was unreadable anyway. I could not write legibly with that tiny pencil on bare paper.
I could not find the convention card holder. Our second assignment was at the same table. I was shocked to learn that we had decisively lost the first round. Usually I am a good judge of our performance. We did, however, win the second round in a close match.
I could not believe the team that we drew for our third round—a team of A players from the Hartford Bridge Club. John and I played against Tom Gerchman and Lesley Myers. Our teammates faced Doug Deacon and Bob Hughes. I did not think that we played well enough to win. I was shocked that our teammates had scored +1700 on the first hand. Evidently Doug and Bob had a disastrous misunderstanding that got doubled. So, after three of eight rounds we had two wins.
We lost the fourth match. I made a serious error in the play. I then ate lunch by myself.
We won only one match in the afternoon. We played against two ladies. John was late getting to the table, and I had painfully shuffled at least one deck at every table. I refused to shuffle again and left the deck for John. He arrived a minute or two later, during which time I had to listen to my LHO declaim about shuffling in spite of the fact that she had arthritis.
That one victory was taken away from us by the director, Tim Hill. On the crucial hand John opened 1♥. The lady to my right bid 2♣. I doubled. When the arthritic opponent asked what my double meant, John hemmed and hawed and then said, “I think that that was a support double for my hearts.”
They ended up playing in a notrump contract. After the play ended, I announced that they had received erroneous information. I had made a negative double showing at least four spades, not a support double showing three hearts. I told them that they could call the director if they felt damaged. They did. Tim took the board to see if their claim as being damaged was legitimate. This took such a long time that we ended up playing on five of the six boards. The ladies complained loudly about this.
Tim later explained to me that there were so many ways that the hand could have gone that he could not determine whether they were damaged. He said that the law said that in that case the party that gave the wrong information gets an average minus. We ended up losing three imps and the match.
At the end of the last frustrating mach I was just ready to hit the road immediately. Fortunately there was no bad weather for the drive back. I had no difficulty whatsoever.
Connecticut’s first tournament was scheduled for the last weekend in March, beginning on Friday the 28th, in Orange. I was on the tournament committee, chaired by Cindy Lyall, that planned and marketed this event. The marketing part was previously handled by the communications director, Ken Steele, who had resigned. Bill Segraves, the president of the Connecticut Bridge Association, said in an email that the communications committee, of which I was a member, was no longer functioning. That was news to me.
I did not really care what was sent to the players with more than 500 masterpoints. They were probably familiar with CBA sectionals. They just needed to know the dates and where to find the flyer. I volunteered to write an email to be sent to the players with less than 500 masterpoints in February. I composed them in HTML for my MailChimp account. I sent a test version (posted here) to the other members of the committee. They all seemed to like it a lot. Well, almost everyone liked ti. John Lloyd thought that it was too long, and Cornelia Guest did not like the phrase “less than 500 masterpoints”3.
Unfortunately, Bill wrote that “Mike is not authorized to send the email.” So, I had to rework the text to use Pianola to send it. Since I never received the email itself, I was not able to post it. The text is posted here. I asked for the photo of the playing area to be included. Even with that, I think that the final version was better than nothing, but it was a poor substitute for my original submission.
Early in the year Eric Vogel agreed to play with me in both pairs sessions on Friday and Saturday. I sent emails to the usual suspects concerning a partner and teammates for the Sunday Swiss. Joan Brault agreed to play with me, but the only nibble that I had for teammates was an email from Cornelia Guest, the CBA’s tournament coordinator, that Joel Wolfe was looking for teammates. I immediately sent him an email to see if he was interested in teaming up with Joan and me, but he never responded. That was quite disappointing. Prior to the pandemic I had always played in the team game on Sunday, and nearly always I had a very enjoyable time.
On Friday morning I fixed myself a sandwich of corned beef, Swiss cheese, and lettuce and inserted it into my backpack along with a bag of Utz potato chips. I left the house at 8:15. The traffic was lighter than I expected, and the construction area south of I-84 posed no difficulty. I made my usual stop at McDonald’s in Cromwell. The price was $.11 cheaper than in Hartford and much cheaper than at any of the three stores in Enfield. I arrived at St. Barbara’s Church in Orange, CT, at a little after 9:30. Eric was already in line to purchase our entries, the cost of which had risen to $18 per person per session.
Eric and I had recently revised our approach to slam bidding when we had a fit in a major suit. Previously we had leapt to game to show a minimal holding. Instead jumps in the major suits would show Picture Bids—a high honor in the trump suit and a strong side suit. Our approach to bidding of controls was also changed slightly. This approached was recommended by Vic Quiros in a series of columns in the Bridge Bulletin.
In the morning session on Friday we sat East-West. We had two opportunities within the first six hands to put our new methods into practice. On hand #12 I opened 1♦ in the West chair. Eric bid 1♥. I bid 1NT. Eric could have put in the game force by bidding 2♦, but he elected to bid 4♣. I was not sure what it meant. I bid 4♥, and he just jumped to six. This was exactly the kind of thing that we wanted to avoid. We got 79 percent of the masterpoints, but we could have done better.
If he had bid 2♦, I would have bid 2♥, and he would have known that we had nine hearts. Then after a couple of exchanged cue bids, he could have visualized thirteen tricks and bid the granny.
On hand #16 I opened 1♥, Eric bid 2♦. I rebid hearts. He used Kickback to determine that I had the three missing key cards. He then bid 6NT.
Since we were already forced to game, I think that he should have bid the cheapest control, which was in spades. I could bid 3♦ to show the ace. He has the ♣K to show, but he must bid at the four-level. I would bid 4♥ to show a control. After he bid 5♦, it would be time to put up or shut up. I have not yet told him about my other two heart honors, had he still seemed interested in continuing. I was in a bidding mood that day. I think that I would have bid 7NT.
The other interesting hand in the morning was #22. Eric and I got am undeservedly good score on it because not only did our opponents not find the game in spades, they also took only nine tricks. Don’t ask me to name the tricks that we took.
Shekhar Rao asked me how he and his partner, Shashank Srinivasamurthy, could have bid the spade game with the North-South cards. They had been playing in the limited point game. After examining the results I told him that only one of the fifteen N-S pairs in the open section accomplished that feat with 22 points and a seven-fit, and they were not considered one of the better pairs when it came to bidding.
I took advantage of the opportunity to explain to the guys that they needed to have an agreement about what a preempt in the fourth seat would show. It cannot be strictly preemptive because both of the opponents have passed. So, it should probably show a minimum opening hand with six pieces. Bidding at the one-level and then rebidding the same suit at the two-level would show at least one trick extra. So, if responder had invitational values, he should be looking for game after that sequence.
For the morning session Eric and I scored a little above 51 percent, which was rewarded with 1.14 silver points.
Eric also had brought a sandwich for lunch. We ate together and discussed a few of the hands. Joel Wolfe came by and asked if he could have some of my potato chips. I said, “Of course.” He did not say anything about playing on Sunday.
Bill and Linda Green, the Vice President of the CBA, announced the winners of some of the awards over the last year. Linda was actually standing on the chair at which I ate lunch. I found this method of distributing awards annoying, but, then again, I have become a real curmudgeon since the pandemic and especially since the last presidential election.
Our first two hands in the afternoon session were against Bill and Paul Proulx. I knew that they played an unusual system in which the 1♣ opening had multiple meanings and could be made with only one club. The responses were transfers. Eric and I had discussed this at lunch. We decided that our interference at the one level would be transfers, at the two level DONT for two-suited hands, and natural at the three-level.
As it happened, I, sitting South, opened the bidding on both hands, but Eric had two weak hands. On the first one Paul, East, played 3♣ and made it. On hand #6 I opened 1NT and Bill overcalled 2♥, which was followed by two passes. I probably should have just passed. If Eric had a suit, he would have bid.
Bill redoubled, but I did not see it. I rarely miss a bid, but I definitely missed that one. Eric took his time, but then passed, as did Paul. I was somewhat upset that the bidding was over and picked up my cards.
Before Eric Bill led, Bill asked to see Eric’s convention card. He asked Eric whether our doubles, which the card says are negative at the three level were also negative at the two level. Eric incorrectly stated that they were negative at both levels. I began to correct him, but Bill stopped me. The whole thing was embarrassing.
In the end Bill made the bid, we received another very bad score, and I was flustered. If I had seen the redouble card, I would have bid 2♥, and the result would have been better. It took me several rounds to regain my equilibrium.
I found out in the evening about the redouble, and I apologized to Eric on Saturday morning about my pass.
I made one other costly miscue in my opening lead against Mike Heider and Mark Blumenthal on hand #16. They had bid 3NT.
The standard lead in this situation was fourth from longest and strongest, which in this case would have been the ♣7. However, the stronger hand would be on my right. I did not want to give away what might be the setting trick. Also I did not have a likely entry outside of the spade suit.
Instead I selected the singleton ♥10. Since East did not use Stayman he was unlikely to have four hearts. So, my partner probably had at least five. My 10 might be good enough to set up the suit for him.
As you can see, my lead allowed them to take the first ten tricks. If I had led the spade, we would have taken the first five.
We did much better on the other hands. We finished with a 55 percent game and won 1.52 silver points. It had been a long time since I had scored above 50 percent on two consecutive sessions of Open Pairs at a CBA sectional.
The drive home was uneventful. I did not sleep too soundly. I found myself awake at 3am. I got up for a while, read a chapter or so of Rain Dogs by Adrian McKinty, and went back to sleep.
On Saturday morning I fixed myself a sandwich of the remainders of a roast beef dinner before I left. I arrived at the tournament at about 9:30 and bought our entries.
Our results on Saturday were remarkably similar to what we did on Friday. In the morning our score was 51.74 percent, which left us just our of the money because the three top scores in our section were registered by B players.
We got off to an unbelievably good start on the first hand I somehow convinced myself that Eric, sitting East, had a very good hand. Since I held a six-loser hand with support for his clubs, I used Blackwood to ask for key cards. When his response indicated that he had 0 or 3, I figured that we had all the key cards and bid 6♥ without even asking about the queen of trump.
As you can see, Eric actually had a minimum opening bid. The opponents held three aces. Fortunately, South decided to lead the ♥A, which allowed him to pitch his spades on diamonds. He also led hearts from his hand, which allowed him to finesse the ten. So, we got 100 percent on this hand. Incredibly, one other pair stumbled into this horrible contract, but they were defeated by two tricks.
By our new method of bidding these hands our auction should have been 1♥-2♣; 2♥-3♥; 3NT (non-serious game try)-4♥ (very reluctant).
One of our worst hands was #8, played against two players whom I did not know, Paresh Soni and Justine Robertson. I was in the West chair declaring 4♠. The same contract was played by all of the other pairs in our section.
At trick 1 Paresh led the ♣4. I counted my losers—two possible in hearts and one in clubs. Then I thought again. What if South had four clubs? If I ducked, she could give him a ruff at trick 2, and I would be down if the hearts were poorly placed.
Then it occurred to me that North was leading fourth-best, I would still lose a trick to North’s king. The only times that playing the ace was wrong was if North began with the king and one or two others. Who would lead low from either of those holdings? No one that I played with. I would be willing to bet that no other North player selected that card to lead. Anyway, I played the ace.
Eric bought a lunch at the tournament. We ate together again. I explained why I only took ten tricks on hand #8. Bill gave out more awards.
Our best session was the last one. We scored 56.47 percent, which was good for fifth, but it was only 1.51 percentage points before the pair in first. We received 2.9 masterpoints.
The most astounding hand of the tournament occurred in the fourth round of the second session. We were sitting North-South. Eric was awarded the privilege of bidding the hand shown at the left. Our opponents were Victor Xiao and Lin Li.
After I opened 2♣ Eric bid 2♥. We played Kokish relays, and so his response indicated a bust—no aces, no kings, and at most one queen. I bid 2♠. Eric thought that his four trumps and a singleton was enough to raise to game. It wasn’t. I only made three. The field was pretty evenly divided between the game bidders and those who stopped at (and made) three.
When Eric lay down his 4-4-1-4 masterpiece I exclaimed “Wow! Eight high!” I then proceeded to count the pips in the center of of the cards: 17 (7+5+3+2) in spades, 19 in hearts, 7 in diamonds, and 16 in clubs for a total of 59. I told the table that this was the second-worst hand that I had ever seen.
After the hand Victor asked me about it. He was struggling to compute the lowest possible total. I explained that it was three sets of 2-3-4 combinations plus one 5 for a total of 41.
We bid and made one slam, but I thought that we might have bid another on hand #16. Eric, sitting north, opened 1♠. I had enough to bid Jacoby 2NT, but I was determined to take it slow. I bid 2♣. I don’t remember the details, but eventually Eric jumped to 4♠.
If he had shown his diamond singleton, I would have bid 2♠ to set trump. He could then show a club control. I would bid 2NT to show a high spade honor and no more controls. He could then bid 3♠ to show both a heart control and a club control. I would bid 4NT, and after he showed 0 or 3 key cards, I would know all fourteen of his points and have no worries about trumps. I would almost 4certainly have bid 6♠.
Afterwards, Eric asked why I did not just bid 2NT to start with. He would have shown his singleton by bidding 3♦. I would be forced to use Blackwood immediately or bid 4♦. The former is a big non-no with a worthless doubleton. The latter will probably induce him to sign off at 4♠.
I checked the results to see if this would have made a significant difference. We finished in fifth place, which was pretty good, but if we had bid 6♠, we would have vaulted past everyone in front of us, including the winners, who were the only pair that found the slam.
Cindy Lyall called for a “debriefing” meeting of the tournament committee. The only bad side to the tournament was the poor showing of the 499er group on Sunday. I volunteered to ask the director, Tim Hill, whether I could get a file of the results for specific events. He never responded, but I figured out how to “scrape” the web page that provided “recaps” of the events. I shared the information with the rest of the committee.
A big problem for the tournament in August is that no one on the committee wants to act as tournament manager. I remarked at the last meeting that I did not understand why anyone would want the position. I wonder what the other units do.
Since I was no longer on the HBC board, I tried to keep Linda Starr (who was) apprised of the board’s attempt to nail down dates for sectionals in 2025 and 2026. There were conflicts with the HBC’s annual meeting in the fall of 2024.
John Lloyd asked me to play with him in the Sunday Swiss of the sectional held in Johnston, RI June 7-8. Our teammates were Mike Shore, who moved from the Hartford area to Rhode Island and Rob Stillman. I knew both of them well, but I had played with neither as a partner or teammate.
I did not encounter any of the difficulties that I faced in the tournament in February. I purchase my usual sandwich at McDonald’s, consumed it while I was driving, and arrived fourteen minutes before the agreed-upon time of 8:30. As that time approached I decided to consult my cellphone to see if John, who is usually prompt, had called. I discovered a text that said that he was running a few minutes late, but he would be happy to transport us to Johnston in his Audi. He appeared at 8:50, and we reached the tournament at 9:40.
We quickly found Rob and Mike and purchased our entry. There were only fifteen teams. Since we were one of the last three teams, we started in a three-way match that consumed the first two of the scheduled eight matches. I cannot explain why they decided to have eight rounds that each contained six-board matches instead of six rounds of eight.
This was a somewhat peculiar experience for me. I had more than twice as many masterpoints as the other three players combined. There was only one other team there with representatives of the HBC and no one else at all from Connecticut.
In the first round John and I played against Tink Tysor from New Hampshire and Denise Bahosh from Central Massachusetts. I had known Tink for years and even was his partner in a regional event once. I knew Denise from working at the district. I did not know the teammates of Denise and Tink whom our partners played against in the second round. We were lucky. We ended up tying that match, but we lost to a much more experienced team in the other half of the three-way.
We also lost the next two matches, but I was not impressed with the play of our opponents. In the fourth round we lost because I took a finesse the wrong way in a notrump contract. Here is what happened. My left-hand-opponent led a low diamond on the first trick. I held AJ9. The other opponent played the king, which in every carding system that I have ever used or seen, denies the queen. I played the ace. Later RHO led a diamond. Knowing that she did not have the queen, I played the 9, which was captured by the 10. LHO led a third diamond, which RHO won with the queen. It was that kind of a day.
I ate lunch with my teammates. They asked me about an issue with the DONT defense against a 1NT opening bid. Rob had employed the 2♠ bid when he had a pretty strong hand. Mike said that his understanding was that the system used a double followed by a spade bid for that kind of hand. I explained that may players, including myself, ignored that distinction because almost all responders ignored the double and continued with their normal response. In that case the overcaller had advertised to them that he/she had most of the outstanding points. In the likely event that they won the auction, the declarer, being able to see half of the deck, could probably guess the suit that would have been bid, but the advancer would gain far less information.
Rob and Mike also asked what to do if your partner opened 1NT, you used Stayman with a hand that had slam interest, and your partner rebid 2 of your suit. I explained that bidding 3 of the other suit was used by almost all good players to indicate agreement with the suit and force at least to game. 4NT after that by either player would be Blackwood.
The fifth round was the low point of the tournament for me. We lost to Ben Bishop’s team of HBC players by one point. It was my fault. John put me in a good 5♠ contract. I won five of the first seven tricks and saw a certain route to the last six. I just needed to draw the last trump first. However, I called, “Club, please” instead of “Queen of clubs”. So, I carelessly went down. It was the only boneheaded play that I made all day, but it could not have come at a worse time.
There was one other interesting hand in that round. Diane Tracy opened 2NT in the third seat. I was the next bidder. I had six hearts headed by the AKQ and five clubs headed by the KQ. I chanced an overcall of 3♥, which was passed by all. John’s dummy included a singleton heart, a doubleton club and the ♦K. They took the aces of clubs and diamonds and then led another club, which I won. I then ruffed a third club in the dummy and discarded my spade singleton on the ♦K. Incredibly, the same thing happened at the other table.
We also lost the sixth round. I had terrible cards. However, the seventh round, in which we faced a significantly better team, went better. We won the round when Venky Venkatarami insisted on playing the last board with less than five minutes remaining on the clock. He went down two, and that was the margin of our victory.
We lost the last round against another good team, but I played several hands well. The difficulty occurred when John opened 1♠, and the next person overcalled 2♥. I had a pretty good hand with five diamonds and four good clubs. I made a negative double. John did not understand my intention and passed. The opponents took nine tricks.
We ended up in fourteenth place. The team that we defeated in the seventh round was last.
It was a horrible tournament, but I enjoyed the last two rounds.
1. For the first time in recent memory the time for the Sunday Swiss event was moved from 9:30 to 10:00. So we arranged to meet a half-hour later than previously.
2. NETTTS is the New England Tractor Trailer Training School, which was the bane of drivers in northeastern Connecticut. Trucks driven by students are often seen struggling to reach the speed limit on heavily traveled roads. I once saw one that was in the first spot at a stoplight with its right turn signal blinking. When the light turned green the truck executed the turn successfully, but not one of the six vehicles behind it was able to enter the intersection before the crossing traffic had the green light.
3. My opinion was that the 0-500 group needed to be persuaded to attend. The other players merely needed information. Since we were essentially offering the same product as on previous recent occasions, presumably they would come if they wanted to. The phrase “less than” is stylistically appropriate for anything that is not countable, in the sense of 1, 2, 3, not in the sense that rational numbers are countable. Thus, one would say less than $50, but fewer than fifty one-dollar bills.
4. The worst was a 53-pointer that I held at the Simsbury Bridge Club back when I was playing with Dick Benedict.
