2010-2015 Bridge Partners on Trips

Out-of-town partners. Continue reading

Through 2023 I have mainly played bridge with people from the Northeast in the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) and the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC) in Connecticut and at tournaments. There were two sets of exceptions: the two bridge cruises that Sue and I took and a few occasions in which I picked up a partner at a club game when I was on the road for business or some other purpose. Only eight out of my 144 partners through 2023 fit in these categories.


Club games: I have included one game in Northampton, MA. The other two locations were in Charlotte, NC, and the Tampa Bay area.

Dave Wroblewski was the father of Denise Podavini (introduced here). He lived in Charlotte, NC, which was the location of the headquarters of Belk stores, one of TSI’s most important users of the AdDept and AxN systems throughout the twenty-first century. Denise was TSI’s primary contact at Belk from her arrival in 2008 until the dissolution of TSI in 2014 (described here).

I learned from Denise that her family was from Massachusetts and that her father was an avid bridge player. Denise was not even slightly interested in the game, but her father was attempting to teach her daughter1 how to play. When he heart that I had become a Life Master he invited me (through Denise) to play with him at the Charlotte Bridge Club one evening when I was in town consulting and gathering specs. This probably occurred in 2010, but it may have been a little later.

Dave and I had a nondescript game together. I am sure that I made a few mistakes. In those days my assessment of my abilities was somewhat inflated.

David was still a member of the ACBL at the end of 2023. He did not receive any masterpoints in 2023, which struck me as peculiar. He needed less than 27 masterpoints to reach the Diamond Life Master level of 5,000. I had to wonder if something happened to him to prevent him from playing.

It occurred to me while writing this section that my wife Sue has played with Ann Wroblewski, who lived in South Deerfield, MA. I had to wonder if her husband John was related to Dave. The name is not that common.


A year or two before the pandemic my friend Judy Hyde was trying to promote the novice game in the Northampton Bridge Club.3 She invited me to come up and play in the Pro-Am game at a room at the Methodist Church in NoHo. It was a long drive, and Wednesday was the worst possible day for me The time of the game (1pm) conflicted with the morning game at the HBC. It did not directly conflict with the evening game in Simsbury, but working out how best to get from Noho to Eno Hall and to eat supper by 6:30 would not be easy.

On the other hand, I wanted to help Judy get the game established, and so I agreed to play with Susan Lantz

It appears that playing one round with me did not inspire her much. She stopped paying dues to the ACBL in 2022, at which point she had only 26.71 masterpoints.


My wife Sue’s parents moved to Clearwater, FL, in 1982. In the subsequent years Sue and I went down to visit with them on several occasions. Occasionally Sue and I visited one of the local bridge clubs for a game. They found appropriate partners for both of us.

The Clearwater Bridge Club4 played on the second floor of the Regions Bank building. They still were playing there at the end of 2023. Occasionally local residents Eric Rodwell and his wife have been known to attend games. The one time that I played there I was paired up with Dr. Mark Goldschmidt, a retired pediatrician who was a very good player.

My recollection is that we had a pretty good session, but we did not win. In 2023 Mark was still active in bridge. He had about 1,700 masterpoints.


The other club near Clearwater is the St. Petersburg Bridge Club, which is actually in a shopping center in Panellas Park, FL. I can only remember going to this club once, but my list of partners lists two from this club, Marvin Kistler of Kenneth City, FL, and Chris Person from Tampa. Both of them were still members of the ACBL in 2023, but Marvin had earned no masterpoints all year.

I have one fairly vivid memory of playing at this club. I think that I was playing with Chris, but I could be mistaken. On a hand in one of the very first rounds we were playing against one of my partners from Connecticut, Michael Varhalamas (introduced here). Chris opened 1, and the opponent to my right passed. I had a very weak hand with shortness in clubs. I passed, and so did Michael. Chris had to play in 1 with less than half the points and less than half the trumps. We received a very bad score.

I asked Michael if he would have bid with my hand. He said that he would have because opener could have as few as three clubs. He said that if he had opened any other suit. I have remembered that advice, but I am not sure that it is the right choice in all circumstances.

Sue has much more vivid memories of this club than I do. She was there when someone drove their car through the flimsy wall and stopped just short of where Sue was sitting. Mark Smith was directing that day. He ran up to Sue and helped her out of the “death seat”. He claims that he saved her life, but Sue remembers it a little differently.

The St. Pete club is still operational in the same building in 2023. Its website is here.


Sue and I took two bridge cruises together. Both of them featured Larry Cohen. The first one was in 2012, right after Sue and I got married. I have recorded the details here. We have often referred to it as the “Honeymoon for One. ” The sordid tale has been posted here.

One of the tournament staff was assigned the job of assuring that everyone had a reasonably appropriate partner. I was originally assigned to play with a lady, but she dumped me before the first hand. Instead my partner for the entire cruise was Frank Evangelista from Boca Raton, FL.

I really liked Frank, and I communicated with him a few times in the years following the cruise. Frank stopped paying dues to the ACBL in 2021. I could not find an obituary or any other clear reference to him on the Internet.

The other cruise was two years later. It was longer and had a much better offering of excursions. My journal of the trip has been posted here. My partner for this one was Marty Singer, who had houses in both New Jersey and West Palm Beach, FL. We intended to play together at an event that was proximate to both of us, but it never happened. He is still playing regularly at national and regional events.

On December 24, 2014, Marty was not available to play. I was paired up with Jacques Sopkin of Newport Beach,CA. The journal page for that experience is here. Jacques died at the age of 91. His obituary is here. His LinkedIn page is still available here. For “experience” only “007” is listed.


1. I never met her, but I think that this must be Katie Podavini, who was still an ACBL member at the end of 2023. She only had 37.71 masterpoints and none in 2083. It is incredible to me that so many people were still paying dues in 2023 but not playing at all.

2. The Charlotte Bridge Club appears to have survived the pandemic. Its home page is here. On the day that I wrote this entry (12/16/23) the club was holding a “Christmas/Holiday” party.

3. The Northampton Bridge Club was struggling in 2023. Their Tuesday night game was taken online during the Pandemic, and it never returned to face-to-face play. Judy’s Wednesday game persisted in 2023, and they sometimes had special games at Amherst. The club’s website can be found here.

4. The Clearwater Bridge Club was running seven in-house games per week and two Swiss events per month at the end of 2023. They were still playing in the bank. The website is here.

2008-2019 Bridge Partners at Tournaments Part 2

Occasional partners at tournaments. Continue reading

One of the very first tournaments that I ever attended was in the Fiesta Regional in Waterbury, CT, in the summer of 2007. I was planning to play with Dick Benedict (introduced here) in the Bracketed Swiss on Labor Day. On one of the weekend days I drove to the Holiday Inn that hosted the tournament by myself in hope of picking up a partner for both sessions of pairs. The person at the Partnership Desk was Carol Schaper (introduced here), whom I knew from the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC).

Carol matched me up with John Morrin to play in the 299er game in the morning. Dick dropped by the 299er room and said that he was glad that John and I had met. We played pretty well, but we failed to win any points because of a defensive lapse. One of us held the ace in a side suit and the other held the king. We both avoided the suit, and the opponents made a contract that they should not have.

I have played against John many times at the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC), at which he still was playing regularly in 2023, but that long-ago game in Waterbury was the only time that we have played as partners.


In the afternoon session in Waterbury I played with Mort Friedman in an event that I had no business playing, the Open Pairs. He was 26 years older than I was and as gregarious as I was introverted. He had come to the tournament from the Albany area. He knew all of our opponents, and he introduced me to them as a “new player”.

Mort thought at the end of the round that we might have placed, but he was overly optimistic. I probably made some simple errors that he did not pick up on.

At the time Mort published a bridge column called “Bridging the Gap”. He emailed it to me for several years, and I occasionally asked him questions about it. He always responded.

Mort died in 2011. His obituary can be found here.

I evidently received my first (fractional) gold points at the Waterbury tournament. Dick, Virginia Labbadia, Donald Fosberg (of whom I have no memory whatever) and I finished third in the bottom bracket of the Round Robin on Labor Day.


The Ukrainian National Home.

I was scheduled to play with Dick Benedict at an afternoon session of the sectional tournament at the Ukrainian National Home on Wethersfield Ave. in Hartford. Our signals got crossed, and, with just a few minutes before game time I discovered that he was not going to come. Lou Brown, who was president of the HBC at the time, also needed a partner. So, although he had much more experience than I did, we formed a one-time partnership.

I remember two things about the session. At one point we played against Mary Witt and Linda Starr. At the time they were both redheads. I question whether that was allowed by the ACBL. A few hands later Lou, as declarer, failed to follow suit even though I had warned him with the question “No hearts?.” He was very embarrassed by his mistake, which prevented us from placing in the event.

I have two other vivid memories of Dr. Brown. He occasionally played at the SBC with his wife Trudi. Quite often he was verbally abusive to her. I took Trudi aside and offered to talk to him about his behavior, which was clearly against the ACBL’s Zero Tolerance policy. She told me not to because, “For me it is like water off of a duck.”

I was present when Trudi got the gold points that she needed to become a Life Master. Lou and Trudi were paired with Merrill Stein and Gary Cohen. I don’t remember who our teammates were, but my partner was Michael Dworetsky. Merrill had bid 7NT on a hand. Michael was on lead on the first trick. For some reason he chose to lead “fourth best” from a spade suit headed by the king. It was a terrible choice that allowed Gary to take all thirteen tricks and win the match. If he had selected any other suit, he would have eventually won that king, and we would have won the event.

Lou and Trudi moved to Delray Beach, FL. They are both still active in the ACBL.


I am pretty sure that in the first event that I ever won I was playing with Dan Finn. Dan was an actuary who lived in the Baltimore area but spent a lot of time working in Connecticut. He played with Tom Gerchman at the HBC on Thursday evenings. He also played with John Morrin at the limited game (that I called 0-Finn) at the HBC on Wednesday evenings.

Dan and I played as partners with Tom Gerchman and his (only?) friend, Terry Fair, an actuary from the Philadelphia area, as teammates. The tournament was a sectional in District 3, probably in northern New Jersey.

We were playing in a B-C Swiss. Everything seemed to go our way. In the final round we played the only other team that was in contention. Our opponents made enough mistakes that I was certain that we had won. When Tom asked us whether we thought that we had done well enough, I asked him, “How many times did you revoke?”

He acted as if he did not understand the question. Dan intervened: “He wants to know how many times you revoked.” Gerchman muttered, “Uh, none.”

I said, “Then I think that we are OK.” I was right. We won the event.

On the way home I wanted to stop and get some real food. We were a long way from Enfield, and it was late. Gerch insisted on stopping at Dunkin Donuts.


Occasionally filling out a card at the Partnership Desk at a tournament brought a very pleasant surprise. Such was the case at the Masters Regional in Mansfield, MA, in 2013 when Ausra Geaski showed up without a partner. I was acquainted with her in three ways: 1) she was president of the district; 2) she arranged for me to become the district’s webmaster; 3) she was Bunny Kliman’s partner at the HBC and regionals and had a lot more points than I did. I don’t think that she was thrilled with the prospect, but she agreed to play with me in the open pairs.

I remember one hand from the round. We missed a slam in a notrump contract because one of us had a six-card diamond suit. It occurred to me that we should have used 2NT as a transfer to diamonds rather than signing off in 3NT. When partner accepted the diamond suit we could have found the slam.

The other thing that I remember was that Carole Weinstein was one of our opponents. She talked with Ausra about helping with the hospitality at the 2014 Fall NABC that was going to be held in Providence.

Ausra still played regularly at the HBC in 2023. She also played at a few sectionals, but she was hobbled by bad knees that she got replaced in October.


This is Paula. I could not find a photo of Marcia.

I came to know Marcia West, who lived in Charlestown, RI, from her association with Paul Pearson. She had taken a bridge class that Paul taught somewhere in Rhode Island. I don’t remember when I played with Marcia, but it must have been at a sectional in Johnston, RI. She did not often venture far from home for tournaments.

I don’t think that we did very well on that occasion, but Steve Smith and I teamed up with Marcia and Paula Najarian in an epic Round Robin at the first regional tournament ever held at the Crowne Plaza in Warwick, RI. I have recounted my heroic dummy play here.

I have been friends with Marcia and Paula for many years. Marcia was a nurse in real life; Paula taught math in high school. They both are still playing pretty regularly in 2023. Marcia played with my wife Sue at a sectional in Johnston, RI.


I am sure that I played with Vince D’Souza at a Unit 126 (Connecticut) sectional, but I cannot remember when or where. We were undoubtedly matched up by whoever was manning the partnership desk. I am even more certain that we did not do very well, but don’t ask me why.

Perhaps Vince remembers. In 2023 he contacted me about the lessons for beginners being offered by the HBC to beginning players. He wanted to purchase them for one of his sons or grandsons. He seemed to remember me better than I remembered him.

The LinkedIn page that is posted here is probably Vince’s. I was somewhat surprised to see that Vince was still a member of the ACBL in 2023. He played in the fall sectional in Orange, CT, but he did not earn any masterpoints.


I was assigned to play with Joe DaCosta at a regional tournament. I am not sure which one or when it occurred. I remember that he was expecting his partner to show up, but for some reason he suspected that he/she might not show up, and so he lined me up as a substitute. I had no choice; no one else was available..

We agreed to play his convention card, which included the Flannery convention, in which the 2 bid is used for hands with 11-15 high-card points, four spades and five or more hearts. Such hands are difficult to describe in most systems.

I played this convention every week with Peter Katz, and I had played it a few times with others. Joe asked me if I was familiar with it and knew the responses. I assured him that I did.

At the very first table Joe opened 2. I quickly responded 2, which indicated a hand with three hearts that had no chance of taking ten tricks even if opener had a maximum. I had an honor card or two, but I could have had absolutely nothing. To my surprise Joe bid 3. I quickly passed, and he went down by one trick.

Joe’s explanation was that he was afraid that I might have had more strength than I showed. I resolved then and there never to play with him again. I did not need a partner who did not trust me when I said that I knew something.

There are no DaCostas in my database and only one Da Costa, Laura from Clovis, CA. So, our game must have been before I started maintaining my database of ACBL members in 2014.


Sue and Judy.

As was our custom, my wife Sue and I drove up to the hotel in the morning of one of the days of the regional tournament in Nashua, NH. She had made arrangements to play with Judy Cavagnaro, one of her partners from Connecticut, but, as usual, she was late. We arrived just a minute or two before play started, and the car was nearly out of gas. My original plan was to see if anyone at the Partnership Desk was looking for a partner, but I abandoned that idea, dropped Sue off at the door to the hotel, filled up the car’s tank with regular, and went to McDonald’s to buy my traditional sausage biscuit with egg.

I later discovered that one other person was looking for a partner for the Open Pairs. His name was Doug Clark, and he was from the Albany area. We met and went over his convention card together. I was astounded to discover that in the “Opening Preempts” section no boxes were checked, and he had written in “Not used”. I honestly felt like I was going into battle with a broken sword.

Somehow we won some points in that session, but I resolved never to play with him again. He was still an ACBL member in 2023, but he has not won any points all year. At some point he moved to Ponte Vedra Beach, FL.


At the same tournament I had arranged to play in the Round Robin with Tony Norris on Sunday. Our teammates were my old friends, Bob and Shirley Derrah from Springield MA.

Shirley, Bob, Tony, and me.

Tony’s convention card had one peculiar item on it. I remember that I messed it up at one point in one match, but we were on the same page in the rest of our matches.

Our foursome were one of the lowest seeded teams in bracket #1, but in the end we came out tied for first place with a team from Maine. We were all very happy with the result. Someone took our photo. It wasn’t Sue. She had driven home earlier. The Derrahs brought me back to Enfield.

I played with Tony again in Nashua in an Open Pairs game. We won only a half of a masterpoint. The last tournament that he played in was a sectional in Williston, VT, in September of 2018. He was still a member of the ACBL in 2023, but he had not won any masterpoints all year. This was surprising to me because Tony liked to play online.


I met Andre Wiejacki (vee eh YAH skee but compressed into three syllables) at the qualifying tournament for Flight C of the North American Pairs in Sturbridge, MA. I was playing with Steve Smith; Andre was playing with Ron Briggs. They finished second, and we finished third. The winning pair was disqualified, and so all four of us got to to to the finals at the Spring NABC in Reno.

I have often said that everyone in bridge has an interesting backstory. Andre’s is one of the most impressive. He was born in Poland when it was still a satellite of the Soviet Union. He somehow escaped to France where he changed his first name to Andre and learned about computers. At some point after that he immigrated to the U.S.

I played a few times at tournaments with Andre. He was good at playing the cards, but his bidding could be erratic. I liked playing with him, and he definitely liked playing with me. The last time that I heard from him he had moved to the NYC area because the job prospects were better.

In 2023 Andre was still an ACBL member, and he has moved back to Chelsea, MA. He had not played at any tournaments since Covid-19 struck, and he has earned only a handful of masterpoints in 2023.

Andre is still “open to work”. If you are looking for a “scrum master”, his LinkedIn page is here.


I remember that an opponent in one of the matches that Andre exhibited was Sarah Widhu of Nashua NH. After one of Andre’s strange bids, I explained to him how we could have reached the right contract.

We lost the match, and the margin was totally attributable to this one hand. I was impressed that Sarah noticed that everything rode on that one hand.

I only played with Sarah once, and we did not do too well. I suspect that if we had played together more, we would have started to click.

Sarah was one of the most active members of the bridge community in New Hampshire during the period that I became involved with the district. I am pretty sure that she was on the B’s Needs committee, and she was definitely the tournament manager for the Nashua tournament at least once. I designed a successful email campaign for her.

Sarah still played regularly in 2023. She might have still been running the club in Nashua as well, but she did not participate in the administration of the district or its functions.


Ron Agel.

Bridge was definitely only the second-favorite card game of Ron Agel. He was first and foremost a poker player. I played with him for two sessions of an Open Pairs game at a regional tournament in Massachusetts I think that it was at some point in 2014.

At the time Ron only had about half as many masterpoints as I did, but he acquitted himself pretty well. We did not win anything, but I remember one hand that we played against an expert pair, Bill Braucher and Rick Binder, who were playing a strong club system. I had made a lead-directing bid of one of their artificial bids. Ron was not familiar with the concept, and took it as takeout. We ended up in a horrible contract that the opponents quickly doubled. Oh, well, a zero is a zero.

My recollection is that Ron had a home on the cape and another one in Florida. He was still a member of the ACBL in 2023. He had about thirteen points for the year, but he had not attended a regional tournament in New England since 2018.


I have played against Alan Godes many times, including two occasions since the reopening. He and his wife, Charlotte Bailey, have long resided in Needham, MA, but for years they have traveled around the country to play in bridge tournaments.

I don’t really remember the event in which Alan and I played together. He was pleasant enough, but I did not enjoy the occasion. I have often had opportunities to play with him again, but I have been reluctant to take advantage of them. I proudly accept the title of geezer, but Alan was in Junior High when I was born, and his game has not changed much in the decade or so that I have known him.

Both Alan and Charlotte were in attendance at the last D25 tournament of 2023, the regional in Marlborough, MA. Alan played with Adi Chehna, and Charlotte played with a pro, Adam Grossack. They finished third in bracket 1 of the Thursday-Friday KO.


I only played with Bill Gay once, but I have fairly clear memories of the occasion. It occurred at the regional tournament in Nashua, NH, where I was often in need of a partner. Bill and I were matched up by the Partnership Desk and we had agreed upon a convention card. We went over to the table at which the directors were selling entries for the Open Pairs game. In front of us were Marcia West and Paula Najarian. The four of us decided to play in a bracketed team game instead.

Our foursome did not win the event, but we had one surprising victory. Bill and I were playing against Christina Parker, and her sister who was visiting from (I seem to remember) St. Louis. Their teammates were Stewart Rubenstein (Christina’s husband and regular partner) and someone whom I don’t remember. We were big underdogs in the match, but somehow we pulled off a victory. Bill asked me, “Do you know how good that team is?” I told him that I did. I had played against Stewart and Christina often with little success.

Bill has not been to a district tournament since 2018, but he was still a member of the ACBL in 2023, and he earned more than eighty masterpoints through the end of October.


Michelle Blanchard, who is from the Worcester area, is still quite active in tournament bridge in 2023. Eric Vogel and I teamed up with her and Carol Seager in the Gala Regional in the autumn of 2023. That experience, which was not altogether pleasant, has been described here.

I am pretty sure that Michelle and I played as teammates in a sectional tournament in Watertown, MA. We seemed to play pretty well together. I never have done well in any events in Watertown, and so I am sure that we did not come close to winning. If the opportunity presented itself, I would be happy to play opposite her again.


I played with Linda Ahrens in a pairs event held in Hyannis, MA. I remember very little about our actual game together, but I have a fairly vivid recollection of some of the ancillary details.

In the first place I remember that Linda played the Mexican 2 convention to handle the hand with balanced distribution and 18-19 high-card points. Most people open balanced hand with 15-17 points with 1NT and those with 20-21 points with 2NT. So, this is used for the ones in between. I have never played it elsewhere before or since.

At the time Linda and her husband Joe Brouillard had a home in Rhode Island and another on the Cape near Hyannis. Before the tournament I drove to Warwick, RI, to play at a club there with Linda. We did not win, but we also did not encounter any major disagreements.

I had the distinction of saying that my partner was the only person who walked from her house to the game in Hyannis. I also was the only person who was brought a home-made sandwich by his partner’s husband during the lunch break. In other ways, unfortunately, my game with Linda was not too memorable.

I took this photo of Linda and Dan. after their victory.

In February of 2017 I was working at the Partnership Desk at the regional tournament in Cromwell, CT. Linda Ahrens had filled out a card indicating that she was looking for a partner for the Mid-Flight Pairs. event.

On the morning of the event Dan Jablonski, a very good player, came to the desk and said that he needed a partner. I matched Dan up with Linda, and they ended up winning the event!

Linda was on the committee that I chaired that awarded the Larry Weiss award to Bob Bertoni in 2018. The details are in Bob’s section of this entry (here).


Paul Lord was from Montreal, but for several years he came down to New England because of his job, which I think involved insurancee. I played as his partner more than once and communicated with him now and then. I have not seen him in quite a few years. However, he was still a member of the ACBL in 2023, had amassed over 3,000 masterpoints, and appeared to be playing regularly.

The last time that I saw Paul he was grumbling about a partner whom he had picked up at a tournament’s Partnership Desk: “He doesn’t know how to defend a hand.”


Diane Storey was a teammate of mine in a knockout. Our team was eliminated in the first round of the Knockout Regional in Cromwell. I have a vague recollection that my partner had been Gary Cohen (introduced here). Diane was probably playing with a guy named Marvin who worked in NYC.

Players who lost in the KO usually played in the Single-session Swiss1, an event that offered only red points. Our partners from the KO wanted to skip the Swiss and go home early. Diane and I were greedy about the chance of winning some points and paired up. The Partnership Desk assigned us to play with a very nice experienced player and a guy with much less experience. I don’t remember either name. My recollection is that we won only one match. The experienced player apologized for his partner’s shenanigans.

I never played as Diane’s partner after that, but I played against her and Marvin often at sectionals. I remember a very bizarre hand from one of those events. I was playing with Peter Katz at a tournament in Hamden, CT. We were playing the Flannery convention, in which 2 is used to show a hand with 11-15 high-card points, four spades, and five or more hearts. I have posted a write-up of this hand here. It is the hand that starts after the horizontal line. Diane was LHO. Marvin was RHO.

In 2023 Diane was still a member of the ACBL, but she had not earned any masterpoints all year. Her address on the roster was Vero Beach, FL.


I am pretty sure that we played against the Palmer team in the semifinals. I know all of the people on Don Caplin’s team, and I don’t remember playing them.

Playing with Estelle Margolin from Rego Park, NY, was a real treat for me. She had a lot more points than I did when the Partnership Desk informed my teammates from the HBC, Sally Kirtley and Jeanne Striefler, that she was the only person who was available to play with us in a compact knockout event in Cromwell in 2015.

I was delighted to discover that I had long ago written up and posted details of this event here. It is a pretty long article; just search for “Estelle”.

Estelle was still playing in 2023. She had amassed over 5,600 masterpoints and was a Diamond Life Master.


I must have played as the partner of Esther Watstein at a sectional tournament, but I do not remember the occasion. I do remember playing against her a few times.

I have had many contacts with Esther on the Board of Directors of the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA). She served two terms as president. I was just a representative or an at-large member. Esther is still active as a member of the CBA’s Communications Committee. She also still plays regularly at sectional events, but since the Pandemic I don’t think that she has played outside of the state.


Greg Winkler was from Australia. He lived in Centerville, MA, which is very close to Hyannis, the site of the Senior Regional. The partnership person for the event was one of my regular partners, Ginny Iannini. Greg needed just a few points to make Life Master. I remember him as a very good card player who needed to learn more about bidding. He agreed with this assessment.

I think that I must have played with him more than once. I remember playing in a team event in which our teammates were Charlie Curley and Gene Flynn. I don’t remember how we did.

My other recollection is that after playing in afternoon session in Mansfield, MA, Greg wanted to play in the evening side game. Evidently he just needed a fraction of a point to attain Life Master status. I had to pass; Because I was very tired, I would have made a poor partner anyway. He played with Marcia West and got the points that he needed.

The next year at the tournament in Hyannis I was scheduled to play with Greg a third time. He had been on a vacation, but he promised me that he would be able to play that day. When he had not arrived, I tried to call him, but I got no answer. Ginny was able to find a partner for me, as is explained in the next section.

After this I had no further contact with Greg.

Greg was extremely sociable. He called all the women “love” and al the guys “mate”. I remember that at one tournament someone fell or suffered some other kind of accident. Greg rushed to his/her aid. I did not; I figured that I would likely be in the way of people who knew what they were doing..

I was surprised to discover that in 2023 Greg had almost as many masterpoints as I did, and he earned a lot more throughout the year. Since he has not been at tournaments, he must have been playing online. Although he has almost the same number of points as I had at the time, he was only a Silver Life Master in late 2023. He probably failed to meet the number of gold points required for subsequent ranks.


On the morning that Greg Winkler stood me up in Hyannis (described above) Lynda Flanger of Mayfield, NY, was looking for a partner in the A/X Swiss. She must have already had teammates. I was the only person available.

We had a pretty enjoyable round playing together, but at that point I would have been a lot more comfortable playing in the Open Swiss that was being held at the same time in the Cape Cod Sectional that was going on at the same time in the same hotel.

Lynda died in September of 2022. Her obituary has been posted here. She was still an active member of the ACBL at the time of her death. Despite what the obituary said, she was actually a Sapphire Life Master with over 4,600 masterpoints.


I don’t remember exactly where I met Charlie Curley. I played against him several times when his regular partner was Mike Colburn an actuary who lived in Simsbury, CT.2 They were the top qualifying team for the North American Pairs (NAP) in both 2010 and 2011. They also were the other pair in the epic five-person team that I successfully captained in the sectional in Auburn, MA, that was described here.

I invited Charlie to play on our team in the Mini-Spingold event in Washington, DC, that I described here. At that tournament I somehow lost my red and blue Barça hat. When Charlie and his wife took a vacation to Barcelona, he bought a replacement for me and gave it to me at a subsequent tournament. I was suitably touched.

Charlie won a few D25 tournaments. When I wrote him to request a photo of him with or without his partner, he advised me to just use a photo of Cary Grant. By the way, he also insisted on being called Handsome Charlie Curley.

I only played with Charlie once. It was at a sectional in Auburn, MA. Charlie told me that he had read many of Marty Bergen’s books and pamphlets and suggested that we should just go by his approach. That was OK with me, although it was the only time that I have ever played “Serious 3NT”.

Our round was scuttled by one unfortunate hand. I opened 1. Charlie responded 2. I interpreted this as a jump-shift, which we were playing as weak (except for Bergen raises). Charlie thought that he was making a standard 2/1 response. Evidently the Bergen books that he had read did not cover this situation.

Charlie owned his own business. During much of our association he was going through the agony of trying to sell it. I commiserated with him. At that point I had already given up on selling TSI (described here). I am pretty sure that in the end, however, Charlie was able to close his deal.

Charlie was still active in the ACBL in 2023. He was closing in on Gold Life Master. However, he has not attended any D25 tournaments since 2018.


I met Tucker Merritt at the HBC, where he was a regular in the Tuesday evening game when I started playing there in 2008. I never played with him at the HBC, but for some reason Tom Gerchman set me up to play with Tucker in a team game in a sectional somewhere in District 3 while he played with Dan Finn or Terry Fair—I don’t remember which.

As usual, we had to meet very early in the morning at the office in Avon where Tom worked. I had to park my car in the open-air garage that was beneath the building. While we were driving to the tournament on the parkway named after one of Tucker’s ancestors I had to memorize Tucker’s convention card, which included a few things that I had never played. I seem to recollect that we played transfer overcalls for 1NT openers.

I think that we held our own in the event, which was a Swiss, perhaps limited to a certain number of points. I am not sure whether we did well enough to place in the overalls. I don’t remember any specifics of this adventure.

I never had a chance to play with Tucker again. He died in 2019. His obituary can be found here.


The partnership coordinator for one of the sectionals in Watertown set me up to play with Lucia Enica (loo CHEE ah) in the Open Pairs game on a Saturday. I corresponded with her by email to establish a convention card with which we both felt comfortable. She convinced me to play a practice game on Bridge Base Online. I was not at all familiar with the interface, and I found the entire experience unnerving. To me it was not bridge. I resolved never to do it again.3

We did not do too well in the event either. My only recollection of it was when I led the ace of a side suit and then the queen. Lucia did not understand that this sequence guaranteed that I also had the king, and she trumped it. She claimed that I was wrong about this, but I could not understand how she could think that I was so silly as to lead the ace from an AQ holding.

Lucia and I never played together as a pair, but we did team up at an equally unsatisfactory attempt to qualify for the Grand National Teams (GNT). My partner was Paul Burnham (introduced here). Hers was Lou DiOrio.

Lucia, who was a psychiatric nurse, was still very active in bridge in 2023, but she had moved to Washington, DC.


I played one session at a regional tournament with a novice player from Rhode Island named Bea Martini. It was probably at the pro-am game that was held in Warwick one year. I remember only that she was rather new to the game.

Bea was still a member of the ACBL in 2023. She amassed a few masterpoints in 2023, but she had not attended any D25 events since 2019. She also did not attend the NABC in Providence in the summer of 2022 even though she lived in East Providence.


I have known Mike Winterfield longer than any of my other partners. He was my first boss at my first job at the Hartford Life in 1972, as described here.

I have seen Mike at the HBC many times and played against him more than a few times. I am pretty sure that my wife Sue played as his partner a few times as well.

When he first started attending games at the club he often played with his wife Jane. She had health problems, an they had relationship problems. They eventually divorced, and she moved away. She died in 2016. I could not find an obituary.

My game with Mike was on a Saturday evening in a pro-am event in the regional tournament in Cromwell, CT, in February of 2016.

We did quite well in the event, finishing in sixth place (out of forty-eight pairs) with a 56.88 percent game, which was good enough for 1.99 masterpoints. I had a good time playing with him and thought that he had quite a bit of potential.

In 2023 Mike mostly played with Barbara Edelstein, who has been his partner for more than five years.


James (really Sun-Ming) Lee has played fairly regularly at the HBC for many years and was still playing pretty often in 2023 when I wrote this. In all of that time he has never really had a regular partner. Since the reopening he has played mostly with Y.C. Hsu.

I only played with him once. It was at the regional tournament in Cromwell. We both needed a partner, and so we paired up. I think that we played in a Mid-Flight pairs game. We did about average.

James has always had a reckless style of play. He loves to play in notrump contracts. He also has shown a propensity for underleading aces on defense.

His most recognizable feature was his posture at the table. He commonly rested his scorecard on his lap and crossed his legs at the knee. When he made any kind of a movement the scorecard would fall on the floor. After several years he had more or less perfected this so that it only happened once or twice per session.


I thoroughly enjoyed teaming up with Brenda Harvey at many tournaments, mostly regionals. My fondest memory is the evening when she, her partner Robert Klopp, and I and my partner, Dick Benedict, celebrated at a restaurant in or near Nashua, NH, the day that she made Life Master.

I also enjoyed the one time that I played with her at a sectional in Hamden, but I don’t remember any details of the occasion.

Brenda moved to St. Augustine, FL. In 2023 she was still a member of the ACBL and played quite a bit.


I knew Pat Nye before I played with her in a game at the Cape. I think that we may have been teammates.

Before the round I disclosed to Pat that I regularly made OBAR BIDS (an acronym for “opponents bid and raise: balance in the direct seat”). I told her that if the opponents bid and raise a major suit, I would bid almost any five-card suit to prevent them from playing in an eight-card fit at the two level. However, when I did it, she raised my bid, and I went down. After the hand, she said, “Well, you warned me.”

In 2023 Pat was still a member of the ACBL, but she had not played in any tournaments since the reopening. On the other hand, the only tournaments that she attended before Covid-19 were on the Cape, and D25 has not sponsored any of those in the last two years.


I played against Tink Tysor, a former IBMer from New Hampshire. I knew how he played, and I thought that our styles would be quite compatible.

We finally played together in an Open Pairs game a year or so before the Pandemic. The result was a disaster, If we were not last, we were certainly close to that.

Tink was still a very active player in 2023.


Sally Kirtley.

I knew Sally Kirtley quite well from both the SBC and the HBC. She often played in both clubs with Jerry Hirsch (introduced here) as a partner. When her mother was still alive she also played with her. When Helen Pawlowski retired as Tournament Manager for D25, Sally replaced her.

Sally also has served as a director for both the HBC and the SBC since Covid-19 caused the mass shutdown. I have worked fairly closely with her at the SBC, and we were also (at least in theory) both members of the D25 Tournament Scheduling Committee.

George Bickford.

I think that Sally and I played together once or twice before the reopening. We definitely have played twice at regional tournaments in 2022 and 2023. We did not do well in the Open Pairs. Part of the problem was that, as Tournament Manager, she was distracted by administrative aspects of the tournament.

Sally was an attorney, and she was still practicing in the same law firm as her husband, George Bickford, who has shown up for bridge in at least one emergency.


Paul Pearson, more than anyone else, helped me get started with bridge in the twenty-first century. That story has been posted here. I often communicated with him via email when I encountered difficulties, especially in the area of competitive bidding. Paul understood the Law of Total Tricks (LAW) quite well, and he directed me to sources that explained its complexity. This knowledge stood me in very good stead against players at the lower levels.

Paul and me in Warwick.

After that I played against him and his primary partner, Laurie Robbins, many times, but I don’t think that I ever played with Paul at either the SBC or the HBC. Our first pairing was in a Swiss event at a sectional tournament in Hamden. Our teammates were two people from the HBC, Joan Brault (introduced here) and Michele (mee KAY lay or Mike) Raviele. I think that we had a pretty good result, but Paul did not like the way that Mike bid one hand.

Our greatest success, however, was at the Ocean State Regional in Warwick, RI, in 2015. We played in the ABC Pairs and finished fifth out of thirty-eight pairs and won both the B and C flights. The reason that the results sheet at right says that it was “Based on 67 Tables” was because there were an additional 38 tables in the Gold Rush.

We hoped to defend our crowns in the same event in 2016, but I had a commitment to play in a two-day knockout that started on the previous day. Paul died of cancer in December of 2016. Shortly thereafter Paul’s wife Sue contacted me about donating Paul’s bridge books. I kept a few and gave the rest of them to the HBC.

Paul had been a programmer longer than I had. In his day they coded in assembler. He also had a great interest in orienteering. Paul died in 2016. His obituary can be found here.


I played one two-session game with Geoff Phipps, a Platinum Life Master, in Honolulu after Ann Hudson had said that she did not want to play with me any more. It was only a little short of a miracle that he was available. He probably would not have agreed to play with me if I was not already familiar with a large set of conventions that Geoff and Randy Johnson used.

My game with Geoff has been described in some detail here. What I did not know at the time was that a photographer was taking photos of the playing area and that one of those photos would be used on the cover of a book by Bill Treble. I was front and center, but Geoff was not included.

Geoff lived most of his life in New Hampshire, but he moved to Bluffton, SC, at some point. Nevertheless he returned for the 2023 edition of the Granite State Getaway in Nashua.


Sabrina approved this photo of herself and Darryl Legassie.

Bridge in New England has a diverse population. There are two exceptions, however. The first is that old people are disproportionately represented. The second is the shocking lack of representation of Black people. Sabrina Miles was unquestionably the most successful Black bridge player in New England during my association with the game.

I played with her for only one two-session game at a district tournament in (I think) Warwick. We had planned to spend a half hour going over our card before the game, but she got involved in a conversation with someone. I remember that we had a very bad score in the first session. Although I had thought that the second was just as bad, we actually did much better.

Sabrina won several regional events. She did not like the photo that I had used of her and asked me to take another. I agreed, and from that point forward I used that photo. She was the only person who made such a request.

Sabrina lived in Mansfield, MA. She served as the partnership person at tournaments held there several times. She set me up for very pleasant games with the next two entries.

Sabrina was still an active participant in D25 events in 2023.


I enjoyed the preparation session with Ru Terajewicz as much as I did the round. The things that she insisted that we go over before the first session were very well chosen. I already knew how (at least in New England) the best players bid with a six-card major in the fourth seat. Ru, who was (and still is in 2023) an accomplished teacher explained how to handle a seven-card suit in that situation.

That didn’t come up during the round. We both played well enough to score well, but it was not our day.

Although Ru moved to Ponte Vedra, FL, she has remained very active in bridge in 2023. However, we have not seen her in New England.


Me and Darryl.

The other fine player that Sabrina set me up with in Mansfield was Darryl Legassie, who had been Sabrina’s steady partner for several years. Darryl and I also played in the Open Pairs, but we seemed to click better than Ru and I had.

When the last card was played we finished sixth out of seventy-three pairs and first in Flight B. This was a really great result for two guys who had never really met before.

Darryl’s email address started with lorddarryl and in the “Prefix” field on his record on the ACBL I did not check his entry in Burke’s Peerage, but Darryl assured me that I need not use his chosen title when addressing him.

Darryl was still an active player in 2023, but he had not appeared in any regional tournaments in D25.


The only Grand Life Master with whom I have played was Mark Aquino. He was also elected Regional Director of Region 2 during the Pandemic. That meant that he was the only person representing D24 (NYC and Long Island) and D25 on the ACBL board.

Mark (right) won his first NABC championship with Shome Mukherjee.

Prior to that I worked with him closely when he was the head of the B’s Needs Committee, President of the New England Bridge Conference (NEBC), and then District Director. Mark was a consummate politician who knew how to work a room. This was quite rare in a bridge player. He also won the Individual tournament in Newton twice.

I have twice played with Mark. The first time was when he invited me to play in the evening side game at a regional tournament. I remember two hands. On one of them I made a lead-directing bid on a hand that the opponents had been bidding. Mark correctly deduced what I had and bid 3NT. The problem was that if the opponent on his left did not lead hearts, the suit that they had been bidding, he only had eight tricks. On the opening lead he chose a different suit. Mark, however, threw him in a little later, and he succumbed to the temptation and led hearts.

I do not remember the outcome of the other hand, but in that case Mark doubled for a lead. I complied, but he mildly chastised me for not leading the top of my KQJ sequence in a different suit.

Our score for the session was a little over 60 percent, which was good enough for second place.

My memorable round with Mark in Honolulu has been described here.


Bob Bertoni.

Bob Bertoni was known as the Grand Poobah of New England Bridge. He served as VP and then President of the NEBC. At the same time he was President of the Eastern Massachusetts Bridge Association (EMBA). He then ran for District Director against the incumbent, Mark Aquino, and won. He held that position and was running for Regional Director when he died in 2021. His obituary has been posted here.

Tuna Snider.

I may have met Bob in 1977 when I was coaching debate at the University of Michigan. Don Huprich, Stewart Mandel, and I made an epic journey to New England (described here) to participate in the tournament at Boston College and two other colleges. At the time Bob was attending BC on a debate scholarship. Bob’s coach, Tuna Snider, threw a party for some of the people at the tournament. We were invited, and we attended. We met some of the BC debaters; we might have met Bob, who was almost certainly in attendance.

Bob asked me to play with him three times. The first occasion was in the Open Pairs at a District 3 regional tournament in Danbury, CT. Bob was there to negotiate with the D3 officials concerning how much they would pay to District 25 to be able to use the Crowne Plaza hotel there for this tournament. He resolved the issue.

We finished above average in the bridge game. We might have won a point or two.

Our second game was when Bob was campaigning for District Director. He came down to Orange for a sectional and attend the U126 board meeting. We played in the Sunday Swiss together. I have forgotten who our teammates were. We played OK, but I think that our teammates let us down.

The last time that I played with Bob was at an EMBA sectional. Somehow he found himself without a partner. So, he asked me to drive to Watertown to play with him. I was more than happy to do so. We finished near the middle.

In 2018 I had the honor of chairing the committee to elect the winner of the Larry Weiss award. A detailed explanation of the criteria of the award has been posted here. Bob was the winner. In 2022 I talked the Executive Committee into retiring the award and presenting a new trophy called the Weiss-Bertoni award. As the most recent winner of the Larry Weiss award, I also chaired that committee. The details are posted here.

Bob was closely involved in the early years of my career as webmaster, database manager, and email manager for D25. That period is explored here.

I really miss Bob Bertoni. District 25 really needed his leadership after the reopening.


1. I took the name of this widely disparaged event as my nom de plume for the “View from B-low” columns that I wrote about my exploits in District 25 tournaments and elsewhere. They were posted on NEBridge.org. I have created an index for the ones that were still available in 2023 here.

2. Mike joined the HBC in 2010. He may have played at the club a few times, but I never saw him. He dropped his membership the next year. He never came to a game at the SBC. In 2023 he was still an active member of the ACBL, but he had not won any masterpoints in years. In fact, he would still be eligible for Flight C of the NAP. I seriously doubt that anyone has ever competed in the NABC finals of that event three times.

3. For the most part I have kept to this plan through 2023. I played online with Ken Leopold and Eric Vogel a few times in preparation for the online qualifying for the GNT. I played with my wife Sue a couple of times during the Pandemic. Other than that I only have signed on anonymously to BBO to play a few hands against the robots before games at the HBC.

2013-2017 Teaching Bridge to Young People

Let me begin by setting the record straight. Most of this was not my doing. The main players were my good friends and bridge teammates, Bob and Shirley Derrah of Springfield, MA1. I saw them often at tournaments and occasionally … Continue reading

Let me begin by setting the record straight. Most of this was not my doing. The main players were my good friends and bridge teammates, Bob and Shirley Derrah of Springfield, MA1. I saw them often at tournaments and occasionally at the Hartford Bridge Club, before and throughout these adventures.


Adam Parrish.

New England Youth Bridge, Inc.: At some point in 2013 I was at a regional tournament when an announcement was made that there would be a meeting of the New England Youth Bridge group during the evening. I cannot remember at which tournament this occurred. It was also mentioned that anyone who was interested in helping to attract young people to the game was invited.

When I arrived at the site of the meeting the only other people there were Jim Rasmussen2 and Adam Parrish3, who had called the meeting. I introduced myself, told them that I was interested in whatever I could do for youth bridge, and mentioned that I had recently become the webmaster. One of them asked me, “Webmaster of what?” They were pretty surprised that I was the I managed NEBridge.org.

Pam Miller and Jim Rasmussen.

Later I met Jeff Lehman4, who was about to become the president of the group, Lisa Allison5, who ran a successful youth bridge program in New Hampshire, and Pam Miller6, Jim’s partner.

Over the course of the next few years I corresponded with Jeff frequently.


Shirley and Bob Derrah.

East Longmeadow Several times in, I think, the spring of 2013 Bob told me about the progress of the students he was teaching to play bridge at a school in East Longmeadow, MA. I think that it was a middle school, but since I was never there in person, I may be mistaken.

According to Bob, most of the participants had only a passing interest in the game, but one of them, whom Bob referred to as “that autistic kid”7, seemed to be a natural. His name was Jack Donaghue.8

In the school year of 2013-2014 Jack was a student at East Longmeadow High School (ELHS), which is just north of the state line, a short drive from Enfield. Somehow a bridge club was formed at the high school.

In those days I was not as busy with work at TSI as I had been a decade earlier, and I had developed a strong interest in bridge. Even a casual observer of the competitive bridge population could easily realize was that it was quite elderly and getting more so every year. In my youth a lot of people learned bridge in college. Although I don’t remember how I did it, I learned to play bridge in high school. Many of those college students took up the game again when they became “empty-nesters” or retired. That cycle started to break down when computers became prevalent.

In 2013 I was 65, and Bob was sixteen years older than I was. I was definitely interested in promoting bridge among younger people. So, when Bob asked me if I wanted to help with the club at the high school I told him that I definitely was very interested.

I could drive to ELHS in 15 minutes.

I attended two or three of the after-school meetings at ELHS. They were held in a classroom at the school, and only a handful of students attended. Jack, who had been elected president of the club (an office with no duties) was heads and shoulders (really hips and knees, too) better at bridge than the others. One student was female and Jack’s age; the others were guys who were bigger and evidently older than Jack.

The setting was not ideal. There were no tables and chairs. Four desks (the kind with a seat that you enter from one side) had to be pulled together in an X shape. I don’t remember Bob ever trying to present a lesson. The attendees generally just took a seat and played, with Bob making comments about what was transpiring. I filled in to make a fourth or an eighth when necessary.

The girl, who attended every week and obviously had a crush on Jack, brought with her a book on bridge that had been written by her aunt or grandmother. She obviously treasured it.

The attendance from the guys was not as regular. They seemed to be more interested in sports and other activities at school. In the last week that I attended, only Jack and the girl were present. She pleaded wtih Bob and me to do something to prolong the club.

Trevor Reeves.

After that debacle Bob told Jack that it was up to him to resuscitate the club. I could understand why he said that, but Jack did not have the kind of personality that might enable him to pull this off. Besides, he had at least as much interest in skiing as in bridge. The club died, but Bob maintained his relationship with Jack.

The Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) annually held a one-day bridge tournament for beginners. Bob contacted them about arranging a partner for Jack at the event scheduled for October 26, 2014. Trevor Reeves,9 who at the time had very few masterpoints, agreed to play with him. I called Trevor to explain Jack’s situation. I think that my wife Sue might have provided transportation for Jack and herself.

Trevor and Jack did very well in both sessions.

They won Flight C in the morning and both Flight B and Flight C in the afternoon. Those performances earned them 2.71 masterpoints. Most beginners play regularly for several months before amassing so many. Sue, who had been playing for more than three years, was upset that Jack and Trevor had edged out her and Judy Cavagnaro in the morning round.

I saw Jack at a few tournaments after that. I said hello to him, and he mumbled something in return. Bob told me that he had decided to join the skiing team at ELHS.


Duggan 2016: One of Bob and Shirley’s grandsons, Matt Sullivan,10 was the vice-principal at Duggan Academy in Springfield, a middle school with grades six through eight. Matt was interested in Bob’s idea of teaching some of its students how to play bridge.

Duggan Academy.

Duggan was like no school that I had ever been in. There was much more security. Only one door could be used, and someone at the office needed to unlock it remotely. A policeman was assigned to the school and was always present during school hours.

The school banned the wearing of hats. I always wore a baseball cap when I was outside or driving to protect my eyes from glare. My optometrist had recommended it. Several times I was asked to remove my cap before proceeding to a hallway, stairs, or classroom. Two or three times the school went into lockdown while I was there. Nothing came of any of these events.

Duggan was not a local grade school. It was a magnet school with a focus on Social Justice. The school’s emblem emphasized Diversity, Opportunity, Equity, and Justice. This contrasted with my grade school, which had no Black kids in any grade, and my high school, which had one out of eight hundred. There were some Hispanic students, but in Catholic schools this was to be expected.

The school year at Duggan was divided into “cycles” of four or five weeks. In each cycle the students were allowed to participate in one “Enrichment Program” to supplement their regular classes. These programs were allotted two hours per week during regular school hours. Matt and Bob worked to have bridge included beginning at Duggan in January of 2016.

Two classes took bridge, one of sixth graders and one of seventh graders. My recollection is that Duggan did not have an eight grade class until the next school year.

Maxine Cechvala.

The kids needed a lot of supervision. To help out with managing them Bob recruited Maxine Cechvala11, whom I knew from the HBC, and two people with whom Shirley had played in a local club. My wife Sue and I also attended every week.

In those days an annual event for beginners was held at the largest bridge club in New England, the Bridge Spot in Woburn (WOO bun), MA. Matt offered the kids a chance to participate in the one on Saturday, May 8, 2016. He would supply the transportation and treat them to supper at a restaurant in Boston. I am pretty certain that Bob footed the bill for most of this.

Bob had devised a good plan for getting the kids up to speed. They would begin by playing whist, which is essentially bridge without contracts. We then graduated to Mini-Bridge, in which each player announces his/her masterpoints. The team with the most points names the trump suit (or notrump), and a table is consulted to determine the contract. The hope, of course, was that the students would get tired of this, and we could move on to bidding for the contract, which I have always thought was the real attraction of the game.

The tournament in Woburn used the Mini-Bridge rules. I have posted a description of the tournament itself and the subsequent supper here. If you examine only one of the hundreds of links that I have posted, check out this one. It is short and endearing, if I do say so myself. Included are many photos and the names of all of the participants.

The Bridge Bulletin, the official publication of the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL), published an abbreviated version of the text and pictures of the webpage mentioned above in its August 2016 issue.12

We never got to bidding in either of the classes, but it was a marvelous experience for everyone involved. Bob and I were enthusiastic about the prospect of working with these and other kids in the upcoming years.


Duggan and Chestnut South 2017: As I mentioned in the write-up of the trip to Woburn, Bob was fairly confident that in the following year we could expand our efforts to more middle schools in Springfield. The reason for his optimism was the the employment of another grandson, Matt’s brother Dan13, as the vice-principal of a middle school on the west side of town. Unfortunately he had a much more difficult time enlisting helpers. I went to every session that I could, and Sue occasionally helped, but Maxine was no longer around, and no one else volunteered.

The security at Chestnut South was at least as tight as at Duggan. The door was unlocked, but we were required to stop at a table, sign in, and then go through a metal detector. We then had to proceed to Dan’s office. Someone there would eventually unlock the closet in which the tables were kept and the room that we were assigned to use that day.

Chestnut was designed to serve the “talented and gifted” students of Springfield. This was encouraging, but it did not have an Enrichment Program. The bridge group met once a week after school. The kids had to arrange their own transportation, which was certainly a potential problem. Many of the students rode the bus to school.

The bridge program at Chestnut South never really got established. At first we had a classroom that we could use. On one occasion we had even enough participants for three tables, but attendance fell off dramatically after that. After a few weeks only two or three players came regularly. Only one student was both willing and able to go to Woburn to play in the second tournament. He had to play with a Duggan student that he had never met.

We entered a door in the basement on the far right.

We ran into problems at Duggan, as well. Part of the Enrichment Program had been moved (for at least a few cycles) from the school to a nearby Boys and Girls Club. The idea was that the students would be excited about the environment and would have a place to hang out if they wanted to

The kids were bussed there from Duggan and bussed back to the school at the end of the session. Of course, the transportation used up part of the period. A bigger problem, however, was that our room was near the gymnasium, and many of our students wandered over there instead of coming to the bridge room.

My recollection is that the sixth-graders, whom we taught at Duggan, seemed to have a lot of potential, but the drop-off in the participation in the other two grades was marked. Only a few of the students from the previous year returned the second year. Because the classes were populated mostly by new students, we had to start at square one in all three classes. The eighth-grade group was much too chatty. At one point I had to ask Bob to switch tables with me before I lost my temper.

I remember one peculiar situation in which one of the girls touched the place on the back of one of my hands where a vein was prominent, just to see what it felt like. I was startled at this, but I did not say anything.

The highlight of the year was the time that a crew from one of the local television stations visited the school, filmed a group of seventh-graders playing bridge in the hallway outside of the auditorium, and interviewed one of the students, Joe Walsh, about the activity. He was very polished and explained the situation very well. It was shown on the station’s newscast. A very nice report was broadcast locally.

Only a few students attended the session in Woburn in the spring. Matt drove the students there in his own car, and he actually ended up playing in the tournament with one of the students. Those who attended the tournament and the subsequent supper (complete with oysters) had a splendid time, but it was disconcerting that we were only able to bring a handful of players. No one won a trophy.


The third year: At the end of the 2016-2017 school year a letter was sent to all of the people who had volunteered at any of the Springfield public schools during the year asking for nominations for the “volunteer of the year” award. I nominated Matt Sullivan. Someone, probably Matt or Dan, nominated Bob, and in fact Bob won the award!

Bob insisted that I be included in the award, and so, Bob, Shirley, Dan, Matt, Sue, and I went to a lunch at Western New England University, which was across the street from Duggan. Bob and I were presented with the award. One of the bridge players who attended both tournaments, Tavi Chea, read a speech in which she described Bob as a wonderful person, Shirley as a “silent assassin”, and me as a perfectionist.

The principal of one of the high schools was in attendance. She expressed interest in a bridge program for her students. In retrospect I realize that I should have gotten contact information.

Shortly thereafter Bob’s health began to deteriorate. He gave all of the materials that we had been using—including a suitcase full of bidding boxes with “WMBA” (Western Massachusetts Bridge Association) written on them in indelible ink. He told me that if I wished to continue in the next year, I would need to take charge myself. I assured him I definitely wanted the program to continue and that I would do the best that I could. He gave me contact information for Matt and Dan. With two years of experience under my belt and with a few assets that I had not used at that point, I felt confident of success.

Mary Petit.

My emails to Dan at Chestnut were not answered. Bob explained to me that Dan had been promoted to principal of both Chestnut schools and he was overwhelmed with the responsibility. Bob said that Dan planned to try to get a program started in January. I wrote to Dan in December, but he did not respond to that letter either. So, there was no bridge program at Chestnut South in 2017-2018.

I solicited by email help from all of the bridge players who were within driving distance of East Longmeadow. I received responses from Judy Hyde (introduced here), Mary Petit, Randy Johnson (introduce here), and Bob Lavin. Here is what I wrote to Jeff Lehman about our experiences:

I finally was called in to meet with Matt Sullivan and a teacher, Tim Hurley,13 in late September. Duggan’s school year is divided into “cycles” of four or five weeks. In the previous year bridge participated in the Enrichment Program, which is offered during the school day for two hours a week, during the first five cycles. They explained that during the cycles in May and June the students all wanted to be outside. This year we had already missed the first cycle. Tim, who was now running the program, said that bridge would be offered to sixth and seventh graders for three cycles. There would be an after-school bridge club for the eighth graders and anyone else who wanted to attend. The good side of this was that all three sessions would be on Thursday. In the previous year we had met with eighth graders on Friday.

I expended a great deal of effort lining up bridge players from the area to help my wife, Sue, and me. I had no idea how many kids we would be dealing with. A few players committed to one day, but the only serious commitment that I got was from Bob Lavin, who lives about ten minutes from Duggan.

The Enrichment Program sessions were a severe disappointment from the beginning. Before we started I had had great hope for the seventh graders. A very promising bunch of kids in the sixth grade had participated the previous year, but none of them returned. I do not know why because I have no way to contact individual students. The dozen or so kids that we got, with only a couple of exceptions, had no interest in bridge and were quite vocal about it.

The sixth graders were also rowdy. They were all boys, and one had extreme emotional problems. At any rate it was difficult to work with both groups. They were all turned off by Bob’s presentations, which were much too lengthy and unfocused. I tried to get him to limit them to one topic for ten minutes, but that conflicted with his style.

In the third cycle (our second) we had two greatly reduced groups, but I thought that we were making progress. Our most deadly foe was the calendar. Because of holidays, snow days, and test days, each class actually got to meet only twice!

Sue and I showed up for the first session of the fourth cycle. Tim told us that the plan had always been for bridge to participate in only two cycles. This was different from the previous year and different from what he said in our meeting in the summer. He arranged for Dakota, Demetrius, and two others to meet with us that morning.

The after-school club was a fiasco from the start. Dakota and Demetrius came only two or three times. At the first meeting they told me that they wanted to attend the Magic card club, which met at the same time, on alternate weeks. In actual fact, although I always tried to find out if they were going to meet with me using the email addresses they gave the ACBL, I never knew if anyone would be there. Only one other person came the first week. I only saw Dakota and Demetrius once after the tournament in Watertown. These two kids obviously have great potential, but I have no way to reach out to them.

I actually worked harder this year than either of the last two years. When Matt worked with us, he tried to direct the kids with the best chance of success in our direction. Tim did not seem to do that. I made some mistakes (Bob Lavin, especially), but I thought that we had a pretty good group when they cut us off at the kneecaps. Another problem is that the other Enrichment Programs are more attractive than in previous years. They now offer both soccer and football.

In my last contact with Tim he said that he was turning the bridge club over to Mary Kay Brown. He indicated that Demetrius, who surely is one of the brightest kids in his class, was in danger of failing. It certainly was not because of bridge. I have never heard from Mary Kay.

In retrospect, I can certainly understand why Matt would bow out of the bridge program after his grandfather was unable to continue. Nevertheless, I was blindsided by the appointment of Tim as the new contact. When I asked a question or made a request, he responded. However, Matt had evidently shepherded many of the best students into the bridge program. That was not the case in the third year. I was especially disappointed that not a single person from the previous year’s promising sixth-grade class participated in the new seventh-grade group.

Tim’s announcement that it had been the plan “all along” for there to be only two cycles of bridge startled me. I sent an email to Matt complaining about this. All that I requested was that I be kept in the loop when decisions affected me and my group.

The point about having no idea how many would attend was critical. It was important to have one experienced player for each table—or at least every other table. Sometimes there would be three tables of students; sometimes one or less. I was occasionally short of helpers, and at least once I sent one home.

I have attended several of Bob Lavin’s lectures at regional tournaments. He did a very good job in that setting. However, his style went over like a lead balloon at Duggan. The seventh-grade class was openly hostel to him in the one presentation that I saw. Nevertheless, I had almost no choice but to let him manage all the groups while I was playing at a regional tournament in Mansfield, MA. I had made commitments to other players.

One thing that I had hoped to add to the way that we taught bridge was to incorporate more things from the Internet. All of the classrooms had Internet access and large screens. I hoped to be able to use my convertible laptop (a Yoga model by Lenovo) via an HDMI cable that I purchased for just this purpose. I had nothing but problems. The first time that I started Yoga up at Duggan it notified me that it had updates to install. That wasted at least fifteen minutes.

When I got it connected, I was prevented by the school’s security software from accessing any of the sites that I wanted to use, even my own. Tim told me that I would need to submit a list of the URL’s that I wished to use, and someone in the administration would need to approve them one by one. Then whoever maintained the security would need to implement the changes. I did not bother to try to get all of this to happen.

I did finally manage to get in touch with Mary Ann Brown, who was the official liaison with the volunteers. I have a set of emails with her that concluded by saying that Demetrius and Dakota did not seem to want to go to the Holiday sectional tournament in Watertown, MA. That turned out to be false, but I do not remember the source of the misunderstanding..

On Saturday morning December 9, 2017, Sue and I picked up Demetrius and Dakota at their houses, and the four of us drove to Watertown. I wanted them to play in the section that used the bidding boxes, but they insisted that they were not ready for it. There was never any question about any of the sixth- and seventh-graders participating. They would have been an embarrassment.

Sue and I served as table monitors in the Mini-Bridge group. At my table one of the players revoked on one hand, but no one on the other team noticed it. I told them what had happened, but it was up to the other team to spot it.

At the end of the session but before the results were announced, Dakota and Demetrius told me that they thought that they had done pretty well. They were certainly correct. Their 81.8 percent score was the highest that I had ever seen, and six years later I have still never seen one that came close.

Sue and I drove the winning pair back to Springfield and asked them where they would like to eat. They both said that we should stop at Texas Roadhouse near Sixteen Acres so that Dakota could intone, “Winner, winner, chicken dinner.” That’s where we went. We all had a really good time. Then we drove each of them home.

In July I tried to contact both schools about the upcoming school year, but I did not receive any kind of reply from either one. I cannot deny that this treatment made me a little bitter.


Preparation and Finances: The ACBL had a program for providing supplies to players working with young people. I received a pair of boxes that contained books, flimsy backpack, and special decks of cards that somehow were coordinated with the books. The books had a radically different approach from what we were planning. I put them in the recycling bin after giving one to Sue. I gave most of the cards to the students. I threw the backpacks in the trash.

The ACBL gave me a stipend of, I seem to remember, $700. It was better than nothing. I doubt that Bob bothered to apply.

I made name tags for everyone involved, both students and volunteers. I purchased Avery labels with holders. I don’t remember what they cost.

Jeff Lehman spent a great deal of time developing a lesson plan for using Mini-Bridge. Bob likewise spent time adjusting it to our purposes. I developed a fairly large set of illustrated mini-lessons. They seemed to go over pretty well. I still have them.

I went to Walmart and bought for each of the students a folder in which to keep the handouts. I didn’t fool myself into thinking that they would study them, but maybe some day someone would look something up.

Bob purchased tables, a set of duplicate boards and cards. I don’t know (and don’t want to know) how he wangled the bidding boxes. In 2023 they are still in the trunk of my Honda.


Ed Marzo was much older when I met him.

Ed Marzo: During the summer of 2016 Bob called me up and invited me to come with him to visit Ed Marzo,14 the man who had developed the very popular bridge program called DealMaster Pro. I had absolutely no idea that this legendary figure lived in the Springfield area.

I drove to Bob’s house. He drove the pair of us to Ed’s small home. He was living by himself at age 88. Maybe there is hope for the rest of us.

Ed was no longer involved in the development, sales, or support of his product, but he knew it like the proverbial palm of his hand. His short demonstration convinced me that this was a very worthwhile program to have. He told us that he had invented it in order to show a friend what a finesse was, but it was not clear to me how we could use it as a teaching aid for youngsters.

This was right up my alley, but Bob could not follow what Ed was saying. Ed gave both of us a copy. I have used mine extensively for projects outside of my work with the young students. Bob tried to use his, but it frustrated him. I hoped to be able to schedule some time with him to show him how to use the program, but it never happened.


Thoughts: This entry, more than any other, has caused me to think about a few topics in a new way. Remembering Jack Donaghue made me think about myself. Am I autistic? I cannot even remember learning to play bridge. I just picked it up somewhere when I was in high school, probably from a book. If that is not autistic, what is? Also, would a sane person undertake, as I have in the 1948 project, to record absolutely everything that he could remember—and stick with it for more than two years and over 700,000 words? I have always thought of myself as a shy but eloquent person with an exceptional stick-to-itiveness, but maybe I am on “the spectrum”.

I also have been thinking about public schools. The young people whom I worked with at urban middle schools lived in a different world from the one in which I grew up in Kansas City. I developed great respect for people like Matt who devote their lives to helping these kids make something of themselves.

What could I have done to make the classes better? At the end I regretted introducing duplicate scoring. Most of the students did not understand it, and it deprived them of instant analysis of their performances. If I had it do do over again, after the kids became familiar with Mini-Bridge I would have introduced rubber bridge scoring. In that way every table would have a winning pair and a losing pair.


1. Bob Derrah died in 2018. His obituary can be found here. Shirley died less than two years later. Her obituary is here.

2. Jim Rasmussen moved to Seattle, WA.

3. Adam Parrish moved to New York City, where he is a playwright, bridge teacher, and a columnist for the Bridge Bulletin.

4. In 2023 Jeff Lehman was still active in bridge in New England.

5.In 2023 Lisa Allison was still active in bridge in New Hampshire.

6. Pam Miller stopped paying ACBL dues in 2020. At the time she lived in Cambridge, MA.

7. I am quite sure that Bob did not mean this in a disparaging way. I did not know any of the people involved, and he wanted to identify one of them for me. If I had seen them, he probably would have used a physical attribute instead.

8. Jack would be 24 years old in 2023 when this entry was composed. He stopped paying his ACBL dues in 2020. At the time he had 60 masterpoints, which was more than I expected to see. I could not find any references to him on the Internet after that date.

9. Trevor, however, was not new to the game. He had played a considerable amount of bridge in England before moving to the colonies. The ACBL, however, had not yet assigned him a quantity of masterpoints to reflect that experience.

10. I last saw Matt Sullivan at Bob’s wake. I got to meet his (and Dan’s) mother, who was Bob’s daughter. This made me feel really old. In 2023 Matt became principal of Pioneer Valley Regional School. His LinkedIn page is here.

10. Maxine Cechvala moved to Ponte Vedra, FL. She is still an active member of the ACBL. She has returned to New England a few times.

11. The recent Bridge Bulletins, including the one with this article on p. 30, are available online to members.

12. Bob had worked for Monsanto for several decades. He spent a good part of the last few months of his life testifying in one of the trials that the company (owned by Bayer) faced.

13. In 2023 Dan Sullivan was still the principal at Chest nut. His LinkedIn page is here.

13. Tim Hurley moved from Duggan to a different school in the area. His LinkedIn page can be found here.

14. Ed Marzo died in 2019. His obituary can be read here.

15. I used DealMaster Pro to generate a large number of hands to test hypotheses about how specific types of hands should be bid and played. The program allows the user to specify what limitations to put on each hand. For example, North’s hand could be limited to ones with a void in clubs, but the other hands could be generated randomly.

2023 Bridge: Sectional Tournaments

The problems: Unit 126 of the ACBL, i.e. Connecticut, ran three sectionals in 2023. All three were held at St. Barbara’s Greek Orthodox Church in Orange. I attended two of them. The third was scheduled at the same time as … Continue reading

The problems: Unit 126 of the ACBL, i.e. Connecticut, ran three sectionals in 2023. All three were held at St. Barbara’s Greek Orthodox Church in Orange. I attended two of them. The third was scheduled at the same time as the sectional in Great Barrington, MA. Since I had already made commitments to play in that event, I did not go to the Orange sectional in August.

How, you may ask, could such a thing happen? Aren’t Connecticut and Western Mass (Unit 196) adjacent, and is not the scheduling of competing sectionals in adjacent units prohibited.

The heart of the problem is that the unit has not had a tournament manager for some time. Cornelia Guest asked to be relieved of her responsibilities before the Pandemic, and no one had been found in the interim. So, the president, Peter Marcus, had been performing these duties. This was a terrible situation. Peter had three other jobs in the bridge world: Director-in-Chief of District 25, Tournament Coordinator for District 25, President of Unit 126. In addition, he was a very active participant in both of the district’s important committees and he had a firm commitment to attend every New York Mets game.

So, Peter the U126 Tournament Manager selected the dates for the August sectional and sent them to Peter the D25 Tournament Coordinator. The latter Peter ignored the conflict and scheduled the tournament. The U126 Peter later told Peter Samsel, the president of U196 that he would compensate him for lost attendance. I have no way of determining if he did or not. If he did, he probably took it from his own pocket. He often solved problems that way.

The Board of Governors of U126, of which I was a member, did not meet at any of the tournaments. We had one or two Zoom meetings that focused mainly on nominations for the officers for and representatives for 2024.

The other problem is communications. Our emails are decidedly pedestrian. They do a poor job of motivating the players with fewer points to attend. The ones that I composed and sent for the first limited sectional (documented here) brought in fifty-seven tables in one day. Compare those with the figures in the following sections.


April 21-23 Sectional in Orange. Two months before the tournament I committed to play in the Sunday Swiss with Mike Heider and Jim Osofsky. I could not find partners for that event, and I also needed partners for the pairs game on Saturday. Mike suggested that I try Ros (short for Rosalind and pronounced as Roz) Abel, who lived in Southington, CT. I did, and we agreed to play on Friday and Sunday in Orange. Ros could not play on

In preparation for the event, we worked on a card that we both could tolerate, and we played together once in the open game at the the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC). She has subsequently become a member of the HBC, which is actually the closest club to her house.

I learned that Ros had recently moved to Southington from the New York area, where she had run a club. It died during the Pandemic. Somehow she found the club in Newtown, but not the HBC.

We did not score too well at the HBC, but our results on Saturday at the sectional were promising. We finished seventh in both sessions out of thirty-nine and forty. We won over four silver points. We had a chance to place in the Swiss as well, but we were defeated badly by a team from the HBC. I remember that on a critical hand Ros made a bid that made it clear that she did not know how to bid controls when looking for a possible slam.

The attendance in the open games was pretty good, especially on Friday, but there were only 25 tables in the two days of pair games for the 0-499 group. The Swiss on Sunday had eighteen tables, but there was no score given for the 0-499 group.


August 11-13 Sectional in Orange: I wasn’t there, and so I can only report on the table count, which was much worse than in April. Here are the totals by day:

Friday: Open: 15 in both sessions; 0-499: 5 and 4.

Saturday: Open: 13.5 and 13; 0-499: 5 and 5

Swiss: 15.


Mike Heider and Jim Osofsky.

August 12-13 Sectional in Great Barrington: I played with Abhi Dutta. On Sunday we defended our title in the Swiss with our teammates, Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider.

On Saturday morning Abhi and I were eighth our of forty-two, quite a good showing. In the afternoon, however, we were barely above 50 percent. Our combined score was not good enough to place in the overalls. Only sixteen tables were needed in the afternoon.

In the Swiss we got off to a terrible start. There were sixteen tables. By winning the last match in a blitz against a bad team we jumped up to sixth place. We did not play any of the teams that were ahead of us.


September 23-24 Sectional in Johnston, RI: At some point in August Abhi Dutta asked me if I wanted to play in the Rhode Island sectional in September. I agreed. I like going to this sectional because I have a lot of friends in the RI bridge community, and the sectional has always been well run.

On Saturday Abhi and I did what we always seemed to do in pairs games. We had one pretty good session and one awful one.

Our teammates for the Sunday Swiss were Ken and Lori Leopold, who had won the second session on Saturday. We drew Mark Aquino’s team in the first round. On the very first hand Mark opened 1NT. His partner, Andrew Chesterton, announced it as 12-14, a “weak” bid. I had thirteen points and a flat hand. I doubled for penalty.

Andrew redoubled to indicate that he had a long (at least five cards). Mark considered this for at least one minute, and then passed. So did I. In fact, Mark had a strong NT opener and forgot that he and Andrew were playing 12-14. He made exactly seven tricks for a very high score. Andrew said that if Mark had bid 2 (as he was required by their runout to do), he would have passed and gone down. Mark admitted that he had been lucky.

Our luck did not improve until the third round. We ended up with three wins and five losses. We could easily have won all of those matches except the first.

The table count put Connecticut’s to shame:

Saturday: Open: 20 and 20.5; 0-749: 8 and 7.

Sunday Swiss: 27! 0-299 pairs: 3.


Bill Segraves.

Recognition Committee: At one of the Zoom meetings Bill Segraves, the webmaster for the unit’s website, CTBridge.org, proposed the idea of four committees to address the problems that the unit faced. One of those was a Recognition Committee to address the various awards and trophies for performance at regionals and perhaps to create new ones. I paid little attention to this because I did not consider it a very important problem, but I was not averse to someone else putting some time in on it.

On October 18 Bill sent the following email to Sandy DeMartino and me:

One of the committees we discussed setting up at the last CBA Board Meeting was the Recognition Committee.  Basically, the idea was to set up publicity for our awards and trophies and make them more relevant to the membership, maybe even generate some excitement for the races. 

I don’t think this should take a lot of time and I would hope the committee would come up with idea but then others could actually do some of the work, such as authoring emails to go out about trophies being given out at the next tournament, etc.

OK to do this? 

I did not immediately respond, but John Lloyd said that he would like to be on the committee. Sandy declined, and so the committee consisted of Bill, John, and me. Bill set the criteria in the following email:

The main things on my mind for attention soon are the following, as they all affect what we post on the website and what will go into the upcoming edition of The Kibitzer as we approach the end of the year.

I thought some of these had already been decided on by the board, but then questions were re-raised and it seems a good idea to resolve them with some real clearity.

1) It was my understanding that the Barb Shaw Trophy would be awarded to the player who earned the most masterpoints in all of Connecticut’s I/N sectionals during the year. Only the I/N sectionals count, not points earned in limited games of the open sectional, STaC’s, or anything else.  I don’t think anyone else is going to have an I/N this year, so that’ll he Hartford I, Branford, Newtown and Hartford II.  We basically ratified this by posting it on the web that way after the board had discussed it, but I think it’s good at least to affirm that among ourselves, and then I think we can just report on it at the next board meeting.  (I don’t know that we’ll have the official winner and standings yet, but I can easily determine the unofficial winner.)  Side note: I am aware of no restriction saying that this is a member of the Unit.

2) There was somewhat less clarity on the Monroe Magnus Trophy.  This has traditionally been awarded to the highest masterpoint winner in all Connecticut Sectionals. (STaCs do not count for this.)  As far as I have understood it, it is not restricted to Unit members.  At one of the board meetings, someone (I don’t recall who) said that they thought that the I/N sectionals should not count for this. I don’t think this received wide support, and I certainly don’t agree with it. A sectional is a sectional.  At that time, it actually mattered, since there was a pair who did very well in the Harford I/N and then in the Open (!) in the CBA Spring Sectional, but it’s no longer relevant at this point. I do suggest that we go ahead and present to the board a motion that the Magnus trophy race counts points in all Connecticut Sectionals (exclusive of STaCs).  Make sense?  We will know the Magnus winner after the sectional next weekend.

3) It was proposed in one of our board meetings that there be a new award/recognition for something like a Connecticut Non-Life Master of the Year. I quite like this idea, but the devil is in the details. The basic idea is that eligible people would be anyone who met the rank criteria at the beginning of the year and was geographically eligible throughout the year. Maybe I am making this too complicated but I think it’s best to spell out all this stuff in advance.

1) Is it open to any Connecticut resident or just Unit members (this can easily matter – we have some Connecticut residents who are members of the New York unit)?  I’m open to either answer.

2) Does the person have to meet criterion #1 for the whole year or just at the beginning, just at the end? People who move in or out?  Part year, e.g. college students or snowbirds eligible? I would tend to recommend something like anyone who has had a substantial presence during the year by any of a) completing a semester of school, b) living in-state for at least 6 months, c) maintaining a home here and living here on an ongoing basis for at least four months a year.

3) What events count? Connecticut sectionals? All Connecticut events? And District 25 events? All events?  All f2f events?  All pigmented events?  I would propose all pigmented events (this eliminates the BBO ACBL games but not the VACBs). If you want to limit it to f2f events, I’ll investigate how difficult this is. It may not be too hard. I think there’s a way to filter for VACB leaders and then subtract that.

4) Is there a MP limit? We have some non-LMs who have well over 1000 MP. I would recommend that we restrict this. Not only does it defeat what I see as the purpose (encouraging newer players) to be recognizing players who already have a pile of masterpoints (maybe even twice as many as I had at the beginning of the year!), but if a player never gets their black or silver, e.g., they would never become an LM and would remain eligible indefinitely. I suggest non-LM under 750 at start of the year.

5) Can a person win it more than once. I’d suggest no.

6) Any other criteria?

7) Do we award it for 2023?  I would suggest we do.

8) What do we call it? Connecticut Non-Life Master of the Year for now? I think we can come up with something more evocative of success but see no point in waiting.

9) What’s the award. For now, I think it’s fine just to get it on the website. The sooner we do it, the sooner we can publish the standings and start giving it a little publicity.

This latter award is complex enough that I’d suggest we ratify the status quo on the other as soon as we can and then talk by Zoom or three-way phone to hit the NLM award issues, come up with a proposal and present it to the board.  My schedule pretty flexible Sunday through Thursday.

Anything else you guys would like to have the committee address sooner rather than later?

I only skimmed most of this, but I objected to a few of the items in the first few paragraphs. I sent the following response:

I strongly disagree with some of this, and I don’t think that anything has been decided by the board. At least there was no vote on it. You can proceed this way if you want in 2023, which is a transition year, but we should have policies that are voted on for 2024. That means a motion and a count of votes, not the “silence must mean approval” method used this year.

The primary purpose of the awards has always been to promote the bridge activities of the UNIT. The trophies were bought and managed by the unit’s government in some distant day. The secondary purpose was presumably (I was not around when any of these were established) to honor the name on the trophy (well, maybe not the governor).

A sectional is NOT a sectional. The I/N sectionals are club activities that, like STaC games, happen to pay silver points. They are sponsored, financed, and promoted by the clubs. It is fine and probably necessary to help the clubs in any way that we can, but that was not part of the design of any of the awards. If I had known that attendance at the HBC sectionals was going to help someone win an award, then I would have trumpeted that in the emails for the award. There is also the problem that the I/N sectionals do not have the same rules about who can play as the unit events (or even one another). Surely, the criteria for eligibility should be set and announced before competition begins. There are other small problems that have to do with players changing residences and points awarded to foreign players by the ACBL. I know that those can be addressed because I did so when I ran the “Best in Class” awards for the district.

At this time I think that the main goal should be promoting play at unit-sponsored sectionals by the I/N group. Our record on this so far is, in my opinion, miserable. Awarding the Barb Shaw trophy for persistent performance as opposed to performance in one tournament is also problematic, but the problems are probably addressable. I am not opposed to this change, but the standard for eligibility should be the player’s standing as of January 1. We should be encouraging players to graduate from the I/N game to the open one when they reach the limit, not discouraging them by removing their eligibility for the award when they achieve success.

I do not have strong feelings about whether we should limit participation to members of the unit. I enjoy seeing people from other units at our sectionals. Some have won the trophies in the past, but in at least some cases they didn’t bother to take them.

I do not have strong feelings about the other awards. The nice thing about the way the awards worked was that it gave us something novel to promote for each event. I don’t think that we ever took advantage of this as much as we could have in the past. I have been attending board meetings for ten years, and the only thing mentioned about the trophies was in the form of “Does anyone know who has the _____ trophy?” The number of people who actually care about the other trophies is probably small, but I always have, and I know a few others who do.

In any case the principal problem to be addressed is the promotion (i.e., emails and other advertising), which has always been meh. The board did not care much because attendance without promotion had been good (go look at the 2019 results) and increasing over time. The unit’s finances were so good that we were actively looking for ways to spend our excess money. That has changed dramatically, and we need to react.

Bill then tried to schedule a time for the three of us to meet or have a Zoom meeting. I agreed to meet before or after the games on one of the days of the Orange. So, we agreed to meet before the game on Saturday at 8:30. I started the meeting by mentioning that I had never won the Barb Shaw Trophy and that Michael Dworetsky’s name was horribly misspelled.

Shirley and Bob Derrah, Tony Norris and me in 2015.

Bill could not understand how the first mistake happened. I explained it to him. He asked me what he should do if he could not find out why I was listed. I said that I would prefer to change it to Bob and Shirley Derrah1, the people who were given the trophy.

Bill provided a summary of what we agreed to:

Barb Shaw Trophy

Traditionally, the Barb Shaw Trophy was awarded to the top Flight C masterpoint winner in the CBA Winter Sectional. The award was last made in 2020. There has not been a Winter Sectional since then and the award was not made in 2021 or 2022. For the transitional year of 2023, the CBA Board approved the award of the Barb Shaw Trophy to the top masterpoint winner in all of the Connecticut I/N Sectionals combined. With the end of 2023 and the first planned I/N Sectional of 2024 (Branford in January) rapidly approaching, the Recognition Committee discussed criteria for the award of the Barb Shaw Trophy in 2024.

The Committee does not recommend continuing the 2023 practice of awarding the Barb Shaw Trophy to the top masterpoint winner in Connecticut I/N Sectionals but would instead prefer criteria that recognize or at least include recognition of performance in Connecticut’s Open Sectionals and “graduation” into progressively more challenging events. We present two options for Board consideration, with a very mild Committee preference for the first option.

Option 1: The 2024 Barb Shaw Trophy will be awarded to the player who begins the year with <750 masterpoints and wins the most total masterpoints in all Open and I/N Connecticut Sectionals.

Option 2: The 2024 Barb Shaw Trophy will be awarded to the player who begins the year with <750 masterpoints and wins the most masterpoints at one designated Sectional.

For Option 2, in the likely absence of a Winter Sectional (acknowledging that March may currently be a formal possibility), the award could be made to the top masterpoint winner at the first sectional of the year. The Committee recognized, however, that if the Scott Loring Trophy (normally awarded at the Spring Sectional) were awarded at the the same tournament, it is possible that the same person or pair could win both the Barb Shaw Trophy and the Scott Loring Trophy. The Committee also considered it desirable to spread out the recognition of developing players over more than one tournament. One way to address this, if the Board prefers the single Sectional option, would be to award the Barb Shaw Trophy to the <750 masterpoint winner at the Summer Sectional. (Pushing the Scott Loring Trophy to the second Sectional, expected to be the Summer Sectional, would have disadvantages including increasing the likelihood that the same person would win both the Scott Loring Trophy and the Governor’s Cup.)

While we continue in this transitional period, the Recognition Committee would plan to re-evaluate the criteria for award of the Barb Shaw Trophy approximately one year from now and make recommendations for 2025.

New Recognition Awards

The Committee also considered potential new awards to recognize the success of our developing players. There are a number of ways in which this might be done and the Committee considered the relationship of any such awards to the Mini-McKenney awards and the Barb Shaw Trophy. The Committee recommends that the Board consider two new categories for recognition, Connecticut Non-Life Master of the Year and Connecticut Newcomer of the Year.

The 2024 Connecticut Non-Life Master of the Year would be that Unit member who begins the year as a non-Life Master with <750 masterpoints and earns the most masterpoints in all face-to-face play during the year.

The 2024 Connecticut Non-Life Master of the Year would be that Unit member who begins the year as a non-Life Master with <50 masterpoints and earns the most masterpoints in all face-to-face play during the year.

These two awards would be clearly distinguished from the Mini-McKenney award by including only points earned in face-to-face play (the Mini-McKenney criteria include points earned in virtual club games and online regionals). And the former award would be distinguished from the Barb Shaw full-year option by the inclusion of all face-to-face club and tournament play at any location, not just in Connecticut’s Sectionals.

The Committee has investigated the technical aspects of applying these criteria and received confirmation that the application of any of these criteria should not present any particular technical challenges. The most complex question related to the proposed new Recognition Awards is how eligibility would be determined for people who may only be Unit members for part of the year. Should such a case arise, the Committee recommends that the Unit rely on the established ACBL criteria for GNT eligibility as the basis for a case-by-case determination as to eligibility.

The Committee has begun what will be a broader discussion of how all of our trophies and other awards are made, including when and how they are awarded and whether there is a physical trophy and will solicit input from the Board and other unit members on this subject. We consider it essential, however, that the Unit take full advantage of all opportunities to publicize these awards widely and to use them to recognize achievement and actively to promote Connecticut bridge.

The Committee also began discussion of other questions for Board consideration during 2025 and welcomes input from the Board and other Unit members about any matters potentially under the Committee’s purview.


October 27-29 Sectional in Orange: On October 25 Bill sent the following email to all of the members of the unit’s Board of Directors:

Thank you again to everyone who pitched in to make the August tournament a success. We should be in much better shape hospitality-wise for this tournament with Stacy Herbert working the mornings and with all of us having had a little more experience.

It would be great if a few of you could help out with some things this weekend. On Friday morning, my wife Carol will bring me and help with getting stuff out of our car, but I won’t be able to carry much myself (broken leg for those who may not know – healing well but limiting my ability to walk without crutches). Stacy will help, too, but a few additional sets of hands will be great. I’ll arrive at 8:15 and Carol, Stacy and and I can get the coffee stuff out so Stacy can get that running, but another set or two of hands by around 9 would be great. 

The bigger challenge this weekend will be getting stuff back into the car on Sunday. Carol won’t be able to come get me until about 7:30 on Sunday evening, and I don’t want her to have to load it all by herself, so if anyone can hang around for a bit or if someone who lives close by can come back to help, that’d be great.

I said that I would get there as early as possible on Friday. I did not volunteer to stay late on Sunday. The drive to St. Barbara’s takes at least an hour, and I would be mentally exhausted after three days of bridge.

Eric Vogel agreed to play with me in the pairs games on Friday and Saturday, and Mike Heider and Jim Osofsky asked me to play with them in the Swiss on Sunday. I had a very difficult time finding a partner. Linda Green, a board member, said that Terry Lubman of Riverside, CT, wanted to play. I contacted her, and we eventually agreed on a convention card.

I arrived at the church at about 8:30. Everything was pretty much already set up. Renee Clift and I distributed BridgeMates for the director, Tim Hill. Otherwise, I twiddled my thumbs for an hour and a half.

I did not think that I played too badly, but I did not have a good tournament at all. Eric and I scratched in only one of the four sessions. I might have been off my game because of the distractions.

Terry Lubman.

Terry and I were almost never on the same wave length. The worst one was when she doubled an opponent’s 2 bid when their wie3 2qw vulnerable. Although I held Q10xxx of hearts (enough to leave a double in according to the Rule of 92), I did not want them to play for 650 points needing eight tricks in an eight-card fit. So, I bid 3 even though I only had three. It turned out that Terry only had the QJ of clubs. The opponents drew our trumps and then took their hearts. I managed only four tricks for -500. It was small comfort that the opponents could easily have managed eight tricks in hearts. We only won three of the seven matches.

It was a long lonely ride home. Worst of all, I had only one day to rest and prepare for the regional in Marlborough that has been described here.

Here were the table counts:

Friday: Open: 17 and 17.5; 0-499: 2.5 and 0!

Saturday: Open: 16 and 18; 0-499: 3 and 0.

Swiss: 19. For the third consecutive tournament, the unit advertised a 0-500 event that did not attract enough people to play.


1. Bob Derrah, who worked for Monsanto for decades, died in 2018. His obituary has been posted here. Shirley died two years later. Her obituary can be found here. I played on teams with them several times. We also worked together to teach bridge to young people in the Springfield area. I documented that effort here.

2. The Rule of 9 was invented by Mel Colchamiro as a way of gauging whether it is OK to pass a takeout double. He advised not to unless the total of three things was at least nine: 1) the number of cards held in the trump suit; 2) the number of trump cards higher than 9; 3) the level of the bid. In this case the numbers were 5, 2, and 2. Therefore, I could (but was not required to) have passed.

2021-? Bridge: New Partners During and After Covid-19

New partners. Continue reading

As of December of 2023 I had played with a gross of partners in at least one complete session of a sanctioned game. After thee reopening in 2021 all of the games that involved new partners were held either at the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) or at a tournament.


HBC partners: Linda Starr (introduced here) was a director at the HBC. Before the Pandemic, she undertook a program of reserving the Sunday afternoon game as a high-low game, in which at least one of the participants must have less than 750 masterpoints. This was an especially good way for someone with a lot of points to play with the person whom they were mentoring. At some point in the winter of 2022-2023 my wife Sue decided that she wanted to play in the high-low game.

I enjoyed playing with Joanne Amenta, but I don’t remember the result or any of the details of the hands that we played together.

I definitely remember one hand in which she was playing in a team game at the HBC. Her partner was John Calderbank. I don’t remember who my partner was.

On the very first hand of the match I made a terrible bid that kept us from reaching a makeable slam. I immediately started whipping myself with a wet noodle.

Joanne had never played against me before. She expressed surprise that I became upset about one lousy hand. John explained that in team play some hands are much more important than others. Missing a slam would probably cause us to lose the whole match because of the difficulty in making up the difference in the other four hands.

Joanne is still an active player. She has attended both regionals and sectionals since the reopening.


I also played with David Brandwein one Sunday in the high-low game. He was a pretty good player, but the bidding system that was used by him and his regular partner, Bernie Selig, was archaic. I suggested a few things that he could add to modernize it and allow him to play more comfortably with more players.

David was elected vice-president of the HBC in 2023. That meant that he was also the chairman of the club’s long-range planning committee, of which I was a long-time member. The first meeting was scheduled for early in 2024.


For a few weeks in the fall of 2021 the Simsbury Bridge Club. (SBC) was not able to run games on Wednesday evenings at Eno Hall. I signed up to play one Tuesday evening at the HBC. Doug Deacon, who had been a regular on Tuesday evenings when I started playing in 2008, needed a partner. So, we worked on a card and played rather successfully (around 55 percent) for two or three weeks.

Paul formerly played with a man from Ukraine named Igor and then with Paul Tungatt.

At the end of 2023 Doug still was still working and playing regularly on Tuesday evenings at the HBC.


One Sunday afternoon Fred Gagnon (GAN yun, rhymes with canyon) drove down from his house in Springfield to mine in Enfield. He had asked me to play with him in the High-Low game and volunteered to drive both of us to the HBC. I had previously referred to him “Boom Boom”, but he said that he had never heard of Freddy (Boom Boom) Cannon or his biggest hit, “Palisades Park”. So, I had downloaded it to my MP3 player and let him listen to it in his car before we left. He said that the song sounded familiar, but he might have just been placating me.

Fred did not play very well that day. He might have been having health issues. He is still quite active in the bridge community.


Barb Gallagher was from Denver. She was in the Hartford area during the summer of 2023 to visit her daughter. I was lucky enough to hook up with her for a few games at the HBC and SBC. Our lists of conventions had a lot of overlap, and so we were able to piece together a rather sophisticated convention card.

I remember that we had one pretty good round, around 50 percent. I had a really good time playing opposite her. I wish that we could have worked in a few more games.

Barb left at the end of September to return to Denver.


Y.C. Hsu has played with various partners both at the HBC and, occasionally, at the SBC. I played with him once in the open game on Thursday morning. Since he sometimes played with one of my regular partners, John Calderbank, it was easy to agree on a convention card.

We had a pretty good game together, and I felt sure that I would play with him again.

Y.C. is from Taiwan. I have seen him many times at the bridge table, but I do not know much about his background.


I played with Diane Tracy in one Sunday afternoon High-Low game at the HBC. She must have enjoyed it; I overheard her singing my praises one day.

Diane is relatively new to the club, but she became a member of the board in 2022. So I have seen her at board meetings once a month. She has offered a valuable perspective because she spent a lot of time in Naples, FL. She has provided us with insights about how the other half lived.


I only played once with Andrea Yalof in the High-Low game, but I was quite impressed with her approach to the game. She and her husband David, who is also a bridge player, moved to Williamsburg, VA, in 2023. David worked at William & Mary. I have it on good authority that Andrea was still active in bridge in late 2023.

The “good authority” is Fran Gurtman (introduced here), who was Andrea’s regular partner when she lived in the Hartford area. Fran and Andrea still play together online.


Tournaments: For quite a few years John Farwell had served as the one-man partnership program for sectional tournaments in Connecticut. In that capacity I had interacted with him several times when I was in need of a partner or teammates.

The first sectional in Connecticut after the reopening was held in Orange, CT, in June of 2022. I was unable to find a partner for the Swiss event on Sunday, June 5, but I needed to attend the tournament anyway because of the board meeting before the game. I ended up being paired up with John and a pair of people I had never met before and have never seen since. Somehow we clicked together and we ended up fifth out of seventeen overall and first in the B strat. The details of the tournament have been chronicled here.

In 2023 John was still acting as partnership person at every sectional.


When he was a novice Abhi Dutta played with my wife Sue at least once. Ken Leopold and I had also teamed up with Abhi and a partner at one of the qualifying tournaments for Flight B of the Grand National Teams (GNT). Although that was not a pleasant experience I responded positively when Abhi asked me to play with him at the NABC in Providence in July of 2022. The details of that adventure have been described here.

Our next outing together was our most successful. Playing with Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider we won the Sunday Swiss at the sectional tournament in Great Barrington, MA, in August of 2022. You can read about it here.

I have played with Abhi in several other pairs and team events in both regionals and sectionals. I also played against him in a memorable knockout that was described here.


I was paired up with Phyllis Bloom for the Flight B Swiss event on Sunday, July 17, at the NABC in Providence. Our teammates were Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider, who both came down with Covid-19 a few days later. We finished slightly below average. Phyllis made a couple of very costly mistakes, but I still enjoyed playing with her.

Phyllis was married to Ken Bloom, an expert player. They lived in Sudbury, MA. Ken’s father, Irv, was an expert player. He and his partner, Bob Hoffman, invented the Blooman convention as a defense against 1NT.


I had committed to play with Jim and Mike in the Sunday Swiss event at the sectional tournament in Orange, CT, in April of 2023. I had a very difficult time finding a partner. Eventually Mike suggested that I contact Ros Abel, whom he knew from the Newtown Bridge Club. Rob agreed to play with me in that event and also the pairs event on Friday. We also arranged to play once at the HBC, which was actually closer to her house in Southington than the Newtown club was.

For a new pair we did quite well in both sessions on Friday, well over 50 percent. We also were doing well in the Swiss until the last round, which was against two players from the HBC whom I knew very well, Peter Katz and Tom Joyce. We had bid to 4. Ros then bid 5. We had not discussed what kind of control bidding we were using. In the one that almost all good players used that bid would show a first-or-second-round control in hearts, but it would deny controls in the two suits that she had skipped. So, I signed off in 5 and made 6, which they bid an made at the other table.

I asked Ros later what her bid meant. She said that she was showing a heart suit. So, I guess that she did not use control-showing cue bids at all.

At the end of 2023 Ros was still playing regularly at the HBC.


I have played against Jim Osofsky a large number of times, especially if you count the team events in which we were both sitting East-West at different tables. Jim and Mike usually teamed up with Ausra Geaski (introduced here) and Bunny Kliman, both regulars at the HBC.

For the 2023 Ocean State Regional in Warwick, RI, Jim’s usual partner, Mike Heider, was visiting the Fatherland with one of his sons. I also needed a partner for the four days that I intended to play. So, Jim and I paired up, intending to play in the Tuesday-Wednesday knockout and the Thursday-Friday knockout.

Abhi Dutta asked if he could team up with us for the event that started on Thursday. Later I learned that his partner would be Paul Johnson, the guy whose behavior upset me so much earlier in the year at Southbridge (documented here).

We used the partnership software to pick up partners from Florida for the first knockout. We had a very successful two days with them. The other two days were less so. The details have been posted here.


The last sectional of 2023 in Connecticut was in late October. Jim and Mike asked me to find a partner and play with them in the Sunday Swiss. I had a difficult time finding someone to play with. Eventually a fellow member of the CBA board, Linda Green, lined me up with Terry Lubman, a veteran player with more points than I had.

Terry Lubman.

Terry and I had a little trouble agreeing on a convention card. She wanted to keep it simple, but I was nervous about not having enough weapons. We got off to a disastrous start, picked up a little in the middle, and lost the last match. We finished a little below average. Terry was very frustrated because it seemed that every decision that she made turned out wrong. Also, we had a rather fundamental and embarrassing miscommunication on one bidding sequence that severely impacted our morale. The details are provided here.

I learned that Terry went to Catholic schools (but never learned about indulgences!),never throws anything away (aaaargh!), and is a bigwig in the gardening club circuit in southwest Connecticut and Westchester County, NY.


1. Jim and Mike were at least as odd a couple as Oscar Madison and Felix Unger. Jim was easily the most talkative person whom I have ever met. One of the bridge players called him Chatty Cathy. Mike, in contrast, had a good sense of humor, but hardly ever talked. While Jim was chatting up Donna Lyons, my partner at the NABC in Providence, Jim confided to me that “Jim seems to be coming out of his shell a little bit.”