Johnston Sectional in March: In January of 2024 Abhi Dutta asked me to play with him at the Rhode Island sectional tournament scheduled for March 2-3. I could not play on Saturday because it was my wife Sue’s birthday, but I agreed to play in the Swiss on Sunday. Abhi was out of town for most of the month of February, but he contacted me late in the month to report that he had acquired teammates. In Johnston I learned that our teammates were the DiOrios, Lou and Megan. I had worked with Megan on the committee for the NABC event in Providence in 2022 (introduced here), and I had played on a team with Lou some time before that.
I was not sanguine about our chances. The partnership of Abhi and me had really recorded only one good result (described here), and that was nineteen months earlier. Our more recent games were not memorable. I also did not remember great successes recorded for either Lou or Megan. The fact that we drew #13 did not raise my hopes, although I always remind people that for Wilt Chamberlain that number was reportedly lucky 20,000 times.2
In the first round Abhi and I played against Al Votolato and someone whom I did not know. The very first hand was weird. Al’s partner opened 1♦ in the second seat; Abhi passed; Al responded 1♠; I passed, and so did Al’s partner! Abhi made the mistake of doubling, which gave Al a chance to bid 2♦, which was the final contract. I asked Al if they had an agreement that allowed his partner to pass his response. He said that he was as surprised as I was. His partner at first defended his pass, but when he understood the situation he said that he did not realize that he had passed.
In the end, even though they were an A team, and we were a B team, we defeated them 29-0, which was a “blitz” that converted to the maximum victory point score of 20. We scored at least one imp on six of the seven hands, and the seventh hand was a push.
In the second round we played another A team, Dan Jablonski and Cilla Borras. They were both very good players whom I had played against several times. I made a horrible mistake in playing a 5♣ contract that Abhi put me in. For some reason I thought that we had nine trumps, not eight. I was therefore quite confident of making the bid when I dropped Dan’s queen on the second round of trumps. A little later, however, I mistakenly led a low diamond from the board. Cilla, who was on my right, ruffed it, and I underruffed even though I had a diamond! I took the requisite eleven tricks, but I was penalized one trick for revoking. Abhi insisted that he warned me when I did it.1
This faux pas cost us 11 imps. We would have lost the match anyway, but our running total of victory points was four fewer—21 as opposed to 25. This was not all bad because we got to play a much weaker B team in the third round, and we beat them 31-0—another blitz.
In the last round before lunch we played a much better B team, Mike McDonald and Tom Floyd. We beat them by 12 imps. At the break we had amassed 56 out of a possible 80 victory points. That was good enough for second place.
I had ordered a salad for lunch. I ate about half of it as well as a bag of chips and a Diet Coke. I sat by myself. I don’t know where my teammates went.
In the fifth round we played the team that was in first place. It included Sheila Gabay and Alan Watson, who had won both sessions of the pairs game on Saturday. The foursome had blitzed both of their last two opponents. Abhi and I played against another very fine pair, Max Siline and Carrie Liu. On the first hand I made 3NT, and our Sheila and Alan had a misunderstanding in their bidding. That was enough for a ten-imp swing, but we would have won the match anyway. The final score was 30-13. Abhi and I had no negative scores at all. I was wondering if it were possible to lose with no negative scores (Yes!), and I was worried that I would find out. I had played against Sheila’s teams at least six or seven times, and I had never won before.
I thought that I played pretty well in the sixth round, but we lost by 16 points to a very good B team. It seemed to me that most of the problems were at the other table. I was most proud of the fact that two of our twelve imps came from when I passed in the fourth seat.
In the last round we played against people whom I did not know. I again passed in the fourth seat, and this time it was worth five imps. Since our margin of victory in this match was only nine imps, I was very surprised to learn that we had won the event by two victory points over both the Siline team and the team from the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC)—Tom Gerchman, Linda Starr, and Bob and Ann Hughes. I was still in a foul mood because at the very end of the last hand Abhi had trumped a trick that I would have won anyway. That mistake cost us six imps, which would have given us two additional victory points. Even so, we brought home 7.15 silver masterpoints.
I did not receive much satisfaction from this result. I had made one huge and embarrassing mistake, and Abhi had made several smaller ones. However, out teammates were very excited about winning. They even asked Tom Gerchman (of all people) to take a photo of the four of us with a cellphone. He had a great deal of difficulty with the assignment.
Was our victory a fluke? I thought so at the time, but after examine the results, I am more inclined to think that we were the best team that day with that set of cards in a fairly weak field. We played all but one of the top teams. We never played against a C team. We beat the top-seeded team decisively in our match with them. We could easily have had quite a few more victory points than we did.
I still had a ninety-minute drive ahead of me. The traffic was slow, and for the first half hour the sun was really brutal even though I had on sunglasses and pulled down the visor as low as I could get it. The high temperature that day was 67 degrees.
On the way home I stopped at Big Y in Stafford and bought a cake for Sue. I should have done it so she could have enjoyed a piece on her birthday, but this was much better than nothing.
St. Patrick’s Day Sectional in Orange, CT: Bill Segraves did a tremendous job of setting up and running this tournament, which occurred the weekend of March 15-17. I am glad that he took the job of president. I would not have had the energy to pull something like this off. The date was the best that could be arranged, but it conflicted with the first weekend of the NABC spring tournament in Louisville. So, undoubtedly some of the best players could be expected to be at that event. That date also meant that it might be difficult to find a director. Robert Neuhart from Troy, NY, was hired. I had no previous familiarity with him.
The design and promotion of this tournament was much better than what was done for the previous ones. I thought that the St. Patrick’s Day theme, which I in fact suggested, was a little overdone, but people seemed to be having fun with it. I planned on wearing on Sunday my bright green sweater that my dad bought in Ireland. Before play started Bill paraded around in a hooded green jumpsuit and a green mask. To goose the Sunday attendance the games on Sunday were designated to support the Grass Roots fund.
A decision was made to increase the masterpoint limit for the Friday and Saturday limited pairs games to 750 masterpoints, but only non-Life Masters were allowed to play. This turned out to be a good decision. The limited games, which had been a problem, were pretty well attended throughout.
I decided to play all three days. Eric Vogel agreed to play with me in the pairs games on Friday and Saturday. I had difficulty finding a suitable partner and teammates for the Sunday Swiss. I sent out a solicitation to my usual list of potential partners, but the only responses that I received were from Buz Kohn, Joan Brault, and Terry Lubman. Terry said that she was still in Florida. Buz was the first to respond positively, but he backed out shortly thereafter. So, I agreed to play with Joan. No one expressed any interest in teaming up with us. So, I sent a request to the email address for partnerships that was on the flyer. Bill replied with an email that indicated that he would find someone. He eventually assigned us to play with Ivan Smirnov from Staten Island and Joe Lanzel from Foxborough, MA. I told Ivan that I would be wearing a bright green sweater with “Ireland” on the chest.
I commuted all three days by myself. Each trip to Orange took a little over an hour, but that included my usual stop at the McDonald’s in Cromwell to purchase a sausage biscuit with egg sandwich. The price at the McD at the end of the ramp for Exit 21 charged a dime less than the one in Hartford. However, the man taking the order on Sunday entered it as “sausage biscuit, add folded egg.” The cost was almost $1 less.
I left each day at about 8:25 and arrived at 9:30. The traffic was heavier on Friday, but it did not really slow me down. A strange thing happened with my car in the mornings. I was accustomed to turning on the front window defogger on cold days. This heated up the car on Saturday, but on Sunday it blew nothing but cold air.4
The return trips were as uneventful as the morning drives, except for the Sunday evening drive. The line of cars backed up on the parkway at the exit that led to I-91 north was more than a mile long. It took me more than ninety minutes to complete that trip.
I decided to wear a mask throughout the tournament. Almost no one except Bill and Frank Blachowski wore one.
Since I arrived on Friday morning before Eric did, I got in line to buy our entry fee. For some reason the director did not allow purchasing of both sessions. I charged the first session. Eric later bought the afternoon session. There was no problem with the transactions on Friday and Saturday. However, the computer connection with the card reading device did not work on Sunday. and so everyone had to pay in cash. I was the customer for whom the malfunction first was discovered. I don’t know if the problem was ever fixed.
The first thing that I noticed about the pairs games on Friday was that Peter Marcus was in attendance and was actually playing with Bill Segraves to fill out the movement. I had seen him at many tournaments, but I had only seen him play bridge once, and that was at the HBC.
The second peculiarity was that there were no clocks to keep track of the time remaining in each round. I cannot remember ever playing in a tournament in which there were no clocks. I never heard why this was the case in Orange. Perhaps the unit has depended on the directors to bring them.
Once play began it was pretty evident that, although the attendance was good (seventeen tables), the field was not as strong as it usually was. That was definitely reflected in the results. Eric and I were in first place after six rounds, but in the last round we were passed by a C team from the HBC, John Lloyd and Donna Simpson. We still won 5.84 points. I did not think that we played particularly well.
Eric and I had two egregious bidding mistakes in the morning session, but only one of them hurt us. Eric had apparently not reviewed our card thoroughly enough.
On one hand we were on defense after I had opened 1♠. I led the ace and then the queen. Eric ruffed it. After the hand I explained that when I led ace and then queen of a suit that I had bid, it meant that I also had the king. He asked why I didn’t just lead the king after the ace. I said that if I did, he would not know that I also had the queen.
Our level of play did not diminish in the afternoon, but our results dropped off a lot. I did not circle a single hand on the scorecard. We finished above 50 percent, but we did not make the overalls, and so we did not get any points.
We actually played better on Saturday. We earned over 9.37 masterpoints over the course of two days. That was not close to Rich DeMartino’s total. He won all three pairs games in which he participated.
We might have gone over the ten-point mark if Eric had not made an uncharacteristic blunder near the end. Acting as declarer, he intended to set up a cross-ruff for the last three tricks, but he discarded the wrong card from his hand. That left him with a heart and two trumps in both hands.
A strange situation occurred on Saturday. The opponent on my right was about to declare a hand. His partner was in the act of setting down the dummy when he accidentally dropped most of his cards on the floor. I did not look, but he said that some were face-up. He said that he was not able to get down on his knees to pick them up, and therefore he called the director, who was also not very spry. I volunteered to put my lead on the table and gather together the cards, but the director insisted on doing it himself.
Eric and I bid a slam in spades after he had opened 2♣. He had hearts and spades. We decided to change our response to the 2♠ follow-up so that the relay to 2NT could be broken if responder had spade support. This eliminated the ambiguity of the sequence 2♣-22♦-2♠-2NT-32♥-4♠. Previously it could have meant signing off in spades or Kickback for hearts.
Ordering lunch was embarrassing. I only wrote the six letters of my last name, but on both occasions the result was almost unreadable.
By the way, both lunches were good. The only problem with Friday’s salad with lots of meat and cheese on Friday was that the only beverage available was a small bottle of water. The sandwich on Saturday was even meatier. This caterer also brought cans of soft drinks. There were only two Diet Cokes, but I managed to claim one. The pizza on Sunday was OK, but the pairs game was still in process when the ninety-six people playing in the Swiss went to lunch. Usually there is enough pizza for seconds, but by the time that the pairs players ate, the teams were back in combat.
Our first round was against Debbie Prince’s team. We won by seven. In the second round we were blasted by 26 imps by a very good team. Joan and I thought that we had more or less held our own, but no hands showed positive results. Our teammates failed to set a 4♠ contract that I could see no way to make. They also bid an impossible slam that got doubled. We won the third round by 13 imps over a C team.
After lunch we played Mike Heider’s team. The results on two 3NT contracts startled me. On one I went down, and they made it at the other table. On the other they made it at our table with two overtricks, but our teammates did not even make the bid. In the fifth round we faced the team from the HBC that had done well in Johnston. Joan and I played against Ann and Bob Hughes. We thought that we had done pretty well, but we were worried about one hand on which we bid 3♠ but made 4. In reality, that hand was our only positive result in an extremely painful 17-imp loss.
Halfway through the sixth round against a team that obviously was over its head I lost interest and started playing badly. Nevertheless, we won the last two matches by 21 and 5 points to finish with four wins and 70 victory points—exactly average.
Our worst hand all day was the last one. We were playing Cappelletti, the only notrump defense that Joan will play. Cindy Lyall, sitting West, opened 1NT, and Joan doubled for penalty. I had a flat hand with only one honor, a queen. Cindy ended up making 3NT for 380 points. It would have been better for them to bid and make 3NT, but at the other table Joe went down in 1NT. Since I did nothing except follow suit and discard the four spot cards in hearts that I was dealt, I have no way to know whether Joan’s defense or Joe’s declarer play was more to blame for this fiasco.
Shekhar and Shashank won the afternoon session of the 0-750 pairs! They won almost three silver points in their first day at a tournament.
The attendance at the tournament was good through the entire weekend. That proved to me that good planning, good marketing, and a good schedule are still the keys to successful attendance in the world of tournament bridge.
1. If Abhi said that he warned me, and I am sure that he did. However, if I were the dummy, and my partner did what I did, I would have said, “Wait a minute. Are you sure that you did not have any diamonds? You underruffed!” I take great pride the fact that none of my partners has revoked in more than fifteen years.
2. In his 1991 book, A View From Above Wilt claimed to have slept with 20,000 different women during his life.
3. In the period after the pandemic I have had trouble getting teammates from the HBC. Perhaps the problem is the timing. Some arrangements are made many months in advance; many are made at the very last minute. My efforts seem to fall in the middle.
4. I brought the car into Lia, my dealership, on Friday, March 22. They gave me a lift home in their shuttle. I had only been there a minute when they called to tell me that the heater was working perfectly. I had tried it on Tuesday and Wednesday without success. There must be more to this story.
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.
In 2023 the lights are always out at the Red Lion in Cromwell.
Presidential Regional: District 25, the New England states, had traditionally held its first major1 regional tournament of the year in February. The site had been in Cromwell CT for as long as I had been playing. However, the demise of the Red Lion Hotel forced it to be moved to Sturbridge MA in 2020. The name of the last four or five events had been the Presidential Regional, because it ended on the weekend of Presidents Day. The name was maintained in 2023 even the the tournament was scheduled for February 7-11, the week before its usual appearance. The site was the Southbridge Hotel and Conference Center, which had also been used for the Spectacle Regional in the previous November, as described here. The 2023 Presidential was was scaled-down tournament of only five days designed to minimize the number of directors needed.
The Southbridge Hotel and Conference Center.
I was not excited about the schedule. There were no team games at all on Tuesday or Friday; if I played. I would be in the top flight. Wednesday featured a two-day knockout. Saturday had a three-flighted Swiss. I tried to get a partner from the pairing person, Denise Bahosh, but she could not find anyone for me. Eventually, one of my regular partners, Eric Vogel, agreed to play with me in the knockout. Our teammates were Jeanne Striefler and Jim Macomber from the Hartford Bridge Club.
I had played every day at every regional tournament for quite a few years. However, I decided not to play on Tuesday, Friday, or Saturday of this one. The drive to the hotel was not likely to be difficult as long as the weather cooperated. So, I decided to commute back and forth on Wednesday and Thursday. I also needed to be at the hotel for the meeting of the Executive Committee on Friday evening. I planned to drive then as well.
Jim Macomber and Jeanne Striefler.
The weather was fine. On both days I stopped at McDonald’s in Stafford for my usual sausage biscuit with egg sandwich. Our team had just the right amount of points. We were the top-seeded team in the second bracket. Nine teams were in our bracket. We had to play an eight-round Round Robin, which we easily won. That gave us the right to choose which of the third and fourth teams we would play on Thursday. I chose to play the Sattinger team rather than the team from Vermont. Those two teams had finished with the same number of victory points, and we had defeated them both by the same margin. One of the pairs from Vermont played Precision3. I worried that if Jim and Jeanne faced them, they might have difficulty handling a radically different bidding system.
Our morning round of twenty-four hands was against Michael and Ulla Sattinger of Slingerlands, NY, a team that I have played against many times over the years. Eric and I were East-West. On the very first hand I made an overly aggressive bid that turned out to be costly. Eric also made a fairly serious mistake on a different hand. However, things must have gone better in the other room. At lunch we were ahead by twelve points, which was a reasonably comfortable margin.
Eric Vogel.
Eric and I played better in the second half, but North-South held better cards on most of the hands. Ulla and Michael bid and made a few game contracts, but the hands seemed rather straightforward. I did not see any hands on which swings were likely. I was wrong. Jim and Jeanne did not bid several of those games and settled for setting their opponents in undoubled partial scores.
This was very upsetting to me. I had expected us to play as well as on the previous day. My record in knockout matches in the past was quite good, and I was convinced that things were lined up favorably for us. In retrospect I suspect that Jim and Jeanne might have gotten tired. Neither of them had played in any tournaments since the pandemic, and they had played in far fewer of them than I had before that. They were basically club players, and they had seldom played two sessions in one day, much less on two consecutive days.
After lunch we had to play against a team captained by Abhi (AH vee) Dutta, with whom I had played in a few tournaments. They had the second-best record in the Round Robin, but they had lost to the Vermonters in the semifinal. So, this match would determine who finished third. Eric and I were East-West against Abhi and Paul Johnson, a player from Connecticut with less than 750 masterpoints. Abhi had always been a deliberate player, and, at least in this match, Paul was at times unbearably slow—taking several minutes to make some decisions. At the half they were ahead by six points.
I told Jim and Jeanne that they would switch to East-West to face Abhi and Paul in the second set of twelve boards. Eric and I played against Liv Carroll and Louis DiOrio. Since they came from different corners of the district; they probably had been paired up by the Partnership Desk. We had a very pleasant match with them. Eric and I did not make any serious errors, but neither did they. It was hard to say if we had made up the deficit.
We had been waiting thirty minutes for the other match to finish when Eric announced that he had to leave to go to a meeting. This would ordinarily not have been a big deal, but it turned out that we won the second half by six points, and so our match ended in a tie. Jeanne tried to reach Eric by phone, but he was miles away and unwilling to return to play in a four-board playoff. So, we had to concede. It was the perfect ending to an awful day.
I drove back on Friday for the meeting of the Executive Committee. According to Curtis Barton, the President of the New England Bridge Conference, everything was “fabulous”. Attendance was better than at the 2022 tournaments, and some headway seemed to be being made, but it did not seem fabulous to me. The tournament was better than nothing, but it still seemed rinky-dink to me. To me the most amazing thing was how much money the district still had after a string of disastrous tournaments. The person most responsible was unquestionably Joe Brouillard, the treasurer.
The most hilarious moment occurred after Joe proposed eliminating the stipend to the secretary (Carolyn Weiser) and treasurer (himself) at tournaments. After some bizarre discussion there was a secret ballot. The motion failed 12-1. Everyone thought that Joe and Carolyn were worth every penny. The other important argument was that, heaven forbid, we were faced with replacing them, we needed to have every incentive available.
Granite State Getaway: I could not find partners for the six-day tournament in June in Nashua, NH. That was too bad; I would have liked to play in the knockouts; I even had teammates lined up for one of them.
Sue and I drove up on the morning of Saturday, June 24. The first half of the trip was in the rain, which was particularly heavy on the Mass Pike. By the time that we reached the hotel it was sunny.
I played with Sally Kirtley, the tournament manager, in the A/X pairs. We were badly overmatched. Sue also played in a pairs game and did not do very well.
At the Executive Committee meeting we learned that this was probably the last time that a District 25 regional will be held at the Sheraton. The hotel wants to increase the rate dramatically. Sally solicited and received a large number of suggestions for places with large spaces that were not directly associated with hotels. Joe emphasized that something needed to be done to strengthen the Grass Roots Fund. Before the pandemic most units specified one of their days as Grass Roots days. The district received funds from those games.
There was some discussion about doing the GNT qualifying in person, but I was the only person who felt strongly that it was a huge mistake to award gold points for online play.
No food was served at the meeting. Sue and I ate supper at Lui Lui. I had a delicious pizza and a beer. I questioned the waitress about on of the cartoonish paintings plainly captioned in Spanish, not Italian. She said that she knew nothing about it.
On Sunday morning at the meeting of the Board of Delegates we again heard about how fabulous things were. Only four people represented Connecticut—Peter Marcus, Paul Burnham, Sue, and me. At the end I took a couple of minutes to describe the Weiss-Bertoni award (introduced here) and to present it to Joe Bertoni. He was pretty choked up about receiving it, but, in my opinion, he definitely deserved it. I just hope that he continues the tradition of presenting it to other worthy recipients.
I scheduled an email to go out at 10AM to announce the winner.
The traffic on the return trip was awful. We arrived home more than a half hour later than we expected. It felt weird not to wonder whether the cats were all right.
If it were not for the presentation of the Weiss-Bertoni aware, I would have considered the trip a complete waste of time, gasoline, and money.
Mike Heider and Jim Osofsky.
Ocean State Regional: For some reason that I do not understand the tournament in Warwick, RI, on the Labor Day weekend was scheduled for only five days beginning on Tuesday, August 29. Knockouts were scheduled for Tuesday-Wednesday and Thursday-Friday. I was fortunate to learn that Jim Osofsky’s regular partner, Mike Heider, would be in Germany with his sons that week. So, Jim agreed to play as my partner for both of the knockouts. He arranged for Abhi and Paul Johnson to be our teammates in the one starting on Thursday. In the first knockout Denise Bahosh, the Partnership Chairman arranged for us to team up with Mike Baker and Susan Swope, two players from Florida who had roughly the same number of masterpoints as Jim and I.
I had decided to play four days, attend the Executive Committee meeting on Friday evening, and skip Saturday. I was able to use my IHG Rewards points to pay for my three nights at the Crowne Plaza in Warwick.
Jim and Mike H. played Precision, but Jim played 2/1 in club games. He lived in Deerfield, MA, and Mike H. lived in southern CT. So, they only played together at tournaments. I had played against them innumerable times.Jim and I had exchanged emails about bidding issues, and we had come to pretty good agreement about the convention card. Still, there were a few issues to be ironed out. So we agreed to meet at the hotel at 9:00 on Tuesday morning.
Judy and Sue.
Sue also wanted to attend the tournament, but, as usual, she did not get any partners until the last minute. On Monday evening she had arranged to play with her friend and long-time partner, Judy Cavagnaro in the Gold Rush pairs. Sue needed gold points to become a Life Master. When I went to bed she had not decided whether she would ride with me or take her own car. I planned to leave at 7:15.
Google Maps recommended taking the back roads to the Crowne Plaza. It took a little over an hour and 45 minutes, but I stopped at McDonald’s.
At 6:30 on Tuesday morning Sue informed me that we would ride together, but she wanted to take her car. Her plan was to provide for the possibility that she might want to come home early. When I asked how I was supposed to get home, she answered that she would drive to Warwick (a trip of at least an hour and forty-five minutes) to pick me up at 7PM on Friday after the meeting of the Executive Committee. I considered this to be ridiculous, but I was wise enough not to press that opinion.
At 7:03 Sue informed me that I should leave at 7:15 by myself. She would drive her own car. I decided not to stop at McDonald’s in Stafford. Instead I set as my destination on Google Maps the McDonald’s on Route 2 in Warwick. I picked up my sandwich there and arrived at the hotel at precisely 9AM.
Jim was already there, talking on his cellphone. His mother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s, was receiving memory care at a place very close to the Crowne Plaza. He was negotiating whether she needed a private nurse. I got a coffee and ate my breakfast.
At 9:30 we met our teammates, Mike and Susan. We had enough time to converse a little. Mike had a house in Rhode Island. Susan lived in Florida throughout the year.
For some reason the official schedule called the event in which we were playing the “Premier Knockout”. It was limited to players with 4,000 or less masterpoints4. Sixteen teams registered. The directors split it into two eight-team sections. Four of the eight teams in the top bracket had more total points than we did.
Jim and I played pretty well throughout the seven matches. We lost two close matches, including the last one to Abhi’s team, but our total of 91 victory points was much higher than that of any other team.
As in February I was allowed to choose our opponent in the semifinal on Wednesday from the third and fourth teams. This whole scene was eerily similar to what had occurred in Southbridge. On this occasion, however, we had blitzed the fourth-place team Mullin), and the other team included an extremely talented young player named Ethan Wood. It seemed like an easy call to pick Mullin.
Meanwhile Judy and Sue had done very well in the Gold Rush Pairs. They finished fourth out of thirty-six pairs and won 2.32 gold and 0.65 red masterpoints. Sue decided to accept the invitation from Sally Kirtley to play in the evening side game. Apparently she was having a great time and did not want it to end. Also, she seldom turned down an invitation to anything.
You pick up orders at that little red area.
I drove to KFC and picked up an eight-piece family meal. I ordered a large Diet Coke as well, but for some reason the person who took the order and got everything else right, did not include the drink. I had to pay $3.50 for a 10-oz. bottle at the hotel. We were also annoyed to discover that they had neglected to include any napkins or sporks. In my suitcase I discovered some napkins and silverware from a previous trip. Sue ate a chicken wing before the side game started.
While she was gone I ate supper and watched the ninth (penultimate) episode of the first season of Sneaky Pete on Freevee. I loved the show, but the plot was so complicated. I was dying of curiosity to find out the resolution in episode 10, but watching it on the hotel’s free Wi-Fi was almost intolerable. It kept timing out, and I needed to restart it.
After taking a shower I read a chapter of Holy Orders, the sixth of the quasi-mysteries written by Benjamin Black. Black’s style5 is exceptionally good. The plots are intricate, but they do not follow any of the traditional forms for crime fiction. The central character, an Irish pathologist named Quirke does not solve the mysteries. His friend, a police detective who is more Inspector Plodder than Sherlock Holmes, explains the situation at the end.
I went to sleep early. Although I was wearing my eye-mask and earplugs, I was still awakened when Sue returned to the room. I managed to get back to sleep, however, and I was well-rested in the morning.
We went to the Jefferson Diner for breakfast. I had a ham and Swiss omelette. It was good, and the home fries were better than they looked.
The Jefferson Diner.
The Mullin team consisted of a pair of ladies, Susan Mullin and Sheila Middleton, and two men, Steven Colman and Mark Sunderlin. Although Sheila, Steven, and Mark were all from Massachusetts, neither Jim nor I had previously played against any of them. They had the most points of any team. So, they must have been playing for a very long time in club games. We were not impressed by the ladies’ performance in the match in the previous day’s event. The two men were apparently long-time partners. They both lived on Cape Cod.
They opted to switch their chairs so that Jim and I played against the men. They announced that they were playing Precision. I had invented a defense against strong club systems. I called it WavaDONT. I had to explain it first to Jim and then to the opponents:
Overcalls of the 1♣ bid at the one and three-levels were natural—showing five and seven pieces respectively.
With a six-piece suit bid 1NT, which is a relay to 2♣ to be passed or corrected.
With a two-suited overcall bid the lower suit as in DONT.
With a very strong hand double.
Our opponents called the director, Tim Hill, to ask whether it was legal for us to use such a complicated (?) defense against their system in a game at “this level”. Tim said that he was “99.9 percent certain” that we could use whatever defense that we wanted. It turned out to be immaterial. In twenty-four hands they never opened 1♣!
The two guys seemed much better than the ladies. In the first half there were two consecutive swing hands. On the first one our teammates made 3NT. Our opponents went down in 4♠. In the other I went down in 3♠. At the other table our teammates did not defend well and let them make 4♠. In total we had a flimsy lead of one imp.
I thought that we had won the second half easily. One of our opponents had revoked on a vulnerable hand that he might have made or gone down one. However, in the first six hands we found ourselves down by six imps. It was a great relief when we won the last six by eleven. So, we won the match by six imps.
In the finals we played Ethan Wood’s team. His partner was not very good, and we easily won both halves. So, we won the premier Premier Knockout and 20.13 gold points. The Mullin team won third place over a team of guys from Maine.
Jim, Sue, and I decided to eat at the Crow’s Nest, a seafood place that was only a few minutes south of the hotel. Sue and Jim, both from New England, consumed some kind of water-dwelling insects. I tried “The Burger”. which was described in the menu as “1⁄2 lb of all-natural free-range beef topped with cheddar, lettuce, pickles, secret sauce, brioche bun, fries.” The secret sauce tasted a lot like the sauce on a Big Mac, which must have been the intent. The problem was that there was so much slippery stuff that the meat kept falling out the bottom of the buns, and when I did get a taste of meat, it was overwhelmed by the other ingredients.
All in all, we had a good time. After winning a knockout I probably would have had a good time if they served me dog food, and I got ptomaine poisoning.
The drive back to Route 1 featured a body of water on the right. We did not even notice it on the way there, but on the return trip the road was pretty severely flooded. The discussion in the car concerned what has the biggest effect on tides. I was even asked my opinion. As a native of Kansas I had none.
On Thursday morning I ate a piece of leftover chicken, and Sue consumed one of her spherical “crab cakes” for breakfast. I consumed one of the coffee pods in the Keurig and secreted one in my suitcase in hope that the cleaning person (who only came on Tuesday and Thursday)6 might refill the empty slots in the pod holder.
Steve Lister.
Sue had obtained a partner for Thursday’s Gold Rush Pairs game at the partnership desk. His name was Steve Lister. I found a photo of him that was taken at the 2019 event in Warwick when he won a couple if 299er pairs games.
I was not too sanguine about our chances in the Thursday-Friday Knockout, which had the same format as the one that we won. Our team had about 3,000 less points than our victorious foursome. Nevertheless, we were the fifth-seeded team in bracket #1 again. This time there were only seven teams per bracket. We therefore played six rounds of eight boards.
We did not do very well. We barely avoided last place. We got clobbered in the last two rounds by the team that won the event and the team that was in last place. I was slightly upset about the last result. Our teammates missed bidding two slams. On one they settled for a game and made seven. On the other they let the other team play in hearts.
The first of those hands was a comedy of errors at our table. The North-South team was Ulla and Michael. Ulla opened 1[suite x=’H’]. Michael bid 2NT to show a game-going hand with four pieces. Ulla rebid 3♠, which was supposed to show a singleton or void in spades—she actually had a doubleton. Michael cued the club suit; Ulla cued diamonds; Michael bid 4NT, asking for key cards. Ulla showed two of the five key cards (four aces and the king of trumps) without the queen. Michael bid 7♥ even though he knew—or at least should have known—that they were off a key card. If it was an ace, as certainly was likely, the contract was impossible. If it was a 50% play. In short, it was a terrible bid.
Ulla could not believe that he went to seven with only two key cards, but the one that they were missing was the Jim’s king of trumps, which could easily be finessed. So they made it. This was the first hand of the match. I knew that we were doomed. My play during the next five hands was uninspired.
So, on Friday we had to play in the Open Swiss or a pairs game. We decided to play in the Swiss.
Sue and I went out to eat with three people from the Northampton, MA, Yan Drabek, Rich McClure, and Allison Ryan. I really needed to get away from Jim O. for a while. He talks during every break between the hands, and I grew tired of listening to him. I was also down on Abhi and Paul after the last two rounds.
The parking lot was full when we visited The Shanty.
Our destination for supper was the Shanty, a small restaurant on Route 1 not very far south of the Crow’s Nest. It was another seafood place. We had two appetizers, yam fries and sweet soy chicken wings. The service was slow and Yan was very hungry. Everyone else liked them a lot. I thought that they were OK, but I would have preferred the wings without the sauce.
I ordered the baby back ribs, which were described as “honey glazed ribs, patatas bravas, corn, sriracha mayo, Parmesan, cilantro.” The last four were all mixed together and also covered with the glaze. I must say that this was the first time that I have ever been disappointed with the way that a restaurant prepared baby back ribs. I ate all the meat, but I barely touched the other stuff. I also had a beer.
The conversation, however, was great. I really perked up when Rich first asked about how to defend against Precision and then how to bid when the opponents play a Weak 1NT system. Everyone also laughed at my impression of Jim explaining things. He was a nice guy and a good player, but he just talked and talked. Yan, Allison, and Rich know him well; they all play in the Northampton Bridge Club.
The most amazing thing about this meal was that the other three participants seemed to have no idea how to split a check. I had to step in and do the arithmetic for them.
I went to sleep shortly after we arrived back at the hotel. I awakened at 3:30, and I never did get back to sleep. I finished up the chicken for breakfast. The rest of the day I stayed awake by imbibing caffeine.
Sue decided that she would not play on Friday. Steve L. was required to be home to celebrate his birthday. If he had been willing to play, she probably would have stayed. Her plan was to use the pool after all of the bridge players were busy playing and then check out of the hotel.
I woke up at 3:30 and never got back to sleep. This happened to me on a fairly regular basis. By the time of the first round I had been up for 6.5 hours. I had consumed plenty of caffeine in the interim, but I was still groggy in the first round. I failed to recognize a splinter and identified it as a weak bid. This resulted in a big swing that cost us the first match. I righted the ship after that shocking mistake.
We bumped around in the middle for most of the day, but we had a couple of big wins. We lost the last match on a hand on which I opened 1NT with a flat 15 and everyone passed. I went down one. Somehow our teammates lost 200 points even though neither side was vulnerable. I did not even ask how they did it.
I rushed off to the Executive Committee meeting with out checking our results. It turned out that we had 84 victory points, which was good enough for fourth in B and 2.66 gold points.
Hardly anyone was there when the Executive Committee meeting was schedule to begin. Someone decided that we should have food again, but we had to order from the sandwich menu. My Reuben sandwich was on the counter with a silver cover that bore my name on a tag. The French fries were surprisingly good. but the sandwich was cold. The sodas were brought in halfway through the meeting.
Curtis.
Curtis Barton, the president, called the meeting to order and, as usual, announce how fabulous everything was. He mentioned the fact that Mark Oettinger had resigned as vice-president, and he had appointed Sue Miguel as temporary vice-president.
Mark Aquino, the Regional Director, said that Bridge Base Online (BBO) was sold to a French company with no concern for the state of bridge. They were only interested in money. The ACBL’s contract runs out in 2025.
The table rate for youth players was set, as was a new rate for online NAP and GNT games. This was done to help boost the balance in the Grass Roots Fund.
I suggested that the Tournament Scheduling Committee should consider offering the Pro-Am game in the evening. After some cajoling I volunteered to manage it for the tournament scheduled for Southbridge in February of 20247.
I took a can of Diet Coke and consumed it on the drive home. I arrived at exactly 9 PM, and the miles-per-gallon read 40.1, but I have long suspected that it overstates the car’s actual mileage by about 5 percent.
The last tournament of the year, which was called “The Return of the Gala“, was held in Marlborough8, MA, from October 31 through November 5. The original Gala was held at the same site in May of 2022. I missed it because I was on the European cruise that was described here.
I planned on playing for five of the six days, but I had a very difficult time finding partners and teammates. I was fortunate that Eric Vogel agreed to play as my partner in the two knockouts held the first four days, but he could not play on Saturday. More than a month before the tournament started I submitted electronic forms to the partnership person, Denise Bahosh, for teammates for the knockouts and for a partner for Saturday. I had to pretend that I wanted to play in the open pairs on Saturday. If I could find a partner, I would try to convince him/her to switch to the Swiss.
The playing area was on the ground floor on the far right.
Sue Miguel had sent an email in early September that claimed that the hotel, a Best Western (BW) property called the Royal Plaza Hotel and Trade Center, was only recognizing the tournament rate until the end of September.9 So, I made reservations for one double room for four days.I planned to drive home after the Executive Committee meeting on Saturday evening. I had forgotten that there would be a meeting of the Board of Delegates on Sunday, and I was unaware that the Executive Committee meeting had been scheduled for Friday.
Denise tried to match Eric and me up with Alan Godes (introduced here) and an unknown teammate. I was somewhat reluctant to commit us to join up with them, but it turned out not to matter. Alan did not respond to my email for some time. In the interim Denise proposed that we play with Carol Seager and Michelle Blanchard (introduced here) in the first KO. I had played with them before and had a reasonably good experience. So, I agreed to teaming up, and so did they.
Meanwhile Alan wrote me to say that he had teammates for the Thursday-Friday KO, but he needed to find someone for the first one. I explained that we had just found teammates for that event. I don’t think that Alan ever found teammates.
Just before the tournament Denise informed me that she could not find a partner for me for Saturday. So, on the eve of the tournament I had big gaps in my dance card.
Sue could not find partners either. She wanted to attend the Board of Delegates meeting on Sunday, but it did not make much sense for her to drive up just to attend. It would be about a seventy-five-minute drive even on a Sunday morning.
On the morning of Tuesday, October 31, I set off in my Honda for Marlborough by myself. The drive was relatively easy. The only problem was that the first leg of the journey was due west on Route 190. In a few places the sun was directly in my eyes. I had my sunglasses on, but even so it was blinding. Still, even though I made my customary stop at McDonald’s in West Stafford, I made excellent time. I arrived at about 8:45, much earlier than I expected.
The only difficult part of the drive was finding the hotel. On I-495 the exit for the hotel was labeled Route 20 west. The street’s local name was Boston Post Road.
The hotel was located on a road that went north from the Post Road called “Royal Plaza Drive”, which was really more like a driveway. There was no street sign that I could see. Later I noticed a large “Best Western” sign, but on my first pass I was searching for a street sign, not a sign with five or six logos on it. Because the Post Road had a median I had to continue to the next stoplight and then make two U-turns to return to the spot where Google Maps had told me to turn.
I definitely did notice the sign for the Hampton Inn, which was located right on the Post Road. I definitely took mental not of the fact that the Hampton and a lot of other more modern hotels were quite close to the BW.
The road to the hotel had one striking feature—an oversized speed bump that was quite jarring if taken at more than 5 mph. The hotel’s parking lot was gigantic. It was mostly empty when I arrived, but at night a large number of big trucks parked there. I don’t know whether the hotel charged them for this privilege.
I parked on the right near the door to the exhibition center. Many of the people who were already there had on costumes. Gary Peterson (introduced here) had by far the most elaborate one. He was dressed as the King of Hearts, complete with crown and mace. One woman wore a long bathrobe; I think that she intended to be a geisha. I thought that all of the costumes seemed creepy. I had on my black trousers and shirt and my Halloween tie. The neck on my shirt must have shrunk. It had become too small for me. I was uncomfortable all day.
Sally Kirtley was wearing some kind of semi-costume, but what caught my attention was the fact that she had on her Tournament Manager badge. That reminded me that I had accidentally left my Goodwill pin and Executive Committee name tag at home. I remembered getting them out of my backpack. What I did not remember was that I had also put them back in the pack. Later I decided that I did not need to bring the pack.
When I arrived the playing area was very cold. For the first half hour or forty-five minutes there was no coffee. I sat by myself and shivered even though I was wearing the jacket that I had bought (and almost never needed) for my European cruise eighteen months earlier. A few people dropped by to say hello to me.
At about 9:30 I located Carol and Michelle. I expected Eric to be there at any minute. He was still missing ten minutes later, and, in fact, there were very few people around the table where they sold entries for the two knockout events. Carol gave me her credit card, and I used mine for Eric and me when I bought the entry. Our preliminary number was 102, which meant that only one other entry had been sold.
I had my phone in my hand to call Eric at about 9:50, but I saw him before I could find his name in the contacts. He reported that he had arrived early, and the hotel let him check in. So, this was my first clue that our group constituted the vast majority of the hotel’s guests.
Unused knockout enty.
I asked the director, David Metcalf, how many entries they had sold. He replied that four teams were in the top bracket and four in the 0-4,000. Carol insisted that we drop out and play in the pairs, and I agreed. Two of the original four teams played in the open KO and were given handicaps.
Eric and I won some points in both sessions of the open pairs, but we did not set the world on fire. There were about twenty-two tables in each session. None of the hands stood out for me.
I am not sure why so few people chose to play in the knockouts.
The lunch break was more than an hour. After I ate my roast beef sandwich and chips, I checked in and went to the room that I had been assigned, #263. I discovered when I opened my shaving kit that I had forgotten my toothbrush. I used one end of a Q-tip to paint my teeth with toothpaste. I also used a proxabrush and floss.
Eli had a beard in Marlborough.
I sent an email to Eli Jolley, who had filled out a card looking for teammates for the Thursday-Friday KO. He had 3,000 masterpoints, and his partner had 2,000. A few minutes later he replied that he would like to team up. I said that I would be around the partnership desk at 9:30 on Thursday morning, and many people would know me.
In the second session we played two hands against a couple who played the Polish Club, which has a three-way 1♣, Kris and Dorota Jarosz. I decided that we would play the defense that I had devised against what I called faux club systems. It involved using a 1♦ bid to make a two-suited overcall. We did well against them.
Sue Miguel kept interrupting the bridge to give awards for costumes. There were also gift cards given as door prizes. She must have used the word “fabulous” ten times. I was ready to puke.
Eric and I got points in both lackluster sessions. If I had had my druthers, I would have just driven home after we found out that there would be no KO.
When I got back to the room after the second session I phoned my wife Sue at home to tell her about the fiasco in the KO.
On Tuesday evening Eric, who is a vegetarian who sometimes eats fish, and I went out for supper. He wanted to try a place called Atlantic Poké. He tried to figure out how to get there from a map that was available near the welcome desk. We finally found it, but it was just a small place that seemed to specialize in takeout. The accent on the “e” made me think that it was probably sushi, the one thing that I have always refused to eat.
So, Eric said that the Longhorn Steakhouse was acceptable. I dialed it up on Google Maps, and we found it rather quickly in the corner of a strip mall. Eric had salmon, and I ate the baby back ribs. We talked about our careers. I learned that after Eric had been laid off from Pratt & Whitney he went to CPI and learned to program. He spent the rest of his career in IT at insurance companies.
I also learned that Eric had done quite a bit of work on Y2K. The part that he did sounded ugly indeed. He also mentioned that it was impossible to get Fortran programs converted to COBOL because they had different rounding mechanisms. He probably would have liked working at TSI, and I would have liked to have him.
I tried to watch an episode of The Bridge on my laptop, but I couldn’t get interested in it. I also tried to read from the book that I had picked up at the Hartford Bridge Club, Mexico Days by Robert Roper, but the light in the room was so dim that I gave up after about one page.
When I went to get into the shower the tub had water in it. I slipped and fell on my back on the floor of the bathroom. I was not seriously injured but I smashed my right hand against the baseboard. I put bacitracin on the small cut after the bleeding stopped. By the way, there was a handle outside of the tub, and I did grasp it as I entered the tub. Nevertheless, I could not stop the fall.
To get the water out of the tub I needed to shove a plastic Bic razor that I always brought for emergencies between the stopper and the lip of the drain.
I did not think much of my room. However, it did have a refrigerator into which I placed the two bottles of water that the desk clerk gave me when I checked in. There was also a microwave, but I did not use it. The bed was quite comfortable, and the heat worked without a problem.
Breakfast was free. I met Eric in the restaurant (which only served supper on Fridays and Saturdays) at 8:15 on Wednesday morning. They served pretty much the same thing every morning: scrambled eggs (plain and with something added), meat (sausage or bacon), French toast sticks with syrup, fruit, and yogurt. Juice and coffee were available from extremely old machines. The sausage that they served on Wednesday and Friday was much better than Thursday’s overcooked bacon. The French toast was much too chewy.
Afterwards we played with Michelle and Carol in the open Swiss. There were only twelve teams. In the first round I played 3NT two hands in a row. The first one was routine. On the second one I had eight tricks. There was also some potential for more in some suits. The problem was spades, where the dummy had only a doubleton, and I held Kx. Sure enough, the lead was a low spade. I played a card from dummy. Then the player on my right pulled two cards from her hand, the queen and ten of spades, and dropped them on the table. We called the director.
Tim Hill came to the table and explained that she could play either card. The other would be a “major penalty card”. She chose to play the queen. I scored my king. Now I only needed one trick. I crossed to the dummy in hearts and took a finesse in clubs. It lost, but I was allowed to tell the left-hand opponent not to lead a spade. In the end I was able to win ten tricks before they got their spades. If she had dropped the cards on the table, I could never have made it.
When we returned to our teammates’ table, I said that unfortunately we had probably used up all of our luck for the day in the first round. They thought that they had done badly, and they had, but the gain from my lucky 3NT game was enough for us to claim victory.
The celebration was short. We played against Mark Aquino’s team in the second round and got blitzed. That was the first of four consecutive blitzes that we endured. This was even worse than the performance in the Swiss at the NABC in Boston (described here).
I played none of the thirty-two hands in the four blitz rounds. One hand in the middle of the blitzkrieg deserved emphasis. I held KQJ10 and three little clubs, a singleton diamond, Ax in hearts and Kxx in spades. Eric opened 1♣! I wasted no time and bid 4♦, which asked him how many aces he had. His answer indicated all three! I thought for only a few seconds before bidding 6♣.
Eric had to play it. I could tell from the look on his face that it was going to be difficult, and it was. He won only my seven clubs, the three outside aces, and the ♠K. At the time I thought that it was due to an unlucky lay of the cards, but I should have known better.
Eric’s opening bid indicated that he had either three clubs or more clubs than diamonds. In any case he had four or fewer hearts and spades. Unless he had precisely one diamond and four in the other suits, he had less than 15 points. If he had had 15-17 points with a balanced hand, he would have bid 1NT. So, he was very unlikely to have either of the missing kings. I was essentially gambling that he had the ♠Q! It was possible, but not very likely.
I should have just responded 2♣ to set the trump suit. We would then bid stoppers up the line. When I was certain of stoppers in every suit, I should have signed off in thee lowest available notrump bid.
In the sixth and last round we played against Alan Godes’s team. The match ended in a tie. Somehow it seemed fitting.
At that point I considered it to have been an unspeakably bad tournament. It got a little better at supper, which we ate with Ben and Ginny Bishop. At the time Ben was the president of the HBC. One of Ben’s sons had recommended a restaurant called Welly’s in the neighboring town of Hudson.
I found a shortcut!
For some reason we took two cars. Ben knew where it was. I was confident that I had programmed Google Maps to report the directions to Welly’s Restaurant in Hudson (there was also a Welly’s in Marlborough).
Somehow I got the directions for Willy’s Steakhouse in Shrewsbury, MA. So I turned a fifteen-minute trip into one that took much more than half an hour. Ben and Ginny had to wait for us.
I don’t think that I spoiled the evening. I had a Reuben sandwich, which was pretty good. The stars of the meal from my perspective, however, were the tall glass of Guinness and the onion rings. The latter were both delicious and plentiful.
We got to learn a little about Ginny’s career in nursing. The rest of the evening was spent with Ben, Eric, and I swapping war stories about working with computers. They were both pretty impressed to learn that I had personally installed thirty-six AdDept systems.
Ben also told us about his two sons. They both had worked for the MITRE Corporation. I had never heard of a non-profit that worked with the federal government.
We found our way back to the hotel without any problem.
On Thursday morning I learned that Eli was a relatively young pro from Auburn, AL. I already knew his partner, Judy McNutt from western Massachusetts. She was wheelchair-bound.
Judy McNutt.
This time there were two brackets of eight teams in the 0-4,000 KO. We were the top-seeded team in the upper bracket. We won our first three matches rather easily. I decided to spend the break in my room resting and dining on the gifts that the lady at the front desk gave me when I checked in—a bag of chips, an energy bar, and water in a bottle. When I returned to the playing area I bought a can of Diet Coke.
Our streak continued after lunch We won the first two matches. At this point we had pretty much clinched a spot in the knockout on Friday. However, we were blitzed in the sixth round, which allowed the team that beat us to pull even with us. Both teams won blitzes in the last round. We were awarded first place based on the fractional victory point score that was in effect.
Eli asked me if I cared about whom we played. I told him that it was a difficult choice. The two teams, Page and Clay, were only one victory point apart, and we had defeated both of them in the Swiss by small margins. I picked to play the Page team because the other team seemed to me to have a stronger East-West pair. I hoped to protect Judy, who was definitely our weak link.
Eric and I ate supper with Donna Feir, the manager of the HBC, and Sally Kirtley. At my suggestion we went to Evviva, a casual Italian restaurant. Two HBC players, Tom Gerchman and Dan Finn were already seated nearby. They were going over the hands from the pairs game. I ordered the Bolognese (at Evviva they put the bowl in Bolognese) and a glass of Montepulciano.
Donna Feir.
The conversation at supper was not extremely memorable, but I enjoyed it. It was the first time in my fifteen years as a member of the HBC that I had been in a social situation with Donna. I did learn that the tournament in February would be the combination sectional and regional, and it would be held in Mansfield. The Presidential Regional had been assassinated. The tournament in Southbridge would be in April.
After we drove back to the hotel Donna and Sally played in the side game. I went to my room and watched part of the football game between TCU and Texas Tech. Texas Tech was ahead 20-7 when I turned it off at the half, and the Red Raiders held on for the victory.
I got the bright idea of dragging the pole lamp over to the side of the bed. I cocked the shade so that it produced enough light to read by. I read a chapter or so before I took a shower and then went to bed.
At 3:00 I awakened and spent an hour and spent about an hour working out the combinatorial probabilities of that slam hand that failed. I only went to sleep when I realized that it was almost impossible for Eric to have either missing king.
I wore an N95 mask the first three days. Less than 10 percent of the other players did so. However, the rigidity of the mask bothered the bridge of my nose, and I had deep gouges in the side of my face. Since I would only be at the same table as four others, I decided to leave it in room 263.
Mark Oettinger.
After breakfast on Friday I went over to the table occupied by Steve Ackerman and Sue Collinson from Vermont. I asked them if they knew what the backstory was for Mark Oettinger’s sudden and—to me, at least—shocking resignation. Steve said that Peter Marcus had called Mark and insisted that he should resign. Steve said that it was “pretty nasty”. Later that morning I met up with Joe Brouillard. I asked him if he knew what had happened. He said that he had been surprised by it and knew no details.
I thought back to an email that I had received from Sandy DeMartino asking me about Mark’s performance. I explained that he seemed OK to me, but my interaction with him had been limited by the fact that I was unable to attend three consecutive meetings of the Tournament Scheduling Committee, at which the strategy for recovery from the Pandemic was decided. I had then resigned from the committee because I was spending so much time on the HBC, the CBA, and this project.
Sandy DeMartino.
Sandy said that Peter Marcus had telephoned her and asked her to support Sue Miguel as the next president of D26. Sandy declined to do so. I think that this must have been before the call to Mark.
I found all of this to be deeply disconcerting. At the close of my conversation with Steve and Sue I asked them if they thought that I should make a stink about this at the Executive Committee meeting on Friday evening. Steve advised against it. Sue was silent.
We lost the match against the Page team. All of the swings in the first set were in the first six boards that Eric and I played. I did not think that we had played badly. We won the second set by eight, but that was not nearly enough.
I bought a salad, which was barely edible, and a Diet Coke for lunch. I ate by myself and had a hard time keeping the Oettinger affair out of my head.
I checked the cards on the partnership desk. I could scarcely believe that no one was looking for partners for Saturday’s open pairs game. I don’t know what I would have done if I had not canceled my hotel reservation.
The first set of the consolation game after lunch was easy to analyze. We did not bid three games that our opponents did. Two of those were my decisions. The games came home because on both hands Eric and I had a secondary fit in the diamond suit that, because of aggressive interference by the opponents, neither of us got a chance to show the other.
Wee came back strong again in the second set. However, we lost ten imps because Eric opened a flat hand with a 12-count, something that I would never do. I had nineteen points. I responded 2NT, which for us showed 12-14 or 18-19 points. Eric bid 3NT, which indicated that he had no short suits. I bid 3NT, which went down. If Eric had had the thirteen points that I expected, I would have made the bid, and we would have won the match. If he had opened a minor with the hand that he had, we would have fallen a few imps short.
I was pretty sure that I had ordered a roast beef sandwich for the box lunch that the hotel provided for the Executive Committee meeting. However, there was nothing but turkey and tuna. I certainly did not order tuna. So I took a turkey sandwich that had a lot of dry meat and bread. I can’t complain. An apple and a bag of chips were also provided.
Mark Aquino.
The main topic of conversation was whether we should worry about scheduling regionals the same weekend as the regional in Lancaster, PA. Mark Aquino said that he had gotten an earful from the president of District 24. Peter Marcus and Sue Miguel were adamant that the “500-mile rule” that D24 cited did not exist. Evidently they hoped to draw more pros from New York City.
The schedule for the tournament in Southbridge February, which because it was near the Super Bowl, would have a football theme. I didn’t plan to go unless someone really wanted to play with me. I would not be eligible for the regional events, and the sectional events did not include any bracketed events. Maybe they will change that.
The meeting closed with a long lecture by Sue Miguel about how we all needed to get off of our butts and to participate in her many programs to recruit people to rejoin the ACBL and play in our tournaments. I found much of this offensive and wrong-headed, but she and Peter will not brook any opposition.
I am also convinced that the basic analysis is wrong. To me the problem was not the Pandemic so much as the ACBL’s reliance on online bridge as a source of money. Maybe it was necessary for the ACBL to survive, but it has now ruined some of the tools that we had used to put on attractive tournaments that made money. The current D25 administration has abandoned most of the aspects that I judged made the events compelling. No one seemed to want to hear this. Instead we have been treating our players like kids in junior high. Costume contests, door prizes, unsharpened pencils with “Day of the dead” figures on them: give me a break! All of the incentives were provided to new players. I saw no effort at transitioning anyone into the games that the district sponsors.
Also, I was supposed to represent Connecticut. There have been no regional tournaments in Connecticut since 2021, and none have been planned. We were told that there were no hotels. Is that possible?
I came away from the meeting with a very bleak outlook. For ten years I have loved to attend regional tournaments. At this point I could barely tolerated them, and they were expensive.
The drive back to Enfield was uneventful. The Honda entered the garage at 9 p.m.
1. Until 2016 there had been an Individual Regional in Newton, MA. It was discontinued because it was unprofitable. My report from the last such event was posted here.
2. The Red Lion was the last name of the hotel in Cromwell, CT, that hosted District 25’s regional tournament in February. In 2020—just days before the Presidential Regional—the state of CT closed down the hotel for failure to pay taxes. It never reopened. The tournament was moved to the Sturbridge Host for that one year.
3. Precision is a bidding system in which the strongest opening bid is at the lowest level—1♣. The Wikipedia article about it is here.
4. I had played in the previous 0-4000 Knockout at least five years earlier. It was a fiasco. Only five teams participated. We played all day in two five-way sessions to eliminate one team. One team had much less experience than the other four; they did not do well. Our team lost in the semifinals and was relegated to the Single-session Swiss.
5. Benjamin Black was the pen name assumed by award-winning novelist John Banville when he began writing genre fiction late in his career.
6. On my previous two visits to this hotel in 2022 no cleaning service was provided at all.
7. I learned months later that there would not be a tournament in Southbridge in 2022. This is explained in the Marlborough section.
8. The name of the Massachusetts town is officially Marlborough. There is a “hamlet” named Marlboro. The town in New Jersey with the same name shortened it to eliminate the “ugh” at the end, but the one in Massachusetts did not. Nevertheless, the highway signs mostly use the short version.
9. The hotel was not actually filled to anything approaching its capacity. I had to wonder it the hotel really enforced or even announced this policy.
After the Covid-19 vaccinations became readily available in the late spring of 2021 competitive bridge1 started a very slow return in New England. The Hartford Bridge Club reopened in August of 2021, but attendance was disappointing. The Simsbury Bridge Club’s first game was a five-table gathering on September 18. The only sectional held in New England in the entire year was an EMBA event in Watertown on December 10-12. It drew 133 tables, exactly half of the attendance at the equivalent tournament in 2019.
The Executive Committee (EC) of District 25 planned to hold a tournament in Warwick, RI, at the end of August. I had publicized it rather heavily.2 However, it—and every other regional event scheduled for August—was canceled by the ACBL. A regional tournament that was also planned for November in Mansfield, MA, was canceled by a vote at a Zoom meeting of the EC.
District 25’s Tournament Scheduling Committee (TSC) held a couple of Zoom meetings in late 2021 in which it decided to change the 2022 schedule drastically. Peter Marcus, the district’s Director-in-Chief, had been arguing—with some degree of seriousness—that the district should schedule no tournaments at all for 2022 rather than play by the ACBL’s rules. Instead the TSC decided to shelve the plans for three events:
The Presidential Regional that had traditionally been held in February in Connecticut.
The intermediate/novice event scheduled for April that had been called the Rainbow Weekend or Gold Mine.
The Senior Regional/Cape Cod Sectional that was also planned for April.
Although I was a voting member of both committees, I was unable to attend either Zoom meeting and was shocked when the TSC proposed this at the Zoom meeting of the EC in early 2022. I voted loudly against the recommendations, but no one else did.
Instead, a four-day tournament called the Gala Regional was scheduled for May 19-22 in Marlborough3, MA, in a hotel that had never before been used for a tournament. The flyer for the event has been posted here. I had a long streak of attendance at regional events, but I could not attend this one because of a European cruise that had been scheduled many months earlier (for a period in which D25 had never run a tournament) and had already been postponed twice. That adventure has been described here.
On April 14 I sent out the first promotional email for the Gala to over 2,000 players in Districts 3, 24, and 25 who had less than 300 master points. A copy is posted here. 61% of the recipients opened the email, but only 51 of them clicked on the link to the flyer.
On the same day I sent a slightly different version to the players in the same districts with between 300 and 750 masterpoints. A copy is posted here. This group was about half the size of the previous one. Again, about 61 percent opened the email; 48 clicked on the link to the flyer.
The third version was sent to “Gold Rush Grads”, those with 750-2000 masterpoints, about 1,000 players. A copy was posted here. 58.2 percent opened it, and 46 clicked on the link.
The fourth version went to players with over 2,000 masterpoints. A copy was posted here. 56+ percent opened it, but only 20 clicked on the link.
So, only a total of 165 players clicked on the link to the flyer. I haven’t checked every email, but I suspect that this was the worst rate of any set of emails promoting tournaments that I had ever sent. People were either still scared of Covid-19, or they were upset about the vaccination requirement. Or maybe my emails were less effective because it was difficult for me to be enthusiastic and creative about the promotion of an event that I could not attend.
I sent a second email a week later to emphasize the convenience and quality of the hotel, which I had never seen. Only people with less than 50 masterpoints were excluded from this email (copy posted here). Nearly 59 percent opened it, and 127 clicked on the link to the flyer. There was no link to the hotel; reservations needed to be made by telephone.
On April 29 I sent a set of three emails that Sue Miguel composed. Her style was much different from mine. A sample of one is posted here. A total of 120 people clicked on the link to the flyer. No further marketing was done.
The schedule placed a lot more emphasis on the party element than the bridge.
Sue Wavada attended the Gala, and when she picked me up at Logan Airport after the tournament was over, she reported that she enjoyed it. She also was allowed to take home some balloons.
The Grand National Teams (GNT) was one of the events scheduled to be held at the eleven-day Summer NABC to be held in Providence in July. Both the qualifying tournament in District 25 and the finals of the event had been held online in 2021. Although I hated playing online I played with my partner, Ken Leopold, on Bridge Base Online (BBO) as often as I could. We teamed up with our long-time teammates, Trevor Reeves and Felix Springer.
On October 25 of 2021 I sent an email to all three about the 2022 qualifying tournament for D25:
My total masterpoints went over 2500 yesterday. However, I just checked the ACBL’s Conditions of Contest for the GNT for 2021-2022 (http://web2.acbl.org/documentLibrary/play/coc/gnt/GNT2021-22.pdf). The cutoff date for the GNT is the roster of August 6, 2021. So, I will still be eligible for one more GNT. The finals will be at the summer NABC, which is scheduled for Providence. The date for the qualifying tournament has not been finalized, but it will probably be in April or May.
I hope that you guys will be willing to play with me again in my final opportunity for this tournament.
All three responded positively to this request. On April 28, 2022, I wrote the following email to all three in order to confirm our plans.
The GNT qualifier for Flight B is on April 30 and May 1. I have read the Conditions of Contest. It will be held online under approximately the same conditions as last year. Two teams will qualify if more than eight participate. The cost is $15 per session
The finals in Providence start on Wednesday, July 13.
Is everyone still up for this? If so, I will register us.
Felix responded within an hour or so with this disheartening message: “Dan Morgenstern asked Trevor and me a while back to play in the GNTs with him and his partner and we accepted. Another time.”
This was soul-crushing news. I really wanted to compete in this event with a team that I trusted and could plan strategy with. I forwarded to them a copy six months earlier of their positive responses to my invitation, but neither of them responded to that email.
Ken suggested that we should look for other teammates, but I told him that I did not want to do so. We had played with inferior teammates in this event in 2019, and I had not enjoyed it at all. In that case the event was face-to-face. This would be online, which I could scarcely tolerate even with good teammates.
Felix and Trevor’s team qualified in the second team from D25 and got to play in Providence.
I was heavily involved in the promotion of the Providence NABC, helped with the partnership desk a couple of times, and played bridge almost every day. The beginning of the description of my involvement has been posted here. Felix and Trevor’s team made it to the semifinals, where they lost to the eventual champions.
The first regional tournament that I was able to attend was the Ocean State Regional in Warwick, RI, which ran from August 30-September 5. The flyer has been posted here.
The first promotional email was what I would call a postcard. Sue Miguel designed it. I sent it on July 27, about five weeks before the tournament began, to everyone in D3, D24, and D25, as well as the people who attended in Providence. 41.3 percent of the 15,000 recipients opened the email. 340 clicked on the link to the “schedule”. There was a mistake on it. I sent out a correction the same day. The correction, which has been posted here, had an additional 500 clicks.
I wrote and sent out the second email on August 18 to everyone in D3, D24, and D25. 184 people clicked on the link to the flyer. It has been posted here.
Sue designed an email for 3,000 players in D25 with less than 750 masterpoints. It was sent on August 22. The email, which was posted here, did not contain any links. She also had me send one for the 824 “Gold Rush Graduates” (750-2000).
The less said about the actual tournament the better. On Tuesday Sohail Hassan4, whom I had met at the partnership desk at a tournament before the pandemic, and I did poorly in the Open Pairs. Sohail showed up at the last minute for both sessions. Since there were a few things on our convention card that I was shaky about, this distressed me.
We intended to play in the Wednesday-Thursday knockout, but we were unable to find teammates. Since the schedule had been pared back to save on director’s fees, our only other choice was to play in Wednesday morning’s Side Game5. It was a horrendous experience. Sohail again appeared at the last minute for both sessions, and in the morning he got into a boisterous argument with one of our opponents. The director had to be called to calm them down. I made several mistakes; our scored was miserable. Nevertheless, we had a 58.71 percent game in the afternoon Side Game.
Bob Potvin.
On Thursday we played in the Open Swiss. We teamed up with two guys from Rhode Island, Don Rankin and Bob Potvin. I had played against both of them before. We somehow finished third in B and sixth overall. This was not that great an accomplishment. Most of the participants were teams that had been eliminated from the knockout on the previous day.
I confided to Don that playing with Sohail had been a miserable experience. He replied, “Maybe we should play together.”
Abhi Dutta.
On Friday I had scheduled a new partner, Abhi Dutta6, for the knockout. Our teammates were Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider. Although the four of us were fresh from a victory in the sectional in Great Barrington, MA (described here), we could not get any traction in our five-team group. We were eliminated and forced to play in the Open Swiss on Saturday. I remember a general feeling of great frustration, but no details.
The Executive Committee met on Friday. I was in no mood to participate. This version of the Warwick tournament, which had always been the jewel in the district’s crown, seemed pitiful to me. Even though we did not even rent the other ballroom, the main room was not nearly full. The rotunda was used for both the side games and the 299ers, and there was still room to spare. The attendance, by historical standards, was alarmingly low.
We learned that we had taken a financial bath at the Gala, and Warwick was probably worse. The only good news was that, as I for one had come to expect, Joe Brouillard, the treasurer, had turned water into wine with the district’s finances. We still had a lot of money in the bank.
I could hardly believe that the roles of tournament chairman and partnership chairman were no longer going to be handled locally. Sue Miguel was going to do the former, and Denise Bahosh had volunteered for the latter. The problem was that the two new sites, Southbridge and Marlborough, had no natural constituencies. Who would take the responsibilities for them? Nevertheless, I considered it a mistake not to use local people in future tournaments in Warwick.
The decision was made to raise the table fees to $20 and to use the projected revenue to turn the Spectacle Regional into a very enjoyable event. I voted for it and even spoke in favor of the move, but I would have liked to see more details about how Sue Miguel intended to spend all of that extra money.
Mark Aquino, the Regional Director, made a depressing presentation that included the statement, “The ACBL is broken.” I left the meeting with the strong feeling that our best efforts might not be enough to save bridge as we knew it.
The Saturday Open Swiss once again was dominated by teams that had been eliminated in the knockout. We finished fourth in B and won a few gold points for a performance that was not worthy of any recognition.
The Ocean State Regional was the most disappointing tournament that I had ever attended. I had no fun in any event in which I played, and I found the EC meeting depressing in the extreme. The Crowne Plaza was not a disappointment, but only because I had also stayed there during the NABC event in July (description begins here) and no longer expected my room to be cleaned after I used it.
The last D25 tournament of 2022 was the Spectacle Regional, held in Southbridge, MA. It began on Tuesday, November 15, and ended on Saturday, November 19. I had been asked to prepare a Bulletin for this event. I therefore joined Curtis Barton (president), Carolyn Weiser (secretary), Sally Kirtley (tournament manager), and Denise Bahosh (partnership) in a “walk-around” inspection of the facility. Sue Miguel was also expected, but for some reason she was unable to attend.
The hotel/conference center was a nice modern place, but the rooms in which we would be playing were much smaller than the ballrooms in which we usually held regional events. The plan for this event was to provide exceptional hospitality, which meant free food and something new (and free) for newer players. Sue Miguel devised that approach, which she called Fest.
I sent out the first promotional piece on September 9. It was composed by Sue Miguel in the postcard format that she preferred. The message was that a lot of gold would be dispensed in Southbridge. I have posted it here.
Sue designed the piece sent on September 12 as well. It was directed to 2,000 players with less than 150 masterpoints. It provided an introduction to the concept of Fest. It has been posted here
On September 15 I sent a different email that Sue created. It was also in postcard format, but it also contained a link to the schedule that had by then been posted on NEBridge.org. The target audience was everyone in District 3, 24, or 25. It can be viewed here.
On October 19 I sent an email to the same audience. This one was in the format that I ordinarily used, but I emphasized the convenience and uniqueness of the site, not the bridge schedule. I considered the latter very meager. I have posted it here.
On October 25 I sent out another solicitation to those with less than 150 points. This one included the 9/15 postcard, but it also had text that Sue had written to explain the Fest concept. It has been posted here.
The next day I emailed to the rest of the players a message that I had written. This one has been posted here. This was the last email that was sent to promote this event, and it was also the last email that I composed for the district. Sue Miguel took over the creation of the emails more or less by default. I don’t think that they tried to find anyone else to do it.
I intended to promote the “Knock-in Knockout” event because it was the only imaginative offering on the schedule for players with more than 2,250 points. The district had also enjoyed great success at attracting players at all levels to bracketed events like this. However, I had been warned by Sue Miguel and Peter Marcus to avoid any explanation of the event or to use the Kiko abbreviation. Apparently they feared that the ACBL might come down on us. I don’t know why.
I decided to commute from my house in Enfield to the hotel. The drive was less than forty-five minutes each way. Sue planned to drive up on Friday morning, play on Friday, attend the Board of Delegates (BoD) meeting on Saturday, and see what she felt like doing on Saturday.
On Tuesday I played with Sally Kirtley in the Open Pairs. Attendance at all events was meager. Sally and I had not played together often, and we were definitely out of our depth in the open event. Playing with Sally at regional tournaments is always challenging. She was interrupted to deal with some sort of problem fairly often in her role as tournament manager.
On Wednesday Eric Vogel and I teamed up with Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider in the Kiko. There were only three brackets! My recollection is that there were only five teams in our bracket. At any rate, we were eliminated on Wednesday. On Thursday, however, the same foursome finished first in the Y strat of the Open Swiss. It did not seem like much of an accomplishment.
On Friday I played with Abhi Dutta, at least that is what my calendar said. The only game that I was eligible for was the Open Pairs. Abhi should have found a partner with fewer points so that he could play in the Gold Rush Graduate event.
On Friday there was a free lunch consisting of a couple of a couple of pieces of pizza. The hotel was poorly prepared for this. Although the total attendance was not very good, the lines for pizza were very long. I had to rush back for the second session.
Robin Hillyard.
While I was in line Pete Matthews and Gary Schwartz complained to me about the fact that the only pairs games available on Wednesday and Thursday were side games. They asked me why no Open Pairs games were scheduled. I said that I did not know. I was not on the Tournament Scheduling Committee any more, but I would bring up up at the EC meeting that night. Previously Robin Hillyard had sent me an email asking why the Sunday games had been eliminated. This was hard on the players who were still gainfully employed. I told him that I would bring that up as well.
I found the attitudes displayed at the EC meeting rather shocking. People were raving about how successful the Fest—a combination of education, free lunch and other goodies, and a short bridge session (also free)—had been. The yardstick for this was that a good number of the forty-four participants had approached the organizers and presenters to offer thanks and praise. Sue Miguel said that it was the best thing that the district had done in twenty-five years. Give me a break.
I, frankly, was much more concerned about the turnout of the people who were willing to pay to play. The attendance in the Gold Rush (0-750 masterpoints) events was shockingly low. My wife Sue had driven up on Friday to play in the Gold Rush pairs. When it did not make, she had to play in an event in which she had little chance of success.
Another surprise at the meeting the report by Mark Oettinger (vice-president). It brought up the possibility of getting more pro teams to come to our tournaments. Evidently Adam Grossack agreed to help with this effort. I wondered if anything would come from this. How would they find them to offer enticements to attend?
My wife Sue and I attended the BoD meeting on Saturday morning. There was no coffee, and the hotel served only breakfast sandwiches that were improperly marked. The only attendees from CT were Paul Burnham, Peter Marcus, Sue and me. That meant that nine delegates from Unit 108 were absent. Curtis announced that the Fest was the greatest thing ever. He insisted that the people attending the meeting were responsible for doing whatever it would take to increase attendance at future tournaments. It was not inspiring.
Sue surprised me by making a little speech complaining about the lack of events for people like her. She got tearful when describing her frustration about the fact that the Gold Rush event on Friday had been canceled. Mark Aquino offered to play with her one day in the Presidential Regional in the same facility in February of 2023. She was happy (and a little nervous) about that.
1. When I write “bridge” I usually mean face-to-face bridge. The online game is, in my opinion, not worthy of the appellation of “bridge”.
2. As soon as I heard that the tournament was canceled, I sent emails to that effect to the same email addresses that I had sent promotional mailings. I also posted a notice on the website. However, one couple from New Jersey read the initial email, but for some reason they did not receive the second one. They drove all the way to Warwick and were shocked to discover that no tournament was in process. I sent them a personal email apologizing for this.
3. Sometimes it is spelled without the final “ugh”.
4. Sohail was retired from a job on Wall Street. He had a house in the NYC area and another on Cape Cod. I could not find his LinkedIn page on the Internet. His name was much more common than I imagined.
5. This was the first time that the district scheduled side games during the daylight hours. I do not know what the TSC was thinking of when it drew up this schedule. I was not a party to it. I had resigned after I had to miss the first three meetings because of scheduling conflicts.
6. Abhi lived in Walpole, MA. I met him when he played with my wife several years earlier. I had teamed up with him once in the Grand National Teams qualifying tournament in 2019. His LinkedIn page has been posted here.
If you are not familiar with competitive duplicate bridge in North America, you may wish to read the entry posted here first.
Because of the threat of COVID-19 only two bridge tournaments were held in all of New England in 2021. Both were three-day sectionals in Watertown, MA. 114 people won masterpoints in the first one in October. 178 people won points at the Holiday Regional in November. This was better, but still unspeakably bad attendance. In the last tournament held in Watertown in 2019 exactly twice as many people won points—356.
The tournaments in Watertown were run by the Eastern Massachusetts Bridge Association (EMBA). I was not a member, and I attended none of the three tournaments listed above. However, I was a member of the Board of Directors of the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA), the “unit” for the state of Connecticut. The CBA ordinarily held six sectionals per year. Two of them were restricted to players with less than 199 masterpoints.
The June Tournament: I am pretty sure that the unit’s official bylaws required that the final decisions about the scheduling of tournaments be voted on by the board of directors. I can say without fear of contradiction that no such votes were taken between March 8, 2020—the last day of our last pre-pandemic tournament—and June 2022. In point of fact the board did not meet at all during that period. We did not even have a Zoom meeting.
Somehow a decision was made, probably after consultation between President Frances Schneider and Tournament Manager Cornelia Guest, to hold a three-day tournament on June 3-5, 2022 at the St. Barbara Greek Orthodox Church in Orange, CT. The schedule was essentially the same as used in 2019-2020. I don’t know who, if anyone, approved the date. The Rhode Island Bridge Association (RIBA) held a tournament the same weekend. The district was supposed to prevent conflicts like this, but someone evidently fumbled the ball.
The first notification of the tournament went out on May 8. Here was the text of the email.
Dear Michael,
CONNECTICUT 2022 SECTIONAL
June 3 – 5
St. Barbara Greek Orthodox Church
480 Racebrook Road Orange, CT 06477
See the attached flier for tournament information.
In my opinion the notification should have been sent earlier, and more effort could have been put into content of the email. For over a year the people whom we needed to attract had been paying only a few dollars to play bridge. Persuading them to return to face-to-face play and pay a lot more would require more effort than this brief announcement displayed.
As usual I sent an email to dozens of my partners past and present, but I only one responded to the invitation to play in Orange. Sonja Smith said that she could play with me in the pairs games on Saturday. She was a very good player, and I knew that she and her husband Chris were planning to move to North Carolina before the end of the summer. So, I jumped at this chance to play with her.
I was also committed to making the trip to Orange on Sunday if only to attend the board meeting that had always occurred on Sunday morning before the Swiss teams game. Chris brought Sonja to Exit 38 on I-91, and I drove the rest of the way. On Sunday I drove myself. I planned on offering to play if they needed me.
I was quite excited at the prospect of playing in duplicate bridge tournaments again. During the drive to the tournament Sonja and I discussed our convention card. We agreed on a set of conventions that was much reduced from what we had played the last time that we played together. I had pretty high hopes that we could do well.
Sonja Smith.
I was not expecting the large crowds that the unit’s sectionals had been experiencing before the pandemic, but the turnout was still disappointing. The open pairs had only thirteen tables, and the 299ers had to play a three-table Howell. Friday had been even worse. The Open Pairs had fourteen tables in the morning and twelve in the afternoon, but there were not enough 299ers to play in either session. Their games had to be canceled. They either had to go home or play against the Grand Life Masters.
Sonja and I had some difficulties in the morning. Most of it was my fault. The competition, as expected, was very good. They avoided mistakes and took advantage of ours.
In the afternoon, however, we rallied with a score of over 62 percent, but that was only good enough for fifth overall out of twenty-six. Still, we both had a very good time, and we returned home with a couple of silver points.
Jan Rosow.
The Sunday meeting was the usual frustrating session. Everyone was morose about the attendance, but only Jan Rosow had a workable suggestion for improving turnout. She suggested changing the upper limit on the limited game to 500 points. We all agreed, and Cornelia was directed to arrange for a sectional in October.
The other main outcome of the meeting was to appoint a committee to prepare a slate of new board members. I managed to avoid participating in that endeavor. Frances had been president for much longer than she expected and was obviously ready to pass the baton to someone else. In fact, she had asked me if I would do it. I had to decline because of commitments to the district.
After the meeting we were all pleasantly surprised to see a fairly large group1 ready to play in the Swiss. Sixty-seven people were waiting to play. John asked me if the offer to play still stood. I said that it did, and I played a very simple card with him as my partner. Our teammates were Barbara Federman and Jim Levitas, who were from California2. She was an experienced player, but he had less than ten masterpoints at the time.
We entered here for both tournaments.
We bumped around the middle of the pack until round six out of seven, which we won with a blitz. In the last round we met an A team that was much more experienced than we were. We would have won if not for the last hand that John and I played. Debbie Benner stretched her nineteen-point hand to open 2NT. Her partner, Art Crystal, who had over 5,000 points, had passed in the first round, but he jumped to 6NT.
The cards sat favorably, and Debbie was able to bring home the slam. At the other table Jim and Barbara did not bid as aggressively. We lost the match by one point.
We won the B strat, however, with 81 points. We also tied for fourth in A, which was very good for a patchwork team. I was very happy with the 6.7 masterpoints that I won in just two days of work. In fact, the drive home was probably the most pleasant experience that I had had in Connecticut since the start of the pandemic.
The board’s reaction to the first sectional: Treasurer Cindy Lyall released a report on the financial hit from the first sectional on June 21.
As requested at the Board meeting, please find below an accounting for the Orange Sectional Tournament that took place from June 3-5, 2022. A spreadsheet version will be included as part of my next Treasurer’s report. If you have any questions in the meantime, please feel free to reach out to me or Cornelia. Unfortunately, the loss from the tournament was just over $4,000.
Thank you,
Cindy
Revenue:
Table Receipts: +$4,984 based on 89 tables (26 on Friday, 29 on Saturday and 34 on Sunday)
ACBL Related Expenses:
Less Fill ins: -$112 Less Tournament Director’s Hotel Accommodation (3 nights): -$631.35 Less Tournament Director’s Per Diem: -$258.75 Less Tournament Director’s Fees ($210 per session): -$1260 Less Sanction Fees: -$281.88 Less ACBL Duplicated Hands: -$32 Less Sectional Surcharge: -$180 Less Caddies, Clocks, Supplies, Boards, Bridgemates, Predups, Hand Records, Free Plays, Pizza: -$935.23 Plus amount Paid to ACBL: +$30.21
Net: +$1323
Additional Unit Expenses:
Cornelia Stipend: -$250 Gene Remuneration: -$750 Snack Expense: – $266.28 Marketing: -163 Venue: -$4160 (Space $3000, janitorial service $700, Table rental $210, security deposit $250 which will be applied to next event)
Total Additional Unit Expenses: -$5,589.28
Loss of $4,266.28 – Please note that the $250 security deposit for this event has not been returned as it is being applied as a deposit to our next event, as such the “loss”for this event is $4,016.28.
In early September the second sectional was announced in the same pedestrian manner as the first. I sent the following email to all board members:
I see that in Orange the limited games have been expanded to under 500. By my calculation this increases the target audience (for unit 126 and 188) from 2235 to 2607. That might help, but it might also reduce the open attendance if people drop down.
Are we doing anything to attract the under-500 group? Many of these people have never played F2F. I propose that someone arrive a half-hour early each day and conduct a lesson in the mechanics of F2F play: bidding boxes, BridgeMates, alerting and announcing, how to avoid leading out of turn, how to prevent your partner from revoking, etc. I will volunteer to create a syllabus and do it on one of the days.
I also think that we need to send two sets of emails targeted to this group, one this week and one in two weeks. If this is already planned, fine. If not, I will volunteer to do it.
Have fliers been sent to the clubs? I have not seen one at the Hartford Bridge Club.
If we don’t want another financial fiasco, we must act soon.
I sent two emails to players in Connecticut and Westchester County, NY. I then sent the following email to board members.
I have attached three things. On 9/16 I sent Email1 to 1,600+ players from CT and Westchester. 64.8% of them opened the email, and 1.3% clicked on the link to the flyer.
On 9/30 I sent Email2 to the same people. 56.3% opened it, and 2.2% clicked on the link to the flyer.
In the emails I mentioned that “an experienced player” would be available on Friday and Saturday to explain the differences between F2F tournament play and online play. The attached F2F Outline contains a list of things that I could think of and a full-page picture of a Bridgemate. I can be there both days. If anyone wants to help, I would appreciate it.
Email1 can be viewed here. Email2 can be viewed here. The F2F Outline is posted here.
Peter Marcus.
During the period between the tournaments the unit’s nominating committee came up with a list of candidates for the vacancies on the Board of Directors, but the information was promulgated to neither the membership nor even the board. Peter Marcus, of all people, would be the new president. Phyllis Hartford would be vice-president. There would be five new members: Phyllis plus Roger Caplan, Linda Green, Linda Starr, and Debbie Prince. This would give the Hartford Bridge Club five members of the board, the most in the ten years that I had been involved.
Great Barrrington in August: I don’t remember exactly how or when the arrangements were made, but Abhi Dutta, Jim Osofsky, Mike Heider, and I agreed to play in the Swiss event on Sunday at the Western Massachusetts sectional tournament at the Berkshire South Regional Senior Center in Great Barrington, MA, on Sunday, August 14. Abhi and I also agreed to play in both sessions of the open pairs to be held on Saturday.
On previous visits to this tournaments I had taken the back roads through Suffield and points west. This time I decided to take the Mass Pike to Lee and then go south to Great Barrington. That was a good plan, but I became engrossed in the opera to which I was listening on Saturday morning, and I drove all the way to Northampton before I realized that I had missed the exit for the Mass Pike. Fortunately, I had left early enough that I still arrived in GB with ten minutes to spare, but Abhi was quite nervous.
Abhi and I played pretty well in the morning session, but we fell apart in the afternoon. However, Mike and Jim had a good day. They placed fifth overall.
I remember one startling fact about the morning session. There were two occasions on which we bid one of a suit, and the opponents overcalled 2NT. In the twenty-first century virtually everyone who played in open events treats that as the “Unusual Notrump”, showing at least five cards in the two lowest unbid suits. In both of these cases, however, when we asked about the bid the opponents said that it was strong and natural. Yes, that was what the bid meant when I was playing in the sixties, but what are the odds of being dealt a twenty-point balanced hand with stoppers in the opener’s suit? They are not good, and the happened to us twice, and both of those opponents were playing this defense. As of this writing I have been playing duplicate bridge for almost nineteen years, and I have never encountered this bid before.
The other thing that I remember was that in the first round of the first session we were East-West against a couple from Connecticut. I had played against them several times in sectional tournaments there, but I had not seen them for years. They told us that they had never used the BridgeMates to record the score before! They said that they always sat East-West at tournaments. So, I had to give the man a very brief lesson on how to use the machine, and I had to help him record each result. I don’t remember the names of the couple.
The Swiss was, from our perspective, absolutely amazing. There were eight six-board matches, and, unbelievably, we won our first seven. Our lead over the field after the seventh round was so large that we could have been blitzed in the last round and still won. We did lose the eighth round badly against a very weak team, but we still won the event by twelve victory points over two good teams from the Boston area.
My most vivid memory is of the match in which we played against John Debaggis and Motoko Oinaga, two Western Mass players who had occasionally played at the HBC. John had opened 2♦, which Motoko alerted as a Flannery bid showing five or more hearts and exactly four spade. John actually had six spades and four hearts. After the hand Abhi called the director and claimed that John had psyched (which is legal in a tournament). John agreed to this. Tim ruled that psyches were not legal when a conventional bid had been employed and penalized John and Motoko.
After the tournament I approached John and asked him if he really psyched. He sheepishly admitted that he had made a mistake. I advised him that he should always admit to mistakes in such situation. I then told him about the times that I had accidentally opened 1NT with two diamond suits (and no hearts). No penalty was imposed either time.
The October sectional: The second sectional was scheduled for October 14-16. The venue would be the same church in Orange that was used for the first such tournament. Eric Vogel told me that he could play on Friday and Saturday in the open pairs. On Sunday Linda Starr and I would be partners in the open Swiss. Our teammates were Abhi Dutta and Paul Johnson, who was Abhi’s partner when he lived in Connecticut a few years ago. I liked this arrangement’ I would get to play against the best players, but we would be in the B strat3 in all five events.
I got to St. Barbara’s at about 9:15 on Friday. I sat near the director’s table to see if anyone appeared to need help. The attendance seemed to be much better than in June. I did not end up giving any kind of a class. The same thing happened on Saturday.
Eric Vogel.
The competition on both days was very good. Eric and I had a miserable morning on Friday. We played better in the afternoon, but our score was not quite good enough to qualify for a place in the overalls.
Our play on Saturday morning was better. The highlight was when I doubled Joe Grue, one of the best players in the world, and he was unable to make the contract. However, we once again failed to win any points. I made one very stupid play against one of the best teams.
Everything came together for us in the afternoon. For the first time in the three days (one in June, two in October) that Eric and I played together, we seemed to get some breaks in the form of mistakes by our opponents. Of the thirty-two players who played in that session, we were the only ones to score above 60 percent. We won 9.35 silver points. This was only the second time that I had won a pairs event at a sectional. The drive back to Enfield was very pleasant.4
The board meeting on Sunday morning was more interesting than usual. Peter talked about the sectionals for next year. He indicated that clubs could run limited sectionals. They could set the limit to any number of points up to 750, and they could exclude Life Masters if they wanted. I ended up on a communications committee, but we only communicated by email. I was also confirmed as one of the unit’s delegates to the district’s Executive Committee.
Linda Starr.
A guy named Bill Segraves was the new webmaster. I had never met him before. He seemed very eager and competent. The board was badly in need of someone with those attributes.
The new board members attended. I knew all of them well except for Debbie, whom I played with a few weeks later, and Phyllis, who—despite her surname—was from Stamford, a very long way from Hartford.
Our team played pretty well in the Swiss. We received a very bad draw for the seventh round. Linda and I had to play against the pair of Steve Becker and Larry Bausher, two of the very best players in the state. Our teammates had an even worse draw. Their opponents were Rich DeMartino and Geof Brod, both of whom were Grand Life Masters—the highest rank in bridge.
We played well enough to win, but we were once again defeated by a clever bid by one of our opponents. Linda opened a nineteen-point hand by bidding one of a minor—as I would have. We ended up in 2NT. At the other table Geof upgraded his hand because of his five-card suit and opened 2NT. Rich raised to 3NT. Both declarers scored nine tricks, and the game bonus was enough to give them the victory.
Steve Becker and Larry Bausher
Rich DeMartino and Geof Brod
We ended up fourth in B, which was worth 1.98 silver points.
152 players earned points at the tournament. That was a big improvement from the 116 that won points in June. However, it was still far short of the 248 players who won points in the sectional held in March of 2020. Cindy Lyall later reported that the unit lost a little under $2,000 for the tournament.
1. In all 116 players won points. In the last sectional in Orange before the pandemic the number was 284. So, attendance was down almost 60 percent!
2. I don’t know how they heard about the tournament. Someone told me that they were in the process of moving to Connecticut. However, as of December 2022 their addresses were still both in California. Jim was not even on the December ACBL roster, which meant that he had not paid his dues. I learned that Jim was a University of Michigan graduate who was a little older than I was.
3. Some events at tournaments had more than one “flight”. Some flights had a limit on the number of points each player may have. If not, they were called “open”. Each flight was usually divided into two or three “strats”. The lower strats had limits on the average number of points. In Connecticut the cutoff between the A strat and the B strat was usually 3,000 masterpoints, but sometimes the directors assigned different levels.
4. The only unpleasant part was the first few minutes. There was not a cloud in the sky, and after I turned onto the parkway I was going straight east. In several places the sun in my rear-view mirror or the one on the left was absolutely blinding.
