I received my driver’s license on August 17, 1964, my sixteenth birthday. From then until May of 2025 I was involved as the driver in nine accidents. One accident occurred when the car was unoccupied.
I was somewhat shocked when I constructed the list that the number was so large. Have I been a terrible driver? I have never thought so. The total damage from the accidents was not very great. I have never received a ticket from the police for any kind of moving violation. No one was ever injured in any of them. Furthermore, I have driven a large number of miles in rental cars throughout the country, and I never had an accident in any of them.
The first accident on the list occurred within the first month or so of my legal driving. My mother let me take her white Oldsmobile 88 to a dental appointment. I don’t know what she was thinking. The office was about two miles from our house, but I was probably the youngest legal driver in the county, and I had no experience at entering and exiting narrow parking spaces. While I was maneuvering the Olds from the parking space its right bumper scraped the car in the adjoining space and caused a little damage to the other car but none on the Olds.
I drove very little for the next eight years. I did not have a car of my own, and I seldom borrowed my mother’s car. After I got out of the army in April of 1972 I purchased a Datsun 1200 that I called Greenie. I drove it to Connecticut.
I had two accidents with Greenie. The first one happened with my dad in the car a month or two after I arrived in Connecticut. I had stopped at a gasoline station in East Hartford. As Greenie pulled out of the station it ran into a car that I did not see. There was a little damage to both cars. Although I was clearly at fault, the policeman declined to give me a ticket. The damage was repaired, but the paint never quite matched, and the repairman did not notice that the tie rod on one wheel had been bent. That prevented Greenie from passing the safety inspection until a different repairman had bent it back while I waited as the only other person in the shop in the late hours of Christmas eve.
The other accident was a spinout in the snow on I-91 just south of the I-84 interchange in Hartford in the winter of 1972. Sue was in Greenie with me when I lost control of the vehicle. Its progress was terminated when it struck a guide rail. The guide rail had a small dent, but Greenie was not damaged. This was the scariest of all of the accidents.
Greenie later executed an impromptu 180-degree turn on an ice sheet on what was subsequently labeled I-384. On that occasion the car came to rest in the breakdown lane facing the wrong direction. Fortunately there was little traffic, and Greenie boasted a very tight turning radius.
There was only one accident during the time that we lived in Michigan. After Greenie and Sue’s Dodge Colt expired, Sue purchased a Plymouth Duster that was nearly as large as Greenie and the Colt put together. I called it “the tank”. We shared it until the early eighties.
The accident occurred on New Year’s morning, within an hour of midnight. The tank was parked directly outside of our house in Detroit. Sue and I were watching television. The people on TV were getting prepared to celebrate with Midwesterners when we heard a loud crash coming from the street. We hurried to the door and went outside. The young man who lived across the street also heard the crash. He identified a car slowly heading east on Chelsea as the culprit.
We found the Duster undamaged in some bushes in our neighbor’s front yard. I jogged after it and took note of its license plate number and the house into which the occupants had entered.
We called the police of course. The officer who responded to the call eventually went to the house that I identified. When he came back he told us that they had told him that our car had jumped out in front of them while they were peacefully driving on Chelsea. This was, of course, complete bullsh*t, and he knew it. However, although most of the people in the house were inebriated, but he said that he could not tell who was driving. This was typical of our encounters with the Detroit Police Department.
I also had a trivial accident while driving the tank across the Bulkeley (pronounced “Buckley” by the natives) Bridge after we moved back to Connecticut. In heavy traffic the Duster was stopped on the bridge. I felt a bump coming from the rear. I got out of the car and cautiously looked at the rear of my car. I told the other driver that there was no damage. Steam was pouring out of his vehicle’s engine, however. I just drove off and let him deal with it.
Sue and I were happy to replace the Duster with a pair of Toyota Celicas in the eighties. I did not trade blows with any other vehicles, but I did cause some damage to mine in a parking lot at Keiler Advertising in Farmington, CT. The incident has been described here.
In the nineties Sue and I traded in our Celicas for Saturns. I had an accident in mine in the parking lot of the Geissler’s grocery store in East Windsor, CT. Its current configuration is shown at the right.
The store is in the upper left corner of the image. I had finished shopping and was driving on the exit toward Bridge Street. Unbeknownst to me the lane in the lot that runs parallel to Bridge Street continued into the exit lane where it was later blocked by a tree. There should have at least been a stop sign there, but there wasn’t. I had been to Geissler’s many times; I had never seen anyone exit the parking lot from that lane. My attention was on the Bridge Street traffic, which sometimes makes the required left turn a little difficult.
On this occasion a Lincoln Continental suddenly appeared in front of me, and the front of my car struck its front panel. The driver was not injured, but his car definitely was. It was not drivable. Mine was not seriously damaged, but the hood was bent enough that it needed replacement. Once again the policeman opted not to give me a ticket. He said that there were often accidents at this spot because the visibility was not good, and there were no traffic signs.
In 2007 I “traded in” my Saturn for a gorgeous sapphire blue Honda Accord coupe. Like all my previous cars, except the Plymouth Duster, it had a four-speed manual transmission. Actually the only recompense that I got for the Saturn was a cassette tape player so that I could listen to Italian tapes while I was driving.
My all-time favorite bridge story involves the Honda on Mass Pike returning from a sectional tournament in Auburn, MA. It was the only time that I have played on a five-person team. My partners were Dave Landsberg and, for the first and only time, Pat Fliakos. The first part of the story, which describes how I set the gold standard for team captain, was recounted in my speech at Dave’s Life Master Party, which has been posted here.
Dave and Pat, who were regular partners played in six of the eight rounds. I played in two rounds with Pat and two with Dave. I sat out the first two rounds and the last two. The first two rounds I watched Dave and Pat play. The first two rounds I sat near Dave’s chair, and watched him play. This was not legal, but I didn’t know that, and the opponents did not object. The last two rounds I spent in my Honda. I wanted to get back to Enfield in time to mow the lawn.
I proceeded without incident until I was within a mile of what was then called Exit 9 on the Mass Pike, the intersection with I-84. At that point all three lanes abruptly came to a dead stop. I stopped without a problem, but the driver of the car behind me was unable to stop, and the front of his vehicle struck the Honda. I could see his car coming in the mirror.
Both of us moved the cars over to the breakdown lane. I was afraid to leave my car, but the other driver, who did not speak English very well, came over to converse about the accident. I did not have a cellphone, but he let me use his to call the police. We exchanged information about insurance companies. About 20 minutes later the trooper arrived, and he gave the other driver a ticket for following too closely.
A week or so later an employee of Progressive Insurance, the other driver’s company, came to my office in East Windsor and spent at least an hour examining the Honda, which had a small bump on the rear bumper. I later learned that the other fellow’s vehicle was actually a rental from Avis, and he had purchase the insurance option. So, Avis, not Progressive, was on the hook.
One day I received a call from a woman at Avis. She said that the company was accepting Progressive’s report on the damage, and she offered to send me a check for $2,000 instead of paying for the repair. I gleefully accepted the offer and provided her with my full name and address. Needless to say I never got it fixed.
I drove the Honda coupe for eleven years. In the tenth year the rear axle broke as I was turning from the I-84 exit onto Flatbush Avenue on my way to play bridge at the Hartford Bridge Club. I called the service lady at the Honda dealer. She diagnosed the problem and called a tow truck. When I picked the car up I asked if I could expect more problems like this. She said that the car was thoroughly inspected, but the rest of the car was just as old as the axle that broke. I started looking for a new car, by which I meant a new Honda Accord.
My dark grey 2018 Accord was not as nice-looking as the blue coupe, but it had a lot of very nice new features. I had had it before I got involved in a stupid accident on Elm Street at the stop light for Palomba Drive just north of the Honda dealership. My destination on this ill-starred journey was the Enfield Square mall. It was December, and there was quite a bit of traffic.
I was driving west on Elm Street (Route 220), which had two lanes on each side as it approached Palomba. A sign near the intersection indicated that there would be an additional lane for left turns, but this was not the case. I was in the left lane when the left turn arrow changed to solid green. Several cars were in front of me. The one at the head of the line had its left signal light on, but there was too much eastbound traffic. I grew impatient and tried to merge into the other lane. I thought that I had enough room, but the right front fender hit the side of another car.
Even though the other driver was very upset, the policeman did not give me a ticket. I don’t know why.
My right front fender had a small dent. I did not bother to get it fixed.
On May 23, 2025, I had been walking in the Enfield Square mall. This time I was eastbound on Elm Street about a mile east of where the previous accident occurred. I had stopped at the red light where Elm Street turns to the right, and 220 continues eastward as Shaker Road. I watched the cars in the westbound left turn land for a second or two when I felt or maybe just heard a bump from the rear.
The car behind me struck the Honda’s rear bumper. It was a white SUV towing a trailer filled with ten-foot long 2×4’s that stuck out the end. After we both stopped the driver told me that his vehicle had also been stopped when it was struck from behind by a black pickup truck with a commercial decal that I only vaguely recall.
A woman and an infant were also in the white vehicle. Two men rode in the truck. One did all the talking with the police. The other was very well built and had braided blonde hair down to his butt.
The policeman who came was a Black man, the first Black cop that I had ever seen in Enfield. I was impressed by the fact that he drove a gigantic black and white Ford SUV. He left his seat for only a short period. Then he returned and filled out forms by hand. Nest to him was an assault weapon—probably an M16 or an AR-15—with its butt on the floor and its muzzle an inch from the roof of the car. I am happy to say that he had no need of his rifle on this occasion.
Linda Kaple at Ohio Mutual me a text on June 18 with a link to an app that was designed to help me upload photos of the damage. I spent more than a half hour on June 23 trying to get it to work. I sent an email to Linda the next day asking if I could send photos by email.
Update: I eventually got the app to work. On July 3 Ohio Mutual deposited $1,103 in my bank account to cover the cost of replacing the bumper. I opted for duct tape.
1. The road after the turn is strangely called Elm Street for about a mile. At that point it makes a second right turn. The road, however, continues for some distance as Moody Road. Elm Street continues almost all the way to Enfield’s main East-West Street, Hazard Avenue (Route 190). The road continues to 190, but for the last twenty yards or so it is called North Street.
Still under construction. The first event of 2025 was a five-day mishmash scheduled for Mansfield, MA, from Tuesday February 18 through Saturday February 22. It featured a limited regional for non-Life Masters and a contemporaneous open sectional. I was not … Continue reading →
Still under construction.
The first event of 2025 was a five-day mishmash scheduled for Mansfield, MA, from Tuesday February 18 through Saturday February 22. It featured a limited regional for non-Life Masters and a contemporaneous open sectional. I was not eligible for the former and was not interested in the latter because of the length of the drive, the cost and location of the hotel, had the lack of interesting events.
It also included qualifying tournaments for each of the four divisions of the Grand National Teams event. I definitely would have been interested in putting together a team for the GNT if I could play in Flight B, which had always been limited to players with less than 2,500 masterpoints. At the last Executive Committee meeting in the fall Mark Aquino, the Regional Director, had announced that the limit would be raised to 3,000, but he emphasized that it had not officially been changed yet, and there was some opposition. So, I used Google to find the official Conditions of Contest. That led me to this website1, which clearly stated on page 4 that the limit was still 2,500. A few weeks before the event I learned that the CofC was erroneous. Evidently whoever was responsible for posting it never bothered to fix it. When I mentioned this to Sally Kirtley, the tournament manager, she was concerned. She told me that whoever was managing the partnerships could probably find a partner for me. I said that it was too late to put a reasonably good team together. I had no intention of driving all the way to Manchester to play in a one-day Swiss2 in which I had no chance of doing well. The worst imaginable situation for me would have been to be part of a team that, even if it did well, the other members might have no interest in representing the district at the North American Bridge Championships in the summer.
So, since I was no longer on either the Executive Committee or the Board of Delegates, I had no reason to attend the event in Mansfield.
The district’s first real regional tournament was scheduled for the Wellsworth Hotel in Southbridge, MA, from Tuesday, April 22, through Sunday, April 27. The 35-mile drive was by far the easiest of all the tournaments for me, and the schedule included plenty of team games (except for on Saturday. I was therefore very interested in playing there.
I learned more than a month before the event that Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider wanted to team up with me on every day except Thursday. That sounded like an excellent plan. The endurance of the 76-year-old me was much less than it had been earlier. A day for napping in the middle would be greatly appreciated.
I quickly enlisted Eric Vogel as a partner. He committed to play on Tuesday and Wednesday, but he was not available on the weekend. He later needed to rescind his commitment. I was, fortunately, able to get Abhi Dutta to fill in. Mike Heider told me that Helen Benson3, with whom he sometimes played at the Newtown Bridge Club, might be available. I contacted her, and she agreed. She played a much simpler convention card than most that I was accustomed to, but after a fairly lengthy exchange of ideas by email, we agreed upon a very limited set of conventions.
On Monday evening I had purchased a Caesar salad and a chicken wrap at Big Y in Enfield. My recollection was that the hotel’s luncheon buffet was not that good, and I was not enthusiastic about standing in line. On Tuesday morning I left the house at about 8:10. I did not anticipate a lot of traffic, but I was ready to go, and so I left. I listened to Hector Berlioz’s epic opera, Les Troyens. As usual, I stopped at McDonald’s in West Stafford for a sausage biscuit with egg. It cost almost a dollar more than I paid in Hartford, but it was quick and tasty. I arrived at the Wellsworth a little after 9 o’clock. Jim, Mike, and Eric all arrived a few minutes later.
We were scheduled to play in the Open Swiss on both days. On Tuesday we had a very unfortunate draw in the morning. We began by playing against the wunderkinds, Eric and Jeff Xiao and their formidable partners, professional David Caprera4, and another fine player, Max Siline. We lost by 18 victory points, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Our schedule in the rest of the matches was relatively easy. We did not face any of the other top teams, and in the last two rounds we even faced teams from Flight C. In the end we as a B team finished in second place behind only the Xiao team. We were award 6.3 gold points. I was in a good mood for the drive home, but I had started well at regional tournaments before and too often had seen poor results later.
The drive to Southbridge on Wednesday was nearly identical to the drive on Tuesday. The only difference was that I listened to the part of the opera set in Carthage, and it featured Dido rather than Cassandra.
Abhi arrived only a few minutes before nine, but we had played together enough that we only had to review a few items.
Because there were two Swiss events on Wednesday (Open and under 2500), I expected the number of teams in the Open event to be smaller than on Tuesday. I was wrong. There were seventeen, three more than on the previous day. The format was seven rounds of seven-board matches. We were in the lowest strat, which was labeled Y. We won our first match against an A team, but we then lost to Sheila Gabay’s team, but only by four imps. In the third round we tied a team that we had defeated on Tuesday. We had a win, a loss, and a tie, but our total victory points was above average.
We won the next three rounds. In the last round we played against two old friends of mine, Chris Apitz and Ellen Dilbert. We lost the match by 18, but it would have been a lot closer if I had not made a defensive error.on the second-to-last hand. Ellen was playing a doubled 5♦ contract. She had one trump and ♣9 on the board as well as some hearts and spades. Clubs had never been led. She led low to the 9. I had the ace and a small one. Thinking that my partner could beat the 9, I ducked, and it held the trick. We set them 500, but if it had been 800, we would have only lost the match by 4.
As it was we finished with the very respectable score of 74 victory points, which placed us third in X and second in Y. If I had played that ace, we would have finished second in X and first in Y. Still, we earned another 5.94 gold points.
The most amazing match of the event occurred in the seventh round. The Xiao team had lapped the field with an incredible total of 105 victory points (out of a possible 120) in the first six matches. However, in the last round they faced Sheila Gabay’s team. Sheila’s team won the last match by an astounding 42 imps and vaulted into second place.
On the way home I stopped at the Big Y near the McDonald’s in West Stafford to pick up a salad and a wrap for lunches on Friday and Saturday. I was shocked to discover that all of the other stores in that strip mall were unoccupied.
I stayed home on Thursday and took a few naps. I also walked four miles.
The only differences between the journey on Friday morning and the first two trips were the fact that Dido had stepped onto the pyre and I narrowly avoided having the torture of trailing a NETTS truck before it turned onto Route 83 in Somers.
Helen and her husband, who works in ecology.
I finally got to meet Helen Benson in the hotel’s ballroom. We had only a few items left to discuss before we got the horrendous news that we were in the top bracket of the knockout. Worse yet was the news that we were the lowest seeded of the seven teams, which necessitated that we play in three consecutive three-ways. We never even got to change tables. We sat at table C5 for the entire day.
In the last round we were forced to play Mark Aquino and Bill Braucher. It was more enjoyable to talk with them than to get pounded at the bridge table.
It was not a total loss. We won one match. It was against the Luo team that we had defeated once and tied once.
I went home discouraged, but I was hopeful about our chances in the Bracketed Pairs event on Friday. Surely we would not be in the top bracket. There were no other events scheduled that day.
The difference between Friday and Saturday was striking. Helen and I were East-West during both sessions, and we started at table 1 in both sessions. Our opponents on both occasion were Judy McNutt and Eli Jolley. The most amazing hand for me was Board #2 in the afternoon session.
We were bidding clubs, and they were bidding spades. We bid them all the way up to the five level before we gave up. After the hand I mentioned that the LAW of total Tricks predicted that we should be able to take ten tricks in clubs. If so, we should have bid 6♣. We would have only gone down two, and even if they doubled us, that would be better for us than the 650 that we lost for their vulnerable game.
However, it is quite obvious that East-West cannot come close to taking ten tricks with clubs as trumps. There is no way to avoid losing one spade, two hearts, and three diamonds. The LAW is off by three tricks! Eli said that the law tends to break down at the six level, but that has never been my experience. Furthermore, the East-West holdings do not seem to be exceptionally “impure”. It is true that the two honors in spades could just as well have been spot cards. Neither of South’s singletons produce any tricks on defense. Maybe the abundance of worthless shortness is the answer.
Helen did not participate in the discussion. I think that she might not be familiar with the workings of the LAW. She said that she had not read Larry Cohen’s classic book, To Bid or Not to Bid.
We were the top East-West team in the morning and second in the afternoon. That was good, but it was not as good as the performance of Pete Matthews and his partner, who won the event while sitting North-South both sessions. Still, we won over 13 masterpoints.
Jim and Mike had a bad morning, but they improved in the afternoon. We were all in pretty good spirits about the last event of the tournament, the Bracketed Swiss on Sunday.
I was the captain of our team. We were in the second bracket, as I hoped, but I was quite surprised that six of the other seven teams had more points than we did. So, we could expect a lot of tough matches. The format was six rounds of eight-board matches. We would therefore not play one of the other teams.
We actually won four of our six matches. That would ordinarily be good enough to allow us to squeak into the overall awards, but these results were unusual. One team lost all its matches. Unfortunately we were beaten badly in the last match by a team that was well behind us. I was very tired at that point, and I struggled mightily to maintain my concentration. Jim and Mike said that six days of bridge—they did not take Thursday off—had taken the toll on them as well.
We ended up with 60 victory points—exactly average. I was surprised to discover that we had defeated both the first- and second-place teams. We were mired in the next group. It was small consolation that we won a slightly larger match award than any of them.
All in all, this was one of my most successful regional tournaments. I had a pretty good time. I would play with Helen again if I had the chance.
The Marriott Hotel in Newton.
I was not enthusiastic of playing in the regional in Newton, MA, that was scheduled for June 17-22 at the Marriott Hotel. The Individual Regional was formerly held there every January. I did not have many fond memories of that event.6 The drive there was sometimes difficult, especially in the vicinity of the hotel. I don’t think that I had ever stayed at the hotel, and I had no intention of paying Marriott prices this time.
Abhi asked me to play in the Bracketed Pairs scheduled for Saturday. Later Ann Hughes asked me if Eric and I would want to play with her and Bob in the Open Swiss on Wednesday. So, I sort of reluctantly agreed to commute twice.
Google Maps said that the drive to the hotel would take about ninety minutes. I planned to leave 7:45. However, My wife Sue heard something on the television about heavy fog. She advised me to leave earlier and expect visibility problems.
I left a little before 7:30. I had no problems at all with visibility. I saw remarkably little traffic on either 190 or I-84. The going was also pretty easy on the Mass Pike. I was on target for a 9:00 arrival when all of a sudden all three lanes were filled with cars as far as the eye could see, and they were all stationary. My Honda inched its way through a couple of miles of this.
I was not sure what the original cause of the bottleneck was. At one point a bevy of vehicles, most of which were displaying flashing red and blue lights, had made camp off the the right of the road. After that the driving was much easier, but there were still a few delays. I was near the hotel when I got a phone call from Eric. I returned his call after I parked my car in the huge lot at 9:45. It was a good thing that I left fifteen minutes early.
I eventually found all three teammates. By the time that I grabbed a cup of coffee and made my way to table A6 I was quite frazzled. I went over my cheat sheet for Eric for a minute or two. I felt fairly comfortable with what we were playing, but in no way did I feel ready to play bridge.
There were three boards on our table, an indication that we would be playing eight matches with six boards each. The director announced that there were fifteen teams, which meant that teams 13, 14, and 15 played three-way matches in the first two rounds.
Our first opponents were Paul Simon (really!) and a woman whom I did not know. On the first hand Eric opened 1♣. I had a really weak hand with four spades and six diamonds headed by the KQ. I bid a spade. I hoped that Eric bid 1NT. We had an easy way for me to sign off in 2♦. If he raised my spades, I would pass. Unfortunately, what he did bid was 2♥, a reverse that indicated that he had a strong hand with more clubs than hearts.
Our card said that we played lebensohl when a reverse is initiated. I wanted to sign of in diamonds at the lowest possible level. To accomplish this I first bid 2NT. Eric was required to bid 3♣, but he forgot about lebensohl. Instead he bid 3NT. I understood the situation, but I decided to pass for two reasons. In the first place there was no guarantee that Eric would pass if I bid 4♦. The second one involved the First Rule of Holes: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
I got to play this horrible 3NT contract. It was worse than I even imagined Eric’s points were concentrated in the red suits. We had no stopper in either clubs or spades. The opponents took the first nine tricks. We were down five for a 500-point penalty. What a terrible start!.
After that Paul, sitting in the East chair, declared the other five hands. That meant that I had to find the lead on five consecutive hands. During one of those less memorable hands a brouhaha ensued at table A2, which was quite close to ours. Elayne Kadis, who was playing with her husband, Ken, complained loudly about something. The director immediately came to the table and warned her about Zero Tolerance violations. She continued talking and the director assigned some sort of punishment.
I was severely distracted by this. I recognized Elayne, or rather her voice8. Despite the distraction, things seemed to go better for us after the first hand. Nevertheless, I did not think that we had a prayer of winning the match.
However, when Bob and Ann returned to our table to compare scores, we were shocked when they announced +500 for hand #13, our first hand. It turned out that North had opened 1NT, which Eric and I never do with a five-card major, and his partner had responded 2NT, which was intended as a transfer to diamonds. North, however, forgot the convention and bid 3NT. So, South had to play the same horrible contract that I did. We ended up winning the match by eleven points.
In the second match two amazing coincidences happened. East played the first two hand, which made seven hands in a row that I had to make the opening lead. The other was that on the following hand I played another horrendous 3NT contract. In hearts Eric held Kx; I had Ax. We had good clubs and diamonds, but we were missing three aces. I went down four. Once again, the opponents at the other table were in the same contract, but our teammates’ failure to lead a heart at trick one gave them enough tempo to take nine tricks.
So, after nine hands West and North (Eric) had played no hands, East had played seven with mixed results, and I had played two for a total of nine undertricks!
At the lunch break we were 2-2. I overheard someone say that it was necessary to pay for parking at the hotel’s front desk. I had left my ticket in the car, and so I retrieved it at lunch and paid it. On my way back to the playing area I passed the area where Elayne was entertaining some other people with the story about her (not their) financial adviser reporting that she and her husband had too much money.
I spent most of the break by myself eating my roast beef sandwich, grapes, and potato chips. Eric joined me for a few minutes. I am not sure what Ann and Bob did.
We won the first two matches after lunch by two points each. We then lost to the best team by ten, and I guess it was my fault. Eric preempted 3♣. The opponents bid to 4♣. No one was vulnerable. I held QTx of clubs and not much else. I figured that we had ten clubs and they had ten spades. If so, 5♣ was safe. Unfortunately, Eric preempted with a weak hand and only six trumps. He went down five, and we lost the match by 10 IMPs.
We won the last match by 10, but it was not enough. we won five matches, but we just missed making the overalls.
The drive back was very slow for the first ten or fifteen miles, but it picked up after that. I was thankful for the weather—cloudy but no rain. A thunderstorm had been predicted, but it never materialized. This was definitely a blessing. The lines for the lanes on the Mass Pike—where they existed at all—were best described as light grey on medium grey. I would have had a very difficult time discerning them if they were wet.9
The drive on Saturday was not nearly as bad. I arose from bed at 5:00, which was certainly too early. I left the house at about 7:15, fifteen minutes earlier than on Wednesday. The weather was fine, and the traffic was much lighter than on Wednesday. The only problem that I encountered was in obtaining my breakfast. When I stopped at McDonald’s in West Stafford, I was shocked to hear they they had no meat products. The employee tried to interest me in something without me, but I had a two-word answer: “No score!”
I considered stopping in Sturbridge or the Burger King. I rejected the former because I reckoned that it would add fifteen minutes to my trip, and I had not liked the BK breakfasts the one time that I tried them. Instead, I decided to stop at the first rest area on the Mass Pike in Charlton. I had a vague recollection that the drive-through entrance for McD’s was in the southwest corner of the parking lot. I therefore steered the Honda in that direction and into the long approach to the first window—there was nothing like the ordering stations that were prevalent in other McD’s locations.
However, when I got to the first window, no one was in attendance. Likewise, the second window was not populated. I therefore drove the car to the small parking lot on the east side of the gas station and walked into the building. There was only one couple in line at McD’s, but they had apparently never been to such a place. They spent several minutes discussing what they wanted. They then placed their orders one at a time. The man, who went second, had a difficult time deciding after his wife had placed her order. In short, they did not behave like typical fast-food devotees.
I finally got my sandwich and consumed it while I was driving on the Pike. It was very tasty, but it cost nearly $1 more than what was charged in West Stafford, which in turn was $1 higher than what I was accustomed to paying in Hartford.
I arrived at the hotel parking lot at the ridiculous time of 8:43. It was easy to find a “pull-through” parking space that I could exit by driving forward.
The hotel staff had just put out the free coffee and breakfast treats. I got a cup of the former and took a seat inside the huge ballroom. I was confused about the event that Abhi and I would be playing in. I thought that we were playing in the Bracketed Pairs, whereas his email clearly mentioned that a “good pair” had asked him to play with them. So, I spent more than an hour on the lookout for him in the wrong area.9 At 9:50 I called Abhi, but his phone must have been turned off. A minute or so later he located me and directed me to the back room—the same area in which the Open Swiss had been held on Wednesday.
I gave Abhi my credit card, and he bought our entry. We were team #13 out of 16, one more than on Wednesday. Abhi introduced me to our teammates Stan Tuhrim and Betty Mintz. They were from New York City, but apparently they also had a residence in Pittsfield, MA. They were not very talkative.
In the first round we had the misfortune of playing against the team of four Chinese guys who ended up winning the event. I did not know who they were, but one of them recognized my name. He thought that I had been president of the district. I told him that I only sent out the emails. We lost that match by 18 IMPs. We lost thee second match to Don Caplin’s team by 21 IMPs. Betty was upset at Don’s behavior during the round; I don’t know the specifics.
I expected easy competition in the third round, but we actually faced two good players, Paul Harris and Peter Clay. Their teammates were also pretty good, but we prevailed by 3 IMPs.
Our worst round was the fourth one. We lost to a team that included Charlotte Bailey by one lousy IMP. I was surprised by the results. I played both of the hands that generated our 18 IMPs in the + column..
As usual, all of my teammates disappeared during the lunch break. I spent most of my time with Charlotte Bailey and her husband, Alan Godes. They did not have much to say. They both had cans of Diet Coke. I knew that I would need a caffeine boost for the afternoon. I asked Alan where they got the drinks. He said that they got them from home. I asked him if he would mind going home to get me one. For some reason that notion did not appeal to him.
The friendliest round that we had was the first after lunch. We played against Shirley Wagner and another woman from Central Mass. I assured Shirley that she was Sue’s favorite person in the world. We won, but only by 3 imps. In the sixth round we played against Dottie Kelleher and Dan Morgenstern. I thought that we held our own except on one hand in which I went down in a 3NT contract sitting South. The contract is unbeatable if North plays it. I still could have made it if I had played dummy’s ♥K on the first trick. Even so we would have lost the match, but by 7 IMPs, not 18.
This hand merits a little more analysis. I opened 1♦. Abhi raised to 2, a strong bid. I bid 2♠, which shows a stopper in spade but nothing in hearts. Abhi, with a game-forcing hand, a good club stopper and Kx in hearts could have (and probably should have) bid 3NT. Instead he showed the club stopper. I could have (and probably should have) bid 3♦ , but I had a minimal hand, and I certainly did not want him to bid 5♦. So, I bid 3NT myself and hoped for the best.
We finally got our machine in gear by defeating the team that finished last by 26 IMPs. Before the match they were ahead of us.
Our reward for the victory was to play Geof Bord and Alan Watson in the last round. There were two swing hands. On the first one Abhi went down in a 3NT contract that was made at the other table. On the other one Geof and Alan bid and made a slam using part of the Wolff Signoff convention that I was not familiar with. Alan’s second bid was 2NT. Geof initiated the convention with a bid of 3♣. Alan was required to bid 3♦. Usually, the next bid is a pass or a signoff. In this case, however, Geof bid 3NT, which indicated slam interest and support for opener’s minor suit. They ended up in 6♣. I was impressed.
I was also impressed by my play in the one hand that I declared. I was extremely tired, but I kept myself together enough to take twelve tricks in a notrump contract. My counterpart at the other table only took ten. So, we earned 2 imps on that hand. Overall, however, we lost by 27 IMPs, just short of a blitz.
So we won only three matches out of eight. I did not particularly like playing with our teammates. Perhaps they thought that we were not holding up our end. There were a lot of really good teams. I thought that our result was commensurate with our play.
I did not enjoy the experience. I did not get to know our teammates at all. Abhi, who is a deliberate player, and I spent a lot of time waiting for them to finish the hands. We got to talk with our opponents a lot more than we did with the teammates.
I was pulled over by a Massachusetts state cop on my way home. He said that my car nearly ran into his when I changed lanes. He must have been in the blind spot of my left mirror, but I am at a loss to explain how he got there without my noticing him. On the Interstates I usually keep a close watch on what is going on behind me. He only gave me a warning.
Warwick
Norwich
1. The erroneous CofC was still available through Google as of April of 2025.
2. Prior to 2020 the GNT Flight B qualifier always was spread over two days. The second day was a four-team knockout. There was no GNT in 2020. In 2021 through 2024 it had been held online using a format that I tolerated in 2021. I planned to play in 2022, but the pair that had agreed to play with Ken Leopold and me reneged on the agreement. I was not eligible for Flight B in 2023 and 2024.
3. She went by Helen, but her real name was Elena DiBissi Benson. She was born in the Abruzzo region of Italy. I told her that I had been there. It was true, but on the South Italy bus tour that Sue and I took in 2011 we only drove through the southern part of the region on our way from Tivoli to Vieste.
4. I happened to overhear David, while he was talking with Eric and Jeff about the card that they would be playing, mention that he was born and raised in Southbridge, and his father was the town attorney.
5. The last Individual Regional was held January 6-8, 2016. At that time I think that the hotel was a Holiday Inn. The district was the only district in North America that was still holding such an event. It was discontinued because the attendance at the two-session individual events (in which each player plays with a large number of different partners) had not been good in the previous few years. The event, which I heavily publicized in emails, drew over forty tables, much better than in previous years. In the last individual on Saturday, January 7, I was in first place out of the 160+ participants. I had played OK in the morning, but I had made one mistake that was so horrible that I had to apologize to my partner. Nevertheless, I somehow record a game of over 68 percent. In the afternoon I played even better, and one of my partners was a World Champion, Pat McDevitt. Nevertheless my score plummeted into the low forties, and I did not even make the overalls.
7. At one time the behavior on the bridge circuit was apparently disruptive before I began playing seriously. A “zero-tolerance” policy was implemented by the ACBL and enforced rather strictly. Behavior since that time has been exemplary for the most part.
8. I had a previous run-in with Elayne Kadis before the pandemic. It was an Open Swiss in, I believe, Nashua, NH. She was playing with exactly the same team—her husband, Steve Gladyszak, and Barbara Murphy.
The district had for a few years enforced a policy designed to speed up play in Swiss events: a player could decide not to play the last hand in a round if there was a danger of not being able to finish the hand and turn in results before time expired.
In the match against the Kadises Elayne, sitting South, had played the first five hands. I was West. My counterpart at the other table was Steve Gladyszak, a very fine play who also played very fast. I did not want to declare a hand with only a few minutes remaining when he might have declared it with plenty of time to think.
When I exercised my option not to continue Elayne loudly protested and then called the director, Marilyn Wells from New Jersey. She evidently did not know the district’s policy and ruled that we had to play the hand, and she penalized our team!
David Metcalf.
I later reported this to the head director, David Metcalf. He was very surprised that this happened. He also asked me who the director was.
Incidentally Ken Kadis was silent or at least soft-spoken during both of these incidents.
9. This was a reference to my cataracts. I had surgery scheduled for August and September.
10. It was not a complete waste of time. I was able to go over in my mind the convention card that I would be playing with Abhi, and I also had a few minutes to talk with Joe Brouillard, a good friend whom I had hardly talked with in the last five years.
The first tournament of the year was held in Johnston, RI, on the weekend of February1-2. I had no interest in playing in the pairs game on Saturday. Abhi Dutta asked me to team up with him and his partner, Vipin Mayar. I was pretty certain that Eric Vogel would not want to play on Sunday, and so I asked John Lloyd again. The four of us had played in a sectional at the same location in September 2024. That adventure has been described here.
John and I again agreed to meet at the Park and Ride lot on Route 32 near I-84, this time at 8:45. Since John had driven from there to Johnston in September, I volunteered to drive this time. I was a little worried about the return trip. My cataracts had recently been diagnosed, and some kind of precipitation was expected.
I arrived at the lot seven minutes late. It was completely my fault, and I apologized. I left a minute or two after I planned. I planned on stopping at the McDonald’s in the Scitico shopping center, but I missed the turn from Taylor Rd., and when I passed it on Route 190 there was a line. So, I decided to keep going and stop at the one in West Stafford.
A feared sight in Somers and Enfield.
Unfortunately, I found myself two cars behind a NETTTS truck2. We only followed it as far as Somers, but its still cost us another five minutes or so as it poked along at 25-30 mph on Route 190.
There was also a slow-moving line at the West Stafford McDonald’s as well. I lost at least another five or ten minutes there.
No, thanks.
The worse news was that they messed up my order. Instead of the sausage biscuit with egg that I always ordered, they gave me a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit. The bacon was tasteless, I don’t like McD’s cheese, and the biscuit had been hardened by time under the heat lamp.
I drove as fast as I reasonably could the rest of the way, but I did not arrive at the parking lot until 8:52. The rest of the trip was uneventful, but it was 9:55 by the time that we reached the Johnston Senior Center. I gave my credit card to John and parked the car. I then got my materials from the back seat. The lunch that I had prepared was there, but I could not find my convention card holder, which contained our convention card, old scoresheets, and my mechanical pencil. I was almost certain that I had remembered to place it there, but I could not find it, and I had no time to spend searching.
We were, of course, the last of the twenty-four teams to register. After a fair amount of effort I found our table, which was U12. John gave me back my credit card, and I then went back to the registration area to obtain a scoresheet and little golf pencil.
One opponent informed us that he had only played in one or two previous team games. His partner did not even know how to keep score. We were scheduled to play eight rounds of six boards. In the first round they bid and made several games that seemed unremarkable to me. Afterwards I told John to compare without me; I intended to search for my convention card holder. My scoresheet was unreadable anyway. I could not write legibly with that tiny pencil on bare paper.
I could not find the convention card holder. Our second assignment was at the same table. I was shocked to learn that we had decisively lost the first round. Usually I am a good judge of our performance. We did, however, win the second round in a close match.
I could not believe the team that we drew for our third round—a team of A players from the Hartford Bridge Club. John and I played against Tom Gerchman and Lesley Myers. Our teammates faced Doug Deacon and Bob Hughes. I did not think that we played well enough to win. I was shocked that our teammates had scored +1700 on the first hand. Evidently Doug and Bob had a disastrous misunderstanding that got doubled. So, after three of eight rounds we had two wins.
We lost the fourth match. I made a serious error in the play. I then ate lunch by myself.
We won only one match in the afternoon. We played against two ladies. John was late getting to the table, and I had painfully shuffled at least one deck at every table. I refused to shuffle again and left the deck for John. He arrived a minute or two later, during which time I had to listen to my LHO declaim about shuffling in spite of the fact that she had arthritis.
That one victory was taken away from us by the director, Tim Hill. On the crucial hand John opened 1♥. The lady to my right bid 2♣. I doubled. When the arthritic opponent asked what my double meant, John hemmed and hawed and then said, “I think that that was a support double for my hearts.”
They ended up playing in a notrump contract. After the play ended, I announced that they had received erroneous information. I had made a negative double showing at least four spades, not a support double showing three hearts. I told them that they could call the director if they felt damaged. They did. Tim took the board to see if their claim as being damaged was legitimate. This took such a long time that we ended up playing on five of the six boards. The ladies complained loudly about this.
Tim later explained to me that there were so many ways that the hand could have gone that he could not determine whether they were damaged. He said that the law said that in that case the party that gave the wrong information gets an average minus. We ended up losing three imps and the match.
At the end of the last frustrating mach I was just ready to hit the road immediately. Fortunately there was no bad weather for the drive back. I had no difficulty whatsoever.
Connecticut’s first tournament was scheduled for the last weekend in March, beginning on Friday the 28th, in Orange. I was on the tournament committee, chaired by Cindy Lyall, that planned and marketed this event. The marketing part was previously handled by the communications director, Ken Steele, who had resigned. Bill Segraves, the president of the Connecticut Bridge Association, said in an email that the communications committee, of which I was a member, was no longer functioning. That was news to me.
I did not really care what was sent to the players with more than 500 masterpoints. They were probably familiar with CBA sectionals. They just needed to know the dates and where to find the flyer. I volunteered to write an email to be sent to the players with less than 500 masterpoints in February. I composed them in HTML for my MailChimp account. I sent a test version (posted here) to the other members of the committee. They all seemed to like it a lot. Well, almost everyone liked ti. John Lloyd thought that it was too long, and Cornelia Guest did not like the phrase “less than 500 masterpoints”3.
Unfortunately, Bill wrote that “Mike is not authorized to send the email.” So, I had to rework the text to use Pianola to send it. Since I never received the email itself, I was not able to post it. The text is posted here. I asked for the photo of the playing area to be included. Even with that, I think that the final version was better than nothing, but it was a poor substitute for my original submission.
Early in the year Eric Vogel agreed to play with me in both pairs sessions on Friday and Saturday. I sent emails to the usual suspects concerning a partner and teammates for the Sunday Swiss. Joan Brault agreed to play with me, but the only nibble that I had for teammates was an email from Cornelia Guest, the CBA’s tournament coordinator, that Joel Wolfe was looking for teammates. I immediately sent him an email to see if he was interested in teaming up with Joan and me, but he never responded. That was quite disappointing. Prior to the pandemic I had always played in the team game on Sunday, and nearly always I had a very enjoyable time.
On Friday morning I fixed myself a sandwich of corned beef, Swiss cheese, and lettuce and inserted it into my backpack along with a bag of Utz potato chips. I left the house at 8:15. The traffic was lighter than I expected, and the construction area south of I-84 posed no difficulty. I made my usual stop at McDonald’s in Cromwell. The price was $.11 cheaper than in Hartford and much cheaper than at any of the three stores in Enfield. I arrived at St. Barbara’s Church in Orange, CT, at a little after 9:30. Eric was already in line to purchase our entries, the cost of which had risen to $18 per person per session.
Eric and I had recently revised our approach to slam bidding when we had a fit in a major suit. Previously we had leapt to game to show a minimal holding. Instead jumps in the major suits would show Picture Bids—a high honor in the trump suit and a strong side suit. Our approach to bidding of controls was also changed slightly. This approached was recommended by Vic Quiros in a series of columns in the Bridge Bulletin.
In the morning session on Friday we sat East-West. We had two opportunities within the first six hands to put our new methods into practice. On hand #12 I opened 1♦ in the West chair. Eric bid 1♥. I bid 1NT. Eric could have put in the game force by bidding 2♦, but he elected to bid 4♣. I was not sure what it meant. I bid 4♥, and he just jumped to six. This was exactly the kind of thing that we wanted to avoid. We got 79 percent of the masterpoints, but we could have done better.
If he had bid 2♦, I would have bid 2♥, and he would have known that we had nine hearts. Then after a couple of exchanged cue bids, he could have visualized thirteen tricks and bid the granny.
On hand #16 I opened 1♥, Eric bid 2♦. I rebid hearts. He used Kickback to determine that I had the three missing key cards. He then bid 6NT.
Since we were already forced to game, I think that he should have bid the cheapest control, which was in spades. I could bid 3♦ to show the ace. He has the ♣K to show, but he must bid at the four-level. I would bid 4♥ to show a control. After he bid 5♦, it would be time to put up or shut up. I have not yet told him about my other two heart honors, had he still seemed interested in continuing. I was in a bidding mood that day. I think that I would have bid 7NT.
The other interesting hand in the morning was #22. Eric and I got am undeservedly good score on it because not only did our opponents not find the game in spades, they also took only nine tricks. Don’t ask me to name the tricks that we took.
Shekhar Rao asked me how he and his partner, Shashank Srinivasamurthy, could have bid the spade game with the North-South cards. They had been playing in the limited point game. After examining the results I told him that only one of the fifteen N-S pairs in the open section accomplished that feat with 22 points and a seven-fit, and they were not considered one of the better pairs when it came to bidding.
I took advantage of the opportunity to explain to the guys that they needed to have an agreement about what a preempt in the fourth seat would show. It cannot be strictly preemptive because both of the opponents have passed. So, it should probably show a minimum opening hand with six pieces. Bidding at the one-level and then rebidding the same suit at the two-level would show at least one trick extra. So, if responder had invitational values, he should be looking for game after that sequence.
For the morning session Eric and I scored a little above 51 percent, which was rewarded with 1.14 silver points.
Eric also had brought a sandwich for lunch. We ate together and discussed a few of the hands. Joel Wolfe came by and asked if he could have some of my potato chips. I said, “Of course.” He did not say anything about playing on Sunday.
Bill and Linda Green, the Vice President of the CBA, announced the winners of some of the awards over the last year. Linda was actually standing on the chair at which I ate lunch. I found this method of distributing awards annoying, but, then again, I have become a real curmudgeon since the pandemic and especially since the last presidential election.
Our first two hands in the afternoon session were against Bill and Paul Proulx. I knew that they played an unusual system in which the 1♣ opening had multiple meanings and could be made with only one club. The responses were transfers. Eric and I had discussed this at lunch. We decided that our interference at the one level would be transfers, at the two level DONT for two-suited hands, and natural at the three-level.
As it happened, I, sitting South, opened the bidding on both hands, but Eric had two weak hands. On the first one Paul, East, played 3♣ and made it. On hand #6 I opened 1NT and Bill overcalled 2♥, which was followed by two passes. I probably should have just passed. If Eric had a suit, he would have bid.
Bill redoubled, but I did not see it. I rarely miss a bid, but I definitely missed that one. Eric took his time, but then passed, as did Paul. I was somewhat upset that the bidding was over and picked up my cards.
Before Eric Bill led, Bill asked to see Eric’s convention card. He asked Eric whether our doubles, which the card says are negative at the three level were also negative at the two level. Eric incorrectly stated that they were negative at both levels. I began to correct him, but Bill stopped me. The whole thing was embarrassing.
In the end Bill made the bid, we received another very bad score, and I was flustered. If I had seen the redouble card, I would have bid 2♥, and the result would have been better. It took me several rounds to regain my equilibrium.
I found out in the evening about the redouble, and I apologized to Eric on Saturday morning about my pass.
I made one other costly miscue in my opening lead against Mike Heider and Mark Blumenthal on hand #16. They had bid 3NT.
The standard lead in this situation was fourth from longest and strongest, which in this case would have been the ♣7. However, the stronger hand would be on my right. I did not want to give away what might be the setting trick. Also I did not have a likely entry outside of the spade suit.
Instead I selected the singleton ♥10. Since East did not use Stayman he was unlikely to have four hearts. So, my partner probably had at least five. My 10 might be good enough to set up the suit for him.
As you can see, my lead allowed them to take the first ten tricks. If I had led the spade, we would have taken the first five.
We did much better on the other hands. We finished with a 55 percent game and won 1.52 silver points. It had been a long time since I had scored above 50 percent on two consecutive sessions of Open Pairs at a CBA sectional.
The drive home was uneventful. I did not sleep too soundly. I found myself awake at 3am. I got up for a while, read a chapter or so of Rain Dogs by Adrian McKinty, and went back to sleep.
On Saturday morning I fixed myself a sandwich of the remainders of a roast beef dinner before I left. I arrived at the tournament at about 9:30 and bought our entries.
Our results on Saturday were remarkably similar to what we did on Friday. In the morning our score was 51.74 percent, which left us just our of the money because the three top scores in our section were registered by B players.
We got off to an unbelievably good start on the first hand I somehow convinced myself that Eric, sitting East, had a very good hand. Since I held a six-loser hand with support for his clubs, I used Blackwood to ask for key cards. When his response indicated that he had 0 or 3, I figured that we had all the key cards and bid 6♥ without even asking about the queen of trump.
As you can see, Eric actually had a minimum opening bid. The opponents held three aces. Fortunately, South decided to lead the ♥A, which allowed him to pitch his spades on diamonds. He also led hearts from his hand, which allowed him to finesse the ten. So, we got 100 percent on this hand. Incredibly, one other pair stumbled into this horrible contract, but they were defeated by two tricks.
By our new method of bidding these hands our auction should have been 1♥-2♣; 2♥-3♥; 3NT (non-serious game try)-4♥ (very reluctant).
One of our worst hands was #8, played against two players whom I did not know, Paresh Soni and Justine Robertson. I was in the West chair declaring 4♠. The same contract was played by all of the other pairs in our section.
At trick 1 Paresh led the ♣4. I counted my losers—two possible in hearts and one in clubs. Then I thought again. What if South had four clubs? If I ducked, she could give him a ruff at trick 2, and I would be down if the hearts were poorly placed.
Then it occurred to me that North was leading fourth-best, I would still lose a trick to North’s king. The only times that playing the ace was wrong was if North began with the king and one or two others. Who would lead low from either of those holdings? No one that I played with. I would be willing to bet that no other North player selected that card to lead. Anyway, I played the ace.
Eric bought a lunch at the tournament. We ate together again. I explained why I only took ten tricks on hand #8. Bill gave out more awards.
Our best session was the last one. We scored 56.47 percent, which was good for fifth, but it was only 1.51 percentage points before the pair in first. We received 2.9 masterpoints.
The most astounding hand of the tournament occurred in the fourth round of the second session. We were sitting North-South. Eric was awarded the privilege of bidding the hand shown at the left. Our opponents were Victor Xiao and Lin Li.
After I opened 2♣ Eric bid 2♥. We played Kokish relays, and so his response indicated a bust—no aces, no kings, and at most one queen. I bid 2♠. Eric thought that his four trumps and a singleton was enough to raise to game. It wasn’t. I only made three. The field was pretty evenly divided between the game bidders and those who stopped at (and made) three.
When Eric lay down his 4-4-1-4 masterpiece I exclaimed “Wow! Eight high!” I then proceeded to count the pips in the center of of the cards: 17 (7+5+3+2) in spades, 19 in hearts, 7 in diamonds, and 16 in clubs for a total of 59. I told the table that this was the second-worst hand that I had ever seen.
After the hand Victor asked me about it. He was struggling to compute the lowest possible total. I explained that it was three sets of 2-3-4 combinations plus one 5 for a total of 41.
We bid and made one slam, but I thought that we might have bid another on hand #16. Eric, sitting north, opened 1♠. I had enough to bid Jacoby 2NT, but I was determined to take it slow. I bid 2♣. I don’t remember the details, but eventually Eric jumped to 4♠.
If he had shown his diamond singleton, I would have bid 2♠ to set trump. He could then show a club control. I would bid 2NT to show a high spade honor and no more controls. He could then bid 3♠ to show both a heart control and a club control. I would bid 4NT, and after he showed 0 or 3 key cards, I would know all fourteen of his points and have no worries about trumps. I would almost 4certainly have bid 6♠.
Afterwards, Eric asked why I did not just bid 2NT to start with. He would have shown his singleton by bidding 3♦. I would be forced to use Blackwood immediately or bid 4♦. The former is a big non-no with a worthless doubleton. The latter will probably induce him to sign off at 4♠.
I checked the results to see if this would have made a significant difference. We finished in fifth place, which was pretty good, but if we had bid 6♠, we would have vaulted past everyone in front of us, including the winners, who were the only pair that found the slam.
Cindy Lyall called for a “debriefing” meeting of the tournament committee. The only bad side to the tournament was the poor showing of the 499er group on Sunday. I volunteered to ask the director, Tim Hill, whether I could get a file of the results for specific events. He never responded, but I figured out how to “scrape” the web page that provided “recaps” of the events. I shared the information with the rest of the committee.
A big problem for the tournament in August is that no one on the committee wants to act as tournament manager. I remarked at the last meeting that I did not understand why anyone would want the position. I wonder what the other units do.
Since I was no longer on the HBC board, I tried to keep Linda Starr (who was) apprised of the board’s attempt to nail down dates for sectionals in 2025 and 2026. There were conflicts with the HBC’s annual meeting in the fall of 2024.
John Lloyd asked me to play with him in the Sunday Swiss of the sectional held in Johnston, RI June 7-8. Our teammates were Mike Shore, who moved from the Hartford area to Rhode Island and Rob Stillman. I knew both of them well, but I had played with neither as a partner or teammate.
I did not encounter any of the difficulties that I faced in the tournament in February. I purchase my usual sandwich at McDonald’s, consumed it while I was driving, and arrived fourteen minutes before the agreed-upon time of 8:30. As that time approached I decided to consult my cellphone to see if John, who is usually prompt, had called. I discovered a text that said that he was running a few minutes late, but he would be happy to transport us to Johnston in his Audi. He appeared at 8:50, and we reached the tournament at 9:40.
We quickly found Rob and Mike and purchased our entry. There were only fifteen teams. Since we were one of the last three teams, we started in a three-way match that consumed the first two of the scheduled eight matches. I cannot explain why they decided to have eight rounds that each contained six-board matches instead of six rounds of eight.
This was a somewhat peculiar experience for me. I had more than twice as many masterpoints as the other three players combined. There was only one other team there with representatives of the HBC and no one else at all from Connecticut.
In the first round John and I played against Tink Tysor from New Hampshire and Denise Bahosh from Central Massachusetts. I had known Tink for years and even was his partner in a regional event once. I knew Denise from working at the district. I did not know the teammates of Denise and Tink whom our partners played against in the second round. We were lucky. We ended up tying that match, but we lost to a much more experienced team in the other half of the three-way.
We also lost the next two matches, but I was not impressed with the play of our opponents. In the fourth round we lost because I took a finesse the wrong way in a notrump contract. Here is what happened. My left-hand-opponent led a low diamond on the first trick. I held AJ9. The other opponent played the king, which in every carding system that I have ever used or seen, denies the queen. I played the ace. Later RHO led a diamond. Knowing that she did not have the queen, I played the 9, which was captured by the 10. LHO led a third diamond, which RHO won with the queen. It was that kind of a day.
I ate lunch with my teammates. They asked me about an issue with the DONT defense against a 1NT opening bid. Rob had employed the 2♠ bid when he had a pretty strong hand. Mike said that his understanding was that the system used a double followed by a spade bid for that kind of hand. I explained that may players, including myself, ignored that distinction because almost all responders ignored the double and continued with their normal response. In that case the overcaller had advertised to them that he/she had most of the outstanding points. In the likely event that they won the auction, the declarer, being able to see half of the deck, could probably guess the suit that would have been bid, but the advancer would gain far less information.
Rob and Mike also asked what to do if your partner opened 1NT, you used Stayman with a hand that had slam interest, and your partner rebid 2 of your suit. I explained that bidding 3 of the other suit was used by almost all good players to indicate agreement with the suit and force at least to game. 4NT after that by either player would be Blackwood.
The fifth round was the low point of the tournament for me. We lost to Ben Bishop’s team of HBC players by one point. It was my fault. John put me in a good 5♠ contract. I won five of the first seven tricks and saw a certain route to the last six. I just needed to draw the last trump first. However, I called, “Club, please” instead of “Queen of clubs”. So, I carelessly went down. It was the only boneheaded play that I made all day, but it could not have come at a worse time.
There was one other interesting hand in that round. Diane Tracy opened 2NT in the third seat. I was the next bidder. I held six hearts headed by the AKQ, five clubs headed by the KQ, and two singletons. For the first time in my life I chanced an overcall of 2NT. My 3♥ bid was passed by all.
John’s dummy included a singleton heart, a doubleton club and the ♦K. It looked to me like I would take five or six hearts and one club. Ben led a diamond. I was not about to put up dummy’s only honor in front of at least 20 points. Diane took it with the queen and then surprisingly led the ♦A. I paused to reexamine the situation. They had squandered two chances to lead a trump and make my task impossible. The bad news was that I had to give them another opportunity.
I led my ♣K. Diane took it and led another club, which my queen devoured. I then led a third club and
They took the aces of clubs and diamonds and then led another club, which I won. I then ruffed a third club in the dummy and discarded my spade singleton on the ♦K. I then went back to my hand with a spade ruff and led my three high hearts. I lost one more club and the ♥J, but I still managed nine tricks.
Incredibly, the same thing apparently happened at the other table. E-W score 140.
We also lost the sixth round. I had terrible cards and was not a factor. However, the seventh round, in which we faced a significantly better team, went better. We won the round when Venky Venkatarami insisted on playing the last board with less than five minutes remaining on the clock. He went down two, and that was the margin of our victory.
We lost the last round against another good team, but I played several hands well. The difficulty occurred when John opened 1♠, and the next person overcalled 2♥. I had a pretty good hand with five diamonds and four good clubs. I made a negative double. John did not understand my intention and passed. The opponents took nine tricks.
We ended up in fourteenth place. The team that we defeated in the seventh round was last.
It was a horrible tournament, but I enjoyed the last two rounds.
1. For the first time in recent memory the time for the Sunday Swiss event was moved from 9:30 to 10:00. So we arranged to meet a half-hour later than previously.
2. NETTTS is the New England Tractor Trailer Training School, which was the bane of drivers in northeastern Connecticut. Trucks driven by students are often seen struggling to reach the speed limit on heavily traveled roads. I once saw one that was in the first spot at a stoplight with its right turn signal blinking. When the light turned green the truck executed the turn successfully, but not one of the six vehicles behind it was able to enter the intersection before the crossing traffic had the green light.
3. My opinion was that the 0-500 group needed to be persuaded to attend. The other players merely needed information. Since we were essentially offering the same product as on previous recent occasions, presumably they would come if they wanted to. The phrase “less than” is stylistically appropriate for anything that is not countable, in the sense of 1, 2, 3, not in the sense that rational numbers are countable. Thus, one would say less than $50, but fewer than fifty one-dollar bills.
4. The worst was a 53-pointer that I held at the Simsbury Bridge Club back when I was playing with Dick Benedict.
By the end of 2022 Americans were still contracting Covid-19, but very few died or became seriously ill. Most people had either contracted the virus already at least once or had been immunized with boosters. I still wore an N95 mask outside of the house for the first few months, but by the end of that period few people joined me.
January
For decades I have been an avid college football fan. New Years Day was ordinarily one of my favorite days. In 2023, however, it fell on a Sunday. The semifinals of the four-team College Football Playoff had occurred on December 31 Only pro games, in which I had little interest, were held on January 1. I was in my office in Enfield for most of the day.
On Monday, January 2, I played with Nancy Calderbank as part of the mentoring program at the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC). She had asked me to coach her through the transition from Standard American to Two-Over-One (2/1). Our results were not very good that day, but there was one memorable hand, which is shown at the right.
I had the dubious privilege of holding the cards in the East hand. When I received a miserable collection like that one, I like to add up the number of pips that are on my cards. In this case the total was 59, the second-lowest that I have ever seen.1 What made it really amazing was that more than half of the pips were clubs. Also, if deuces were aces, threes kings, etc., this hand would be worth 30 high card points. West’s monstrosity has only 70 percent of that number.
On the day after this bridge game I learned that one of my regular partners, Peter Katz, and an occasional partner of both Sue and me, Fred Gagnon, had contracted Covid-19 over the holidays. Neither became seriously ill, and both were back at the tables within a week or two.
On January 5 I sent the first email to the committee for the Weiss-Bertoni Award. The details of this project have been chronicled here.
The garbage disposal in the new kitchen had been stopped up. Apparently it was my fault. Sue said that all fat and grease must be removed with a paper towel before scraping the garbage from plates and cooking utensils into the sink. A plumber came out and fixed it on the 14th. He returned three days later to address a leak under the sink in the old kitchen. Tennessee Ernie Ford came to mind.
On the 15th I started work on a third-person autobiography entitle Cowboy Coder from Kansas. When the blog entry for this project is completed, I will link it here.
My wife Sue informed me that someone had told her years ago that we could get a break on our real estate tax because I am a veteran. That program exists, and we might have been able to use it in the first few years that we lived in Enfield, but our income, which is primarily from social security, seemed much too high.
On January 18 Sue was in a funk all day.. She played at the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC) with Maria Van Der Ree in the evening game. Even though they came in last out of eight pairs, Sue seemed chipper at the end. She needs to be out with people much more than I do.
The infamous Tonto email went out on the 19th. The tale is told here.
Bob: Several early entries in the 2023 notes for the pandemic concern the demise of Sue’s cat, Bob, our last surviving pet. The notes for January 3 reported: “Bob drools a lot and smells bad. Sue gave him a bath of some kind, but his saliva is rancid. He sleeps most of the time, but he bothers Sue when he is awake.”
The litter box in the basement. The grey items near the box are pieces of litter that absorbed water when the basement flooded. The water later evaporated.
We had cats in Enfield from the time that they moved there. Throughout this period all of them were able to use the cat door installed in a basement window to go outside when they felt like it. They could be relied on to make use of it whenever they needed to relieve themselves. However, in 2022 it became necessary to make a litter box available to them. At first it was in the basement. By the beginning of 2023 I had to move it upstairs because Bob was no longer able to negotiate the stairs.
Bob finally died on January 28. In some ways it was a sad occasion, but neither Sue nor I thought that he enjoyed the last few months of his life the way that our other cats seemed to.
Sue and I get a reminder about Bob every evening at 8:55. Her phone announces “Eight fifty-five Meds Slash Bob”. We call this announcement “Slash Bob.”
February
The coldest day of the year, by far was February 4. It approached 0 in Connecticut, but it was much colder on Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. The temperature was 8 below but the windchill index was an incredible -109° Fahrenheit.
February 7 was the first day of the regional bridge tournament in Southbridge, MA. Sue played with Mark Aquino in the Open Pairs. They did not do well. My adventures in the tournament have been described here.
In Sue’s absence I took my car in for the emissions test at Mad Hatter Auto Repair. Afterwards I calculated that we would owed $500 in income tax for 2022. The biggest reason for this was the cost of the cruise (described here) that necessitated a fairly large distribution from my 401K.
On February 10, only six days after that extremely cold day, the temperature reached a balmy 62°.
March
The first post-pandemic limited sectional was held at the HBC on March 26. It drew an incredible fifty-seven tables. The whole story is revealed here.
“Donald, my book will be coming out soon.”
On March 30 Donald Trump was indicted by the state of New York on 31 counts of business fraud! The indictments were in regard to Trump, through his fixer at the time, Michael Cohen, paid Stormy Daniels $150,000 to Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about their affair during the run-up to the election. Trump misused corporate funds to reimburse Cohen. That is what made it a crime in New York, which was, at that time, the official location of the companies. It was being filed as a felony because it was an illegal attempt to influence an election, which was a felony in New York.
An important Zoom meeting was held for replacement of the relational database that I had designed and implemented for the district. Details of that meeting have been posted here.
April
The income tax situation worked out better than my preliminary calculation had indicated. I had to pay the IRS $181. However, we received a refund from CT of $1996 I used one of the free filing services, but I had to pay $15 to file electronically in CT.
For the 2023 National Debate Tournament, U-M’s top team of Rafael Pierry and Kelly Phil won the Copeland award and were seeded #1 in the tournament. I could hardly believe that seven assistant coaches were going to attend the tournament in Chantilly, VA. Pierry and Giorgio Rabbini had also won the Copeland award in 2022 and were second in 2021.
Pierry and Phil.
Pierry and Phil were 7-1 in the preliminary rounds with 21 out of a possible 24 ballots. The U-M second team of Rabbini and Joshua Harrington also was 7-1 with only one fewer ballot. Pierry and Phil made it to the final round, but they lost to Wake Forest. Pierry attained the final round in three consecutive years, an achievement that will probably not be duplicated in my lifetime. I was nearly as disappointed with this result as I was with my own failure to qualify for the NDT in 1970, as described here.
There was quite a bit of activity about the Weiss-Bertoni award.
On Saturday, April 8, we went to see Tom, Casey, and Brian Corcoran in Tom’s house in Wethersfield. When we came back I found a dead mouse in the toilet of the bathroom in the older part of the house. I set traps the next day, but I caught nothing. Some mysteries are never solved.
On April 13 the temperature reached 90°. I walked five miles, but I had to stop, rest in the shade, and cool off three times. The next day it reached an incredible 96°, breaking the previous record by fourteen degrees. That temperature was never exceeded in the summer months.
The first CBA sectional was held in Orange on the 21st through the 23rd. I played all three days. Descriptions of my adventures were posted here. My most memorable achievement was the 512 miles that my Honda logged on a tank of gas. It took over 13 gallons when I filled it, but it claimed that it could have gone another fifteen miles. .
May
It was about this time that I discovered Bosch on Freevee. Sue and I watched it nearly every evening, and it didn’t cost us a penny. This and other ventures into the land of streaming are cataloged here. We could not believe that Amazon, which purchased the service from IMDB, was allowing people to view this high-quality police dram for free.
It was very hot on May 1 when I mowed the portions of the lawn that face either North Street or Hamilton Court. I was not able to mow the rest until three days later.
On May 8 I volunteered to send out the HBC’s emails for the summer through MailChimp. Lori Leopold had been doing it, but she had a lot of travel scheduled for the upcoming months. I somehow also was saddled with creating the official calendar from Donna’s handwritten version.
On May 11 the national health emergency for the pandemic officially ended. For several months I continued wearing my mask wherever I was likely to be in fairly close contact with others.
The day-by-day blog entry for the rest of 2023 has been posted here.
1. The lowest total that I have ever seen was an incredible 53 at the Simsbury Bridge Club fairly early in my bridge career. Unfortunately, although I often had my camera with me in those days, I did not record this event, and no hand record was available because the SBC was not yet using a dealing machine.
As I had done on nearly every Saturday for quite a few years, I played bridge with Peter Katz at the Hartford Bridge Club on April 6, 2024. I thought that we both played pretty well, especially against the best players, but we did not get a very good score. Part of that was due to a few hands that were bid very strangely by the opponents. The one that stood out for me was hand #9.
Peter and I were sitting East-West against Xenia Coulter and Nancy Calderbank. Xenia opened 2♠. I can understand why she did. She surely wants to bid, and the hand does not meet the rule of 20. Hers might be the only conceivable hand that I would bid with only ten points and only one five-card suit. I would not bid 2♠. I can think of many hands that would deliver ten tricks that I would pass opposite that bid, which could be made with only five points.
Peter, playing East, could not find a bid. Nancy for some reason decided to bid 3♠. I can see passing, and I can see bidding 4♠ to force the opponents to enter the bid at the five-level. I would never have bid 3♠.
In fact, I probably would have bid 5♠, the bid that the LAW of total tricks prescribes in this situation, assuming that North’s bid showed six spades. This bid would force one the opponents either to double a not-vulnerable contract or bid a slam with no idea of the partner’s holding.
If Nancy had passed, I would certainly have bid 3♥, and we would probably have found the slam. As it was, I did not have the temerity to enter the auction at the four-level. I passed, as did Xenia. Peter took a long time before he, too, passed. If Nancy had bid 4♠ or 5♠, I am sure that he would have doubled or bid notrump to show two places to play. In any of those cases my response would have been in hearts.
We ended up winning a lousy fifty match points on a hand that we were cold for a grand slam in either clubs or hearts.
So, only the combination of a peculiar opening bid and an inexplicable response left us tongue-tied. I guess that it was my fault. An old bridge aphorism states that one never preempts a preempt. In this case, however, the fact that both opponents showed spade length and some weakness maybe should have prompted me to think that I could count on Peter for four tricks. It was that kind of day.
When I arrived home from bridge I told Sue about the hand. She was surprised that it was legal to open Xenia’s hand at the two-level. I don’t know what she would have done instead. A pass certainly would be sinful with a hand that had the AKQJ of spades and a fifth one.
With this and other hands still on my mind I descended to the basement to spend some time watching MHZ Choice while using my rowing machine. I immediately noticed that there was a little bit of water on the floor in that corner of the basement. It wasn’t enough to be overly concerned about, but I resolved to tell Sue about it.
I watched the fifth episode of season 2 of The Bridge, a fictional police drama about a detective in Sweden who works with a detective in Denmark1, on MHZ Choice on my laptop. The reception was less than optimal. Because of repetitive delays for buffering it took forty-five minutes to watch the first half hour. Then I quit and went upstairs.
When I told Sue about the water in the basement, she asked if we had any leftover kitty litter. She suggested that we use it to absorb the water. I said that I was pretty sure that we did. I went back downstairs to check. The litter box and the box of litter were in the new part of the basement. When I opened the door between the two parts of the basement, I was surprised to see about an inch of water covering the entire floor of the new part.
It was time for supper. I resolved that early on Sunday morning I would repeat the laborious process that I did for the aftermath of Hurricane Ida in September of 2021. That effort is documented here with a good deal of detail and photos.
I got out of bed at about 2:00 a.m., found the extension cord and my wet-shoes, and filled ten barrels of the Sears equivalent of the Shop-Vac. The amount of water that I removed made almost no visible impact. I then went back to sleep.
On Sunday I opened the hatchway door on the northern side of the new basement at about noon. Fortunately the weather was clear and seasonably mild. I also filled another eighteen barrels. This was far less than my plan, but being two and half years older is very meaningful when one is in his mid-seventies. I was exhausted after four barrels, and both my lower back and the sides of my legs were aching.
I went back down and was pleasantly surprised to see that the level of the water was lower than I had left it on Sunday evening. After I had filled seven more barrels, there were still two small puddles, but I hoped that by Tuesday morning the dehumidifier and natural evaporation would seriously reduce or eliminate them.
My plan did not work. I filled two barrels on Tuesday morning. That cleared a path to the door, but it filled back in before I could leave. I did a barrel and a half on Tuesday afternoon. Some progress was made, but the two remaining areas, near the north wall and about twenty feet south of there were obviously going to fill back in with water.
On Wednesday I sucked up one full barrel and another perhaps one-third full. Because the hatch door was closed, I could not gauge my progress near the door. Most of the remaining water is along the north wall. It took another three days before I was able to suck up enough water for it to dry out completely.
I suspected that the water came from the depression beneath the deck outside of Sue’s bedroom. When the water table was exceptionally high water must have seeped in through the north wall and flowed downhill after that.
I swore more often this time than in 2021. I did not want to contemplate the possibility that flooding had become a repetitive occurrence. The weather in Connecticut seemed to have become much more tropical than in the previous decades. I did not miss the snow, but I have become too old to deal with the flooding. Also, the fact that I was continually obstructed by the mountains of useless junk in the basement turned my attitude bitter. I longed for an apartment and a landlord.
1. The two countries are connected by the Øresund Bridge that is almost five miles long.
