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.
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.
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!
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.