2008-2019 Partners at the Hartford Bridge Club Part 2

Mentoring and short-term partnerships. Continue reading

This entry describes my partners who participated in the mentoring program of the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) and the ones with whom I have only played once or twice. The regular partners can be found here. Those I encountered outside of the HBC mentoring program after the pandemic have been posted here.


Mentoring: The HBC’s Board of Trustees established a mentoring program several years after I became a Life Master. I cannot think of a way to set the date. The purpose was to allow newer players to pick up a few tips from more established players by playing together as often as possible over a three-month period. The incentive for the mentors was that one game per month was free. I always participated. I am not certain of the order of my partners, but I have put them in chronological order as closely as possible.

My technique varied little from year to year. I asked my partner what they wanted to focus on. I then asked them to send me a copy of the convention card that they were currently using. I wrote up a series of questions about the card/ After they answered we scheduled our play at mutually convenient times.

I communicated very little during the play. I generally try not to watch my partner’s play very closely because I do not want to make them nervous. If we had time after the round I might fo over anything that I noticed. Afterward I went of

My first partner in the mentoring program was Susan Glasspiegel1, who was already a pretty good player. At the time she played mostly with her husband Bob on holidays, in night games, and occasionally at the SBC. I also encountered them sometimes at nearby tournaments, where they often teamed up with Ru Cole and Silvia Szantos. I remember losing my temper when my team lost to them. I did not mind losing, but Ru was late turning in the score—for no good reason. That meant that both teams received the dreaded red dot. Two red dots would result in a loss of a victory point. My team never got the second dot, but theirs did.

I don’t think that playing with me had much effect on Sue’s bridge game. At the time she was pretty set in her ways. Bidding has always been my favorite aspect of bridge, and she made it clear that she needed to continue bidding the way that she did because Bob was unlikely to change.

I remember that Sue played Standard American rather than 2/1, her sparse set of conventions included the Brozel defense against 1NT openings. She also insisted that if she was responder after a one-level opening in a suit, and her right-hand opponent overcalled, that a 1NT response did not necessarily imply a stopper in the overcaller’s suit.

In later years Sue played at the HBC quite a lot with Lee Wilcox and a few other people. By then I think that her bidding was more sophisticated.

Sue suffered a very bad accident in 2022. However, when she heard that we had two and a half tables in Simsbury, she told Bob that she wanted to play so that we could have a reasonable game. That was very nice of her.


JoSue Coppa: JoSue usually played with her husband, Gene, described below, both in tournaments and at club games. I was a little surprised to learn that she had signed up for the mentoring program.

I cannot remember any memorable occurrences during our partnership. I don’t think that she advanced a lot.

Gene and JoSue moved to Fairfax, VA, during the Pandemic or shortly thereafter.


I also don’t have a lot of memories of playing with Linda Erickson. The main one is that I was scheduling games for her at the time that I had scheduled a game with Linda Starr. It was the first and (so far) last time that I double-booked. The other Linda was very gracious about the situation, although she admitted that she had placed a curse on us. Linda E. and I had a horrendous result.

I remember that Linda said that in her house she was the CEO of the kitchen. She evidently did not appreciate her husband messing around with culinary paraphernalia.

Linda served as vice-president of the HBC for a while. I guess that she was in line to become president, but for some reason she decided not to. My wife Sue, who was on the nominating committee speculated that her reluctance was because of the fact that she and her husband were moving to Charlotte, NC. However, she was still playing locally in 2020, so she must not have moved before the Pandemic.


Fran Weiner2 was a member of the HBC long before I returned to the world of bridge, but she did not have a lot of masterpoints. We only played together a couple of times. In fact, I ended up owing her

At the time, Fran’s daughter Jennifer, a novelist was involved in some kind of promotional event in California for one of her novels or screenplays or something. So, Fran went out to the West Coast to help her or to babysit or something. I expected Fran to get in touch with me when she returned, but she never did.

Bridge was not a very important part of Fran’s life. She was in the ACBL for twenty-nine years, and she only amassed 282.19 masterpoints. I doubt that she got much out of our association. Nevertheless, I was quite disappointed that she seemed to disappear from the HBC after that. I wanted to learn more about how her daughter managed to break into the world of publishing.

I often say that everyone in bridge has an interesting backstory. Hers certainly qualified.


John Calderbank came to the mentoring program with a specific objective, to learn the 2/1 bidding system. I wrote up a description of the differences between the Standard American that John had always played and 2/1. The differences were not insignificant, but there were not a lot of new things to learn.

John probably got more out of our partnership than any of the other people with whom I worked. When I wrote this entry in 2023 I was still playing with him in the morning game at the HBC nearly every Tuesday. I subsequently have taught John a few new conventions, but he mostly has wanted to take it slowly.

John and Mary Sullivan (below) took over management of the mentoring program in 2022. Their oversight was far superior to the previous coordinator’s.

In 2023 John was still doing a lot for the club behind the scenes. In addition he and his wife Nancy (below) were running an unsanctioned game in their home town of Glastonbury. He also took and passed the ACBL’s directorship test. His first assignment for the club was to direct the Sunday afternoon High-Low game. My wife Sue and I played in it regularly.


Of all of my mentoring partners3, Mary Sullivan was the most conscientious. She always responded to my emails, which she shared with her regular partner, Xenia Coulter, and she usually had additional questions.

Xenia was already a Life Master when I started playing with Mary It did not surprise me at all when Mary achieved the same rank in 2022.

In 2023 Mary was still running the the club’s mentoring program with John Calderbank (above). She also was assisting several of the other programs aimed at helping newer players.

Mary has hearing difficulties and macular pucker, scar tissue in the macula that can distort vision. Through my first seventy-five years I avoided the first of those, but I was still struggling with the latter in my left eye.


In 2022 Nancy Calderbank asked me to be her mentor. Like her husband, John, she had been playing bridge for a long time, but she wanted to learn how to play the 2/1 bidding system. We only got to play together a few times, but I am pretty sure that she had mastered 2/1 by the time that the mentoring period was finished.

I also worked with Nancy for three years on the HBC Board of Trustees. She and John, whom she called a “busy-body”, also ran an unsanctioned bridge game in Glastonbury, CT.


In the summer of 2023 I got to meet and play with Fran Gurtman, who had much less experience than any of the other players whom I had mentored. She was still a practicing physician when we started playing together.

Fran had taken online lessons. The first convention card that we played was very unsophisticated. It had no defense against 1NT openings, and it also lacked Jacoby 2NT, New Minor Forcing, Drury, and other conventions used by most of the mid-level players at the HBC. We only played together, but she felt comfortable adding most of them.

On November 8, 2023, Fran was driving from her home in Avon to play with my wife Sue in the weekly Wednesday evening game at the Simsbury Bridge Club. A deer jumped in front of her car. The collision killed the deer and damaged the auto. She called Sue to ask if she was still needed. Sue told her that we would not be able to have a game if she dropped out.

So, after filing a police report Fran drove the car, which was difficult to steer, to her house and drove a different car to the game. She arrived only a couple of minutes late.


A new mentoring session started in January of 2024 and ran through March of the same year. I was assigned by the mentor program to work with Mike Kaplan, who had even less experience than Fran did. Our convention card contained a lot of blankness. I taught him New Minor Forcing, Fourth Suit Forcing, and the two-suited bids.

Unfortunately, we had to play in the open pairs games at the HBC. Our results were therefore not very good, but I think that Mike learned quite a bit. I wrote up all of the hands on which we did poorly as I always did. I could have played for free in three of the games, but I donated the money to the HBC, which got reimbursed $30 by the CBA.

Playing with Mike on March 7 I was dealt the following hand: A5432 A653 A5 62. This hand had no face cards and only forty-four pips, an incredibly low number. The lowest possible number is twenty-eight. Mike had a very good hand, which got a lot better when blended with my three aces. He took all the tricks, but we only bid 4. We got a bad score.

At the same time I served with Mike on the HBC Planning Committee.


One-time partners: For quite some time I have maintained a spreadsheet with one line for each person with whom I have played at least one entire session in a sanctioned game at a club or tournament. Below is a list of the ones with whom I played only one or two games at the HBC. They are listed in alphabetical order, mostly just to make things easier for me to make sure that I did not skip anyone.


A guy whose last name was Balasubrama played on Saturdays a few times one summer at the HBC. He asked everyone to call him Bala, but the spreadsheet also has KC in the First Name column. On at least one of those occasions I played with him. He was pretty good, and he liked to play with me.

I could find no trace of Bala either online or in my database of players. Perhaps he dropped out of the ACBL before I began downloading the rosters in 2013. It is also possible that I have his name wrong. Unfortunately, in 2023 there is no longer a way to look up HBC results on the Internet.


Myrna Butler lived in Southwick, MA. She came down to the HBC to play occasionally. I played with her at least once at the HBC. I am pretty sure that she answered one of my mass emails soliciting partners.

I remember that some time after we played together I found a card filled out by Myrna at the partnership desk at the regional tournament in Cromwell. My team had been eliminated in an early round of a knockout. We planned to play in the next day’s “Loser Swiss”, but one of our team members was not feeling well. Since we had already played together, I assured the remaining members of the team that I would play with Myrna. However, I was unable to get in touch with her. I later learned that she had gone home and had neglected to remove her card from the partnership desk. I don’t recall how the team dealt with the situation.

I played in a Swiss team event at a tournament in (I think) Hyannis, MA, with Myrna and her partner, Connie Dube (introduced here). They were late for the first match. Helen Pawlowski, the tournament manager, and Sally Kirtley, who at the time was learning Helen’s job, sat in for the first match. After she learned whom she was replacing Helen said, “Oh, Myrna’s always late.”

Myrna has played a few times at the HBC since it reopened after Covid-19.


Gary Cohen played bridge for only a little more than a year, but what a year it was! He played mostly at Stan Kerry’s West Hartford Bridge Club (WHBC) game at the temple in West Hartford3. During his first year of play Gary amassed more masterpoints at club games than any other rookie in all of North America. That earned him the national Ace of Clubs award, as well as the district and unit versions. Since I was still playing with Dick Benedict, that must have been in 2008.

I am pretty sure that I played at the temple with Gary once. He made a joke about getting out the big (circumcision) knife. Although we did pretty well, I did not enjoy the experience much. Stan’s laissez faire style of directing was not appreciated by serious players like myself.

I am certain that I played with Gary at the HBC. It was on December 31 of, I think, 2009. Gary asked me to play in hopes of augmenting his chances of winning the award. We did win a fraction of a black point, but, as it turned out, he didn’t need it.

I remember playing on a team with Gary at the Cromwell tournament the next year. We had to play against Y.L. Shiue’s team. Gary did not think that it was fair for us rookies to be matched against “the best card-player” at the club.

Gary, who was a professional photographer, often went on vacations with both his wife and his ex-wife—at the same time! He insisted that he could get away with this because he was “a catch”. His LinkedIn page is here.


Gene Coppa and his wife JoSue (introduced above) joined the HBC a few years after I did. I played with Gene at least once at the club. We played together at a limited game on Wednesday afternoon that was designated as an NAP qualifier. There were at least ten pairs. Gene and I were the only people in the B strat. All of the other players were in the C strat and had considerably less experience than we did. So, we should have easily been able to qualify; in fact, we should have won.

Instead I got the worst result that I had ever received at the HBC. We finished dead last, and we did not earn our Q.

I was playing East that day; prior to that time I had always sat in North, South, or West. For quite a few years thereafter I refused to sit East in that building. When I began playing with Joan Brault (introduced here), she insisted on playing West when we were assigned to sit East-West, I reluctantly discarded the superstition.

Gene served a term as HBC president. He also served as hospitality manager for Unit 126 before the Pandemic. He and Jo Sue moved to Fairfax, VA, in 2022.


Phyllis Crowley

Phyllis Crowley was a fairly new player when I was paired with her for some reason. She was, in my recollection, somewhat overwhelmed by the event.

I think that she still plays in limited games in 2023. I have not seen her in any open games, but she was still on the email list.


Lucie Fradet.

I remember playing with Lucie Fradet once at the HBC, but I do not remember the circumstances. I remember, too, that Felix Springer and I helped her to win some gold points at a regional while playing in a Swiss event of some sort.

In 2023 she was still a member of the HBC , but she mostly played at the WHBC.

In real life Lucie had been a French teacher, and she still loved to speak in that language.


Marsha.

I am certain that I played with Marsha Futterman only once at the HBC. She was a very good player at one time. She even won the Governor’s Cup at a sectional, but she refused to take the very large trophy home.

Carl.

Marsha often played with Peter Katz. She told me that she thought that she was a better bidder than Peter, but Peter played his cards better. That may have been true then, but Peter’s bidding improved, and Marsha’s play did not.

Marsh directed the Saturday games at the HBC. Her husband, Carl, often came with her, helped set up and clean up, and filled in at the bridge table when necessary. When Marsh played with him (to avoid a sitout), she was constantly frustrated by the way that he played. I suggested that she could play with my partner, Peter, and I would play with Carl, but she did not want to do that.

Marsha gave up bridge after the Pandemic. I don’t know why.

Carl Futterman died on November 12, 2023, while I was composing this entry. His obituary can be read here.


Margie Garilli

Margie Garilli has for year run one or two games in the northeastern suburbs of Hartford. She has played at the SBC quite a few times, mostly with Donna Lyons. She seldom came after the Pandemic because she could not drive at night.

Margie, who is a pretty good player, asked if I would play a game with her at the HBC. I quickly agreed. I don’t know if she got a great deal out of it, but she seemed to have a good time.


Marilyn Goldberg.

Marilyn Goldberg was an exceptionally good player with much more experience than I had. She asked me to play with her very late in her career. I made a mistake—I don’t remember the details—and she remarked that she knew that I would do that. That hurt.

Marilyn died in 2022 at the age of 93. Her obituary can be read here.


Judy Hyde.

I played with Judy Hyde quite a few times before she moved from the Hartford area to Northampton, and I played with her a couple of times at the Northampton Bridge Club before she paired up with Bob Sagor.

On one occasion at a regional tournament in Nashua, NH, my wife Sue and I went out for supper with Judy (my partner at the tournament) and Judy Cavagnaro (Sue’s partner). The unusual aspect was that Judy C. was married to Jud H.’s ex-husband, Tom Hyde. There was not a bit of animosity between the two Judys.

On her eightieth birthday Judy bought herself one lesson and game with a local pro, Doug Doub.

Judy served as the representative of Unit 186 (Western Massachusetts) on the committee that I formed to determine the first winner of the Weiss-Bertoni award. That process was described here.


C.J. Joseph.

C.J. Joseph‘s first name was Carolyn, but absolutely nobody called her anything other than C.J. I only played with her once.

C.J. met her husband, who was (to the best of my recollection) a hospital administrator while they were both attending the University of Michigan. So, most of our conversations were about the Wolverine football team.

She left the Hartford area for a seaside home they built in Englewood, FL She scoffed when joked about her house being washed away. I don’t know; the Ross Ice Shelf is several hundred meters thick and the size of France. Nothing but friction is holding it back.

In 2023 C.J. was still a member of the ACBL, but she did not appear to be playing any more. A lot of that happened during the Pandemic


Joel Krug.

Joel Krug was still a regular at the HBC as I wrote this in late 2023. I only played with him once, but I recognized him on an old photo of an annual meeting, and none of the other members looked familiar.

The only thing that I remember about our game was that he was surprised that I knew how to play the McCabe Adjunct as well as the Brozel 1NT defense.

Joel was one of the best players at the club. He may have lost a step over the years, but he was still formidable.


I played at least one round with Pam Lombardo, when she was just a novice. Maybe it was during one of the first sessions of the Sunday high-low game before Covid-19.

Pam has had significant health issues that seemed to affect her ability to play, but in 2023 she was still an active member of the club.

A friend of hers named Butch Norman was one of two recipients who objected to me using the name Tonto in one of my emails. I discussed this incident in detail in the blog entry that I posted here.

At one time Donna Feir planned to hire Pam as a director, but that plan never came to fruition.


Jim Macomber (MAY cum ber) was a regular player in the Tuesday evening games when I first started playing at the club in 2008. I may have played against him more times than against anyone else.

One of Jim’s regular partners at the HBC morning games was Jeanne Striefler. I asked Jeanne and Jim to team up with Eric Vogel and me for the knockout in the Presidential Regional in Southbridge in February of 2023. We did very well on the first day, but terrible on the second. The saga has been recorded here.

Later in 2023 I finally got to play a round as Jim’s partner. I had long respected him a great deal. Our result was uninspiring, but it left me hoping for a second chance.

When Jim had his cataracts removed in the late summer of 2023 he was left with double vision, something to which I could relate. He was unable to drive until he got a pair of glasses to address the situation.


Partab Makhijani was my regular partner on Tuesday mornings at the HBC before Covid-19 caused the club to close. We played a fairly sophisticated card. I remember that he criticized one of my bids once, but I don’t recall the details.

Partab did not return to the club after it reopened in 2021, and I have not heard any explanation for his absence. His LinkedIn page, which is posted here, in 2023 listed him as part of the adjunct faculty of the University of Hartford.


Lesley Meyers was (and still is in 2023) one of the best players at the club. We only played together once. There must have been something about my style that she did not like. She never responded to any of my emails after that.

Lesley (LEZ lee) notices things about people. She was the only person who noticed the golf-ball-sized lump on my left elbow that was presumably caused by the effort required to extract gallons and gallons of water from the basement of our house in Enfield after Hurricane Ida in September of 2021. That episode is recounted here. I am glad that she noticed the problem. I saw a doctor about it, and he gave me a wrap that eventually reduced it to nothing.

Lesley was also the only person who asked me about the fingernails on my left hand. They apparently got severely bent and bruised when I fell in Budapest in May of 2022. That misadventure has been described in detail here.

When I first started to play at the club, no one intimidated me as much as Lesley. She was not tolerant about novices who took excessive times concocting their bids.


I remember distinctly that Nancy Narwold told me that one day that she would surprise me and respond positively to one of my emails soliciting one-time partners. Her name is on my spreadsheet, and I have a convention card for her. Therefore, it must have happened, but I don’t remember it. It seems strange that I remember the off-hand comment more than the 3.5 hour game that it resulted in.

I do recall that before she became a Life Master Nancy played almost exclusively with another woman whose name has escaped my memory—Karen Somebody, I think. The HBC held a party when the two of them achieved Life Master status. I attended. The other lady told tales about their efforts to attain the rank, including something about answering a knock on the door of their hotel room in a nightgown. I always considered Nancy a much better player than her partner.

After that event I don’t think that they ever played together again. From then until the closing for the Pandemic Nancy played mostly with Joel Krug. She also ran an unsanctioned bridge game at one of the country clubs on the west side of town.

I have deduced that in 2023 Nancy teaches business at Manchester Community College. If so, her LinkedIn page is here. She is still winning masterpoints; she probably plays online.


Val Orefice was not as serious about bridge as most of the people on this list. Although she joined the ACBL in 1994 (ten years before I did), she only made Bronze Life Master in 2012, a year after I did. She dropped out in 2018.

I remember only two things about Val. The first was that she did not seem to be familiar with several of the conventions that nearly all the accomplished players used. The other was that she pronounced her last name the same as the common word “orifice”. The Italian word orefice means goldsmith and is pronounced oh RAY fee chay.


I played with Pam Palmer a few times when her main partner, Aldona Siuta, could not play. Pam. They played a much simpler system than I was accustomed to. They very seldom made mistakes, and both of them were very good at playing the cards.

In 2023 Pam was still playing, but at a much reduced rate. She seemed to be very frightened of Covid-19, perhaps on account of her partner.

Both Pam and her partner were quite active in the same church attended by the Calderbanks.


Susan Pflederer, who was (and still is in 2023) one of the best players at the HBC, once told me that she wanted to play with me because she had a hard time playing against me. This astonished me because I did not remember having particularly good results when I played against her.

I know very little about Susan. She had been playing bridge for a long time when I started. I seem to remember that our results were mediocre. I probably made some mistakes that she noticed and I didn’t. We never played again.

After the Pandemic Susan has played less than she did before.


Trevor Reeves has the unique distinction of playing with me without making it onto my spreadsheet. When we were scheduled to play together a second time, he was able to show me the results from our first partnership. I cannot imagine how it could have happened, and I took no notice of it.

Trevor learned to play bridge in England, which explains why his BBO handle is ACOLyte. Trevor is a very good player. Although in late 2023 I still have more masterpoints than he does, the people in the club obviously consider him a better player than I am.

Trevor formerly played as a teammate of mine at many tournaments, and we did quite well. He also played with me in a pairs event at the Summer NABC in Toronto in 2017 (no notes?). We won our section in the evening session.

I would like to play more with Trevor, but he obviously prefers other partners. He asked me to play with him in the sectional in Orange in August of 2023, but I had to turn him down because of a previous commitment to play in the sectional in Great Barrington, MA.

Trevor’s primary partner at tournaments has been Felix Springer. They have a great record together and even made it to the semifinals of Flight B of the Grand National Teams in 2022.

Trevor served as both the president and then treasurer of the HBC. He was responsible for implementing the accounting changes that allowed the club to do accurate budgeting during and after Covid-19.


Joan Salve.

I cannot say that I enjoyed the one time that I played with Joan Salve. Her world view was just too different from mine. I don’t remember any details, but I was happy when the session was over.


Carol Schaper.

I met Carol Schaper at the SBC. She was a regular there when I first started playing. I liked her a lot.

She played with a former nun named Louise Alvord. Carol was interested in my book on the popes (posted here). She especially liked the title, Stupid Pope Tricks: What St. Mary Immaculata Never Revealed About the Papacy. Louise, however, did not want to hear anything about Roman Catholic clergy, good, bad, or just unusual. Carol tried to defend me, but Louise did not want to hear it.

I played with Carol only once at the HBC and never at tournaments or, for that matter, the SBC. I thought that she had the potential to be a pretty good player, but she did not want to put in the effort.

Carol was one of the thousands of people who let their membership in the ACBL lapse during the Pandemic or shortly thereafter. She had enough points for Life Master, but she must have been short some gold and/or silver.


Susan Seckinger has long been a key person at the HBC. She was hired as a director and Donna Feir’s right-hand person. Before that she was a critically important official for Unit 126. She had the formidable responsibilities of being both the treasurer and the tournament manager at the same time. She did a good job in both roles.

Susan’s husband Gary was considered one of the best players in Connecticut. He often played with Deb Noack at sectionals. He died in 2014, just as I was becoming active at the district and unit levels.

I only played with Susan once. I think that we both enjoyed it, but we never played again. She has long had a small group of women with whom she played regularly.


Mike Smith almost always played with his wife Susan. They became a formidable pair during their stay in the Hartford area. They even won a pair of national championships. Mike was a Life Master when they moved to God’s country. I spoke at Susan’s Life Master party and complained that she had never once agreed to play with me and that they had stolen my favorite teammates, Bob and Shirley Derrah.

I never got to play with Susan Smith, but on one occasion Mike asked me to play with him on a Tuesday evening when Susan was busy elsewhere. I jumped at the chance. I really enjoyed it, but he was an intimidating figure (both physically and at the table). I made a mistake that kept us from having a good round. It was embarrassing.

Mike was still working full-time while the couple lived in the area. So, his presence at the HBC was pretty much limited to evenings, weekends, and holidays. Susan, however, became a rather active member. I an pretty sure that she participated in the mentoring program.

In the post-Pandemic period the Smiths moved to Alexandria, VA. I have not encountered them since they did.


Linda Starr.

I first met Linda Starr during the Tuesday evening games. She usually played with Mike Carmiggelt in those days. They—and many other players in those games—were good enough that they intimidated me. Once Mike accused my partner and I of something unethical. When I responded with a one-word interrogative: “Ethical?” Linda immediately responded by saying that Mike was just crabby because he was hungry. I am not sure why, but Linda has not played with Mike for a few years.

I have paired with Linda a few times at the club and at least once at a sectional in Orange. That experience has been recorded here.

Shortly before Covid-19 struck Linda passed the director’s exam and was hired by the HBC. At my suggestion the club bought a subscription to MailChimp to send emails about news of the club. Linda took over the project of maintaining the database and composing emails. Her emails throughout the closure helped maintain a sense of community among club members.

Doug Eitelman.

Linda came up with the idea of the High-Low game on Sunday as a way for experienced players could help the less experienced. She has unofficially mentored Doug Eitelman and greatly improved his game.

Linda and I worked together on the fantastically successful Limited Sectionals that were sponsored by the HBC in 2023. Documentation of those events begins here. At the time she was a member of the board of the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA). She became very upset at the handling of the notorious “Tonto Scandal” that has been documented here. After a short sting on the CBA board she resigned. At the HBC’s annual meeting in October of 2023 she became the first director ever elect to the Board of Trustees.


Gary Cohen put together a team for a Swiss event at the HBC. I don’t remember the date. I was assigned to play with Merrill Stein, whom I barely knew. I don’t remember any more details. I think that Merrill died in 2018. An obituary for someone with that name has been posted here.


Jeanne Striefler has been an active member of both the HBC and the SBC for longer than I have. We have played on teams together at tournaments quite a few times and we have paired up at least once or twice.

On a few occasions Jeanie (as everyone called her) invited my wife Sue and me to the house in West Simsbury that she shared with her husband Fred4. One of those occasions was when she celebrated making Silver Life Master, and Susan Seckinger celebrated making Gold Life Master. She probably would have invited us more often if we had reciprocated. Fat chance.

Fred Striefler.

Jeanie served as the HBC’s secretary for many years.

Jeanie and Fred went on a Viking cruise in France at the same time that I took the European cruise (described here). She contracted Covid-19 near the end of the cruise and was unable to leave Paris for several days. She reported that she had had a terrible experience. She was surprised that I enjoyed my journey and thought that Viking did well under the circumstances.


I learned when I played with Rowna Sutin at the HBC that she had been a professional opera singer in Pittsburgh. She appeared as Musetta in Puccini’s La Bohème. I immediately remarked that she must have sung the show-stopping aria, Quando me’n vo’5. I then asked her if she wore a red dress. She said that her dress was not red, but it did have a very long slit in the skirt.

I also discussed with Rowna about the version of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin that was performed on television and is available on YouTube here. Rowna did not like the cuts that were made. I felt that the cuts made it a much better television show and highlighted the talents of the wonderful choir and dancers.

I told Rowna about my favorite Tchaikovsky opera, Cherevichki. She replied “How come I have never heard of it?” I wasn’t sure how to explain why it has not gotten much attention in the U.S. I speculated that it might be because it was difficult to stage. I refused to believe that it had anything to do with the music.

That was the last time that I saw Rowna. For some reason she stopped coming to the HBC. She was still a member of the ACBL in 2023, and she had won a few masterpoints during the year.


Bill Watson.

Bill Watson became the president of the HBC shortly after I joined. As president he arranged for Michael Lawrence, a world champion and highly respected author, to visit the club and give a free presentation on takeout doubles. He even let him stay overnight in his house.

I attended the event. During a break I encountered Mr. Lawrence in the men’s room. He stumped me with a question about whether the faucet’s water ever became hot.

Michael Lawrence.

Bill was also a director at the HBC and with Laurie Robbins ran the club’s education program for new members. For six years he ran the Limited Sectional that the club hosted every October.

I played with Bill a few times before Covid-19 shut down the club in 2020. I remember that he was shocked when I said that a bid at the two-level in the fourth seat should show a minimum opening hand. The club’s experts agreed with me, but later when I played with Barbara Gallagher that the best players in Denver played that the same bid at the one-level was weaker.

Before the Pandemic Bill often was the public address announcer at football games for one of the local high schools in Hartford.

Bill and I have not played together since the club reopened. He mostly has played with Mike Carmiggelt and Larry Bowman.

Bill drove a red Jaguar that gave him a lot of grief in 2023.


John Willoughby started playing at the Tuesday evening games a little after I did. I think that I only played with him once, and I don’t remember any details about the occasion. My wife Sue played with him pretty often online during the Pandemic.

Although he and his wife had moved to North Haven in 2022 John continued as president of the HBC until his sudden and very unexpected death in the summer of 2023. Previously he had lived in Suffield. In his business life he worked as an underwriter for one of the insurance companies. His obituary can be found here.

When John was vice-president of the HBC, he was also the chairman of the Planning Committee, of which I was a member. The committee came up with many good ideas during this period.

The club held a special event as a tribute to John. Many of his family and friends attended. Over $6,000 was raised for the club.


1. In September of 2023 Bob and Sue Glasspiegel moved to Charleston, SC.

2. I was surprised to discover that Fran was still living in West Hartford when she died in 2021. Her obituary is posted here.

3. Stan had just opened his club when Gary began the year of his feat. Stan took advantage of a loophole in the ACBL rules to give extra points by designating every game as a “charity game”. In addition, although all of the games were technically open games, almost no Life Masters ever attended. So, because the games were fully rated—and then some—it was much easier to earn points at the WHBC than at the HBC, where the open games were dominated by experienced players. .

4. Fred was introduced here. His real first name was Manfred, not Frederick.

5. The long version would be “quando me ne vado”, which just means “when I go out”. I don’t know what happened to the “e” in “ne”.

2023 Bridge: Limited Sectional at the HBC on 3/26

57 Tables! Continue reading

The details of the event, its planning, the first email, and the brouhaha that followed are described in the excruciating long blog entry that is posted here. You almost certainly won’t want to read the entire entry, but the first few paragraphs are rather essential to the understanding of this one.

If you refuse to use the link, you should at least know that the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) was planning a Limited Section on Sunday, March 26. The details were handled by Linda Starr, but Donna Feir, the club manager, oversaw the project. Two flights were planned—0-299 and 0-750 non-Life Masters. A free lunch would be served between the two sessions.

Westchester County is outlined in red.

While engaged in the back-and-forth concerning the scandalous Tonto email, I cobbled together a similar one for the people in Westchester County, NY, the wealthy suburban area that is west of southeastern Connecticut. You can view a sample of this email here. Before I sent it out, I showed this to the officers of the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA). They liked it, probably because I removed the toxic character who featured in the first one. This version went out on January 31.

201 people eventually opened the email, most of them repeatedly. Ten clicked on the link to the flyer to get more information. Not great, but most of these people were facing a two-hour drive to the HBC.

The second set of emails was sent on February 23. It used some obscure facts that I unearthed on the Internet. They highlighted the dearth of silver in southern New England. A sample is posted here. Just as I had sent it out, Linda Starr asked me via email:

Did you send out the latest email about the March 26 sectional? I haven’t gotten even one new registration since the few days after the first email went out and I only have 6 tables at this point. So if you get a chance, any additional publicity would be helpful!!! I have been announcing it at the Friday afternoon games and have asked to have it announced at all the other games. Any suggestions on what else I can do to promote it? 

We had decided to ask people to register early so that we would know how many lunches to buy. Peter had told us that ACBL rules prohibited excluding players who failed to register.

I replied that I had just sent out the first part of the second batch. I also reported some statistics:

As of 5pm 1305 deliveries, 521 opened, 17 clicked (one twice), 19 bounced, 3 unsubscribed. I will send to Westchester tomorrow.

I will work on a third email over the weekend emphasizing that the HBC is a nice place to play. It should go out on March 12. I am open to other suggestions.

There was one small issue that Linda had to address. A page on Unit 126’s website, CTBridge.org, advertised that those playing in their first tournament would get a free game. There was also something about people who joined the ACBL. The concern was whether either of these policies, which were put in place years earlier, would apply to a tournament run by a club. The webmaster planned to take down the notice as soon as the HBC’s Limited Sectional was over. Linda wrote,

I emailed Peter this morning asking if he wanted us to promote the free game for first time tournament players or just give it to those who asked. Haven’t heard back yet but depending on his reply, that might be something else to promote.

I had made no mention of this in any previous emails. I needed to know whether to emphasize it in the last email. I wrote “Since everyone in my database is a current or former ACBL member, it would have to be a request for people to ask others who are not members.”

On March 6 Linda wrote “So far it appears that no one knows the answer. So just go ahead and send out the reminder without the info about the free sessions. If any non members show up, I’ll deal with it then.”

As I was almost ready to send the emails, Linda received an answer from Peter Marcus, the President of the CBA.

I will admit, I tend not to be too concerned with these kind of freebies.  If no one takes them, it costs nothing.  If a lot of people take them, while that could amount to some money, it means we are getting a lot of new players that, over time, will more than cover the costs.  So, I tend to be open to being very liberal about things like this,

I don’t totally understand the guest membership program of the ACBL.  But, from my understanding, guest memberships get all the information to “add someone to our database” so we can contact them.  To me, that alone is worth a free play, let alone the possibility of them becoming a full, recurring ACBL member.

The HBC Bulletin Board.

An email in praise of the HBC’s outstanding facility, a sample of which is posted here, was sent in two batches: one (sent on March 5) for players having between 200 and 750 masterpoints, the other (released on March 8) for those with less than 200 points.

Meanwhile, a signup sheet had been posted on the club’s bulletin board. People were needed to help setting up the tables and chairs, to run the two registration tables, to organize and set out the lunch, and to clean up. I volunteered to take photos and to help out in the morning. Seventeen other members of the club signed up.

By the middle of March it was clear from the number of registrations that the tournament would be a success. More people signed up for the 0-200 flight than for the 0-750 NLM flight.

On the morning of March 9 Linda sent me this email:

I thought I’d see if you know the answers to the questions below rather than take up a lot of time — and look stupid : ) — at the Zoom meeting tonight.

In the paperwork you gave me, you said there’s a $50 sanction fee for the tournament, an $8/session charge for boards, and a $2 or less per table charge (not sure what that is). Can you tell me who these fees are paid to? the ACBL? the unit? Will we be billed in some way? 

Also, do you know how I get the files for the hands? Are they emailed to the club automatically because we have a sanction or do I need to request them? I assume we’ll make our own boards? Is there anything else you think I should know? (Assume I know nothing!)

I had read everything that I could find on Limited Sectionals, but I was certainly not an expert. I replied as follows.

My understanding is that the unit charges us nothing. I don’t know how/when the ACBL gets its pound of flesh.

I assume that someone will send pbn files, but that is just guessing.

Everything that I know I told you. Bill Watson may know more since he did essentially the same thing for a few years.

Hours later Linda received an email from the ACBL. A guidebook for the directors of IN (Intermediate/Novice) tournaments was attached. I have posted it here.


The event: The first session of the tournament was scheduled to begin at 10:00. I arrived before 9:00, but many of the volunteers and a few of the players were already there. Because more than half of those who had registered were 199ers, Linda had placed the 199ers in the main room of the club. She was expecting fifteen tables. I wandered around and took a few photos.

By 9:30 quite a few players who had not previously registered for the event appeared. The great majority of them were in the 0-750 flight. A few more tables in the backroom were provided with bidding boxes and BridgeMates. At about 9:45 more tables needed to be set up, but there were no additional bidding boxes. Fortunately, I had a suitcase filled with bidding boxes in my car. I brought them into the club.

Both sections had fifteen tables, about what was expected for the 199ers. The 0-750 section had a lot more than predicted. At the last minute two tables were moved from the very crowded backroom to the main room. Thirty tables! This was so far off of the chart for post-pandemic attendance that no one could believe it.

The only tables that were not used in the first session were the two that were set up for registration. I told Linda that if more people came, I would pull my Honda into a handicapped space, and they could play on the hood. The weather was nice enough for it.

After the first session I took photos of the winners. Then I went home after advising Linda that someone else should take photos of the winners in the afternoon sessions.

Bill Segraves, the eager-beaver webmaster of the CBA asked how the event went. Linda replied,

It was a great day! The worst part was wondering if we were going to run out of tables. We had 57 tables in total for both sessions. And lots of excellent feedback! Mike has lots of pictures too!! We’re happy to do it again any time.

The next morning Linda sent the following email to the volunteers and directors:

Thank you all SO much for volunteering at yesterday’s tournament! The “powers that be” think the tournament was a success because we had 57 tables over the course of the two sessions. But those of us who were there know that the tournament was a success because of all of you! If we’d had 57 tables of unhappy players, the tournament would have been a huge failure. Thanks to you, that didn’t happen. Susan, Donna and I received many, many comments from players unfamiliar with the club about how friendly the club was and how much they enjoyed their time there. 

So thank you all for decorating, greeting, cleaning up, baking cookies, answering questions, taking pictures, pitching in wherever it was needed — for everything you did to make every player who attended feel comfortable and welcome and at home. Each and every one of you was the secret to the success of the tournament and on a bigger scale, of course, you are the secret behind the success of HBC. Hopefully many of those who attended will, because of their experience yesterday, continue to play and help regrow the game we love.

Betty Kerber and Peggy Arseneaux counting the 199er receipts.

The event earned the HBC a few thousand dollars, which just about matched what it had been losing each month from its day-to-day operations since reopening in July 2021.

Plans were immediately made for a second event in the fall.

2021 Part 2: The Pandemic Strikes Back

Living with Covid-19 in 2021. Continue reading

I kept pretty good records of what my activities during 2021. I decided to arrange this entry in chronological order with separate entries for a few startling or momentous events.


January: 2020 was widely considered the worst year ever or at least in my lifetime, but it appeared that 2021 might wrest that crown away. It had the usual 365 days, but it felt like the longest year of all time. I had rather enjoyed the tranquility of the isolation in 2020, but by January of 2021 I really wanted to play bridge and see all of my friends again on a regular basis.

During the first few days of the new year no one talked about anything besides the election. I had become convinced early in the election campaign that Trump would try to start a coup if he lost. I was right. That story has been told here.

On the Pandemic front the big news in late 2020 was that three different vaccines would soon be available, but the schedule had not been published. The priority would be given to health care workers and then to those over 65.

We sufferers from trypanophobia were relentlessly subjected to photos of people with their sleeves rolled up as someone near them administered the shot (or “jab” as they called it in England).

On January 1 I played bridge online with Ken Leopold. We scored over 65 percent, one of my best scores ever. I still did not enjoy it.

Senators Manchin and Sinema.

On January 4, my sister’s 65th birthday, both of the Democrats were declared winners in Georgia. The Democrats seemed to be in control of both houses of Congress, but two of them, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona, were not reliable votes. The former was in bed with Big Coal and conservative for even a Blue Dog, and the latter was just a narcissist.

On January 6 I played bridge with Ken again. This time we did horribly. When I get nervous playing online (sometimes because I am not yet used to the BBO interface), my left hand begins to shake.

Almost none of the rioters that stormed the Capitol wore masks. Deaths from Covid-19 were still averaging 4,000 per year. So, on top of everything else the insurrection was also probably a super-spreader event.

Ken and I had another awful game on January 8. This time I had an excuse. While we were playing, Sue was in the other end of the house and had a heart attack. She called 911, and an ambulance took her to the emergency room of St. Francis hospital. The doctors put in a stent. In January of 2021 hospitals were a very dangerous place. I was quite worried. I had long known that a day like this might come. Sue was quite overweight, and she knew that she had a mild case of diabetes for a long time. She never exercised, and her eating and sleeping habits were deplorable.

Almost all my horror stories involved Unite.

Expedia sent me an email that said that I had a credit with United Airlines. I had absolutely no idea what caused this. I looked at the header for the email; it seemed legitimate. At that point it seemed pretty unlikely that I would ever fly on United again. Unfortunately, the email got lost when I cleaned out my Outlook folders before moving to the Asus computer (details here) in 2023. So, I probably will never know any more about this.

I drove Sue home from the hospital on January 11. For the rest of her life she was required to administer insulin shots to herself and to take several types of heart medicine and a few other drugs for other chronic issues. She was on a fairly strict diet aimed at getting her weight down and her blood-sugar level under control. She could walk without assistance, but she had no stamina. She seemed worse a couple of days later.

She made an appointment with her primary care physician. The appointment with the doctor seemed to go OK. There might have been an adjustment to her drugs. I was required to wake her up every morning at 9 a.m. and to remind her when it was 6 p.m. After a while she figured out how to give herself reminders on her phone, but I still needed to awaken her every morning.

On January 20 Joe Biden was sworn in peacefully. At this point some right-wingers were claiming (with no evidence whatever) that the rioters (or at least the instigators) were actually from Antifa or Black Lives Matter or even the FBI. The FBI had begun searching for participants. There was an unbelievable abundance of video. Evidently for a lot of these bozos this was the culmination of a great deal of training and effort, and they wanted to make sure that they had mementos. Many of them would come to regret that decision.

On the 23rd I wrote in my notes that Sue seemed a little better, but she was still quite weak. She said that she could cook some, but she requested that I do the dishes. I agreed, of course, and there were several delicious but easy meals that I was comfortable preparing and cooking. I shopped for them, and she learned how to order groceries online.


February: On February 5 I played on BBO with Eric Vogel. We scored better than 54 percent.

Sue has rehabilitation therapy scheduled for the 8th, but she canceled it. She did that a lot when she had her knee replacement surgery a few years earlier. For a little while she tried to walk around on Hamilton Court. I joined her for a few of these jaunts. The cold air bothered her breathing for some reason. When it got warmer she went on little walks by herself, but she eventually stopped doing them. That was just the way she was. It would have done no good to nag her to exercise.

On the next day I played with Eric again. This time we scored better than 57 percent. I was starting to feel more relaxed playing online, but I still hated it. It was also the day that Trump’s trial in the Senate began. The first vote was on whether the process was constitutional. That passed 56-44 with six Republicans voting in favor. However, 67 votes will be required for conviction, and so it appears that he will walk again.

On the 10th Sue went back to her heart doctor. He put her back on Lasix to reduce the buildup of fluids. This seemed to help her a lot, but it made her go to the bathroom. It took her a bit of time to learn how to control this situation.

On the same day I went downstairs to walk a few miles on the treadmill1. It made a horrible sound, and I had to unplug it. After I thought about it, I became pretty sure that this was caused by the cats, Giacomo and Bob. They both took naps on the treadmill after visiting the litter box, which was also in the basement. A bit of litter might have stuck to their paws, then fell into the treadmill’s mechanism, and somehow made it jam up. In any case fixing or replacing it was not a job to be undertaken when all of society was under lockdown.

I always watched an opera or a streamed TV show or movie on my laptop situated on the ping pong table.

On the very next day I spent 100 minutes on the rowing machine that Sue had bought for me many years earlier. It gave me a sore tailbone. I brought down a small pillow and strapped it on top of the seat. I also brought down a pair of grey sneakers and permanently tied them into the footrest. It had bothered me that my feet slipped while I was rowing. This solved the problem.

Sue at some point in February had an anxiety attack. This was really the worst symptom yet. She had difficulty breathing for several minutes. This development meant that I had to keep bottled up my feelings about everything (including but not limited to my disdain for the pigsty in which we lived) or risk killing my wife. She got a prescription for this from one of her doctors. It seemed to work.

Over the next few days I spent some time doing our income taxes. I filed them electronically using “Free File Fillable Forms” and almost immediately received a refund from Connecticut. The federal refund did not arrive for several months. I can’t complain too much; the IRS did send a “stimulus” check of $2800.

At some point I dropped my Pixel 2 cellphone and cracked the screen. It still seemed to function correctly. This device, which I came to hate, continued to function until May of 2022. Its demise occurred somewhere in Germany and was described in detail here.


March: The 2nd was Sue’s 70th birthday. She was planning on throwing a big party, but she was definitely not up to it, and not many people would have been able to come anyway.

On March 15 Sue and I drove to a huge parking lot on Runway Rd. in East Hartford. There we received our initial Pfizer mRNA-based vaccine. It was a very quick and well-organized process overseen by members of the National Guard. The vaccine was reportedly more than 90 percent effective, which was incredibly high for a vaccine of any time. The number of new cases was already dropping in response to its availability.

A meeting of the District 25 Executive Committee (EC) was held via Zoom. Not much was decided. The big issue was whether the district would follow the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL), the locality, or nobody with regards to requirements for vaccination and/or masks.

On March 16 the weather was nice enough to walk five miles outside. However this was the last time in March that I was able to achieve that distance. Subsequent walks were cut short by pain in my right foot that seemed somehow to be related to the chronic tendinitis that I had in the IT band that ran from my knee to my hip (described here). This was quite upsetting to me.

On March 21 I posted the pre-registration form and deposit for our team for the Grand National Teams (GNT) qualifying tournament: Felix Springer, Trevor Reeves, Ken, and me. The qualifying games would definitely be held online on BBO. The national finals were scheduled for the summer NABC. Because that tournament had been canceled, the GNT finals would be held online.

On March 22 the Tournament Scheduling Committee (TSC) for District 25 (D25) met on Zoom. The plan was to hold the Ocean State Regional in Warwick on the week before Labor Day, if possible. The ACBL was planning to make a decision about sanctioning tournaments on May 22.

On the last day of March I made a long overdue appointment with my dentist, Dr. Coombs in Suffield. I later canceled the appointment because of fear of Covid-19.


April: No April fool jokes on April 1: The last blossom on the Christmas cactus appeared. The most remarkable story of the year concerned the mysterious injury to Sue’s cat, Bob. The details have been posted here.

April 5: I sent out an email composed by Sue Miguel to promote the online GNT qualifying tournaments that will be held at various times.

April 7: Bob seems nearly fully recovered.

April 13: Frances Schneider, the outgoing president of the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA) asks me to take over her job at the end of her term. I declined because I was still doing a great deal of work for the district, and no one seemed to be taking seriously that I planned to resign those duties at the end of the year, and a great deal of effort would be required to replace me.

April 15: Sue and I drove back to East Hartford to be given the second Pfizer shot. I was once again amazed at how easy it was. I have always absolutely hated even the idea of shots, but this was not a bad experience. A fairly sizeable percentage of the population, however, has bought into the idea that the vaccines are some kind of plot generated by the Big State.

No screens online.

April 17-18: The GNT qualifier was held over a weekend online on BBO. In the first round on Saturday our foursome played in a four-way, which was necessary because there was no way to do a three-way on BBO. Because it was so easy to cheat on BBO, we were supposed to provide our own way of communicating visually (via Zoom or some other device). There were no instructions as to how this should or could be done. It was left up to the players, each of whom was paired up with an opponent in the way that is done in matches that used screens. .

The Meyerson team. Bernie is on the right.

In the first half of the first round we met Steve Meyerson’s team for a twelve-board match. I was supposed to set up some kind of communication with Bernie Bendiksen. I had played against Bernie a few times at tournaments, but I did not know him well. He didn’t know how to do it, and neither did I. So, we just played. I think that the other six people figured out a way to do it.

We won easily. The margin was 30 victory points. That meant that we did not need to play in the second half of the first round. We did not need to come back until after lunch.

Meyerson’s team won the second half of the morning. So, they got to play in the second round after the lunch break

Stay away, Fluffy.

In the afternoon we had another four-way. In the first twelve-board match our opponents were the team captained by Dana Rossi, who was also the person with whom I was supposed to establish verbal communication. Dana was from southwest Connecticut; I had played against him quite a few times at sectionals, but I had never been friendly with him. He provided me with a link to a Zoom feed that he was controlling. I signed in on Yoga, my convertible laptop. I played the match online on my desktop computer. I was uncomfortable listening to Dana Russo talking to a little girl, presumably his daughter. He told her that they take dead animals to the incinerator to burn them.

Not in Flight B.

We won again, this time by 35 victory points. So, we qualified to play in the quarterfinals on Sunday. We were matched up against Brad Mampe’s team. I was paired with his long-time partner Steve Willner. I had played against them once or twice, but I had not conversed with either of them. They seemed to play very little except in this event. Steve ran the Zoom feed. They had previously played a version of the Polish Club (as, in fact, so had Dan and his partner, Adam Lally). In this match they played a fairly standard version of 2/1.

This was a twenty-four board match. We lost the first half by 11 victory points. Steve was not around when the second half began, but he showed up a few minutes later. Ken and I had some chances in the second hand, but we each misplayed one hand. We lost the second half by 24.

Eric and Victor Xiao in 2019.

The Mampe team defeated the team captained by Dan Jablonski in the semifinals. Their opponents in the final match would be the Xiao team, whose captain was Victor. They would play a 48-board match for first place at some later date, but they were both guaranteed to qualify for the GNT.

On April 19 I sent out another email on MailChimp for Sue Miguel. When I attempted to remove everyone from the audience that I was using so that I could replace them with C players, Donna Cone’s record did not move. In an online “chat” someone from MailChimp told me it was because her record had been “cleaned”, which meant that the email address was no longer valid. I had obtained this address from the Rhode Island Bridge Association (RIBA) several years earlier.

After I sent out the email I undertook to print a coupon for $3 off of a box of cat litter. Thus began the great encounter with the Geek Squad that has been recounted in detail here.

On April 24 I walked 2.5 miles, but I had to quit at that point because of the pain in my right foot. The pain persisted throughout the evening.

The next day I sent out another email for Sue Miguel.

On April 26 I listened to a very disturbing podcast on This American Life about how right-wingers are sabotaging the effort to get the nation to a state of “herd immunity”, in which enough people have immunity that new infections cannot find new hosts. It has been posted here.


May: On May 2 I sent the following email to my friend, Bob Sagor (introduced here), the captain of the team that finished third: “The Xiaos won C. They can’t play in both flights. You may get to play in the NABC!”

On Thursday, May 6, I mowed the lawn for the first time in 2024. As usual, the Honda lawnmower started on the first or second pull. I needed to stop after completing the parts of the yard that face Hamilton Court or North Street. I sat, stretched the IT band on my right leg, and rested a bit. I then mowed the rest of the lawn.

The flowers on the daffodils and tulips in the neighborhood were withering. New Englanders said that the plants were “going by.” I had never heard this expression before coming to Connecticut, and I have never seen it in print.

Bob Sagor.

On May 8 Brad Mampe’s team beat Victor Xiao’s team in the final match of the Flight B qualifying tournament by 50 Victory Points! The third-place match was won by the team thrown together at the last minute by my friend and occasional partner, Bob Sagor. In fact, Bob’s team did attend the tournament, which was held online. They added Felix to their roster.

On May 11 Sue somehow hurt her left foot. I gave her the ankle brace that I had used a couple of times when I had sprained my ankle. Also, her ears were stopped up. Neither of these conditions lasted very long, but they made her even more miserable.

On May 13 I walked five miles with only two stretch breaks in 70 degree weather. I considered that a big improvement! Giacomo was having trouble getting up the steps from the basement to the house. I hated to do it, but I was going to need to bring the litter box upstairs.

The was the day that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) eliminated the mask guidelines “for most”. This was strictly a political move. Hundreds were still dying every day, but an incredibly large number of people resented being told to wear them. Good masks were an effective means of reducing the spread of the virus. The CDC had fumbled the ball when they said that any sort of face covering would do. Only later did their spokesmen indicate that the N95 masks were many times more effective than ordinary cotton ones.

Yoga and Big Bubba.

On Wednesday, May 26, I had placed my convertible computer, Yoga, on the floor next to the nightstand in the bedroom just before I took a nap. I then set my Big Bubba mug on the nightstand. It fell on the computer. Even though Yoga was closed, the impact cracked the screen. It was no longer functional.

Two days later I ordered a Microsoft Surface Go laptop from Best Buy. Before the Pandemic there was a Best Buy store in Enfield, but it had been closed. I had to drive to Manchester, CT, to pick it up. I did not give it a name.

On May 31 the Hartford Bridge Club reopened. Eight pairs played in a Howell. Masks were required (thank goodness!) because of the policy of West Hartford.


June: On the first day of the new month my new laptop would not operate. The screen was all black or dark grey. I could see the cursor, but i could not get it to operate. I made an appointment and drove to Best Buy in Manchester. The guy at the Geek squad desk was sanguine. He told me that “It uploads changes every Tuesday; something must have happened so that it could not reboot.” I asked him if I should make an appointment now for the following Wednesday. He advised me to hold the power key, which was the second one from the right on the top row, down for ten seconds.

On June 3 the TSC had a Zoom meeting. The district will try to hold a tournament in the week before Labor Day in Warwick, RI. This was exciting news. I sent out three big emails about Warwick.

That evening I found Bob in the basement. I deduced that he was able to climb up and down the stairs. I moved the litter box back to the basement.

Sohail Hasan, a partner from a tournament in 2019, sent me an email that asked me to play with him in Warwick.

On June 5 Chen’s team beat Mampe’s in a close match in the Flight A final of the GNT qualifier. That would really have been something if Mampe’s team had won both A and B.

The internal modem on my desktop computer stopped working, but I got the Belkin external modem to function. 52 people unsubscribed to my emails. That was a very high number. It was 94 degrees outside that day. I found that I could no longer tolerate long walks in temperatures above 90. When I was in my fifties I had no problems running in 100+ temperatures. It was still very hot the next day.

Sue told me that she has seen a white circle in the middle of her field of vision twice. This could be very bad. I certainly hoped that it didn’t happen again.

On June 8 I committed to play on July 1 with Felix Springer at the Hartford Bridge Club. I needed to avoid getting too many masterpoints because my total was very close to 2500, which was the cutoff for the GNT in 2022. I needed to be under that total for the roster that was published on August 6, 2021.

While researching for the blog entry about the Mark Twain writing contest (posted here), I discovered that Dorothy Clark was one of the judges. I played against her many times in Simsbury, and I was also her partner one evening, as described here.

Me, Felix, Eric, and Trevor.

June 12th was my third straight day of pain-free five mile hikes. I committed to play on 6/21 with Eric Vogel in club qualifying game for the North American Pairs (NAP).

The next day I committed to play at the HBC with Trevor Reeves on June 29. That game got canceled later.

On June 14 I discovered that Sue’s cat, Bob, was able to use the ramp that led from the basement to the cat door and thence to the back yard. So, he evidently no longer needed the litter box.

I played with Eric online on June 21. We were horrible.

I learned on June 27 that I did not need to report for jury duty. In 2023 I would be 75, which would allow me to avoid jury duty forever. I never served on a jury. I came close once. I was selected as an alternate for a civil case about an automobile accident. It was scheduled for two days, but one of those was canceled because of a bomb threat. I was unable to attend on the rescheduling date, and so I was excused.

6/29 Bob Bertoni (introduced here) died at 5:45 AM. This was very hard to take. Bridge in New England will have a very difficult time recovering without him. Over the subsequent years I have thought of him very often. His obituary was posted here.

John Willoughby.

Sue played bridge at the HBC with John Willoughby. After the temperature topped out at 97 degrees, a front came through with a thunderstorm.

6/30 I played with Felix at club. There were nine tables. We won with 62+%, and I earned my Q for the NAP qualifier.


July: A lot happened in July. On the first Sue and I drove to Bradford, MA, for Bob Bertoni’s wake. I had to let Sue off and park several blocks away. I saw Peter, Lois DeBlois, Carolyn Weiser, and Paula Najarian, who, to my great surprise, had white hair. A lot of the bridge players from the Eastern Massachusetts Bridge Association (EMBA) were also there. I introduced myself to Beth Bertoni and told her that I did not know what we were going to do without Bob. I really meant it, and in the ensuing months and years I learned that my concern was justified.

Sad news: O’Connor’s closed for good at the end of 2022.

On the way back to Enfield we stopped for supper at O’Connor’s Irish restaurant in Worcester. I had to let Sue off again before I found a parking sport a good way from the door. This was our first night out in over fifteen months. We wore masks until the food came. Most of the other diners acted as if the Pandemic had never happened.

Mrs. Brown’s giant chicken and vegetable pot pie.

I had the chicken pot pie and a Guiness. It was good, but not a lot better than what could be purchased at the grocery store and reheated. It was nice, however, to be in public and see people who were having a good time.

It was raining lightly when I walked out to retrieve the car. By the time that we reached the Mass Pike there were torrents of rain. I drove almost all thee way home with the windshield wipers on at the highest speed. Most of the time I had great difficulty seeing the lane indicators. This was the worst occasion for summertime driving that I ever experienced.

It continued to rain very hard on the next day. Enfield seemed to get more rain than nearby locations. The back yard was flooded, and a few puddles were evident in the basement. Never in the more than thirty years that we had lived in Enfield had water seeped into the basement. I struggled to understand where it came from. Evidently concrete is slightly porous, and when the soil is very wet the water finds its own level.

Sue borrowed (or otherwise procured) a Sears Wet/Dry Vacuum and showed me how to use it. The puddles were eliminated rather quickly.

Stuart Whittle and Saul Agranoff.

On July 9 Saul Agranoff asked me if I could help with the EMBA website. It had been designed and supported by Bob Bertoni. I supplied him with the email address of the contact person at Bob’s company, Megahertz Computer. I also explained that I had never worked on the EMBA website, had no credentials for it, and was pretty certain that it was significantly different from NEBridge.org.

On July 10 I received emails from District 25 officials who were concerned about new ACBL rules for tournaments. They evidently required masks on all players and a distance of nine feet between tables.

My notes said that on the next day the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA) announced a sectional in Stamford. I could find no details about when this was scheduled to occur. This struck me as very peculiar because I was a member of the board in 2021 (and the previous eight years). To my knowledge we had no meetings whatever during the Pandemic.

My notes also indicated that on the next day that I sent email to my steady partners. Because a large number of emails were deleted when I converted to the Asus box in the fall of 2023 (described here), I cannot locate a copy of this email, but my recollection is that I wanted to set up a regular schedule for online play at the HBC on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

On July 13 I played bridge at the H

I kept a couple of these masks to use while mowing my lawn in allergy season.

BC with Felix. Quite a few players had difficulties with the masks. The most common complaint was that they caused glasses to fog up. I had bought ten masks for $10 at Shoprite. They were sold by Hanes and made of cotton and were washable. They probably stopped not even one infected particulate, but they did not bother me even a little.

Ben and Ginny Bishop provided decorated masks for members of the HBC. Sue ordered one. I don’t know what happened to it.

On July 15 I renamed the blog entries that chronicled the story of my life as The 1948 Project. It was a takeoff on the somewhat controversial 1619 Project that was sponsored by the New York Times in 2019 concerning the role of slavery in the development of the United states.

On the same day a $63.75 charge from Slice appeared on my American Express card. This was for three pizzas that the cellphone that was in my pocket apparently ordered while I was on one of my five-mile walks. The pizzas were delivered, but I had refused them because I did not place or confirm the order.

In an open pairs game at the HBC on July 20 Donna Lyons (introduced here) and I scored 62%. It was Maria Van der Ree’s 90th birthday.

On July 22 I played at the HBC with Joan Brault (introduced here). There were a lot of wild hands. Joan and I did not deal with them very well.

On July 24 Sue and I attended Maria’s birthday party. We found the event somewhat scary. No one was wearing masks. People had had enough of Covid-19, but the threat was a very long way from over.

Ken Leopold’s teenage son Sam had died at some point in July. I never learned the details. Sue and I attended the burial service in Avon. It was the first Jewish burial service that I had attended. A few people from the HBC were there: Ronit Shoham, Geof Brod, Y.L. Shiue, Marie Abate, and Felix Springer and his wife Helene. Ken gave a very touching speech about his son’s baseball heroics.

The virus had been raising its ugly head. On July 30 the ACBL responded by canceling all tournaments scheduled for August, which included the tournament that D25 hoped to old in Warwick. I immediately sent out an email with the same selection criteria as the on that I had previously sent to announce the cancellation of the tournament.


August: On August 2 I received an email from Viking (the cruise line) moving the departure date for our Grand European Tour to October 23. That would preclude attendance at the scheduled tournament in Mansfield, MA. I began investigating the alternatives.

My notes for August 5 say “Stood up by Joan. Had to drive back to pick up Sue Rudd.” I do not remember either of those events or what caused them. American Express reinstated the charges for the pizzas. I called, and they reopened the dispute. In the end I had to pay for one pizza. It was not worth it to fight this any more, but I deleted the Slice app from the Pixel 2. I have told this story many times, and I have yet to meet anyone else whose phone ordered anything for them.

After a Zoom call in the evening with Mark Aquino, who, after Bob Bertoni’s death, had decided to run for Regional Director, I felt very depressed about the future of bridge in New England and elsewhere.

On August 6 I rebooked the Viking tour to depart on October 11.

Brenda Montague.

On the next day on behalf of Brenda Montague, the chair of the Nominating Committee, I sent out a set of emails to bridge players in New England soliciting volunteers for the job of vice-president. Trevor Reeves later talked with me about the possibility of applying. I don’t think that he went through with it.

On August 11 I attended the Zoom call with the three Regional Director candidates, David Moss, Mark Aquino, and Allan Graves. David was the District 24 Director from New York City. Allan Graves lived in St. Johnsbury, VT, but for years had only participated in NABC’s and international events. No one mentioned the word tournament. Allan argued that we should concentrate our efforts on trying to get people to play rubber bridge. I found the whole event very depressing.

After the bridge game on my 73rd birthday a bunch of people who had played in the game joined Sue and me for lunch at Effie’s Place. In attendance were Lea Selig, Susan Seckinger, Lois McOmber, Jeanne Striefler, Maria Van der Ree, and Fred Gagnon. We ate outside. I think that I had a Reuben sandwich. It was nice to have any kind of a social occasion.

The next day a “war room” Zoom meeting of D25 officials was held. Carole Weinstein, Carolyn Weiser, Jack Mahoney, Peter Marcus, Sue Miguel, Joe Brouillard, and Sally Kirtley atttended. Peter wanted D25 to cancel all tournaments for 2021 and 2022! Nobody took that suggestion seriously. The qualification tournaments for the NAP would be held online. Carole called the decision a “no-brainer”. I thought that it was a bad idea to decide that anything would be played online if an alternative was possible.

On August 19 I reluctantly voted for Mark Aquino for Regional Director. He won.

I learned on August 20 that airline reservations had been made by Viking for the trip in October. I started doing some serious research about the ports of call on the cruise, which would start in Amsterdam and end in Budapest.

SBC games were played at Eno Hall, the Simsbury Senior Center.

On August 21 I sent an email to players in the vicinity of Simsbury to determine whether they would be interested in resuming the games of the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC). It is posted here. I received a lot of positive responses.

The next day Hurricane Henri passed through Connecticut. Enfield received only a little bit of rain, but floods were reported in Vernon and Manchester.

On August 24 I learned that the SBC will have been turned over to Sally Kirtley as of September 15. Ken did not want to direct the games. I asked her to verify the schedule with Eno Hall before I announced it.

On August 25 I sent an email to SBC subscribers that we would not be allowed to validate vaccinations on site. I definitely did not want to play bridge with anyone who had not been vaccinated.

Med Colket.

On August 30 Med Colket came up with a work-around. We could change SBC games to invitational instead of open so that I could validate vaccinations that were sent to me through emails. I could also automatically register players whom I had seen play at the HBC.

Aaaaargh! The U.S. has been removed from the white list by the European Union because of the recent uptick in the number of Covid-19 cases here. I began to wonder whether the cruise would be called off and, if not, whether we would be quarantined before boarding the ship.


September: On the first day of the month tropical depression Ida arrived in CT late at night. The rest of this heroic story has been told here.

On September 3 three European countries (Norway, Sweden, and Italy) began requiring tourists from the U.S. to quarantine. The problem was the new Delta variant was nearly twice as transmissible as the original strain, which had spread at an incredible rate before the vaccinations began. .

On September 5 the leaders of D25 were considering—via an exchange of emails—whether to cancel the tournament in Mansfield in November. Most people seem to be leaning in that direction.

On the following day Tom Corcoran, Sue and I decided to postpone the cruise until the spring because of the threat of quarantining in Europe. This would also allow Tom to spend his 70th birthday with his family in Vermont.

On August 8 the cruise was changed to begin on May 5 and end on May 22. Sue made the arrangements while I was playing bridge at the HBC. This period was chosen because no bridge tournaments were scheduled then. The new cruise started in Budapest and ended in Amsterdam. The other ports were the same or nearly so. This was not the last change in our plans, but I actually did go on the cruise on those dates. The bizarre details have been posted here.

On September 10 the HBC restarted the Saturday afternoon game. Peter Katz, my long-time Saturday partner, agreed to play with me.

On September 10 Sue and I went to the picnic for the Locke cousins. I sat by myself because I heard that some of the attendees had refused to get vaccinated, and no one in attendance wore a mask.

On September 14 for the first time ever my Honda lawnmower would not start. I later learn that there was gas or oil in the air filter. On the next day it started, and Sue hired a local guy to pick it up, change the oil, and check it out.

The inaugural Friday afternoon open game at HBC on September 17 drew only six pairs. I played with Trevor.

On the next day the first Saturday afternoon game at the reopened HBC was held. Both Mike and Susan Smith and Ken and Lori Leopold attended. There were five tables.

On September 20 I learned that changing the date of the trip had cost Tom $3K. I did not understand why, but there was not much I could do about it.

Giacomo surprised me by climbing back up on the couch. In his younger days he nonchalantly walked up onto the couch. He also executed a very tentative “mighty leap”2.

On September 21 the mechanic delivered the lawnmower and only charged $125. It ran very well. It was (and still is in 2024) the best lawnmower by far that I ever bought.

I realized on September 23 that I officially had exceeded my life expectancy at birth (73.1 years). I told people this at the HBC. No one seemed interested at all.

The cats had been acting weird for the last week or two. They no longer associated with each other. Bob stayed outside all day and night. He only came in only for meals or storms. Giacomo has returned to his throne on the back of the couch. He has taken to biting at his back legs and spine area. Who knows why?

On the same day the EC voted 9-3-1 to cancel Mansfield. I was the 1.

On September 24 the forecast on WTIC radio at 4:30 AM predicted a low of 75 and a high of 69.

The next day I discovered a sensitive spot on Giacomo’s back. For the first time ever he bit me.

Me and Ann.

On September 26 I was on the winning team of the first Swiss event at the reopened HBC. I played with Ann Hudson. Our teammates were Trevor, and Felix. We won by four victory points with a blitz in the last round against weak competition. I made made three bidding errors, but none of them cost us, and one helped us. 1-1-1NT-2-2NT made 3; 2 by Ann was a relay to 2D (XYZ)3.Ann wanted to sign off in diamonds.

On September 27 I walked five miles without stopping for first time in months in perfect weather.

On September 30 I changed dentists because Dr. Peter Coombs did not take ConnectiCare. My new dentist was Dr. Bill Cummiskey.


October: On October 11 I canceled Chewy.com order of Advantage II, but it was delivered four days later. The charge was refunded on October 18.

On October 13 I saw Boris Godunov (an opera by Modest Mussorgsky recorded live in HD at the Met) at Cinemark4 at Enfield Square. Only one other person attended. Since that person was at least thirty feet away from me I took off my mask. I also saw two employees and one other person who was there to see a movie.

On October 15 I sent out the invitations for the first Simsbury game to 72 vaccinated people.

The next day Linda Starr helped me make boards at the HBC for the first game at Simsbury. Peter Katz and I finished first. There were only five other pairs, but it was a strong field. So far 4.5 tables are committed for the first game at the SBC.

On October 19 I got the points that I needed to finally make Gold Life Master even though I played poorly with John Calderbank.

Sally Kirtley set me an email that Eno “cannot accommodate SBC” on October 20. I had to postpone the first game, for which we had five tables.This was hard to take.

On October 20 I checked to make sure that everyone saw my email about the cancellation. Felix and Trevor agreed to play with Ken and me in the GNT qualifier next spring. HBC announced that it will drop mask requirement as of Friday. I had absolutely no intention of abandoning my mask.

On October 22 I discovered that Bob had a bump on his right shoulder that he did not like being touched. Sue was convinced that it was a bite. It did not feel like that to me.

I played with Sally Kirtley and learned that Eno Hall canceled our game because it did not have a janitor scheduled for October 20. Eight pairs had so far agreed to play on October 27.

On October 24 the HBC held its annual meeting on Zoom. Trevor had asked me to serve as a trustee, and I had agreed to a three-year commitment.

Donna Feir.

On October 27 Donna Feir let us use the boards that were made for the Tuesday night that was canceled because not enough people registered. It was Tom Corcoran’s birthday. Sue and I talked with him and his kids on Zoom. I copied the wrong .pbn5 file onto my thumb drive to give to Sally. I was ten minutes late at Simsbury because of Sue Rudd. Ken and I tied for first (out of eleven pairs) with Felix and Trevor.

On October 29 I discovered that Bob had one or two ticks.


November: We assigned November 1 as the birth date for two of our cats, Giacomo, and Woodrow. So, we celebrated Giacomo’s eighteenth birthday on 11/01/21. This was a big one. Both Woodrow and Rocky had made it to 18, but each died shortly thereafter. So, from now on Giacomo was playing with the house’s money.

In other cat news: Bob would not come into the house. Sue put food and water in bowls outside for him and made up a bed for him among all of her junk piled up outside of the blue door to the kitchen. Maybe he was afraid of Giacomo. Maybe he was afraid of me. Maybe he was just crazy.

On Tuesday, November 2. I drove into the HBC before the morning game and used the HBC’s dealing machine to make boards for the SBC game the next evening. John Calderbank and I then had a 59 percent game, a real coup for us.

I somehow managed to pull a huge tick off of Bob’s right shoulder. Sue claimed that he still had a smaller one on the left side of hs neck, but I had not seen it.

On Wednesday evening we had 3 1/2 tables at the evening game at the SBC. I had used the correct pbn file this time.

On November 6 the grey cat that sometimes roamed our neighborhood appeared. Bob stayed inside.

On November 7 an astounding sixteen teams played in the Swiss at the HBC! Food was provided, and the players were definitely ready to party.

I picked a second tick off of Bob’s right shoulder. I could not find anything on his left shoulder. This might have been the best day of the year at the Wavada household.

On November 12 Bob returned to the family. He got up on Sue’s chair without help while she was sitting on it. Sue was absolutely delighted.

On November 23 the first meeting of the new HBC Planning Committee was held on Zoom. John Willoughby, the new vice-president, ran the meeting. I learned that there would be a “rainbow” event for clubs in January. Gold, silver, red, and black points would be awarded 6

Sue has taken to sleeping on my chair in the living room because Bob would not leave her chair. Why, you may ask, does she sleep prefer to sleep on a chair rather than a bed?

On November 24 I sent a long email to the people on the EC to explain what I had been doing in my role as webmaster, database manager, and other things before the Pandemic. The rest of my frustrating but ultimately successful attempt to resign from these responsibilities has been described here in excruciating detail.

November 27 was another great day. U-M defeated Ohio State 42-27. Michigan had no takeaways and only punted twice. They had seven drives that ended in touchdowns. Needless to say, I did not watch the game, but I wished that I had. I feasted on lots of replays of the many highlights. Michigan finished the regular season 11-1 and would meet Iowa on December 4 for the conference championship.

11/29 For some stupid reason the TSC announced that it would meet on Zoom on December 15, a Wednesday evening. My protests that this was the ONLY time all week that Sally and I could not attend fell on deaf ears. I don’t know if Sally emphasized this, but I certainly did. was really upset about this.


December: Sue and I got our booster shots for the Pfizer vaccine at the local CVS.

12/3 I had a minor pain in my shoulder and neck; the only reason to mention it was because I had no known injuries there. The passport that I planned to use on the October trip would expire before I needed it for the rescheduled one in May. I had researched what was required. I took a photo of myself in the size and format required. I mailed it with all the other materials, including my old passport. The State Department did not accept the photo and sent the package back to me.

On the next day Michigan beat Iowa 42-3. The Wolverines were champions of the Big 10 for the first time since they started the championship game.

On December 6 the new stove that Sue purchased arrived and was installed. The burners are, in my opinion, much too hot, but I didn’t know what we could do about it. My neck felt much better.

12/7 I went to Walgreen’s and bought a new passport photo. They guaranteed that it would be accepted. Evidently there was a website that examined the image and validated it. I could not find my old passport.

The next day I found the old passport under my chair in living room. It had apparently dropped through the cushions. I mailed the forms back in.

Ken and I scored more than 72 percent at the SBC bridge game. That might have been the best score that I had ever recorded up to that point.

The space to the right of the Gold LM certificate will probably always be empty.

On December 10 I received Gold LM certificate from the ACBL and attached it to the east wall in my office below the other ones. I don’t expect to win any more

On the next Tuesday Donna Feir needed me to make boards for the morning open pairs game while she got the room set up. I did so. I only had time to make 5 boards for the Wednesday night game at the SBC. I made the rest of boards by hand. Unfortunately, when I did so I made boards #21 and 22 the same. Ken directed and Margie Garilli kept score on the BridgeMate.

On December 16 the EC voted on Zoom to move the Royal STaC to April of 2022, to cancel the Presidential Regional ordinarily held in February, and to hold two four-day regionals in May. One would be a free tournament structured along the lines of the Gold Mine held in 20197. The other would be open.

On December 17 President Biden postponed closing U.S airports to people from countries that were infected by the Omicron virus.

On December 22 I could not get dealing machine to work. At the SBC game we played using an old deck that had been given to me years earlier. The players did not like this much.

Discontinued but not forgotten.

In the little shelf on the north wall of my office I found a package of McCormick’s Meat Marinade. On Christmas day I used it to marinate a spoon roast that Sue and I feasted on. I put Bob up on my lap both in the office and the living room. He really liked the former when I petted him with both hands, but I was not able to get much work done when I did so.

By December 26 Omicron accounted for 71 percent of the cases of Covid-19 in the US. The number of new cases eclipsed 200,000 per day. The holiday season turned into a super-spreader event.

I realized that I must be allergic to Bob—sneezing and blowing nose all day. I bought ten N95 masks at Home Depot for $23. The CDC finally admitted that simple face coverings were better than nothing, but the N95 masks were tremendously more effect

I encountered no problems whatever in making thee boards for the SBC game. I played with Felix in the open pairs game at the HBC. We almost won; one different decision against Tom Joyce would have done it.

On December 29 I had a 64 percent game in the open pairs at the HBC with Eric. In the last game of the year at the SBC 3 tables, Ken and I scored 65%.

On December 30 at an emergency meeting of the HBC Board of Trustees (BoT) on Zoom. Carole Amaio was a riot: “Can you hear me? I broke my wine glass. Shit!” We decided to require masks starting on Monday.

On December 31 over 500,000 new cases were reported, the most of entire Pandemic. The only good sign was the fact that hospitalizations and deaths were not as prevalent as with the original virus. However, both vaccinated people and those who had already had Covid-19 were susceptible to Omicron.

U-M lost to Georgia 38-11. The football team had a great year, but they were not (yet) in Georgia’s class. Four bowl games were canceled in 2021.


1. This treadmill was given to me by Tom Corcoran. My first treadmill was purchased second-hand from someone who had never used it. I found them on Craig’s List. The belt on that one broke after I had used it regularly in the winter and foul weather for several years. Tom brought the second one from his house in Wethersfield. His wife Patti had used it for a while. He somehow arranged for removal of the old one and installation of this much better one. Incidentally, I claim to be the only person who has ever broken two treadmills. Prove me wrong.

2. Giacomo was the only cat that we ever had who attempted to make the “mighty leap” from the couch on which he tended to spend his days to my easy chair where he liked to sit on my lap while I was watching television. When in September 2021 he executed the “tentative” version of the leap, I realized that his legs and body were so long that he could actually reach the armrest that he landed on by just stretching out to his full length.

3. XYZ is a kind of new-minor forcing. After any three bids 2 is a relay to 2, usually to show invitational values. A rebid is an artificial game-force.

4. In December of 2023 the twelve-theater Cinemark complex in Enfield Square closed for good. At that point it became a twenty-minute drive to see a movie or, in my case,an HD opera.

5. Files with the extension “.pbn” (portable bridge notation) can be read by the Dealer4 software that runs the dealing machine at the HBC. At first I had Linda make some of these files for me using software on the HBC’s computer. In 2023 I discovered free software available for download that allowed me to make them on my computer. In both cases the files generated were completely random.

6. I am pretty sure that the “rainbow” event was later called a Royal STaC.

7. The free Gold Mine never happened. I do not remember why.

2010-2019 Partners at the Simsbury Bridge Club Part 2

Further adventures in and out of the SBC. Continue reading

My adventures playing with members of the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC) before I became a Life Master at the end of 2009 are recounted here.

I met Jeanne Striefler at the SBC in my first few weeks there, but I don’t think that we ever played as partners there until much later. She seldom played with anyone besides Jerry Harrison during that period. We did play together at the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) a few times, mostly when her regular partner and my regular partner were not available. I have no vivid memories of any details of those occasions.

I definitely do recall the holiday parties that she and her husband Fred held at their house in West Simsbury. Since we had played together seldom, if at all, I was flattered and surprised when she invited Sue and me to join the celebration. I particularly remember the one that celebrated her achievement of Silver Life Master (1,000 masterpoints), a party that she shared with Susan Seckinger, who had recently become a Gold Life Master (2,500 masterpoints). Susan remarked that it was not a big deal; it just meant that you had been playing a long time. That is not precisely accurate. In most cases it meant that you had played a lot in tournaments—and done fairly well. It has always been very difficult to amass thousands of points in club games, even if you usually finish at the top of the list.

Jerry, Jeanne, CJ, and me. In the photos that I took at tournaments I NEVER cut off a head.

I have a pretty strong recollection that the biggest thrill that Jeanne and I had experienced was as teammates in a Swiss Teams game at the regional tournament in Cromwell. However, I was unable to locate such a result. On the other hand, I did discover that we won a Compact Knockout in 2011. I played with Jerry Hirsch, and Jeanne played with CJ Joseph. Someone even took our photo1.

I have also played with CJ once or twice at the HBC. She attended the University of Michigan; I think that she graduated two years before I did. She does not live in New England any more. In 2021 she has a house in Florida. I seem to remember that she also had one in the Chicago area.

Jeanne is my age, and she grew up in the state that is just north of where I did. She met her husband Fred at the University of Nebraska. Fred was a professor at the University of Hartford.


I am not sure that I ever played opposite Donna Lyons at the SBC, but I have included her in this section because she has played there for a long time, and she still supports the club. In December, 2021, in fact, she was driving up from her winter home in Florida with the intention of playing in a few games in December at Eno Hall. I am sure that this was not the only reason that she was making the trip, but I like to think that our little game was the focal point.

I was disappointed to receive the following email from her on December 11:

Had to turn back after 6 hours, little dog not doing well. Sorry, won’t be there till May games, happy holidays, Mike!

I learned some time ago that Donna formerly taught Latin at Enfield High School. She actually knew my Italian teacher, Mary Trichilo (TREE key low), as well as one of the other continuing ed students who also formerly taught languages in Enfield. How big of a coincidence is that?

I can’t remember the first game in which Donna was my partner. Before that she had been playing with Michele Raviele, among others. I do remember playing with Donna in both games of a Connecticut sectional. We did not do very well, but I remember that one of our opponents, a guy from the Worcester area, later asked me about her. She must have made a strong impression.

Donna made a great impression on me because she obviously read—or at least looked at the photos there—one of my travel journals. I wrote about the star-crossed tour that Sue and I took in 2011 of South Italy that began with a few days in Rome2. Donna liked a couple of the photos that I took in Rome and Paestum. She asked me if she could use them for a project that she was doing for an association that promotes the study of classical periods. I enthusiastically agreed. She later gave me a SWAG bag that contained the resulting notebook and cards and a few other things. I still have all of these.

Donna was not a great player when she started. I have the feeling that she did not spend enough time in college at the bridge table. For some reason she seemed to consider me something of a guru. Over the years she sent me questions about various aspects of the game, mostly bidding. I always answered them, and she seemed very appreciative.

We got Sue to take this photo.

Whenever I could not find partners for tournaments, I sent out emails to people whom I enjoyed playing with. I had an opening in my schedule for the 2019 Ocean State Regional in Warwick, RI. Donna volunteered to drive all that way just to play with me for one day, August 28, in the Mid-Flight Pairs.

We had a pretty good session in the morning. We were definitely among the leaders. We also got off to a good start in the afternoon session. With only a couple of rounds to go we faced a husband-and-wife team from Vermont, Steve and Karen Hewitt Randle. We all took out our cards from the first board and started to bid the first hand. Before we got very far Karen announced that she did not feel well and needed to be excused. She left the room, and Steve went with her. When the round was almost over, and they had not yet returned, we called the director, who gave us a “No Play” on all three hands.

Not long after that the Randles returned. Not only did they finish the round, but they also had the best score of all the pairs and vaulted up among the leaders.

When we finished playing the last hand, I checked our score on the Bridgemate. Our percentage was about the same as what we had scored in the first round. I told Donna that that should be good enough to finish first or second.

I was stunned by her reaction: “I don’t want to be second. I’ve never been first at anything. Since I made Life Master playing with Margie, I haven’t even won any gold points.”

Donna got her wish. We won by a very narrow margin. I wondered how we would have fared if we had actually played the three hands against the Randles. Their score in the second round was considerably better than ours.

The Ocean State Regionals in 2020 and 2021 were canceled. If Donna wants to defend her title in this event in September 2022, she will need to find another partner. I now have too many points to play in Mid-Flight games.

In the summer of 2021 I played in one face-to-face game at the HBC with Donna as my partner. We did pretty well, but Donna told me that she preferred to play online. One reason was that it was safer, but she also disclosed another one that might have been nearly as important to her. “I don’t have to put on lipstick.”


After Dick Benedict told me in 2010 that he did not want to play at Simsbury any more, I looked around for a new partner. I decided to ask Sue Rudd. Sue was ten years older than I was and had played a lot more bridge than I had, but she was not yet a Life Master. So, I resolved to help her get the gold and silver points that she needed. We went to quite a few tournaments together. We had some success, but we never won an event together, at least not that I can remember. Come to think of it, I think that those years that I played with Sue were the only ones in which I failed to win at least one flight or strat in an event at a tournament.

I learned that Sue formerly worked for the Massachusetts Department of Revenue. She had two sons. One lived in Boston, the other in Minnesota. Sue lived in an apartment in West Springfield that was not far from the house occupied by my sister Jamie’s family. Later Sue moved to a condo complex that was only about two miles from our house in Enfield.

Sue was in good shape. She was an avid tennis player and cyclist. She told me that she had skied all over the US and Europe when she was younger. She also took several international vacations.

Sue insisted on driving half of the time. I agreed, but I never felt comfortable when she was driving. If there was snow, I drove. On one occasion the trip began with a light drizzle. It got heavier, and the visibility was not too good. She was driving at first, but when it began to get a little difficult, she agreed to let me finish the drive.

It is strange to say, but I cannot remember ever eating supper with Sue. I know that we went to at least a few overnight tournaments, but I cannot remember going to a restaurant together. Sue usually stayed with Helen Pawlowski, who by then was the Tournament Manager for the district. Maybe they ate together. I was still working. So, we must have gone to regional tournaments—the only ones that pay gold points—on weekends. Therefore, there would have only been one supper per tournament.

There was almost always ice or snow on the sidewalk and parking lot in Cromwell.

I remember only a few specific incidents. We were in Cromwell playing in a compact knockout event. that required us to play twelve hands against the same pair. One of the opponents on the other team was a little bit rude, especially to Sue. Sue got flustered and played badly. We lost the match.

I mentioned this to Helen. She immediately knew whom I was talking about. She said that she wished that she had heard about it earlier. She also said that I needed to protect Sue from people like her. This gave me pause. I wasn’t ready for that role. At that point of my life I had pretty much abandoned the tactic of arguing with anyone about anything. I would make my case, but if they could not accept my point of view, I almost never pressed the point. The reason was that my voice had a tendency to get much louder than I realized in situations like this, and the scene quickly became uncomfortable for everyone.

Harold Feldheim.

I remember encountering Harold Feldheim3 in the men’s room at a tournament. He asked me how I was doing, and I frankly replied that I was frustrated with my partner. He said that in his years of experience he had concluded that whenever someone felt that way, he should look for a new partner.

Sue and I won a few gold points together. She was getting very close to what she needed for Life Master. I am not sure which tournament it was, but we were playing in the last round of a bracketed Swiss teams event. We were in contention to finish first or second in our group. The bidding on the last hand of the last match had convinced me that my spade support and runnable club suit provided a good chance for a slam in spades that I did not think that most people would bid. It was risky, but I decided to bid 6. It turned out to be a good contract. The only problem was that Sue had to play it.

She had to begin by drawing trump, which she did. Then she had to take her K, which she did. Then she needed to lead a low club to the board and take the ace and queen. She made both of those plays. I could see that the clubs split 3-2, which made the three remaining clubs good, guaranteeing the needed twelve tricks. At this point she could have tabled her cards and claimed. The opponents would have conceded without an objection.

But she didn’t claim. She thought about the situation for what seemed like a very long time. Then she started leading red cards and fell short of the contract.

As I suspected would happen, our counterparts at the other table had only bid 4, but they made six. So, instead of getting a positive swing that would assure us of winning gold points, we suffered a double negative swing that dropped us out of contention—all because she could not count the clubs.

This was not a mistake of inexperience. There were no distractions; it was early in the play of the hand. There were only two possible explanations. Either she did not count the clubs, or she forgot that every suit had thirteen cards. I was completely exasperated. The situation was so perfect, and I had analyzed it correctly! I could not hold back my frustration, and my reaction was so intense that even the opponents castigated me for it.

After the long mostly silent drive home I sent her an email in which I apologized for the way that I acted and stated that we should not play together any more. It was just too frustrating for me. Years later she told me that she was very tired that afternoon because she did not sleep well the night before. Fine; that is why coffee is always available at tournaments.

Sue did not give up. Some months later she won enough gold points for her Life Master playing with Sally Kirtley. I don’t think that they ever won anything in the “overalls”, but they did finish first in their section a couple of times. Those two awards were enough to push her over the threshold. I don’t think that she ever won any gold points4 at all after that.

Since then I have driven Sue to games in Simsbury almost every Wednesday before the pandemic and after the club reopened in the fall of 2021. I have even played with her a few times at the HBC. I also gave a little speech at here LM party there. Here is the text.

Sue sometimes rides with me to bridge games at local clubs, and almost always I have remembered to bring her home. During one those rides some years ago she confided to me that her goal was to have “Life Master” in her obituary. So I looked in the Hartford Courant’s Future Archives for her obituary. It took quite a while, but I found it.

Susan F. Rudd–I’ll skip the dates–worked in the Collections Section of the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, where she was known as Rudd the Ruthless. After retirement she divided her time between her family and her many hobbies. She is survived by her sons Paul and David, eight grandchildren, twenty-seven great-grandchildren, forty-two great-great-grandchildren, and one great-great-great grandson.

Susan is best known as being the only woman to win the American women’s super-senior tennis championship as an octogenarian, a nonagenarian, and a centenarian. However, her proudest accomplishment was to become a Life Master in bridge, a game without electronics that was popular in the twentieth century.

My wife Sue and I attended her eightieth birthday party in 2018. She asked me to reprise the LM speech, and I was ready to do so. However, Sue’s daughter-in-law, who organized and ran the fete, put the kibosh on the idea without telling anyone.

Sue left her car in this parking lot.

By the way, it was true that on one occasion I drove Sue Rudd to the HBC for a Tuesday evening game. I had a bad game playing with a different partner and left in a foul mood. Just as I reached the bridge over the Connecticut River on I-91, I realized that I had left Sue back at the club. I turned around at exit 44 and returned to the club. It was all dark and obviously empty.

I learned the next day that Sally Kirtley had driven Sue to TSI’s office in East Windsor, which is where she had left her car.


I had no difficult whatever in deciding whom I should ask to play with me at the SBC. By then Ken Leopold had been attending somewhat regularly, and he seemed like he knew what he was doing. The good thing was that he was younger than I was—his memory still functioned. The only drawback was that he wasted a lot of time on his family and his job. He and his wife Lori had six kids, a couple of whom were still living at home. He also had an unhealthy commitment to the idea of helping his patients beat cancer. He was a doctor, you see. He worked (and still does in 2021) at Hartford Hospital in the field of radiation oncology.

Ken wore a blue shirt to the Christmas party at the HBC in 2013. The two ladies at the table are Sue Rudd and Kay Hill.

So, Ken and I mostly played together just on Wednesday evenings at the SBC. I attended almost every tournament within driving range, and i always asked him to play, but I usually had to settle for his participation in the Sunday Swiss events.

On most of these occasions our team consisted of Ken, me, Dave Landsberg, and Felix Springer. Much more about Dave and Felix can be read here. Sometimes I played with Dave, and Ken played with Felix. Often we had to rearrange things to accommodate a different fourth.

We did amazingly well, and our results formed a pattern. We were almost in the lowest group, the C strat. I was on the board of the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA), which always met before the Sunday Swiss. I would generally emerge from the meeting five or ten minutes before game time and frantically scan the playing area for the rest of “the band”. When I found them I fished some bills out of my wallet and reimbursed whoever had paid my entry fee. Then I had only a few seconds to peruse the convention card to refresh my memory about what conventions we were playing.

I almost always made mistakes in the first round, which we usually lost. We then almost always won our next two matches, which forced us to face a pretty good team in the fourth round. I am not sure that we ever won a fourth round. So, we would invariably go into the pizza break in the middle of the pack. We then almost always won two of the last three rounds to finish in the top half, which, for a C team, was good enough to win quite a few silver points5. It was truly remarkable how often we did this. Here is an example from the Swiss held in Hamden on March 1, 2015:

I just loved playing with these guys. Earlier in the tournament Felix had played in pairs games with both Dave and me. I am not even sure who played with whom in the Swiss. I don’t think that Ken ever played with Dave, but any other combination was possible.

My fondest memory of the four of us is from the North American Bridge Championships held in Providence in November and December of 2014. On both Sundays at the tournament some or all of us played together in the bracketed Swiss events.

The band: me, Felix, Ken, and Dave.

I am disappointed and embarrassed to report that I can find very little documentation of those two events. I am absolutely certain that I posted detailed write-ups of them on the NEBridge.org website as part of my “View from B Low” series. Unfortunately, all of the web pages posted between January 24, 2014, and July 22, 2015, were lost during the catastrophic system failure of July 2015.

I thought that perhaps a draft copy of this work was on my desktop computer, but I could find no trace. I then looked for the photos that I took on those two weekends. I found about forty of them, but I am pretty certain that I took more than that if only to add more atmosphere to the “View” article. I suspect that I moved the best of those photos somewhere to facilitate uploading them to the NEBridge.org website. The uploaded copies are gone for good, but the originals should still be on my computer. I just can’t locate them.

Ginny Farber.

So, I must rely on my fading memories and the results that I found on the ACBL website. My partner for the first weekend, November 29-30, was Ginny Farber6, whose last name at the time was Iannini (eye ah KNEE knee). She lived on the Cape. We had played against each other at tournaments a few times. After her husband died shortly after the Cromwell tournament of 2014, we began playing as partners at tournaments.

Ginny and I played in pairs games on Saturday, but we did not do too well. For the bracketed Swiss on Sunday we were joined by Dave Landsberg and Pat Fliakos, both of whom I had met in the Tuesday evening games at the Hartford Bridge Club.

Pat Fliakos.

We played well through the first six matches. We won them all. However, we could not rest on our laurels. In the last round we faced a foursome from Montreal that was only four points behind us in the standings. I don’t remember the situation precisely, but I do recall that there was one critical hand in which Ginny had reversed, a bidding sequence of two different suits showing a strong hand in which the first suit is longer than the second. An example would be 1 followed by 2 after partner has responded 1 or 1NT.

Somehow we ended up in an impossible slam, and the contract failed. I was certain that our counterparts at the other table probably did not bid the slam, which would provide them with a big swing. Ginny and I were extremely nervous at the end of the match when we went to the other table to compare scores. Fortunately, Dave and Pat had had a good round. We lost the match, but only by two points

Imagine our shock when the opponents came over to get us to agree that they had won the match by ten points, not two. It turned out that they had recorded a 0 on one hand in which both of our pairs had actually won three points. When we pointed this out to them, they were, of course, bitterly disappointed, and our relief was palpable.

As the results clearly show, the third-place teams were not even close. In the second weekend our team was Felix, Dave, Ken, and me. I cannot remember who played with whom on Saturday when we lost in the semifinals of a compact knockout. On Sunday we played in another bracketed Swiss. I played with Dave, and Ken played with Felix.

This time a very weird thing happened in an early round. There were repeated director calls on one hand. Then the same thing happened on a subsequent hand. Dave and I finished long before Ken and Felix. After we compared the scores they explained that the director had twice ruled against them, and they had appealed both rulings. Evidently neither appeal was successful. I don’t remember the specifics. Ken and Felix weren’t exactly angry about it, but they weren’t satisfied with the ruling either.

It hardly mattered. This time I knew that we were doing well, but I never checked the scoreboard. After the last round Ken checked the scores. He reported that “We lapped the field.”

So, the tournament had the best possible ending for “the band”, and it left us hungry for more. After that we played together whenever we could.

Ken made Life Master in July of 2015. The HBC sponsored a party for him and Felix, who achieved the rank a little earlier. It was a five-round team game using the Swiss format. Dave and I were their teammates. Ken and Felix sat North-South at table 1 in the A section. We sat East-West at table 1 in the B section. We won our first three matches, but we did not have any big victories.

Then there was a break for food and speeches. Dave said to me sotto voce, “Did you see their résumés? Why do they play with us?”

Of course, what I thought was, “What do you mean ‘us’, Paleface?”, but I didn’t say any thing. A little later I took the floor to give my little speech. I began with a trivia question:

What do the following three famous people have in common?

  • Champion golfer, Phil Mickelson, who can consistently hit a golf ball 300 yards.
  • Four-time Pro Bowl quarterback, Michael Vick, who can throw a football 80 yards.
  • World-class physician and Life Master bridge player Ken Leopold.

I told them to think about it. I would come back to it at the end. Meanwhile, I had a survey that Mark Aquino, the District Director, asked me to conduct:

“Are you aware of the procedure at a regional or national tournament for appealing a director’s ruling?” Most people were.

“Have you ever appealed a director’s ruling?” About half the players raised a hand to indicate that they had. I pretended to count and record the result.

“Have you ever appealed more than one director’s ruling in the same tournament?” Only Felix and Ken still had their hands raised.

“In one very short eight-board match of a bracketed Swiss event, commonly known as a Round Robin, have you ever appealed more than one director’s ruling?” Still only Ken and Felix.

“Have you ever won such an appeal?” They both sheepishly lowered their hands.

I then asked if anyone knew the answer to the trivia question. Dave, of all people, piped up, “They are all left-handed.”

“No!” I said. “Actually, they are all right-handed. Mickelson swings left-handed and Vick throws left-handed, but they both do everything else with their right hand. Similarly, Ken plays bridge left-handed, but his right hand is dominant.”

We won the fourth match, but our margin of victory left us a couple of points behind the first place team. We faced them in the last round. Our opponents were Laurie Robbins and Tom Lorch. The hands were not very exciting. The match came down to a hand in which the West player had to decide whether to accept a game try. I passed, and my counterpart at the other table bid the game. Since the tricks for game were not actually available, we won the match and the event. As I have often said, most of my best calls are green.

Donna Feir, the manager of the HBC, announced that never before in the history of the club had the players being honored ever won a team event, and never had they won all five matches..

A few years later Ken thought that we should play a weak 1NT opening. I think that he got this idea from Doug Doub, a pro who gives lessons at the HBC. I went along with the idea, mostly because I already played a different version of that approach with Peter Katz7 on Saturdays at the HBC. Ken sent me the link to a detailed write-up of how it worked. We have been playing that weak 1NT system ever since, and I review the manuscript before each game. Even so, I sometimes forget that we are playing it.

Ken also insisted on playing the Wolsey defense against strong 1NT openings because that was what he played with Lori, and he alleged that he could not remember two different defenses. I much prefer a more disruptive approach, especially in the balancing seat, but I have agreed to grit my teeth and play Wolsey.

Ken was one of the driving forces behind the resuscitation of the SBC in 2019. That story is told here.


The spreadsheet that contains my list of partners includes a line for Helen Pawlowski, and so I must have paired with her at least once, either when she was running the club or when she dropped in to play after she no longer did. It is also possible that I might have played with her at a tournament or at the HBC.

I find it remarkable that I have no recollection of the occasion. Helen was a very good player, and playing with her would have been a big deal at any point in my career.

In 2023 Helen lived in Bluffton, SC.


On at least one occasion before the Pandemic, when Ken could not play, I played opposite Al Carpenter. Al was not a great player, but he was very enthusiastic and gregarious. He had a hearing problem, and so he often was speaking too loudly for the size of our room.

At the time that I played with him Al was working for Enterprise Rent-a-Car. I seem to remember hearing from someone that Al died, but I could not find an obituary or any other reference on the Internet. .


Chuck Pickens.

Chuck Pickens played at the SBC occasionally before the Pandemic. I played with him once when Ken was not available.

Chuck died in 2022. His obituary is posted here.


Al Gee began playing regularly at the SBC after the Pandemic. His usual partner was Kathie Ferguson. On one evening Kathie had another commitment, and so did Ken. So, I played with Al.

I learned that he had taken up bridge after his wife died, and he credited the game with getting him through that crisis. He originally played at the Newtown Bridge Club, but he found the SBC after moving to the area. Al was retired from a career at 3M.

We played Al’s convention card, which was not very sophisticated. We finished last.

Al was still playing pretty consistently at the SBC in late 2023.

Shown at left is a photo of Al that I took at the Limited Sectional at the HBC on March 26, 2023. Al and his old partner from Newtown won their section in the morning session of the 199er Flight. The fellow behind Al is Howard Howard Schiller, another regular at the post-Pandemic SBC.


Allison Ryan came down from her home in Northampton, MA, to play at the SBC on an evening on which I happened to be available. This occurred before Covid-19. She was a new player at the time, but she obviously had a lot of potential. I don’t recall how we did, but I don’t think that we were last.

In 2023 Allison was retired or at least mostly retired from her career as a neurologist. I have seen her a few times at tournaments. My wife Sue and I had a very pleasant supper with her and her bridge partner at the tournament in Nashua, NH, that has been described here.


On many occasions I drove Maria Van der Ree from her apartment in Enfield to the games at the SBC on Wednesday evenings. On almost every occasion she played with either Sue Rodd or my wife. Once, however, she got stuck playing with me. Line most new partnerships we had a few misunderstandings in the bidding.

In 2023 Maria turned 93. She had difficulty with new bidding concepts, but she was still quite good at playing the cards. Sue Wavada saw her often at the non-sanctioned games in Somers and East Longmeadow.


1. I found this photo in the bag that contained the ones that I shot in my disposable-camera days. However, by this time I had been using my Canon point-and-shoot camera for six years, and I was too cheap to have prints made. So, someone probably took the photo with Jerry’s camera, and he gave me a print.

2. The journal is posted here.

3. Harold Feldheim died in 2019. Much better than his obituary are the comments from fellow bridge players that are posted here. After I had been working for District 25 for a few years Harold paid me one of the nicest compliments that I have ever received: “If more bridge players were like you, everyone would enjoy the game a lot more.”

4. To put this in perspective, as of the end of 2021 I had 697.41 gold points.

5. Through the end of 2021 I have amassed 548.03 silver points, almost all of which were won at sectional tournaments, and the bulk of those in the Sunday Swiss games.

6. Much more about my partnership with Ginny can be read here.

7. Details about my adventures with Peter Katz are posted here.