2022 Return of the Variants

Posted on January 8, 2024 by Mike

Dairy for 2022. Continue reading →

My notes from 2022 are rather comprehensive. Tournament bridge finally started again in that year. My experiences at the sectional tournaments in New England have been recounted here. The events sponsored by District 25 (D25) are described here.

I decided to organize this blog entry chronologically. Several other major events that occurred during the year received their own entries. Links to those entries can be found in the appropriate month.

I was looking forward to 2022 with hope of a return to some degree of normalcy. Both of the bridge clubs in which I played regularly seemed to be doing fairly well, and tournaments were scheduled nearby at the unit (state), district (New England), and national level. Furthermore my wife Sue, my friend Tom Corcoran, and I had an exciting trip planned for May. Finally, although the U-M football team lost its last game of 2021 badly, it was a gigantic improvement over the team that won only two games in the first year of the Pandemic.

January: On New Year’s Day the temperature reached 50 degrees. I walked five miles outdoors with only one stop. I also found René Conrad’s (introduced here) LinkedIn page.

Ohio State was lucky to beat Utah 48-45 in the Rose Bowl. Both teams had great offenses and terrible defenses.

On the next day I received an email from René. I wrote back to her, but there was no further interaction.

On January 3 I brought the car into Lia Honda because the windshield washers were not squirting. The service guy told me that mice had chewed a hole in the hose. He put in a new one and advised me to put traps in the garage in which the car was stored.

On the morning of the 4th I used the Dealer4 machine at the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) for the Wednesday evening game at the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC). I encountered no problems that I could not immediately resolve. On the way home from bridge I bought some mouse traps.

At the Zoom meeting of the HBC Board of Trustees (BoT) the big news was that Linda Starr, the director who had sent out so many clever emails during the shutdown via MailChimp, was resigning from communication duties. I thought about volunteering, but at that point I was still busy with my work for D25.

On January 6 I caught a mouse in a trap that I had set near the wooden chest on the northern wall in the garage.

I suspected that I might be charged by the BoT with finding and/or training a replacement for Linda. So, I asked for and received copies of Linda’s write-ups of what she did in MailChimp. It was certainly nice (and unusual) to work with someone who had thoroughly documented her responsibilities.

The traps for the first two mice were set just to the left of this chest.

On January 7 I caught a second mouse in a trap set in the same spot.

I had ordered a blue sweatshirt with Michigan spelled out in yellow (actually maize) from someone on Espy. I received it on January 8. I already had on that I liked a lot, but the collar and the cuffs were quite frayed, and it was a little too big. The color was right and it seemed comfortable, but the letters were not precisely yellow. They had blue specks in them. I decided that it was close enough, and I did not send it back.¹

On the 10th I caught a third mouse. By then Bob (the cat) seemed to have moved into the new bedroom with Sue. Bob and our other pet for 2022, Giacomo, were black cats. They were both introduced here.

The plain old mousetrap of decades gone by still worked perfectly well.

I cooked carne asada tacos using a seasoning packet that Sue had purchased, but I did not think much of them. In the national championship game Georgia beat Alabama with s fourth-quarter rally. U-M finished third in the final voting, the highest that they have been since the shared national championship of 1997-98.

On January 11 a fourth mouse was executed for illegal residency in the garage.

The computer in the office at the HBC was on the fritz. I had to make the the boards for the SBC game on Wednesday manually. John Calderbank and I somehow finished first out of twelve pairs.

On the next day I trapped mouse #5. In the morning game at the HBC the boards did not match the hand records. Somebody messed up when making the boards

I caught no more mice in the garage, but on the fourteenth I trapped one in the kitchen. They can run but they love cheese too much to hide.

On January 18 Giacomo had trouble getting to his feet. That was also day on which I learned that after the latest rebooking of the cruise for May, Tom was not on the same flights as Sue and I. Tom remembered that we had paid extra to be on the same flights.

Linda had made .pbn files on Tuesday evening for me to use when making the boards. On Wednesday the 18th at 9 am I made boards for the Simsbury game. We had four tables at the SBC.

On the 20th Giacomo was frantic when he could not get to his feet, but he finally made it. He could get around OK after that. Obviously his 19th year is going to be a difficult one for him. He had never been ill or injured. Occasionally he coughed up a hair ball, but that affliction is common to almost all long-haired cats.

On the next day I made a MailChimp “audience” (the MailChimp word for contact list) for the HBC using my laptop. I had to reuse the audience that I had previously created for emails from the president of the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA) that welcomed new members.

On January 22 Sue’s cat Bob had for some reason spent the last three nights in the bathtub in which I take a shower every evening. This morning he left behind a turd when he departed. I did not thank him for it.

Tom negotiated with Viking and got us all on the same flights: SwissAir to Budapest and British on the return.

On January 23 I walked nine laps (five miles) wearing a mask in the Enfield Square mall to investigate using it as an option for exercising in foul weather. What a sad place! Hardly anyone was shopping in the few stores that were open. The two restaurants each had one table occupied. No one seemed to be in the movie theater. I encountered a dozen or so walkers, some with dogs! An obese guy in a white strapped undershirt with a shopping cart full of stuff was at the Asnuntuck kiosk. He had plugged in some kind of weird machine. This trip inspired me to keep a rather complete log of my subsequent walks. It has been posted here.

On the next day my left lower back was sore in the morning, but it did not prevent me from walking another five miles.

On January 25 both sides of my lower back were sore when I woke up. If I did not know better, I might conclude that I was getting old.

The Tournament Scheduling Committee (TSC) for District 25 (D25) scheduled another meeting for Wednesday night, the only time all week that I cannot attend! This infuriate me. I complained, but I did not know whom to be angry at.

I learned that Unit 126 (Connecticut) was facing the possibility of holding two major face-to-face STaC² games a week apart.

On the 26th I could barely walk with the pain in my left lower back. For some reason lying down made it worse. I immediately took an ibuprofen tablet. It helped a lot.

On the next day I spent an hour and a half on the rowing machine; the back felt OK.

On January 28 a “bomb cyclone” was predicted to arrive at about 10 pm. I forgot to pay the bill for the Chase credit card because Sue was “checking” the charges. I received a nice email from Rick Cernech. He was living in Florida and was either working as or had worked as a cruise planner.

There was plenty of snow on January 29. I decided while using the rowing machine that the creaking sound that I could hear in my bedroom was really coming from the shelves in the basement directly below it.

Joe Brouillard, a co-chair of the committee that was running the event, reported that the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) had finally posted the schedule for the summer North American Bridge Championship (NABC) that was scheduled for July. The preparatory work that Joe and his team (of which I was in charge of email publicity) did for the NABC has been documented here.

On the last day of the month I decided to try to bleed as many of the radiators in the old section of the house as I could. Since boxes, bags and furniture were virtually everywhere, this was not an easy task. One that I was able to get at in the living room started pissing after I bled it. It was extremely difficult to get the screw back all the way in. The hot water burnt my hands pretty badly, but I finally prevailed.

I watched episode 1 of season 2 of the series “Resident Alien.”³ It didn’t seem as good.as the first season, but I still enjoyed it.

February: On Groundhog Day only five pairs registered for the evening bridge game at the SBC. I had to cancel the game. Eric and I were first at 68% in the morning game at the HBC. In the afternoon game online Sue by tied for first. Her partner was John Willoughby.

In the evening I went to see Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Cinemark in Enfield Square. About ten people were in attendance. I thought all of the performances were quite good, especially Rosa Feola’s portrayal of a more Gilda who was more mature than usual. However, I hated the production decisions in the last act.

On February 5 I sent 20,000 emails for the NABC. I played pretty well but got a bad result at the HBC game with Peter Katz. I realized that I had forgotten to send the invitational email to SBC players on Friday. I set Outlook up to remind me to do so on Fridays and Mondays.

On February 8 I received the toner that I had ordered from Ink Technologies LLC.

February 11 was astoundingly warm—55 degrees. I walked 3.5 miles outside. Sue’s left big toe was very sore from gout.

The next day was 60 degrees! I finished the blog entry on Enfield Square, but I planned to update it as stores closed and (hopefully) opened.

On February 13 I received a mysterious email from Floyd Smith in response to my query about the name of his boss at Stage Stores (introduced here). It said “Sure. She is also on Facebook. Good luck and great to hear from you!”

Two inches of snow appeared on the grass, but the surfaces were clear. I drove Sue to the Urgent Care place on the north side of Hazard Ave. for her toe. They prescribed some drugs for her.

On the next day Sue’s toe was much better. I drove her to heart doctor. The appointment was for 10:15. I made sure that she was awake by 7:45. Nevertheless, it was 10:50 by the time we reached 1699 King St., which is just north of East Windsor. They would not see her. We were home at 11:30. The temperature only reached 20 degrees, which made it one of the coldest days of a very mild winter.

On February 15 I received this email from Floyd: “Suire is her last name. Sorry about that; spell check changed it last time. “

That evening the HBC’s Planning Committee held a Zoom meeting. Earlier I had committed to playing in the Swiss game at the HBC on February 27 with Ken Leopold, Y. L. Shiue, and Frank Blachowski. Frank and Y.L were very good players with a lot of masterpoints.

On the 17th the temperature reached 60 degrees, but it was very windy.

At a Zoom Meeting the D25 Executive Committee (EC) approved the Gala tournament on May 19-22 (coinciding with the dates that I planned to be in Europe on the cruise). The plan was to charge full price for events with lots of hospitality. I abstained; the other representative from Unit 126 (U126), Sonja Smith, did not attend. She may have already moved to North Carolina.

On February 18 the temperature hit 55 degrees in the morning but it fell throughout the day. I had to return the toner to Ink Technologies. I ordered the wrong thing. The company gave me a partial refund of $31 out of the original charge of $78.

On February 21 Russia sent troops into breakaway provinces in eastern Ukraine. I walked four miles outdoors in the rather warm 52 degrees. Rob Stillman and Y. C. Hsu agreed to play as the third pair for the Wednesday evening game in Simsbury. Sue will play with Maria Van der Ree.

On February 23 it was 72 degrees when I left the HBC after winning the open pairs game with Eric in morning. An email at 3:00 from Judy Larkin informed me that Ida Coulter could not play. Minutes later Renee Janow and Lucie Fradet asked to play. Sue was too tired to play, and so Judy ended up playing with Maria. I played terribly. I was stressed out from juggling the schedule.

On February 24 Russia invaded Ukraine. I walked nine laps in the mall.

In the Swiss on the 26th we lost our first two matches on flukes. We came back to win the last three by 18, 18, and 20 victory points to finish second out of twelve. YC made 6NT after he underled his ♠A.

March: For Sue’s birthday party on March 2 at the SBC she brought cupcakes for everybody. There were only 3 tables, but we had a good time.

On the next evening Sue and I went to supper with Tom at the Puerto Vallarta Mexican restaurant. The tacos al carbon were not as good as I remembered them. Tom ordered his usual gigantic bowl, which was no longer on the menu. I don’t remember what it was called.

On March 6 I walked 5 miles outside. The temperature was 62 degrees, but I needed to circumvent many puddles from the snow melting.

On March 9 about two inches of snow was on the lawn. The streets had been cleared, but Eno Hall was closed, and so the SBC could not hold a game.

By March 10 I had read the following books from the Enfield Public Library: T.C. Boyle’s Talk Talk; Max Barry’s The 22 Murders of Madison May and Lexicon. I liked Lexicon the best, but they were all good.

On March 18 the temperature hit 76 degrees, a new all-time record for the date. I walked five miles in a tee shirt. I learned that the Xiaos (aged 10 and 13) won the 0-10K Swiss at the NABC in Reno. The two youngsters

On March 20 Sue and I played in the “8 is enough” Swiss with Mayank and Aarati Mehta. Finished in the middle because of a hand in which Rob Stillman and Ronit Shoham bid 4♥ against Sue and me, but the Mehtas let Y. C. play 3♦.

On March 27 there was no pee or poop in the litter box. I brought the box upstairs, and Giacomo took a pee and then lounged in the box. He had never done this before. It was not a good sign.

On March 30 Ken and I won a five-table STaC game at the SBC. Sue and I could not find Giacomo when we returned to Enfield.

The cat’s door as seen from the back yard.

On the next morning I found Giacomo’s body lying in the back yard just outside of the cat door. He had not gone outside in weeks, maybe months, and he had not been downstairs for days. Nevertheless, he must have used up all of his remaining strength to descend the stairs, walk over to the ramp, climb up the ramp to the cat door, and exit through that door.

He was a wonderful cat. I really mourned for him, and I still miss having him on my lap while I watch television. More details about long relationship with Giacomo before the Pandemic can be found here.

In the last few years of Giacomo’s life I apparently became allergic to something about him. Several times I had rather severe outbreaks of hives, and I got the sniffles when he sat on my lap. After he died these symptoms disappeared.

I did the income taxes using FreeTaxesUSA.com. My federal tax was $0, and I received a refund of over $900 from Connecticut.

A lot of other things happened on the last day of March. An oil bill for $780.52 arrived. I brought the litter box, which now is officially Bob’s, back downstairs. While I was doing so, I fell into some empty boxes and bruised my left hand. It hurt, but it was not fatal. The Sony audio recorder that I ordered for the cruise arrived. I played with it enough to feel fairly comfortable using it.

April: On the 2nd of the month M&T Bank took over our previous bank, Peoples United Bank, which had a few years earlier purchased United Bank. United had purchased Rockville Bank, from which I negotiated our final mortgage, as documented here. This changeover seemed to go rather smoothly, and I like the new website slightly better than the old one.

Bob has found the litter box. Thank goodness.

Peter and I won the six-table STaC game at the HBC. On consecutive hands grand slams could be made in hearts. We only bid one of them, but no one else took all the tricks on the other one.

On April 6 the switch for the lights in the basement did not work. Two days later I got it to work, but it was difficult. Eventually this problem disappeared or maybe I just adjusted to the toggle.

On April 11 I received the second booster shot at a pharmacy in Springfield. Sue had already gotten hers

On April 15 I downloaded the VeriFly app that Viking had recommended for my phone and eventually got it to work. This was a complete waste of time, and it stressed me out. It was never needed or, for that matter, useful on the entire trip.

On April18 Ken and I learned that we had been dumped as teammates for the upcoming Grand National Teams (GNT) online qualification tournament by Felix Springer and Trevor Reeves again. Details can be found here. I was not looking forward to the online part again, but I thought that we would have a pretty good chance of qualifying. Playing in the GNT in Providence in July had been my goal for many months, and I had avoided accumulating masterpoints throughout the Pandemic in order to maintain my eligibility. I ordinarily do not hold grudges, but I still feel bitter about this more than a year and a half later.

On April 29 Peter Katz and I won the last Saturday game at the HBC before it went on hiatus. There were only three tables. I faked out Y. L with a terrible overcall.

The huge hump of hair on Bob’s back was an embarrassment to all of us.

May: Something incredible happened on May 2. Sue took Bob to the veterinarian. She learned that the big clump that had been on his back for years was just hair. The vet shaved it off, and it never grew back. How can this be? He would not let us touch it; why was it so sensitive? What cat has that much hair? What made it keep growing for such a long time? Sue said that the vet said that it was just bad grooming. He also said that Bob was at least thirteen years old.

That cat never ceased to amaze me. After his haircut he suddenly liked to be petted, he also became more friendly to me. One untoward result was that I developed very small bumps around my ankles that were itchy and a little painful. I must have been allergic to him or at least his dander.

I downloaded the Uber app for possible use in Vienna to get back to the ship from the opera. The rest of the bizarre preparation for the European cruise has been catalogued in some detail here.

I learned that thirty staff members of Henry Barnard School have Covid-18! I did not realize that the school even had that many employees. The state of Connecticut was showing a 9.4% positivity rate. The good news was that Germany’s level, which I had been following closely, was down by quite a bit. The other three countries on our itinerary were also improving.

The European cruise trip began on May 5. The incredible story of that day and the rest of the journey is well documented here. One thing that is not related there is the fact that the little bumps on my ankles cleared up while I was in Europe. The ones on my right ankle began to reappear in June or July.

On May 23 I mowed the lawn, which had by then become a jungle. While doing so I realized that I had to attack the poison ivy, which was much more prevalent than in 2021. I ordered some Roundup that could be sprayed on the plants from Amazon.

Only five pairs had registered for the Wednesday night game in Simsbury, but I had not yet heard from Lori Leopold. She could usually find a partner on short notice.

The next morning brought another frustrating bridge game. When I got back to the house I needed to cancel the Wednesday evening game at the SBC because only five pairs had registered.

I brought to the Verizon office on Hazard Ave. the Pixel 2 cellphone that had failed me on the cruise. The tech guy at Verizon showed me that the phone was considerably thicker in the middle than on the edges. He explained that this was a symptom of overheating. So, the phone was officially dead. In retrospect I concluded that the transformer in the cable that connected the phone to the outlet in my cabin must have failed to convert the current to 110 at least once on the cruise, and the European current fried the battery or something. I kept the phone plugged in virtually all of the time that I was in my cabin.

We planned on eating at the Kebab House before entering the Cinemark at Enfield Square to see the opera, but it was not open. We watched the rust-belt production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. The character of the priest just did not work. Otherwise, the first two acts were very moving, but the third act was a total mess until Javier Camarena’s outstanding performance near the end. The many interviews during the breaks. were insipid. Sue and I settled for popcorn for supper. Incredibly she stayed awake throughout the performance.

On May 25 I discovered that our mortgage on the house was completely paid off! I was not expecting this news for several months.

June: At some point in June Sue purchased for me a new (well, new to me) cellphone. This one was a Samsung Galaxy S7. It was similar to Sue’s, and so she could sometimes help me with it. A year and a half later I still hated it, but not as much as I loathed the Pixel 2. The Samsung had not ordered any pizzas for me, but, then again, I had not downloaded the Slice app. I could almost never figure out where the app that I wanted to use was hiding, and it randomly plays YouTube videos and other stuff from the Internet. I figured out how to answer the phone in a minute or two, but it took me eighteen months to figure out how to hang up.

On the 1st I learned that Sally Kirtley, the director at the SBC, had tested positive for Covid-19. Ken had to direct at the Wednesday night . Ken and I won easily.

On the very next day Sally came to the ACBL’s walk-through in Providence. I very much enjoyed talking with old friends like Paula Najarian.

On June 13 I received two bottles of Roundup that I had ordered from Amazon. I immediately went outside and sprayed the poison ivy that was growing along the fence on the north side of the yard. Two days later I sprayed the poison ivy again. I wore a mask during both sprayings, and I was careful not to get any on my skin or clothes.

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates to combat the serious inflation that began after the country reopened. Any moron could see that the main culprit had been pent-up demand from the shutdown, and the secondary cause was shipping holdups. Nevertheless, I had to peel a sticker off of a gas pump at Costco that claimed that “Biden caused this.”

I met Mike Barke, a geography professor at the Northumbria University, and his wife Vivienne on the cruise. Mike had recently published a book entitled Newcastle upon Tyne: Mapping the City. As soon as I got back to the U.S. I ordered a copy. It finally arrived on June 17. It was both beautiful and interesting. It made me want to visit the Tyneside area.

The Longest Day game on June 21 at HBC very annoying. There was much too much noise. Donna Feir pressed everyone to play faster and then canceled the last round because the pizza had arrived. This turned out to be a super-spreader event for Covid-19.

From an email from Cindy Lyall, the treasurer of the CBA, I earned that U126 lost $4,000 on the tournament in Orange. Ouch!

On June 23 Mary Whittemore reported that her name was missing from the “Top 200 List” on the CTBridge.org website. I asked the CBA board members if anyone knew why. Don Stiegler sent me a correct list. It showed that many names were missing from the one on the website. Evidently no one knew how that page got updated on the website. Bob Bertoni, who died in 2021, set up the website and, because the unit had no webmaster at the time, did all of the updating.

On June 29 Sue and I attended a potluck supper at Sue’s church, the Somersville Congregational Church. I always feel very uncomfortable at these religious gatherings, but this one was tolerable. After supper we listened to Graham Van Keuren’s presentation on his vacation with his spouse Eric in Israel. I recorded it on my audio recorder. It was a good presentation, but it certainly did not make me want to visit what I considered to be an apartheid country.

On June 30 Dr. Anthony Fauci announced that he had Covid-19 for the second time. This news astounded me. Did he take no precautions? The Pandemic was finally running rampant at the HBC. Only five tables were occupied on Tuesday morning, and the evening game was canceled. Only three tables appeared on Wednesday, and the Simsbury game was canceled. Both of the games at the HBC on Thursday were canceled.

July: The big event of the month was the Providence NABC. I attended most of the event, but Sue decided not to go. I kept notes on my laptop and wrote them up a little later. They have been posted here and here. It was good to see some familiar faces, but the bridge games were not much fun.

The tournament was another super-spreader of Covid-19. Almost everyone with whom I played or associated caught the virus. I almost ripped the driver’s side mirror off of my car, and the hotel rooms were never cleaned. However, I avoided getting the disease. So, in a period of about two and a half months I had survived three super-spreader events—the cruise, bridge at the HBC, and the NABC. I credited my collection of free N95 masks that I had amassed from giveaways at various retailers.

August: I was hoping to have a party at the SBC to celebrate my seventy-fourth birthday. Not enough people were able to attend on the 17th. Instead, I decided that the SBC would have a Christmas party on August 24. Twenty people attended, and so we had five tables and lots of food. The players gave me a $100 Amazon card and $20 in cash. I was a little upset that Sue and I arrived so late because she, as usual, was not ready on time. I had made beef Stroganoff that needed to be heated up in the slow cooker. I crawled under the table and plugged in the pot, but I neglected to turn it on.

On August 26 the refrigerator stopped working. Panic set in. Sue and I resolved to deal with it the next morning. By then it had resumed functioning. If we ever figured out the cause of the outage, I made no note of it.

Throughout the period from my arrival back in Enfield after the cruise up to the end of August the weather had been hot, and I had spent every spare minute working on the journal for the Grand European Tour. On August 28 I finally finished it and sent an email to quite a few people announcing that the journal had been posted on Wavada.org. I was quite pleased to hear back from both the Barkes and the family from Saskatchewan.

A Big Y Express replaced the Shell station.

I noticed that the Shell station on Hazard Ave., which had been operational since we moved to Enfield in the late eighties, was closed.

On August 29 I received a long email from Tom Caputo, whom I had worked with at both Lord & Taylor (described here) and Saks Fifth Avenue (here). He was looking for a job at the age of 60. He asked me if I knew about anything being available. Since he knew very well that I had had nothing to do with retail for at least eight years, he must have been desperate. Maybe he thought that I had kept in touch with people more than I had.

I also received an email from Mike and Vivienne Barke.

August closed with an incredibly disappointing Ocean State Regional tournament in Warwick, RI. I had a rotten time, the attendance was abysmal, and the district lost money. The details have been posted here.

September: On September 13 Bob decided to take over Giacomo’s old position atop the back of the couch in the living room. On the next evening he lost his balance (something that Giacomo had never done in eighteen years) and tumbled off the back. He was in a panic and tried unsuccessfully to climb up the drapes to regain his perch.

On the following evening Bob had clambered back into Giacomo’s old spot. When I seated myself in my chair a few feet away, he obviously wanted to come join me, but he was evidently afraid to land on the pillows that were arrayed on the couch’s cushions. I moved them out of his way. He then descended to the sitting level and, after executing calculations in his walnut-sized brain, made the “mighty leap” to the armrest of my chair. He sat peacefully on my lap for a few minutes. Then he got nervous, peed on me, descended frantically to the floor, and did his “breakdance.” Much more has been written here about the misadventures of this very strange feline.

After sleeping comfortably for a month or more on beds in hotels and cruise ships, I judged that I needed a new mattress. The one that I had been sleeping on was more than thirty years old and was a little too short for me. Sue selected one for me as a late birthday present. It arrived on September 14. The delivery people set it up and took away the old one. Sue, of course, kept the obsolete pieces that held it off the floor. I found them leaning against the bookcase in the hallway. The new mattress was considerably better than the old one, but I still woke up with a backache more often than not.

On September 16 I talked with someone from the town of Enfield about the tax bill that I had received that day. It contained a significant interest charge because I did not pay the July installment. The simple reason for my delinquency was that I had never received a bill. It turned out that the mortgage holder, Peoples United Bank, had payed the portion due in January. The mortgage schedule indicated that five payments were remaining when the bank declared that it was fully paid. I was sent a notice of this, but I was never apprised of the bill from the town that the bank must have received. The lady with whom I talked refused to waive the interest charge. Since the bank that held the mortgage at the time that the bill was sent no longer existed, I did not have any recourse except to pay.

On the same day using my free MailChimp account, I sent an email that I had previously composed to try to improve the attendance of the players with less than 500 masterpoints at the upcoming sectional tournament in Orange.

The bookshelf fell onto the bed in 2023. The light is now attached to a screw in the wall.

On September 17 two items that I had ordered from Amazon were delivered. The first was a reading light that I would be able to clamp to the bookshelf above the new bed. The second was a book by Daryl Gregory entitled We are All Completely Fine. I liked this book much less than the one by Gregory that I had read on the cruise, The Spoonbenders.

Bob had mysteriously disappeared on September 16. He returned two days later and spent all day and night by the stove. Something was apparently wrong with him, but we were not too concerned. His behavior had always been eccentric.

Eric, Motoko Oinaga, John Debaggis, and I finish second out of ten in the Swiss event held at the HBC on September 18. We were the #8 seed. Eric and I bid and made slams on two of the last three hands to win the round by 24. We lost only to the winners—Lesley Meyers, Laurie Robbins, Felix, and Trevor.

Sue made an appointment at the vet for Bob on September 20. I heard him at some point after 4 a.m. on the 19th. At 5:45 I brought the litter box upstairs and shut the door to the basement, but when Sue woke up Bob was nowhere to be found. I opened the door to the basement. He came in about 9:30, and I shut the door to the basement again.

Before my bridge game on September 20 I placed Bob in the cat carrier, but at some point he somehow escaped. Sue was able to get him back in and took him to his 12:30 appointment. We found out that he had a tumor in his mouth or throat. There was not much hope for him, but the doctor gave Sue some medicine for him. Sue gave him the drops when I got back from bridge and could hold him. He needed them twice a day. I was so involved that I forgot about my Zoom meeting of the HBC Planning Committee.

We probably should have put Bob down when we heard about the tumor. He had always been Sue’s pet. She had to make the decision, and she could not do it.

On the last day of the month I sent a second email for the CBA.

October: On October 3 Sue started giving Bob antibiotics and steroids. He started eating a little better. Sue took him to the vet again on the 18th. He was still not eating much even though Sue was diligent about preparing meals that were both nutritious and easy to swallow.

Southbridge Hotel and Conference Center.

The October 19 Simsbury game was canceled. I drove Sally to Southbridge to check out the hotel that we would be using for the tournament in October, which was named the Spectacle Regional because the hotel was the administration building of the defunct American Optical Company. The ground floor was very modern, but the the playing area not very large. The restaurant, which was called Visions, was not open except for groups.

On the same day Sue’s cousin Robby Davis was found dead in his apartment.

On October 21 I had breakfast with Sue and Mark Davis. Mark was very involved in a gigantic project involving his ancestry. For some reason I have almost no interest in exploring mine. Someone from the Spokane branch of the Wavada sent my dad a lot of research that she had done. Sue got it from him and put it somewhere. I have never seen it.

On October 22 there was no game at the HBC. I went by myself to see Cherubini’s Medea at Cinemark at the Enfield Square. Sondra Radvanovsky gave an outstanding performance in an opera that had not been performed since Maria Callas played the title character. A carnival was set up in the mall parking lot.

On October 24 I drove to the mall for a walk. I forgot my little blue mp3 player, and I wore the wrong shoes. I had to drive back home and start over.. A girl in a red suit made of balloons and a small backpack was walking stiff-legged around the mall. I think that she was supposed to look like an astronaut.

November: The first week of the month was unseasonably warm. On the 7th it was 67 degrees at 5 a.m. and 80 as I drove through Hartford at 1 p.m. after playing with Nancy Calderbank for the first time in the mentorship program. She had asked me to teach her 2/1.

On November 8 I finished writing the Bulletin for Southbridge and sent it to Sally for printing.

In the mid-term elections the Republicans, as expected, won the House of Representatives, but the Democrats held onto the Senate after Senator Warnock won another runoff.

I received a bill from Somers Oil for $798.86!

The hilarious postscript to the Grand European Tour occurred on November 8, almost six months after I departed. Sue and I were in the living room when we heard the unmistakable sound of claws shredding paper. Sue rose from her chain, hurried into the kitchen, and yelled, “Bob, what have you gotten into now?” She snatched a paper bag from beneath his claws. When she looked inside she found the passport for which she had searched for several days back in early May. She should have just asked Bob where it was.

11/23 Sue and I spent Thanksgiving alone. I sent the following email to the Barkes and Steve Flamman:

I hope that you are all doing well.
I thought that you might be interested in this. Two weeks ago my wife Sue and I were watching TV in our living room in the evening when we heard the unmistakable sound of our cat Bob shredding something made of paper in the kitchen. Sue sprang from her chair to prevent further damage. She found that Bob had somehow discovered a small paper sack and had pulled it out onto the floor. Sue retrieved it from him and discovered her current and expired passports as well as a few other items that had been missing for over two years.
Incidentally, I included two photos of Sue unsuccessfully trying to negotiate a deal with Viking on the Day 0 page of my journal and one that she took of Bob on Day 12.
Today is Thanksgiving in the U.S. It is hard to find things to be thankful for lately, but I am definitely thankful for the friends that I made on the cruise in May.

I had more to be thankful for three days later. Michigan defeated Ohio State 45-23 at the Horseshoe in Columbus to win the eastern division of the Big 10 for the second year in a row. They did it without the Big 10’s best running back, Blake Corum. Donovan Edwards filled in for Corum very well. The Wolverines finished the regular season 12-0.

December: A week later the Wolverines beat Purdue in the Big 10 title game 43-21. They have qualified for the four-team College Football Playoff for the second year in a row.

December 8 was the tenth anniversary of our wedding ceremony. Sue and I are about as unhappy as we have ever been. Sue blames her health and various inanimate objects. I blame the house.

Curtis Barton, the president of D25, sent an email to members of the Executive Committee indicating that all senior employees of the ACBL had been fired. He then sent a correction that said that, according to Mark Aquino, who as Regional Director should know, “fired” is not the right word.

On December 9 Sue suddenly screamed, “I hate my life!” I was thinking that I hated our house, which was a pigsty. I also resented that almost whenever I needed something I must ask her where it was. Usually she did not know and said that she would look for it. In addition, we had so much junk everywhere that every time I that I went to get something I must remove four or five other items and then replace them in the right order. The refrigerator, for example, was always full to overflowing. THERE ARE ONLY TWO OF US!

However, as always, I said nothing because I did not want to trigger a tearful reaction or a panic attack.

December 12 brought the first snow of the season.

At 5 a.m. on the next day the weatherman on WTIC AM reported that it was 8 degrees in Granby and 19 in neighboring East Granby.

On December 17 I bought a rib roast. Sue forgot about Tyesha’s confirmation. Then she also bought a rib roast because she forgot her shopping list, and my phone was off because I forgot to turn it back on after bridge.⁵ I discovered that for weeks she had been leaving me voicemail messages that I did not know about. We have become two incompetent old farts.

On December 21 we had five tables at the SBC game. Sue and I arrived too late for the holiday party because Sue went to the store at 4:30 p.m. to buy the fruit that she had promised to bring. The players gave me $130.

On December 23 very strong winds uprooted the pine tree in the front yard. I heard a loud crashing sound at about 5 a.m. The tree fell straight towards our house, but there was no damage at all because the top section landed harmlessly on the patio between the old section of the house and Sue’s garage.

The high temperature the next day was only 19. I got a letter from ConnectiCare. The premium for my dental policy went down from $79 to $56.

We did nothing special on Christmas day. Sue may have watched It’s a Wonderful Life,⁶ but I didn’t.

Crystal Lake Construction, the company that cleared the snow from our driveway and sidewalks chopped up and removed most of the fallen tree. They came back later for the stump.

On the same day I received an email from Mark Aquino about the new training required for directors at sectionals, On the 27th I met with the HBC directors after the bridge game. Peter Marcus, who generally knew these things, had reported that the new rules applied only to events with masterpoint limits in excess of 500.

On the last day of the year Michigan lost to TCU 51-45. Early in the game J. J. McCarthy threw two interceptions that were returned for touchdowns. It was a wretched end to an awful year.

A week later TCU got clobbered by Georgia in the championship game. U-M would have done better, but they probably would have lost.

1. By the fall of 2023 a small spot had appeared on the front of the sweatshirt. It looked like a grease stain, but on closer inspection it was obvious that the exterior had worn thin. I could hide the blemish with ink from a Sharpie pen, but that was not a good permanent solution.

2. STaC stands for “sectional tournament at clubs”. These were games held at clubs that awarded more points, and the overalls included all of the participating clubs. Regular STaCs paid silver points. The points in Royal STaCs were evenly split between black, red, gold, and silver points.

3. “Resident Alien” was originally shown on the Syfy channel. Sue and I watched season 1 and season 2 on the streaming service called Peacock. At the time it was free on Cox cable. Eventually they wanted people to buy monthly subscriptions and restricted the free option so much as to make it worthless.

4. Apparently Peoples United Bank wanted our mortgage off of its books when it was taken over by M&T bank. The five mortgage payments that I saved by this action more than covered the cost of the July tax bill, but someone should have told me that that amount would be due.

5. I did not learn how to put the Samsung cellphone on “vibrate” until much later. It was easy to do but not a bit intuitive.

6. All year long Sue watched TCM during every waking (and many sleeping) moment.

2008-2019 Bridge Partners at Tournaments Part 2

Posted on November 22, 2023 by Mike

Occasional partners at tournaments. Continue reading →

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After this I had no further contact with Greg.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tink was still a very active player in 2023.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sabrina approved this photo of herself and Darryl Legassie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2023 Bridge: Sectional Tournaments

Posted on November 5, 2023 by Mike

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Swiss: 15.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The table count put Connecticut’s to shame:

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

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

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

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

One of the committees we discussed setting up at the last CBA Board Meeting was the Recognition Committee. Basically, the idea was to set up publicity for our awards and trophies and make them more relevant to the membership, maybe even generate some excitement for the races.
I don’t think this should take a lot of time and I would hope the committee would come up with idea but then others could actually do some of the work, such as authoring emails to go out about trophies being given out at the next tournament, etc.
OK to do this?

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

The main things on my mind for attention soon are the following, as they all affect what we post on the website and what will go into the upcoming edition of The Kibitzer as we approach the end of the year.
I thought some of these had already been decided on by the board, but then questions were re-raised and it seems a good idea to resolve them with some real clearity.
1) It was my understanding that the Barb Shaw Trophy would be awarded to the player who earned the most masterpoints in all of Connecticut’s I/N sectionals during the year. Only the I/N sectionals count, not points earned in limited games of the open sectional, STaC’s, or anything else. I don’t think anyone else is going to have an I/N this year, so that’ll he Hartford I, Branford, Newtown and Hartford II. We basically ratified this by posting it on the web that way after the board had discussed it, but I think it’s good at least to affirm that among ourselves, and then I think we can just report on it at the next board meeting. (I don’t know that we’ll have the official winner and standings yet, but I can easily determine the unofficial winner.) Side note: I am aware of no restriction saying that this is a member of the Unit.
2) There was somewhat less clarity on the Monroe Magnus Trophy. This has traditionally been awarded to the highest masterpoint winner in all Connecticut Sectionals. (STaCs do not count for this.) As far as I have understood it, it is not restricted to Unit members. At one of the board meetings, someone (I don’t recall who) said that they thought that the I/N sectionals should not count for this. I don’t think this received wide support, and I certainly don’t agree with it. A sectional is a sectional. At that time, it actually mattered, since there was a pair who did very well in the Harford I/N and then in the Open (!) in the CBA Spring Sectional, but it’s no longer relevant at this point. I do suggest that we go ahead and present to the board a motion that the Magnus trophy race counts points in all Connecticut Sectionals (exclusive of STaCs). Make sense? We will know the Magnus winner after the sectional next weekend.
3) It was proposed in one of our board meetings that there be a new award/recognition for something like a Connecticut Non-Life Master of the Year. I quite like this idea, but the devil is in the details. The basic idea is that eligible people would be anyone who met the rank criteria at the beginning of the year and was geographically eligible throughout the year. Maybe I am making this too complicated but I think it’s best to spell out all this stuff in advance.
1) Is it open to any Connecticut resident or just Unit members (this can easily matter – we have some Connecticut residents who are members of the New York unit)? I’m open to either answer.
2) Does the person have to meet criterion #1 for the whole year or just at the beginning, just at the end? People who move in or out? Part year, e.g. college students or snowbirds eligible? I would tend to recommend something like anyone who has had a substantial presence during the year by any of a) completing a semester of school, b) living in-state for at least 6 months, c) maintaining a home here and living here on an ongoing basis for at least four months a year.
3) What events count? Connecticut sectionals? All Connecticut events? And District 25 events? All events? All f2f events? All pigmented events? I would propose all pigmented events (this eliminates the BBO ACBL games but not the VACBs). If you want to limit it to f2f events, I’ll investigate how difficult this is. It may not be too hard. I think there’s a way to filter for VACB leaders and then subtract that.
4) Is there a MP limit? We have some non-LMs who have well over 1000 MP. I would recommend that we restrict this. Not only does it defeat what I see as the purpose (encouraging newer players) to be recognizing players who already have a pile of masterpoints (maybe even twice as many as I had at the beginning of the year!), but if a player never gets their black or silver, e.g., they would never become an LM and would remain eligible indefinitely. I suggest non-LM under 750 at start of the year.
5) Can a person win it more than once. I’d suggest no.
6) Any other criteria?
7) Do we award it for 2023? I would suggest we do.
8) What do we call it? Connecticut Non-Life Master of the Year for now? I think we can come up with something more evocative of success but see no point in waiting.
9) What’s the award. For now, I think it’s fine just to get it on the website. The sooner we do it, the sooner we can publish the standings and start giving it a little publicity.
This latter award is complex enough that I’d suggest we ratify the status quo on the other as soon as we can and then talk by Zoom or three-way phone to hit the NLM award issues, come up with a proposal and present it to the board. My schedule pretty flexible Sunday through Thursday.
Anything else you guys would like to have the committee address sooner rather than later?

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

I strongly disagree with some of this, and I don’t think that anything has been decided by the board. At least there was no vote on it. You can proceed this way if you want in 2023, which is a transition year, but we should have policies that are voted on for 2024. That means a motion and a count of votes, not the “silence must mean approval” method used this year.
The primary purpose of the awards has always been to promote the bridge activities of the UNIT. The trophies were bought and managed by the unit’s government in some distant day. The secondary purpose was presumably (I was not around when any of these were established) to honor the name on the trophy (well, maybe not the governor).
A sectional is NOT a sectional. The I/N sectionals are club activities that, like STaC games, happen to pay silver points. They are sponsored, financed, and promoted by the clubs. It is fine and probably necessary to help the clubs in any way that we can, but that was not part of the design of any of the awards. If I had known that attendance at the HBC sectionals was going to help someone win an award, then I would have trumpeted that in the emails for the award. There is also the problem that the I/N sectionals do not have the same rules about who can play as the unit events (or even one another). Surely, the criteria for eligibility should be set and announced before competition begins. There are other small problems that have to do with players changing residences and points awarded to foreign players by the ACBL. I know that those can be addressed because I did so when I ran the “Best in Class” awards for the district.
At this time I think that the main goal should be promoting play at unit-sponsored sectionals by the I/N group. Our record on this so far is, in my opinion, miserable. Awarding the Barb Shaw trophy for persistent performance as opposed to performance in one tournament is also problematic, but the problems are probably addressable. I am not opposed to this change, but the standard for eligibility should be the player’s standing as of January 1. We should be encouraging players to graduate from the I/N game to the open one when they reach the limit, not discouraging them by removing their eligibility for the award when they achieve success.
I do not have strong feelings about whether we should limit participation to members of the unit. I enjoy seeing people from other units at our sectionals. Some have won the trophies in the past, but in at least some cases they didn’t bother to take them.
I do not have strong feelings about the other awards. The nice thing about the way the awards worked was that it gave us something novel to promote for each event. I don’t think that we ever took advantage of this as much as we could have in the past. I have been attending board meetings for ten years, and the only thing mentioned about the trophies was in the form of “Does anyone know who has the _____ trophy?” The number of people who actually care about the other trophies is probably small, but I always have, and I know a few others who do.
In any case the principal problem to be addressed is the promotion (i.e., emails and other advertising), which has always been meh. The board did not care much because attendance without promotion had been good (go look at the 2019 results) and increasing over time. The unit’s finances were so good that we were actively looking for ways to spend our excess money. That has changed dramatically, and we need to react.

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

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

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

Bill provided a summary of what we agreed to:

Barb Shaw Trophy

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Recognition Awards

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you again to everyone who pitched in to make the August tournament a success. We should be in much better shape hospitality-wise for this tournament with Stacy Herbert working the mornings and with all of us having had a little more experience.
It would be great if a few of you could help out with some things this weekend. On Friday morning, my wife Carol will bring me and help with getting stuff out of our car, but I won’t be able to carry much myself (broken leg for those who may not know – healing well but limiting my ability to walk without crutches). Stacy will help, too, but a few additional sets of hands will be great. I’ll arrive at 8:15 and Carol, Stacy and and I can get the coffee stuff out so Stacy can get that running, but another set or two of hands by around 9 would be great.
The bigger challenge this weekend will be getting stuff back into the car on Sunday. Carol won’t be able to come get me until about 7:30 on Sunday evening, and I don’t want her to have to load it all by herself, so if anyone can hang around for a bit or if someone who lives close by can come back to help, that’d be great.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here were the table counts:

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

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

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

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

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

2013-2018 Bridge: The Larry Weiss Award

Posted on July 29, 2023 by Mike

D25’s old award. Continue reading →

In 2013 I was still working full-time at TSI. My bridge was mostly limited to evenings and weekends. My involvement with District 25 (New England) was mostly limited to maintaining the NEBridge.org website, but I did accept an appointment to be one of the people who represented Unit 126 (Connecticut) at the twice-yearly meetings of the Board of Delegates. The big attraction was the free breakfast.

The Larry Weiss award was about eighteen inches in diameter.

The Larry Weiss Award was actually instituted in 1982. Its history is recorded here. The first presentation that I witnessed was at a Board of Delegates (BoD) meeting in 2013. The winner that year was Frank Hacker¹, an expert player from Vermont whom I had contacted about contributing materials to the district’s website. The presenter was the previous winner, Jim Rasmussen. Frank seemed shocked and a little embarrassed to receive it.

I read about the award on NEBridge.org. It was named after an expert player who had a national reputation for being very congenial at the table. The evident purpose was to recognize a good bridge player from New England who had similar comportment. In those days² an accomplished player who was also friendly was rare.

I was fascinated by the award, which was the only physical trophy given out by the district. I examined the list of previous winners. Most of the names were not familiar to me.

Not long after receiving the award Frank moved to Florida. No award was presented in 2014 or 2015. In 2016 someone retrieved the tray from Frank, and Jim Rasmussen was pressed into service to find a suitable recipient. I posted a notice on the website for him asking people to submit nominations to Jim’s email address. I submitted two names, mainly because I was afraid that no one else had bothered to respond.

A few months later I was taken aback when Jim called me aside at a tournament and asked me if I would be amenable to him just selecting the person to receive the award. I said that I certainly had no objection. The award that year was given to Luke Gillespie, whom I had played against a couple of times. I was a little surprised that he won. I had only seen him at a few tournaments. I had also encountered him at no meetings or in any of my undertakings as webmaster. Luke was very surprised when his name was announced. That was the only time that I ever saw him at a BoD meeting.

Both of Jim’s presentation speeches were brief. He described the award, but he never went into any details about the process used to determine the winner.

In 2017 I was again asked by someone on the Executive Committee to post an item on the website soliciting nominations for the award. This time I did not nominate anyone. The award was presented at the BoD meeting in Nashua NH in June. Earlier in the week Jack Mahoney had greeted me in an elevator with “Congrats on the Weiss!” I don’t remember what I responded. However, this revelation game me a day or two to think about what I would do if they actually gave me the award.

At the end of the meeting Luke Gillespie presented me with the Larry Weiss award. When he introduced me, he admitted that he did not actually know me. In fact, I had only played against him once or twice. The memorable occasion was in Johnston, RI, at a sectional. I distinctly remember one hand. He was playing with Sheila Gabay. My partner, Steve Smith (introduced here), had opened 3♦. Sheila had bid 4♣. I raised to 4♦. Luke ventured 5♣, and Steve said 5♦, which was doubled.

As I lay down the dummy, I remember my exact words: “I don’t know; I don’t think that they are making 5♣. Afterwards, Luke and Sheila gently chided Steve for usurping my captaincy.

I was well aware of the criteria for this prestigious award, at least one of which I did not in any way meet. I gave a little speech in which I argued that if they were going to lower the standards to consider a Bracket 4 player, they should have chosen my friend and frequent teammate, Bob Derrah, who had established successful youth bridge programs at two middle schools in Springfield. His devotion of time, energy, and his own money for this and other projects was truly “superior behavior.” His wife (and bridge partner) Shirley had also been a great help, but Bob had been the driving force.

At the very end I emphasized that I felt honored, but Bob would have been a better choice. I spelled Bob’s last name so that the fill-in secretary, Beth Bertoni, would be certain to get it right in the minutes. Sandy DeMartino said that I made a good point in that players should be encouraged to nominate people that they thought were deserving of the award.

Early in 2018 I followed the instructions that were posted on the NEBridge.org website. I organized a committee of nine players that had representatives each of the eight units in Di25. My first choice was Luke Gillespie. The text describing the award indicated that preference should be given to former winners. Luke agreed. The other members were Susan Smith, Shirley Wagner, Jack Mahoney, Wayne Burt, Linda Ahrens, Karen Hewitt Randall, and Bob Sagor.

I once again posted a notice for the submission of nominations. This time I asked people to reply to my email address.³ Only nine people responded; seven nominated one person, and Carolyn Weiser nominated Wayne Burt, Dick Budd, and David Rock. The other nominees were Paul Harris, Sabrina Miles, Joe Brouillard, Bob Derrah, Don Caplin, Pat McDevitt, Felix Springer, and Frank Merblum. I nominated Bob Bertoni and Ausra Geaski. No one was nominated by more than one person.

I created a pdf file of all of the nominations, included the arguments provided by the nominators and sent it with the following email to the members of the committee.

I received thirteen nominations for the Larry Weiss Award. I have enclosed them in a pdf file and a Word doc file. To some of them I have appended comments when I had personal knowledge of the recipient.
I think that the next step is to gather comments from committee members. No one can know everyone, and so in some cases we must rely on the judgments of others. Please read the documents and send me whatever comments you might have this week. During the week of April 9 I will assemble a new package that includes them. Then we can start the balloting.
One note: The last ten winners have been men. No woman has won the award since Jane Smith in 2003. This seems peculiar to me, since there seems to be nothing in the criteria that would predict such a bent.
Thanks for your participation.

There were only a few comments, but one person was very upset that one of the nominees was even under consideration and asked that I include that comment without attribution. Since I had said that I would allow anonymous comments, I did. The subject of that comment, who was also a voting member of the nominating committee, offered the opinion that only positive comments should be accepted. I did not remove the comment.

In the first round of voting I allowed all members to name up to three nominees who best, in their opinion, met the criteria. Only three people were named by more than one person: Joe Brouillard, Ausra Geaski, and Bob Bertoni. Bob and Ausra were named more often than Joe.

So, the final ballot was between Bob and Ausra. Ausra got four votes; Bob get five. I would have been happy with either result. In retrospect it seems remarkable to me that if I had not been on the committee, they would not have even been considered.

I announced on the website that the award for 2018 would be given out at the meeting of the Board of Delegates at the Granite State Getaway ( a regional tournament held in Nashua, NH) on Sunday, June 24, 2018. I did not disclose the winner’s name to anyone—not even my wife Sue.

I brought the award with me to the Senior Regional in North Falmouth, MA. When I gave the trophy to Carolyn Weiser to be engraved, I had to tell her who had won. A big smile appeared on her face.

My presentation of the award to Bob has already been chronicled here (search for “Weiss”), but that account did not include my actual description of the winner: “My friend, my boss, my guru, my hero, Bob Bertoni.”

This was the last presentation of the Larry Weiss award. Bob died in 2021. No one seemed to know where the silver-plated tray ended up.

My relationship to the award that replaced it has been described here.

1. I also played against Frank in a sectional in New Hampshire. He told me that he was an actuary. He also asked me if I knew Joel Wolfe. I did know him from the Tuesday evening games at the Hartford Bridge Club, but I was terrified of him. I never told Joel about the encounter in New Hampshire.

2. Behavior was apparently much less friendly in the eighties. In 1988 the ACBL instituted a set of laws governing behavior at the bridge table called the Zero Tolerance policy. Over the next three decades bridge gradually became a much more friendly game as it became “bad form” to be rude or abusive to the others at the table.

3. I am not sure why I did not send a district-wide email asking for nominations. The district certainly had its MailChimp account by that time, and I had been maintaining the database for many years. The description of the award says that the website should be used to ask for nominations, but when that admonition was written the district had no way to send a large set of emails. Perhaps I was worried about the cost, which would have been about $7.50.

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

Posted on June 29, 2023 by Mike

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.

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.

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.

John Willoughby & Linda in the 199er Room

I don’t remember what was in the SWAG bags.

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.

By a few minutes after 10 both rooms were packed.

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.

As My dad used to say, “The winners laughed and told jokes; the losers just said, ‘Deal the damned cards.'”

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.

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Tag Archives: Unit 126

2022 Return of the Variants

2008-2019 Bridge Partners at Tournaments Part 2

2023 Bridge: Sectional Tournaments

2013-2018 Bridge: The Larry Weiss Award

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