Still under construction. The first event of 2025 was a five-day mishmash scheduled for Mansfield, MA, from Tuesday February 18 through Saturday February 22. It featured a limited regional for non-Life Masters and a contemporaneous open sectional. I was not … Continue reading →
Still under construction.
The first event of 2025 was a five-day mishmash scheduled for Mansfield, MA, from Tuesday February 18 through Saturday February 22. It featured a limited regional for non-Life Masters and a contemporaneous open sectional. I was not eligible for the former and was not interested in the latter because of the length of the drive, the cost and location of the hotel, had the lack of interesting events.
It also included qualifying tournaments for each of the four divisions of the Grand National Teams event. I definitely would have been interested in putting together a team for the GNT if I could play in Flight B, which had always been limited to players with less than 2,500 masterpoints. At the last Executive Committee meeting in the fall Mark Aquino, the Regional Director, had announced that the limit would be raised to 3,000, but he emphasized that it had not officially been changed yet, and there was some opposition. So, I used Google to find the official Conditions of Contest. That led me to this website1, which clearly stated on page 4 that the limit was still 2,500. A few weeks before the event I learned that the CofC was erroneous. Evidently whoever was responsible for posting it never bothered to fix it. When I mentioned this to Sally Kirtley, the tournament manager, she was concerned. She told me that whoever was managing the partnerships could probably find a partner for me. I said that it was too late to put a reasonably good team together. I had no intention of driving all the way to Manchester to play in a one-day Swiss2 in which I had no chance of doing well. The worst imaginable situation for me would have been to be part of a team that, even if it did well, the other members might have no interest in representing the district at the North American Bridge Championships in the summer.
So, since I was no longer on either the Executive Committee or the Board of Delegates, I had no reason to attend the event in Mansfield.
The district’s first real regional tournament was scheduled for the Wellsworth Hotel in Southbridge, MA, from Tuesday, April 22, through Sunday, April 27. The 35-mile drive was by far the easiest of all the tournaments for me, and the schedule included plenty of team games (except for on Saturday. I was therefore very interested in playing there.
I learned more than a month before the event that Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider wanted to team up with me on every day except Thursday. That sounded like an excellent plan. The endurance of the 76-year-old me was much less than it had been earlier. A day for napping in the middle would be greatly appreciated.
I quickly enlisted Eric Vogel as a partner. He committed to play on Tuesday and Wednesday, but he was not available on the weekend. He later needed to rescind his commitment. I was, fortunately, able to get Abhi Dutta to fill in. Mike Heider told me that Helen Benson3, with whom he sometimes played at the Newtown Bridge Club, might be available. I contacted her, and she agreed. She played a much simpler convention card than most that I was accustomed to, but after a fairly lengthy exchange of ideas by email, we agreed upon a very limited set of conventions.
On Monday evening I had purchased a Caesar salad and a chicken wrap at Big Y in Enfield. My recollection was that the hotel’s luncheon buffet was not that good, and I was not enthusiastic about standing in line. On Tuesday morning I left the house at about 8:10. I did not anticipate a lot of traffic, but I was ready to go, and so I left. I listened to Hector Berlioz’s epic opera, Les Troyens. As usual, I stopped at McDonald’s in West Stafford for a sausage biscuit with egg. It cost almost a dollar more than I paid in Hartford, but it was quick and tasty. I arrived at the Wellsworth a little after 9 o’clock. Jim, Mike, and Eric all arrived a few minutes later.
We were scheduled to play in the Open Swiss on both days. On Tuesday we had a very unfortunate draw in the morning. We began by playing against the wunderkinds, Eric and Jeff Xiao and their formidable partners, professional David Caprera4, and another fine player, Max Siline. We lost by 18 victory points, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Our schedule in the rest of the matches was relatively easy. We did not face any of the other top teams, and in the last two rounds we even faced teams from Flight C. In the end we as a B team finished in second place behind only the Xiao team. We were award 6.3 gold points. I was in a good mood for the drive home, but I had started well at regional tournaments before and too often had seen poor results later.
The drive to Southbridge on Wednesday was nearly identical to the drive on Tuesday. The only difference was that I listened to the part of the opera set in Carthage, and it featured Dido rather than Cassandra.
Abhi arrived only a few minutes before nine, but we had played together enough that we only had to review a few items.
Because there were two Swiss events on Wednesday (Open and under 2500), I expected the number of teams in the Open event to be smaller than on Tuesday. I was wrong. There were seventeen, three more than on the previous day. The format was seven rounds of seven-board matches. We were in the lowest strat, which was labeled Y. We won our first match against an A team, but we then lost to Sheila Gabay’s team, but only by four imps. In the third round we tied a team that we had defeated on Tuesday. We had a win, a loss, and a tie, but our total victory points was above average.
We won the next three rounds. In the last round we played against two old friends of mine, Chris Apitz and Ellen Dilbert. We lost the match by 18, but it would have been a lot closer if I had not made a defensive error.on the second-to-last hand. Ellen was playing a doubled 5♦ contract. She had one trump and ♣9 on the board as well as some hearts and spades. Clubs had never been led. She led low to the 9. I had the ace and a small one. Thinking that my partner could beat the 9, I ducked, and it held the trick. We set them 500, but if it had been 800, we would have only lost the match by 4.
As it was we finished with the very respectable score of 74 victory points, which placed us third in X and second in Y. If I had played that ace, we would have finished second in X and first in Y. Still, we earned another 5.94 gold points.
The most amazing match of the event occurred in the seventh round. The Xiao team had lapped the field with an incredible total of 105 victory points (out of a possible 120) in the first six matches. However, in the last round they faced Sheila Gabay’s team. Sheila’s team won the last match by an astounding 42 imps and vaulted into second place.
On the way home I stopped at the Big Y near the McDonald’s in West Stafford to pick up a salad and a wrap for lunches on Friday and Saturday. I was shocked to discover that all of the other stores in that strip mall were unoccupied.
I stayed home on Thursday and took a few naps. I also walked four miles.
The only differences between the journey on Friday morning and the first two trips were the fact that Dido had stepped onto the pyre and I narrowly avoided having the torture of trailing a NETTS truck before it turned onto Route 83 in Somers.
Helen and her husband, who works in ecology.
I finally got to meet Helen Benson in the hotel’s ballroom. We had only a few items left to discuss before we got the horrendous news that we were in the top bracket of the knockout. Worse yet was the news that we were the lowest seeded of the seven teams, which necessitated that we play in three consecutive three-ways. We never even got to change tables. We sat at table C5 for the entire day.
In the last round we were forced to play Mark Aquino and Bill Braucher. It was more enjoyable to talk with them than to get pounded at the bridge table.
It was not a total loss. We won one match. It was against the Luo team that we had defeated once and tied once.
I went home discouraged, but I was hopeful about our chances in the Bracketed Pairs event on Friday. Surely we would not be in the top bracket. There were no other events scheduled that day.
The difference between Friday and Saturday was striking. Helen and I were East-West during both sessions, and we started at table 1 in both sessions. Our opponents on both occasion were Judy McNutt and Eli Jolley. The most amazing hand for me was Board #2 in the afternoon session.
We were bidding clubs, and they were bidding spades. We bid them all the way up to the five level before we gave up. After the hand I mentioned that the LAW of total Tricks predicted that we should be able to take ten tricks in clubs. If so, we should have bid 6♣. We would have only gone down two, and even if they doubled us, that would be better for us than the 650 that we lost for their vulnerable game.
However, it is quite obvious that East-West cannot come close to taking ten tricks with clubs as trumps. There is no way to avoid losing one spade, two hearts, and three diamonds. The LAW is off by three tricks! Eli said that the law tends to break down at the six level, but that has never been my experience. Furthermore, the East-West holdings do not seem to be exceptionally “impure”. It is true that the two honors in spades could just as well have been spot cards. Neither of South’s singletons produce any tricks on defense. Maybe the abundance of worthless shortness is the answer.
Helen did not participate in the discussion. I think that she might not be familiar with the workings of the LAW. She said that she had not read Larry Cohen’s classic book, To Bid or Not to Bid.
We were the top East-West team in the morning and second in the afternoon. That was good, but it was not as good as the performance of Pete Matthews and his partner, who won the event while sitting North-South both sessions. Still, we won over 13 masterpoints.
Jim and Mike had a bad morning, but they improved in the afternoon. We were all in pretty good spirits about the last event of the tournament, the Bracketed Swiss on Sunday.
I was the captain of our team. We were in the second bracket, as I hoped, but I was quite surprised that six of the other seven teams had more points than we did. So, we could expect a lot of tough matches. The format was six rounds of eight-board matches. We would therefore not play one of the other teams.
We actually won four of our six matches. That would ordinarily be good enough to allow us to squeak into the overall awards, but these results were unusual. One team lost all its matches. Unfortunately we were beaten badly in the last match by a team that was well behind us. I was very tired at that point, and I struggled mightily to maintain my concentration. Jim and Mike said that six days of bridge—they did not take Thursday off—had taken the toll on them as well.
We ended up with 60 victory points—exactly average. I was surprised to discover that we had defeated both the first- and second-place teams. We were mired in the next group. It was small consolation that we won a slightly larger match award than any of them.
All in all, this was one of my most successful regional tournaments. I had a pretty good time. I would play with Helen again if I had the chance.
The Marriott Hotel in Newton.
I was not enthusiastic of playing in the regional in Newton, MA, that was scheduled for June 17-22 at the Marriott Hotel. The Individual Regional was formerly held there every January. I did not have many fond memories of that event.6 The drive there was sometimes difficult, especially in the vicinity of the hotel. I don’t think that I had ever stayed at the hotel, and I had no intention of paying Marriott prices this time.
Abhi asked me to play in the Bracketed Pairs scheduled for Saturday. Later Ann Hughes asked me if Eric and I would want to play with her and Bob in the Open Swiss on Wednesday. So, I sort of reluctantly agreed to commute twice.
Google Maps said that the drive to the hotel would take about ninety minutes. I planned to leave 7:45. However, My wife Sue heard something on the television about heavy fog. She advised me to leave earlier and expect visibility problems.
I left a little before 7:30. I had no problems at all with visibility. I saw remarkably little traffic on either 190 or I-84. The going was also pretty easy on the Mass Pike. I was on target for a 9:00 arrival when all of a sudden all three lanes were filled with cars as far as the eye could see, and they were all stationary. My Honda inched its way through a couple of miles of this.
I was not sure what the original cause of the bottleneck was. At one point a bevy of vehicles, most of which were displaying flashing red and blue lights, had made camp off the the right of the road. After that the driving was much easier, but there were still a few delays. I was near the hotel when I got a phone call from Eric. I returned his call after I parked my car in the huge lot at 9:45. It was a good thing that I left fifteen minutes early.
I eventually found all three teammates. By the time that I grabbed a cup of coffee and made my way to table A6 I was quite frazzled. I went over my cheat sheet for Eric for a minute or two. I felt fairly comfortable with what we were playing, but in no way did I feel ready to play bridge.
There were three boards on our table, an indication that we would be playing eight matches with six boards each. The director announced that there were fifteen teams, which meant that teams 13, 14, and 15 played three-way matches in the first two rounds.
Our first opponents were Paul Simon (really!) and a woman whom I did not know. On the first hand Eric opened 1♣. I had a really weak hand with four spades and six diamonds headed by the KQ. I bid a spade. I hoped that Eric bid 1NT. We had an easy way for me to sign off in 2♦. If he raised my spades, I would pass. Unfortunately, what he did bid was 2♥, a reverse that indicated that he had a strong hand with more clubs than hearts.
Our card said that we played lebensohl when a reverse is initiated. I wanted to sign of in diamonds at the lowest possible level. To accomplish this I first bid 2NT. Eric was required to bid 3♣, but he forgot about lebensohl. Instead he bid 3NT. I understood the situation, but I decided to pass for two reasons. In the first place there was no guarantee that Eric would pass if I bid 4♦. The second one involved the First Rule of Holes: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
I got to play this horrible 3NT contract. It was worse than I even imagined Eric’s points were concentrated in the red suits. We had no stopper in either clubs or spades. The opponents took the first nine tricks. We were down five for a 500-point penalty. What a terrible start!.
After that Paul, sitting in the East chair, declared the other five hands. That meant that I had to find the lead on five consecutive hands. During one of those less memorable hands a brouhaha ensued at table A2, which was quite close to ours. Elayne Kadis, who was playing with her husband, Ken, complained loudly about something. The director immediately came to the table and warned her about Zero Tolerance violations. She continued talking and the director assigned some sort of punishment.
I was severely distracted by this. I recognized Elayne, or rather her voice8. Despite the distraction, things seemed to go better for us after the first hand. Nevertheless, I did not think that we had a prayer of winning the match.
However, when Bob and Ann returned to our table to compare scores, we were shocked when they announced +500 for hand #13, our first hand. It turned out that North had opened 1NT, which Eric and I never do with a five-card major, and his partner had responded 2NT, which was intended as a transfer to diamonds. North, however, forgot the convention and bid 3NT. So, South had to play the same horrible contract that I did. We ended up winning the match by eleven points.
In the second match two amazing coincidences happened. East played the first two hand, which made seven hands in a row that I had to make the opening lead. The other was that on the following hand I played another horrendous 3NT contract. In hearts Eric held Kx; I had Ax. We had good clubs and diamonds, but we were missing three aces. I went down four. Once again, the opponents at the other table were in the same contract, but our teammates’ failure to lead a heart at trick one gave them enough tempo to take nine tricks.
So, after nine hands West and North (Eric) had played no hands, East had played seven with mixed results, and I had played two for a total of nine undertricks!
At the lunch break we were 2-2. I overheard someone say that it was necessary to pay for parking at the hotel’s front desk. I had left my ticket in the car, and so I retrieved it at lunch and paid it. On my way back to the playing area I passed the area where Elayne was entertaining some other people with the story about her (not their) financial adviser reporting that she and her husband had too much money.
I spent most of the break by myself eating my roast beef sandwich, grapes, and potato chips. Eric joined me for a few minutes. I am not sure what Ann and Bob did.
We won the first two matches after lunch by two points each. We then lost to the best team by ten, and I guess it was my fault. Eric preempted 3♣. The opponents bid to 4♣. No one was vulnerable. I held QTx of clubs and not much else. I figured that we had ten clubs and they had ten spades. If so, 5♣ was safe. Unfortunately, Eric preempted with a weak hand and only six trumps. He went down five, and we lost the match by 10 IMPs.
We won the last match by 10, but it was not enough. we won five matches, but we just missed making the overalls.
The drive back was very slow for the first ten or fifteen miles, but it picked up after that. I was thankful for the weather—cloudy but no rain. A thunderstorm had been predicted, but it never materialized. This was definitely a blessing. The lines for the lanes on the Mass Pike—where they existed at all—were best described as light grey on medium grey. I would have had a very difficult time discerning them if they were wet.9
The drive on Saturday was not nearly as bad. I arose from bed at 5:00, which was certainly too early. I left the house at about 7:15, fifteen minutes earlier than on Wednesday. The weather was fine, and the traffic was much lighter than on Wednesday. The only problem that I encountered was in obtaining my breakfast. When I stopped at McDonald’s in West Stafford, I was shocked to hear they they had no meat products. The employee tried to interest me in something without me, but I had a two-word answer: “No score!”
I considered stopping in Sturbridge or the Burger King. I rejected the former because I reckoned that it would add fifteen minutes to my trip, and I had not liked the BK breakfasts the one time that I tried them. Instead, I decided to stop at the first rest area on the Mass Pike in Charlton. I had a vague recollection that the drive-through entrance for McD’s was in the southwest corner of the parking lot. I therefore steered the Honda in that direction and into the long approach to the first window—there was nothing like the ordering stations that were prevalent in other McD’s locations.
However, when I got to the first window, no one was in attendance. Likewise, the second window was not populated. I therefore drove the car to the small parking lot on the east side of the gas station and walked into the building. There was only one couple in line at McD’s, but they had apparently never been to such a place. They spent several minutes discussing what they wanted. They then placed their orders one at a time. The man, who went second, had a difficult time deciding after his wife had placed her order. In short, they did not behave like typical fast-food devotees.
I finally got my sandwich and consumed it while I was driving on the Pike. It was very tasty, but it cost nearly $1 more than what was charged in West Stafford, which in turn was $1 higher than what I was accustomed to paying in Hartford.
I arrived at the hotel parking lot at the ridiculous time of 8:43. It was easy to find a “pull-through” parking space that I could exit by driving forward.
The hotel staff had just put out the free coffee and breakfast treats. I got a cup of the former and took a seat inside the huge ballroom. I was confused about the event that Abhi and I would be playing in. I thought that we were playing in the Bracketed Pairs, whereas his email clearly mentioned that a “good pair” had asked him to play with them. So, I spent more than an hour on the lookout for him in the wrong area.9 At 9:50 I called Abhi, but his phone must have been turned off. A minute or so later he located me and directed me to the back room—the same area in which the Open Swiss had been held on Wednesday.
I gave Abhi my credit card, and he bought our entry. We were team #13 out of 16, one more than on Wednesday. Abhi introduced me to our teammates Stan Tuhrim and Betty Mintz. They were from New York City, but apparently they also had a residence in Pittsfield, MA. They were not very talkative.
In the first round we had the misfortune of playing against the team of four Chinese guys who ended up winning the event. I did not know who they were, but one of them recognized my name. He thought that I had been president of the district. I told him that I only sent out the emails. We lost that match by 18 IMPs. We lost thee second match to Don Caplin’s team by 21 IMPs. Betty was upset at Don’s behavior during the round; I don’t know the specifics.
I expected easy competition in the third round, but we actually faced two good players, Paul Harris and Peter Clay. Their teammates were also pretty good, but we prevailed by 3 IMPs.
Our worst round was the fourth one. We lost to a team that included Charlotte Bailey by one lousy IMP. I was surprised by the results. I played both of the hands that generated our 18 IMPs in the + column..
As usual, all of my teammates disappeared during the lunch break. I spent most of my time with Charlotte Bailey and her husband, Alan Godes. They did not have much to say. They both had cans of Diet Coke. I knew that I would need a caffeine boost for the afternoon. I asked Alan where they got the drinks. He said that they got them from home. I asked him if he would mind going home to get me one. For some reason that notion did not appeal to him.
The friendliest round that we had was the first after lunch. We played against Shirley Wagner and another woman from Central Mass. I assured Shirley that she was Sue’s favorite person in the world. We won, but only by 3 imps. In the sixth round we played against Dottie Kelleher and Dan Morgenstern. I thought that we held our own except on one hand in which I went down in a 3NT contract sitting South. The contract is unbeatable if North plays it. I still could have made it if I had played dummy’s ♥K on the first trick. Even so we would have lost the match, but by 7 IMPs, not 18.
This hand merits a little more analysis. I opened 1♦. Abhi raised to 2, a strong bid. I bid 2♠, which shows a stopper in spade but nothing in hearts. Abhi, with a game-forcing hand, a good club stopper and Kx in hearts could have (and probably should have) bid 3NT. Instead he showed the club stopper. I could have (and probably should have) bid 3♦ , but I had a minimal hand, and I certainly did not want him to bid 5♦. So, I bid 3NT myself and hoped for the best.
We finally got our machine in gear by defeating the team that finished last by 26 IMPs. Before the match they were ahead of us.
Our reward for the victory was to play Geof Bord and Alan Watson in the last round. There were two swing hands. On the first one Abhi went down in a 3NT contract that was made at the other table. On the other one Geof and Alan bid and made a slam using part of the Wolff Signoff convention that I was not familiar with. Alan’s second bid was 2NT. Geof initiated the convention with a bid of 3♣. Alan was required to bid 3♦. Usually, the next bid is a pass or a signoff. In this case, however, Geof bid 3NT, which indicated slam interest and support for opener’s minor suit. They ended up in 6♣. I was impressed.
I was also impressed by my play in the one hand that I declared. I was extremely tired, but I kept myself together enough to take twelve tricks in a notrump contract. My counterpart at the other table only took ten. So, we earned 2 imps on that hand. Overall, however, we lost by 27 IMPs, just short of a blitz.
So we won only three matches out of eight. I did not particularly like playing with our teammates. Perhaps they thought that we were not holding up our end. There were a lot of really good teams. I thought that our result was commensurate with our play.
I did not enjoy the experience. I did not get to know our teammates at all. Abhi, who is a deliberate player, and I spent a lot of time waiting for them to finish the hands. We got to talk with our opponents a lot more than we did with the teammates.
I was pulled over by a Massachusetts state cop on my way home. He said that my car nearly ran into his when I changed lanes. He must have been in the blind spot of my left mirror, but I am at a loss to explain how he got there without my noticing him. On the Interstates I usually keep a close watch on what is going on behind me. He only gave me a warning.
Warwick
Norwich
1. The erroneous CofC was still available through Google as of April of 2025.
2. Prior to 2020 the GNT Flight B qualifier always was spread over two days. The second day was a four-team knockout. There was no GNT in 2020. In 2021 through 2024 it had been held online using a format that I tolerated in 2021. I planned to play in 2022, but the pair that had agreed to play with Ken Leopold and me reneged on the agreement. I was not eligible for Flight B in 2023 and 2024.
3. She went by Helen, but her real name was Elena DiBissi Benson. She was born in the Abruzzo region of Italy. I told her that I had been there. It was true, but on the South Italy bus tour that Sue and I took in 2011 we only drove through the southern part of the region on our way from Tivoli to Vieste.
4. I happened to overhear David, while he was talking with Eric and Jeff about the card that they would be playing, mention that he was born and raised in Southbridge, and his father was the town attorney.
5. The last Individual Regional was held January 6-8, 2016. At that time I think that the hotel was a Holiday Inn. The district was the only district in North America that was still holding such an event. It was discontinued because the attendance at the two-session individual events (in which each player plays with a large number of different partners) had not been good in the previous few years. The event, which I heavily publicized in emails, drew over forty tables, much better than in previous years. In the last individual on Saturday, January 7, I was in first place out of the 160+ participants. I had played OK in the morning, but I had made one mistake that was so horrible that I had to apologize to my partner. Nevertheless, I somehow record a game of over 68 percent. In the afternoon I played even better, and one of my partners was a World Champion, Pat McDevitt. Nevertheless my score plummeted into the low forties, and I did not even make the overalls.
7. At one time the behavior on the bridge circuit was apparently disruptive before I began playing seriously. A “zero-tolerance” policy was implemented by the ACBL and enforced rather strictly. Behavior since that time has been exemplary for the most part.
8. I had a previous run-in with Elayne Kadis before the pandemic. It was an Open Swiss in, I believe, Nashua, NH. She was playing with exactly the same team—her husband, Steve Gladyszak, and Barbara Murphy.
The district had for a few years enforced a policy designed to speed up play in Swiss events: a player could decide not to play the last hand in a round if there was a danger of not being able to finish the hand and turn in results before time expired.
In the match against the Kadises Elayne, sitting South, had played the first five hands. I was West. My counterpart at the other table was Steve Gladyszak, a very fine play who also played very fast. I did not want to declare a hand with only a few minutes remaining when he might have declared it with plenty of time to think.
When I exercised my option not to continue Elayne loudly protested and then called the director, Marilyn Wells from New Jersey. She evidently did not know the district’s policy and ruled that we had to play the hand, and she penalized our team!
David Metcalf.
I later reported this to the head director, David Metcalf. He was very surprised that this happened. He also asked me who the director was.
Incidentally Ken Kadis was silent or at least soft-spoken during both of these incidents.
9. This was a reference to my cataracts. I had surgery scheduled for August and September.
10. It was not a complete waste of time. I was able to go over in my mind the convention card that I would be playing with Abhi, and I also had a few minutes to talk with Joe Brouillard, a good friend whom I had hardly talked with in the last five years.
Johnston Sectional in March: In January of 2024 Abhi Dutta asked me to play with him at the Rhode Island sectional tournament scheduled for March 2-3. I could not play on Saturday because it was my wife Sue’s birthday, but I agreed to play in the Swiss on Sunday. Abhi was out of town for most of the month of February, but he contacted me late in the month to report that he had acquired teammates. In Johnston I learned that our teammates were the DiOrios, Lou and Megan. I had worked with Megan on the committee for the NABC event in Providence in 2022 (introduced here), and I had played on a team with Lou some time before that.
I was not sanguine about our chances. The partnership of Abhi and me had really recorded only one good result (described here), and that was nineteen months earlier. Our more recent games were not memorable. I also did not remember great successes recorded for either Lou or Megan. The fact that we drew #13 did not raise my hopes, although I always remind people that for Wilt Chamberlain that number was reportedly lucky 20,000 times.2
In the first round Abhi and I played against Al Votolato and someone whom I did not know. The very first hand was weird. Al’s partner opened 1♦ in the second seat; Abhi passed; Al responded 1♠; I passed, and so did Al’s partner! Abhi made the mistake of doubling, which gave Al a chance to bid 2♦, which was the final contract. I asked Al if they had an agreement that allowed his partner to pass his response. He said that he was as surprised as I was. His partner at first defended his pass, but when he understood the situation he said that he did not realize that he had passed.
In the end, even though they were an A team, and we were a B team, we defeated them 29-0, which was a “blitz” that converted to the maximum victory point score of 20. We scored at least one imp on six of the seven hands, and the seventh hand was a push.
In the second round we played another A team, Dan Jablonski and Cilla Borras. They were both very good players whom I had played against several times. I made a horrible mistake in playing a 5♣ contract that Abhi put me in. For some reason I thought that we had nine trumps, not eight. I was therefore quite confident of making the bid when I dropped Dan’s queen on the second round of trumps. A little later, however, I mistakenly led a low diamond from the board. Cilla, who was on my right, ruffed it, and I underruffed even though I had a diamond! I took the requisite eleven tricks, but I was penalized one trick for revoking. Abhi insisted that he warned me when I did it.1
This faux pas cost us 11 imps. We would have lost the match anyway, but our running total of victory points was four fewer—21 as opposed to 25. This was not all bad because we got to play a much weaker B team in the third round, and we beat them 31-0—another blitz.
In the last round before lunch we played a much better B team, Mike McDonald and Tom Floyd. We beat them by 12 imps. At the break we had amassed 56 out of a possible 80 victory points. That was good enough for second place.
I had ordered a salad for lunch. I ate about half of it as well as a bag of chips and a Diet Coke. I sat by myself. I don’t know where my teammates went.
In the fifth round we played the team that was in first place. It included Sheila Gabay and Alan Watson, who had won both sessions of the pairs game on Saturday. The foursome had blitzed both of their last two opponents. Abhi and I played against another very fine pair, Max Siline and Carrie Liu. On the first hand I made 3NT, and our Sheila and Alan had a misunderstanding in their bidding. That was enough for a ten-imp swing, but we would have won the match anyway. The final score was 30-13. Abhi and I had no negative scores at all. I was wondering if it were possible to lose with no negative scores (Yes!), and I was worried that I would find out. I had played against Sheila’s teams at least six or seven times, and I had never won before.
I thought that I played pretty well in the sixth round, but we lost by 16 points to a very good B team. It seemed to me that most of the problems were at the other table. I was most proud of the fact that two of our twelve imps came from when I passed in the fourth seat.
In the last round we played against people whom I did not know. I again passed in the fourth seat, and this time it was worth five imps. Since our margin of victory in this match was only nine imps, I was very surprised to learn that we had won the event by two victory points over both the Siline team and the team from the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC)—Tom Gerchman, Linda Starr, and Bob and Ann Hughes. I was still in a foul mood because at the very end of the last hand Abhi had trumped a trick that I would have won anyway. That mistake cost us six imps, which would have given us two additional victory points. Even so, we brought home 7.15 silver masterpoints.
I did not receive much satisfaction from this result. I had made one huge and embarrassing mistake, and Abhi had made several smaller ones. However, out teammates were very excited about winning. They even asked Tom Gerchman (of all people) to take a photo of the four of us with a cellphone. He had a great deal of difficulty with the assignment.
Was our victory a fluke? I thought so at the time, but after examine the results, I am more inclined to think that we were the best team that day with that set of cards in a fairly weak field. We played all but one of the top teams. We never played against a C team. We beat the top-seeded team decisively in our match with them. We could easily have had quite a few more victory points than we did.
I still had a ninety-minute drive ahead of me. The traffic was slow, and for the first half hour the sun was really brutal even though I had on sunglasses and pulled down the visor as low as I could get it. The high temperature that day was 67 degrees.
On the way home I stopped at Big Y in Stafford and bought a cake for Sue. I should have done it so she could have enjoyed a piece on her birthday, but this was much better than nothing.
St. Patrick’s Day Sectional in Orange, CT: Bill Segraves did a tremendous job of setting up and running this tournament, which occurred the weekend of March 15-17. I am glad that he took the job of president. I would not have had the energy to pull something like this off. The date was the best that could be arranged, but it conflicted with the first weekend of the NABC spring tournament in Louisville. So, undoubtedly some of the best players could be expected to be at that event. That date also meant that it might be difficult to find a director. Robert Neuhart from Troy, NY, was hired. I had no previous familiarity with him.
The design and promotion of this tournament was much better than what was done for the previous ones. I thought that the St. Patrick’s Day theme, which I in fact suggested, was a little overdone, but people seemed to be having fun with it. I planned on wearing on Sunday my bright green sweater that my dad bought in Ireland. Before play started Bill paraded around in a hooded green jumpsuit and a green mask. To goose the Sunday attendance the games on Sunday were designated to support the Grass Roots fund.
A decision was made to increase the masterpoint limit for the Friday and Saturday limited pairs games to 750 masterpoints, but only non-Life Masters were allowed to play. This turned out to be a good decision. The limited games, which had been a problem, were pretty well attended throughout.
I decided to play all three days. Eric Vogel agreed to play with me in the pairs games on Friday and Saturday. I had difficulty finding a suitable partner and teammates for the Sunday Swiss. I sent out a solicitation to my usual list of potential partners, but the only responses that I received were from Buz Kohn, Joan Brault, and Terry Lubman. Terry said that she was still in Florida. Buz was the first to respond positively, but he backed out shortly thereafter. So, I agreed to play with Joan. No one expressed any interest in teaming up with us. So, I sent a request to the email address for partnerships that was on the flyer. Bill replied with an email that indicated that he would find someone. He eventually assigned us to play with Ivan Smirnov from Staten Island and Joe Lanzel from Foxborough, MA. I told Ivan that I would be wearing a bright green sweater with “Ireland” on the chest.
I commuted all three days by myself. Each trip to Orange took a little over an hour, but that included my usual stop at the McDonald’s in Cromwell to purchase a sausage biscuit with egg sandwich. The price at the McD at the end of the ramp for Exit 21 charged a dime less than the one in Hartford. However, the man taking the order on Sunday entered it as “sausage biscuit, add folded egg.” The cost was almost $1 less.
I left each day at about 8:25 and arrived at 9:30. The traffic was heavier on Friday, but it did not really slow me down. A strange thing happened with my car in the mornings. I was accustomed to turning on the front window defogger on cold days. This heated up the car on Saturday, but on Sunday it blew nothing but cold air.4
The return trips were as uneventful as the morning drives, except for the Sunday evening drive. The line of cars backed up on the parkway at the exit that led to I-91 north was more than a mile long. It took me more than ninety minutes to complete that trip.
I decided to wear a mask throughout the tournament. Almost no one except Bill and Frank Blachowski wore one.
Since I arrived on Friday morning before Eric did, I got in line to buy our entry fee. For some reason the director did not allow purchasing of both sessions. I charged the first session. Eric later bought the afternoon session. There was no problem with the transactions on Friday and Saturday. However, the computer connection with the card reading device did not work on Sunday. and so everyone had to pay in cash. I was the customer for whom the malfunction first was discovered. I don’t know if the problem was ever fixed.
The first thing that I noticed about the pairs games on Friday was that Peter Marcus was in attendance and was actually playing with Bill Segraves to fill out the movement. I had seen him at many tournaments, but I had only seen him play bridge once, and that was at the HBC.
The second peculiarity was that there were no clocks to keep track of the time remaining in each round. I cannot remember ever playing in a tournament in which there were no clocks. I never heard why this was the case in Orange. Perhaps the unit has depended on the directors to bring them.
Once play began it was pretty evident that, although the attendance was good (seventeen tables), the field was not as strong as it usually was. That was definitely reflected in the results. Eric and I were in first place after six rounds, but in the last round we were passed by a C team from the HBC, John Lloyd and Donna Simpson. We still won 5.84 points. I did not think that we played particularly well.
Eric and I had two egregious bidding mistakes in the morning session, but only one of them hurt us. Eric had apparently not reviewed our card thoroughly enough.
On one hand we were on defense after I had opened 1♠. I led the ace and then the queen. Eric ruffed it. After the hand I explained that when I led ace and then queen of a suit that I had bid, it meant that I also had the king. He asked why I didn’t just lead the king after the ace. I said that if I did, he would not know that I also had the queen.
Our level of play did not diminish in the afternoon, but our results dropped off a lot. I did not circle a single hand on the scorecard. We finished above 50 percent, but we did not make the overalls, and so we did not get any points.
We actually played better on Saturday. We earned over 9.37 masterpoints over the course of two days. That was not close to Rich DeMartino’s total. He won all three pairs games in which he participated.
We might have gone over the ten-point mark if Eric had not made an uncharacteristic blunder near the end. Acting as declarer, he intended to set up a cross-ruff for the last three tricks, but he discarded the wrong card from his hand. That left him with a heart and two trumps in both hands.
A strange situation occurred on Saturday. The opponent on my right was about to declare a hand. His partner was in the act of setting down the dummy when he accidentally dropped most of his cards on the floor. I did not look, but he said that some were face-up. He said that he was not able to get down on his knees to pick them up, and therefore he called the director, who was also not very spry. I volunteered to put my lead on the table and gather together the cards, but the director insisted on doing it himself.
Eric and I bid a slam in spades after he had opened 2♣. He had hearts and spades. We decided to change our response to the 2♠ follow-up so that the relay to 2NT could be broken if responder had spade support. This eliminated the ambiguity of the sequence 2♣-22♦-2♠-2NT-32♥-4♠. Previously it could have meant signing off in spades or Kickback for hearts.
Ordering lunch was embarrassing. I only wrote the six letters of my last name, but on both occasions the result was almost unreadable.
By the way, both lunches were good. The only problem with Friday’s salad with lots of meat and cheese on Friday was that the only beverage available was a small bottle of water. The sandwich on Saturday was even meatier. This caterer also brought cans of soft drinks. There were only two Diet Cokes, but I managed to claim one. The pizza on Sunday was OK, but the pairs game was still in process when the ninety-six people playing in the Swiss went to lunch. Usually there is enough pizza for seconds, but by the time that the pairs players ate, the teams were back in combat.
Our first round was against Debbie Prince’s team. We won by seven. In the second round we were blasted by 26 imps by a very good team. Joan and I thought that we had more or less held our own, but no hands showed positive results. Our teammates failed to set a 4♠ contract that I could see no way to make. They also bid an impossible slam that got doubled. We won the third round by 13 imps over a C team.
After lunch we played Mike Heider’s team. The results on two 3NT contracts startled me. On one I went down, and they made it at the other table. On the other they made it at our table with two overtricks, but our teammates did not even make the bid. In the fifth round we faced the team from the HBC that had done well in Johnston. Joan and I played against Ann and Bob Hughes. We thought that we had done pretty well, but we were worried about one hand on which we bid 3♠ but made 4. In reality, that hand was our only positive result in an extremely painful 17-imp loss.
Halfway through the sixth round against a team that obviously was over its head I lost interest and started playing badly. Nevertheless, we won the last two matches by 21 and 5 points to finish with four wins and 70 victory points—exactly average.
Our worst hand all day was the last one. We were playing Cappelletti, the only notrump defense that Joan will play. Cindy Lyall, sitting West, opened 1NT, and Joan doubled for penalty. I had a flat hand with only one honor, a queen. Cindy ended up making 3NT for 380 points. It would have been better for them to bid and make 3NT, but at the other table Joe went down in 1NT. Since I did nothing except follow suit and discard the four spot cards in hearts that I was dealt, I have no way to know whether Joan’s defense or Joe’s declarer play was more to blame for this fiasco.
Shekhar and Shashank won the afternoon session of the 0-750 pairs! They won almost three silver points in their first day at a tournament.
The attendance at the tournament was good through the entire weekend. That proved to me that good planning, good marketing, and a good schedule are still the keys to successful attendance in the world of tournament bridge.
Summer on the Sound Sectional in Stamford, CT: The tournament was held at the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church on August 9-11. No one asked me to play, and it is a very long drive for me. So, I did not attend. The attendance was good: 57 tables on Friday, 50.5 on Saturday, and 52.5 on Sunday.
I heard from Mike Heider that they ordered far too many pizzas on Sunday. He said that at least a dozen boxes of them were being given away at the end of the tournament.
Western Mass Championships in Great Barrington, MA; The annual tournament in Great Barrington, MA, began on my 76th birthday. I had played with Abhi Dutta in this event in both 2022 and 2023. Our teammates in the Sunday Swiss in those events were Mike Heider and Jim Osofsky. They also agreed to team up in 2024.
The weather forecast was for some rain on Saturday night and Sunday because of Hurricane Ernesto, which was in the Atlantic Ocean heading northeast. It was not expected to land, but locations near the ocean had really been deluged.
On Saturday morning the weather was clear. I took the Mass Pike to Lee and then drove south to GB. I stopped at the McDonald’s near the Berkshire South Regional Community Center that hosted the tournament every year. The event was being held in the gymnasium. I remembered from previous years that it was somewhat cold in there at times, and so I brought my nylon windbreaker, even though it has picked up a few bullet holes over the years.
Tables and chairs replaced the exercise equipment.
When I arrived in the gym I found a table near the back of the building and ate my sandwich while wearing my jacket. The director, Tim Hill, began selling entries a little after I arrived. By the time that I finished the sandwich the line for purchasing entries was pretty long. I had nothing better to do, and so I got in line. The entries cost $15 per session, and the credit card reader was working. I bought both entries for Saturday and let Abhi buy the Sunday entry. We started as E-W at table V5, which happened to be the same table at which I ate breakfast.
I accidentally sat in the East chair. I almost never play East. Perhaps I should have switched as soon as I noticed it.
Before the event started Mike Ramella conducted some sort of raffle. The acoustics in the gym were deplorable, and very few people were able to understand anything that he said. A woman also gave a presentation promoting some kind of show. She carried a poster about it. I couldn’t understand what she said either.
In the morning there were two sections in the open pairs and one five-table Howell in the 299er pairs. There were 21.5 pairs in the open.
The morning session was chaotic. Somehow the BridgeMates got fouled up, and the results (and player numbers) for the first few rounds were lost.
For some reason Abhi and I made games when we bid partials and slams when we bid games. Our opponents made mistake, but they always seemed to end in the right spot.
Abhi failed to take advantage of a once-in-a lifetime situation on hand #6: I opened a strong 1NT, and he had a hand with seven hearts and only four losers. After trying Stayman (because he also had four good spades), Abhi jumped to 4♥, which I passed after mulling over what in the world had possessed him. He easily made 6♥.
I could not immediately concoct a “scientific” bidding sequence that could find the slam. On Sunday morning I wrote up a better sequence that had him start with a transfer and then used cue bidding. At the end he would jump to 5♦ or 5♥ and leave the final decision to me. Because I had prime values, I would have certainly bid the slam.
I did not even check the results for the first round. I was sure that we were in the forties, which would be a miserable score. We had correctly been placed in the A strat. Most of the players in attendance had much less experience than I did.
I only enjoyed two moments. The first was when we had time after the against Debbie Prince and Janice Bazzini, whom I knew from the HBC. Debbie remarked that she could not come to the Simsbury Bridge Club games because her book club met on Wednesday evenings. I asked her if she had ever heard of John Banville. She said that she had not, but she wrote down his name. On Sunday I brought two of his books to loan her, but the two ladies did not play on Sunday.
The other good moment was also at the end of a round. Elizabeth Gompels, who lived in Cambridge, whom Abhi knew much better than I did, thanked me for all that I had done for bridge in New England. I told her that I no long did the emails or website. I also told her that all my pages on the website had been deleted. She was duly sympathetic to my frustration.
The sandwiches at lunch were tiny but tasty. I had tuna. They also provided chips, soda, and dessert. The previous lunches that I had had at this tournament were not to my liking, and I do not have high standards.
The afternoon session was much better. The only embarrassment was when Abhi forgot what defense we were playing against a weak 1NT opening. The opponents, Al Votolato and Grace Charron, asked what Abhi’s double meant. I said that he had a strong hand with at least fourteen points. Actually, he had a long suit and a mediocre hand.
The 299er pairs game had too few participants. Those people had to play in the open pairs, which had 24 tables in two sections. We placed fourth in our section, which earned us .84 masterpoints.
The drive back to Enfield was uneventful. Sue heated up some leftover pork chops. We watched Person of Interest and Raising Hope together.
Patty Tucker and Robert Minter have published books on Kickback.
The weather was still dry when I left on Sunday morning. I arrived at the gym and almost immediately saw Judy Hyde, with whom I planned to play in the regional tournament in Warwick a few weeks later. We sat together for a few minutes. I briefly explained the Minorwood, Redwood, and Kickback5 versions of Roman Key Card Blackwood to her. She then had to rush off to talk with her partner for that day, Philippe Galaski.
When Abhi arrived, I went over Hand #6 (above) with him as well as two somewhat obscure variations on the Stayman convention.
In the first round we faced Mike Ramella’s team. I thought that we had won easily, but I did not realize that Abhi had been conservative with an eight-card club suit, which caused us to miss another game. In addition, our teammates had a serious bidding misunderstanding. We ended up losing by four IMPs. We then defeated two C-strat teams, but only by nine IMPs and 1 IMP respectively.
The lunch was rather strange. They only allowed people to take one piece of pizza, and they only offered two choices—vegetarian and pepperoni. Chips, soda, and home-made desserts were available. I ordinarily avoided dessert, but on this occasion I ate two cookies because of the limit on pizza.
Our team ate together. One of the topics of conversation was obsession with results. Jim related how one of his previous teammates, Bunny Kliman, used to run (I doubt that!) around announcing how many matchpoints the team had won by multiplying the number of victories times the match award. I insisted that I did not even want to know the value of the match award because it distracted from the actual goal, which was always to finish high in the overall results.
Jim and Abhi went somewhere, which provided me with a chance to chat with Mike. He was wearing his famous tee shirt, which was emblazoned with a drawing of a dog and the words “In dog years I’m dead.” He had worn this to every Sunday Swiss event for many years, but the lettering was not very faded. When I asked him if the one he was wearing was the original, he said it was the second one. I then inquired if he washed it. He answered in the affirmative, and then quickly corrected his answer to “My wife washes it.”
I responded, “You really mean that she tells you that she washes it. She probably just throws it in the dryer, folds it, and gives it to you.”
That led to a discussion of getting old. I told him about my baseball cap with the text “It’s weird being the same age as old people.” I then mentioned my favorite saying was “Women my age are very old.” That always got a reaction.
A big smile appeared on his face as he said, “It’s true.” I had not seen that smile for some time. He had been experiencing health problems. They definitely affected his walking and his balance, and I suspected that they also affected his bridge game. I was very glad to see him smile.
In the first round after lunch we lost by thirteen IMPs to a B team that Abhi and I did not think was very good. The scores that Mike and Jim produced were discouragingly bad. At that point we were in tenth place overall, which was terrible for an A team. Jim said to me privately “Remember what you said about the match awards.”
As it turned out, losing that round was a blessing in disguise. The all-star team captained by Judy Hyde had been mowing down every opponent. The team that we lost to in the fourth round was one of their victims in the afternoon. Our low standing meant never had to play them. At the end Judy’s team had the remarkable total of 122 victory points out of a possible 140.
The back side of our scoresheet showed us scoring a six-IMP victory over an A team followed by a resounding twenty-five point win over a B team. That gave us a total of 70 victory points after six rounds, which tied us with the team from the Hartford Bridge Club—Tom Gerchman, Ben Levine, and Ken and Lori Leopold. We played them in the final round. Abhi and I played against Tom and Ben.
As luck would have it, the match came down to the last hand. Ben opened the bidding with 2♠, a preemptive bid that showed a relatively weak hand with six spades. After Abhi passed, Tm made the unusual bid of 4♥. I passed. Ben thought for a while and then bid 4♠. After Abhi passed, Tom bid 5♥, and that was the final contract.
When I led the ♣Q, Tom scoffed and said to Ben, “I know that you are void; that is why I jumped to 4♥ to show you I had a self sufficient hand.” He was obviously disgusted that he was now forced to take eleven tricks. It was generally considered a good idea for a person who made a preemptive bid to refrain from bidding thereafter.
In fact, Ben had two hearts, six spades headed by the AKQ, two diamonds, and three clubs. Tom called for a low club. Abhi and Tom also played low clubs. So, I surprisingly won the trick. I wondered why both Abhi and Tom let me win it. Abhi’s was the ♣6. I could see every club lower than the 6. We were playing standard carding. His signal clearly indicated that he did NOT want me to lead another club. Unfortunately, I could not figure out what he did want me to lead. I settled for a trump. I was afraid that a switch to diamonds would finesse give declarer a free trick.
I learned later that Abhi had both the ace and king of clubs, but his only other club was the 6. He was quite upset with me for not continuing clubs. He asked, “What possible reason could there be for not continuing clubs?” I reminded him that he clearly signaled that he did not want me to continue, and at trick one in such a weird auction I did not know what to do. I did not mention it, but he obviously should have overtaken my queen, and led clubs himself. Evidently this never occurred to him.
So, long story short. Tom took his eleven tricks. Abhi was beside himself.
Short story a little longer: At the other table the bidding was the same, except that Mike passed 4♥, and Ken doubled. Lori, holding my hand, was on lead. She led a spade. This allowed Jim to take twelve tricks. We won eight IMPs on that hand and won the match by six.
This vaulted us into third place overall, which was precisely the same result, earned in an eerily similar fashion, as what occurred the previous year (described here).
The weather both days featured pleasant temperatures, but the sun was never visible because of clouds and particulates that had been generated by forest fires in Canada.
The drive home after winning the last round of a Swiss is almost always pleasant. This was no exception. However, just before I reached Westfield, MA, the traffic in both lanes slowed down to only 35 mph, which is less than half the usual pace. As I got closer to I-91, the traffic thinned a little, but it began raining. By the time that I reached Springfield, it had reached the level of a downpour. The last twenty minutes of the trip was not pleasant. It was well before sunset, but the sky was dark enough, and the rain was heavy enough to make it somewhat dangerous.
Oxford received a once-in-a-thousand-years rainfall.
Sue had spent the day at the Davis family reunion. She heated up some leftovers for both of us. I ate mine while watching Reacher and Endeavour. She made a plate for herself, but she was so tired that she fell asleep in her chair without touching her food.
I later learned that southern Connecticut had experienced severe storms all day long on Sunday. Oxford received more than sixteen inches of rain in one day!
Fall Sectional in Johnston, RI: At some point in August Abhi asked me too play with him at the sectional tournament in Johnston, RI, scheduled for September 21-22. He was looking for a partner for Saturday and for teammates on Sunday. Knowing that I would be missing on two consecutive occasions my standing game with Peter Katz at the HBC, I declined the invitation for Saturday. I asked a new partner, John Lloyd (introduced here), to play with me on Sunday. We worked out a convention card and arranged to meet at 8am at the Park & Ride at Exit 70 on I-84. He would be coming from Avon, CT. I would drive down Route 32 from Stafford.
John had recently purchased a white Audi that he was quite proud of. So, he drove from the parking lot to Johnston. As expected on a Sunday morning, the drive was quite uneventful. Since the rising sun was obscured by clouds, we were not bothered by the usual blinding rays on the predominantly eastbound journey. We talked about a few things with which John had little experience, such as defending against weak 1NT bidding and strong club systems.
Vipin Mayar.
When we arrived at the Johnston Senior Center at a little before 9am, I was surprised to see relatively few cars in the parking lot. In fact, only a dozen teams participated in the event. That was 20 percent fewer than the number in the March sectional described above.
Abhi arrived a little after we did. He introduced us to his partner, Vipin Mayar, who had about 170 masterpoints. So, I had more masterpoints than the rest of the team combined. We were in the B stratum, which contained five teams.
We played eight rounds of six boards each. I would have preferred to play six rounds of eight boards. It probably would have gone a little faster and minimized the number of mismatches in the late rounds.
We narrowly lost our first match to another B team from Rhode Island. We then won a close match against a team of HBC players, the Leopolds, Rob Stillman, and Ronit Shoham. It would not have been close except for the fact that Abhi somehow went down three in a 5♥ contract whereas John and I defeated Ken by only one trick in 6♥. We then won two close matches against a B team and a C team. So, at lunch we were 3-1 with 42 victory points.
I can’t comment on the lunches that they sold. John and I both brought sandwiches.
We won our fifth match against the first A team that we had faced. John and I played against Sheila Gabay and Alan Watson. After we compared scores, I found it incredible that Abhi and I had defeated Sheila in both matches in 2024. I had played against her many times in Swiss matches in the previous fifteen years with absolutely no success.
In the last three rounds we were beaten badly by two other A teams, and we defeated a C team. We won five matches, but our total of only 73 victory points kept us out of the overalls. I found the afternoon session to be very tedious. I played one partial against Sheila’s team, no hands in round 6 and 8, the two rounds that we lost badly. I called such situations in which you feel powerless “playing D&D”—defense and dummy.
The drive home was not bad. My navigating instructions were basically all “Keep to the right.” I enjoyed being with John. He is serious about bridge, and he was a pretty good partner. He forgot a couple of conventions, which caused a few embarrassing moments. He asked me later for advice on how he could improve his ability to spot the situations in which they might occur. This is what I wrote to him:
One key to remembering might be to do it earlier. When you put down a pass card, and your partner has not bid yet, try to categorize your hand as garbage, possibly supporting, or invitational. Then look at your major suits and make a plan as to how you might support. Since one new convention, Drury, is part of that support process, this will allow you to put it into your memory process more often.
When you open a minor you would prefer to end up in NT or a suit. Plan ahead. If partner bids a major he is showing four pieces. If you have four, you are set. However, if you have three pieces you should immediately think about the two tools for finding a 5-3 fit. You can tell partner about your three with a support double or redouble. Partner can tell you about his five with new minor forcing. If partner does not bid a major, then you need to determine whether you should end up in NT or a minor. These require a different set of tools.
Memory improves with repetition, but the repetition need not come under fire. If you plan ahead for potential fits, you activate the right memories without necessarily deploying them.
I used Bridge Baron to learn new conventions. It provided a large number of samples or nearly every convention imaginable. Sometimes the convention was appropriate. Sometimes it wasn’t. Unfortunately, my copy disappeared at some point.
October Sectional in Orange: The CBA’s final sectional of the year was held in Orange on the weekend of October 25-27. Eric agreed to play with me in the Open Pairs, but I was unable to find a partner for the Swiss on Sunday even though two different pairs contacted me about teaming up with them. I had to decline, of course.
The tournament was both very well organized, and the attendance reflected the effort. Bill Segraves, Cornelia Guest, and others did a very good job.
At the beginning of the tournament I was in a terrible mood. I had received a very strange email from Bill on the previous Saturday:
I just stumbled upon your blog and write to express my concern about two aspects of this:
1) It would have been my thinking that CBA board members engaging in communication while acting in that capacity have a reasonable expectation that their communication is not all for public display and consumption. If that is not something you can accept and act on, then I need to bring it up to the board for discussion right away.
2) In your blog, you are presenting a particular viewpoint on various things, but it is not the only viewpoint. I don’t think you even meant to have caused hurt by some of your comments and omissions, but you have.
Of course, I did not agree that people had such an expectation, particularly when they used “reply all”. I certainly did not intend to “cause hurt”. I replied as follows:
I have never purposely done anything hurtful to anyone in my adult life. Prior to Covid there was practically no communication on the Internet among members of the CBA. If there are boundaries about this, I am unaware of them.
Let me know what you want removed. I will tend to it. I know of no one who reads my blogs regularly. I have a hard time believing that people do not want me to express my opinions. I have written over one million words in blog entries. Someone is bound to take issue with some of them.
I am very unhappy with life. I have no family or pets. The only things that I have left are bridge and writing. I already concluded that people were actively trying to take the former away from me. I am very reluctant to accept censorship about the latter.
He wanted to talk on the telephone about the situation. It was very strange and awkward conversation. He refused to provide details. He only said that he would censor himself in future communications with me. This has been my practice for thirty years; it surprised me that he would only start at that point.
On Tuesday I had learned that Peter Marcus had sent a “scathing” email to Donna Feir complaining about the HBC’s supposed supporting of my opinions or activities. She offered to let me see it, but I declined. She did show it to Eric, who was surprised, to say the least.
I inferred that he had been “hurt” by my blog entry on the ridiculous Tonto scandal. I took down the entry. I was tired of fighting. I have never been combative. When I told Bill on Friday that I had done this, he asked me if I had taken care of the “phone numbers”. I had no idea of what he was referring to. He explained that some of the photos of the “partnerships” had phone numbers on them. I should have asked for more details, but he was quite busy.
On that same day I received an email from Carolyn Weiser, the Secretary of the New England Bridge Conference, asking me to remove phone numbers and “addresses” in my blog entries. I went to several of the entries concerning my partnerships over the years, but I could find no way to display addresses or phone numbers with regard to the numerous photos.
On Saturday Bill specified that the photos were in the entry concerning the Pro-Am game (posted here) in Nashua. I discovered that two 300-pixel photos contained quite small and faint phone numbers and email addresses on index cards or Sue’s notes. I could not make out any of them when I looked at the screen, but perhaps someone could have blown the image up and enhanced the contrast. I deleted the photos and slightly modified the text. I sent an email to Carolyn saying that I had done so.
The bridge at this tournament was not memorable for me. It seemed as if our opponents were making mistakes, but Eric and I failed to bid games when we should have. We were a little below 50 percent in all four sessions. It was an extreme embarrassment.
My only strong memory is of the first round of the second day. On two consecutive hands I had no aces and no face-cards. On the third one I had only one king.
As I said, the attendance was pretty good. The open games on Friday drew 33.5 tables. The limited games had 15.5. The numbers on Saturday were 36 and 21.5. The two-session Swiss on Sunday had 23 tables, and the limited game in the morning had four.
This is still somewhat short of 2019’s results: Friday open 39; limited 27. Saturday open 38.5; limited 17. Sunday open Swiss 26; limited 6. It should be noted that the limited games in 2019 were for 299ers. The limited games for 2024 were for 499ers. Prior to Covid the CBA board never considered changing the top level of the limited game.
1. Abhi said that he warned me, and I have no reason to doubt that he did. However, if I were the dummy, and my partner did what I did, I would have announced, “Wait a minute. Are you sure that you did not have any diamonds? You underruffed!” I take great pride the fact that none of my partners has revoked in more than fifteen years.
2. In his 1991 book, A View From Above, Wilt claimed to have slept with 20,000 different women during his life.
3. In the period after the pandemic I have had trouble getting teammates from the HBC. Perhaps the problem is the timing. Some arrangements are made many months in advance; many are made at the very last minute. My efforts seem to fall in the middle.
4. I brought the car into Lia, my dealership, on Friday, March 22. They gave me a lift home in their shuttle. I had only been there a minute when they called to tell me that the heater was working perfectly. I had tried it on Tuesday and Wednesday without success. There must be more to this story.
5. Roman Key Card Blackwood asks for the number of aces plus the king of trump. The bid that starts the convention is always 4NT. Redwood and Minorwood change the first bid if the trump suit is a minor. Minorwood uses four of the trump suit, Redwood uses one suit higher. Kickback uses one suit higher than the trump suit for all trump suits.
7. The fall sectional was traditionally held at various sites in the Hartford area. Since Covid-19 no appropriate site seemed to be available there. In 2072 Carole Amaio contacted the Portuguese Club in Newington. They were supposedly remodeling their facility. However, they stopped returning her telephone calls.
8. I was disabused in the the early nineties of the notion that my electronic communications were in any way private when dealing with Sheree Marlow Wicklund during the early days of the installation of the AdDept system (chronicled here). Sheree was our liaison, which I thought that she would act to help us keep the users happy. Instead, she forwarded all of my communications to all of the managers of areas that would be using the system. Some of my replies criticized some manager’s responses as out of bounds. This did not go over well.
By the end of 2023 I was thoroughly disgusted with the state of affairs in the district. The new president, Susan Miguel, and vice-president, Denise Bahosh, had ideas about running the district that were drastically different from the ones that Bob Bertoni and the people who had called the shots prior to the pandemic had promulgated. The new people insisted that every tournament should have a party atmosphere. They also seemed to think that the only way to induce new players to attend was to bribe them.
The final tournament of 2023 in Marlborough, MA (described here) included a meeting of the Executive Committee. One of the last things discussed was how to attract people to the evening games. In the closing minutes I suggested trying a Pro-Am pairs game in which each pair must have at least one non-Life Master. I remembered that we had attracted two sections of players to such an event before the pandemic. Susan asked if I would agree to tun it. Thinking that she meant at the next tournament in February in Southbridge and that I would be able to market it the way that I wanted, I agreed. The complete story of the 2024 Pro-Am is posted here.
Playbook NLM Regional in Mansfield, MA
The first event of 2024 sponsored by District 25 was called the Playbook NLM Regional. It ran from Tuesday through Friday, February 6-9. The site was the enVision Hotel and Conference Center in Mansfield, MA., that was formerly a Holiday Inn. The Harvest Regionals had been held there for a few years before the pandemic. The all-weekday schedule was, as I recall, devised because the hotel was not available on weekends. In late 2029 the Executive Committee, of which I was a member, held an email vote whether the Tournament Scheduling Committee, run by Denise and Susan after Mark Oettinger was forced out, should continue to “investigate the feasibility” of a gathering that included an open sectional and a limited regional for non-Life Masters with less than 750 masterpoints. The event was placed on the calendar without a subsequent vote.So much for democracy in D25.
The Gold Rush events drew nine or ten tables per day. The sectional drew more than twice as many people, but the five-day event drew approximately the same number per day as the sectional in Watertown, MA, in February 2023. Neither my wife Sue nor I attended. The tournament broke even financially.
The Executive Committee met on Thursday evening. I attended via Zoom. As usual for the previous three years I went away both disgusted and frustrated. The only good news that I heard was that Joe Brouillard had somehow been able to report that the district had over $147,000 in liquid assets. The next tournament would be a five-day (April 17-21) affair in the Wellsworth Hotel in Southbridge, MA. This hotel was once headquarters for American Optical Company and served as the previous site for tournaments under a different name.
For some reason the Executive Committee did not meet in Southbridge, but there was a Zoom meeting on April 2. Among other things this virtual gathering revealed the incredible news that New England will probably never again be allowed to host an NABC. That meant that the district now had roughly $150,000 in liquid assets and no fixed expenses whatever!
My overall reaction to the meeting was uniformly negative. We talked about everything but tournaments. The district’s leadership seemed to be getting distracted by all kinds of extraneous stuff from the role of running good tournaments for our players. I let off steam with a long email to CBA president, Bill Segraves.
I am so exasperated with the attitudes of the people on the Executive Committee that I cannot sleep. I think that I must resign for my own mental health. My wife was subjected to an hour or so of ranting after this painful 2.5 hour meeting. If I had my way, the word “fabulous” would be removed from the dictionary. I am so sick of hearing how fabulous and fun everything is in an activity that I see as falling apart.
Prior to Covid I played every day in nearly every regional. Up until 2016 D25 ran six regional tournaments, one hybrid event for I/N called the Rainbow weekend, and face-to-face qualifying events in both the NAP and GNT. Here it is April, and the only open event we have held since the crappy Halloween tournament was a sectional. The only thing scheduled before June is a “right-sized” tournament in Southbridge that has been (in my opinion) poorly promoted.
Bob Bertoni, our former District Director who died in 2021, implemented the philosophy of holding outstanding tournaments through a combination of good schedules, good sites, and good marketing. Since his demise we have lost our way. In my opinion the purpose of the NEBC should be to present as many good events as possible. Online events do not qualify for many reasons. As I have written before, the online game resembles bridge in some ways, but it is not bridge any more than softball is the same game as baseball. In fact the online game is, I am quite convinced, rapidly destroying the game that I and thousands of others loved before the pandemic.
I voted against moving the GNT and NAP to online in 2021, but no one else on the ExComm did. The decision was called a no-brainer by the acting District Director. I played in one online GNT qualifier and absolutely hated it. Now we learn that we are having a difficult time attracting players to the online qualifiers, and, even though the president admitted that “the bloom is off the rose”, the best that the ExComm can do is put together a subcommittee to come up with a suggestion. To me the solution is obvious. Bring back the Rainbow Weekend (or its successor, the Gold Mine) for the Flight C GNT and hold the others at tournaments. No one even mentioned this as a possibility. Maybe we would lose a little money. So be it. The context of all of this is that we have the incredible sum of $137,000 available, and it is “99% certain” that we will be deprived of the opportunity to use it for an NABC event in New England.
To me nearly every bit of the discussion at the meeting was away from the two critical topics — online bridge and really good tournaments. Maybe we cannot do much about the ACBL’s pact with the online devil, which will apparently be expanded, not eliminated. I cannot brook the way that the Executive Committee management now seems to be focused on so many distractions from its primary purpose of putting on good tournaments. We do not need committees and brainstorming sessions to find out how to do this. Good tournaments have good sites, good schedules, and good promotion. Maybe we will lose money if we go back to this formula, but if we put on really good tournaments, I suspect that the world will come to them. If I am wrong, then at least we went down trying to do what we were supposed to do.
On another subject: The CBA board needs to be notified immediately about the massive increase in the STaC charge. I don’t think that many board members will want to accept such a large increase in the amount the CBA spends on the few clubs who run these games. Certainly not Cindy. As I said, if the HBC has to pay the table fees, I think that it might no longer participate in the STaCs, at least in the open games.
Your proposal to give scholarships to people organizing bridge clubs in college may be a good idea, but where is the evidence that there would be a lasting effect? From what I heard, as soon as the enthusiastic organizer leaves, the program generally dissolves. That is what always seemed to happen in the world of intercollegiate debate with which I am rather familiar. I don’t have any evidence about bridge clubs, but it seems to me that if we are to invest in college bridge, the money might be better spent in subsidizing the clubs themselves rather than the charismatic leaders. Also, I think that it makes more sense for this to be proposed to the ACBL educational fund rather than the NEBC, the mandate of which is to put on tournaments.
I am serious about all of this. I am tired of being the lonely vox clamantis in deserto. I cannot stand what has happened to bridge in New England during the last few years. Maybe I should just spend my efforts trying to help the Hartford Bridge Club survive. The perspective of the people there seem to accord better with my world view.
Thanks for listening.
Bill responded to my email. We exchanged views on a few of the things that I mentioned.
Spectacle Regional in Southbridge, MA
A five-day regional was scheduled for Southbridge, MA, on April 17-21 (Wednesday-Sunday). I decided to play for three days starting on Thursday. On Thursday my partner in the Open Swiss was Abhi Dutta. On Friday I played with Eric Vogel in the 0-4,000 knockout, a two-day event. Our teammates were Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider. I commuted all three days. My wife Sue did not attend.
My experience with lunches in Southbridge had not been positive. I therefore made myself a sandwich before leaving on Thursday. I also brought a package of diced peaches and a bag of potato chips. On my way to Southbridge I made my usual stop at McDonald’s in West Stafford for my usual sandwich. It was very slow, expensive, and they added erroneously cheese to my sausage biscuit with egg, thereby ruining McD’s best sandwich. I resolved to try a different approach to breakfast on Friday.
I located my teammates. Mike and Jim played North-South. We lost our first round by 19 points. The second round was even worse, a by 21 point shellacking by Michael and Ulla Sattinger’s team. One of the swings was our teammates’ fault. On the other one I opened 1♥. Abhi raised. I had twelve points that consisted of three kings and three jacks. We were vulnerable, and so I did not want to pass up a potential game. However, when I counted my losers, I was astounded at the result—9! I passed and then took eleven tricks. Michael must have been more aggressive. They bid the game. He was right, but Losing Trick Count, which I always consult in non-competitive auctions when we have a fit in a suit, had never let me down so dramatically.
So, we were assigned to the second three-way. We won both of those rounds, one by seven and one by one. At lunch I ate my sandwich and some of the chips that I had brought. I bought a can of Diet Pepsi for $3. I did not eat my peaches because I forgot to bring a spoon. I put them back in my cold pack.
After lunch we won the fifth round by 14. We should have won the sixth round, too, but Abhi made a lead-directing double that diverted me from leading correctly after I took my only defensive trick. We won the final round by only two imps, and we needed an eleven-imp swing on the last hand to achieve it. One of our teammates’ opponents got mixed up and bid an impossible slam. They say that it is better to be lucky than good.
It seemed as if we had been playing badly, and I did not think that we had played any really good opponents. Nevertheless, we somehow ended up third in the Y strat and won 3.93 gold points even though our score of 63 victory points was 10 percent less than average.
On Friday morning I varied my routine slightly. I stopped at the McDonald’s in Scitico. The sandwich was very good and no more expensive, and the service was excellent. I also stopped at Big Y and bought a chicken Caesar wrap for lunch. I had also brought chips and the unopened container of peaches.
Eric was my partner for the Swiss that determined the four qualifiers for Saturday’s knockout. Fifteen teams competed in the 0-4,000 flight and eight in the top flight. In the old days our flight would have been split into three five-team brackets or at least an eight- and a seven-. They did not do it that way in Southbridge.
We won our first match by 17. We then lost to John Lloyd’s team by 5 because out teammates failed to bid a routine notrump game. We also lost the the third round when Eric did not look for slam after I opened 1NT. We would have lost that round anyway due to errors at the other table. We also lost the fourth round to Eli Jolley’s team. He and Judy McNutt had been our teammates in Marlboro in 2023. So, at the lunch break, which we ate with our tails between our legs, we were 1-3 and in twelfth place out of fifteen. We had almost no chance of qualifying.
At lunch Susan Miguel made a peculiar announcement. She said that there were actually two brackets hidden in the 0-4,000 Swiss. A total of eight teams, not four, would qualify. This certainly sounded illegal to me. Who ever heard of changing the rules at the halfway point of an event? Susan characterized it as “exciting news.”
In any case it did not help us. With more than 9,000 points we were surely in the top group. We would still need to pass eight teams in the three rounds after lunch. It seemed hopeless, but in actual fact we did better than that. We faced three teams that were in the lower “bracket”, and we defeated them by 19, 6 (Abhi’s team), and 19 imps. That brought our total victory points to 77.99. I did not think that that would be enough to qualify, but in fact only three teams had more, and one of them was in the lower bracket.
Tim Hill, the director, cut a deck of cards to determine the matches in the semifinals. We drew the Sattingers, who were the top seed. That was fine with me.
On Saturday morning I repeated the routine that I had established on Friday. This time I remembered to bring a spoon so that I could eat my peaches. I also bought a 20-ounce bottle of Diet Coke at Big Y.
Writing about the semifinal is very painful. Mike and Jim played against the Sattingers. We played against Lew and Linda Millenbach, who were friends of the Sattingers. Both couples lived in the Albany area. In our room it was a very friendly match, although Linda upbraided Lew several times for not following their conventions.
Eric and I played very well in the first set. On the very first hand he bid and made a slam that netted us 13 imps. Our lead at the break was 14.
I had great cards at the beginning of the second set, and I made the most of them. In the first five boards I bid and made two slams. They were also bid and made by Michael S. in the other room. However, on the sixth board Eric made the inexplicable play of ducking the setting trick in a game contract. That exactly erased the 12 imps that we had gained on the first and fourth hands. We lost 11 more on two hands in the second group of six, but we still had a three-imp lead in the match going into the very last hand, on which the Millenbachs made an overtrick on a strictly routine game contract that somehow Mike and Jim failed to find. We lost by four. I was absolutely crushed. I could not possibly have played any better, and Eric was also at the top of his game in the second set except for that one play.
The consolation match was against Richard Underwood and Joanne Schlang, whom I had never previously met. They lived in Voorheesville, NY, which is west of Albany. I was wearing the Michigan sweatshirt that I bought on Etsy.
Joanne announced that she had attended U-M between 1966 and 1970. I responded, “So did I.” She then told how she had been the absolutely last freshman admitted in 1966. I had nothing to add to that story. When they asked me what I studied, I admitted to “not much of anything.” That was the truth. She announced that she never attended a U-M football game. I told the story of how I only missed the very last one, one of the greatest victories in Michigan history, the upset of the team from Ohio State that had not lost in two years.
I got terrible cards for the entire match. I kept my attention up, but the disappointing results from the other room outweighed the mistakes made by our opponents, and—once again!—Eric and I lost both head-to-head matches in a knockout in Southbridge. Eric told me that he did not want to play with Mike and Jim any more (but he changed his mind later).
I felt like quitting bridge. If we did not play with Mike and Jim, with whom would we play? I had experienced great difficulty in finding partners and teammates since the pandemic. I was in a miserable mood for the entire drive home.
Sue went to a movie somewhere in southern Connecticut on Saturday evening. I bought a bag of fried chicken at Big Y and devoured a thigh and two legs while I watched Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks (an unpleasant experience). The chicken must have been under the heat lamp all day. It was not very good.
Granite State Regional in Nashua, NH
I could find no one who wished to play with me in the regional held in Nashua, NH, June 11-16. A few weeks before the tournament I asked Sally Kirtley, the D25 Tournament Manager, if she would be able to play. She said that she could certainly play on Saturday. I agreed to that and filled out Google forms for the other five days to indicate that I needed partners. Denise set me up with a man named Steve Banwarth, a resident of Nashua, for Wednesday. He only had 1716 points, which meant that he would have been better off with a partner who could play in the so-called Gold Rush Graduate (up to 2250 masterpoints) events, but our styles seemed quite compatible. We not only agreed to play on Wednesday, but on Thursday and Friday as well, assuming that everything went well on Wednesday.
My wife Sue came with me to Nashua, but she did not arrange for any partners. She exhibited a rather foul demeanor before and during most of the trip. Part of her attitude was attributable to her frustration about the Pro-Am, which has been documented in another entry.
Sue had a dental appointment on Tuesday, June 11. When that was over we packed up1 and left for Nashua at about 4 p.m. The drive was devoid of the horrendous delays that often occurred on I-495. Google Maps advised us to go through Worcester on I-290. We also evaded the interchange between I-495 and Route 3 by going through side streets in Westford, MA.
When we arrived at the Sheraton Nashua I dropped off all of our luggage at the hotel’s door. I then circled around and parked my Honda in the handicapped space closest to the main door. Meanwhile Sue went inside the hotel to acquire a luggage cart. We needed to check in together because, although I had made the reservation using my Schwab American Express card, the paperwork was for some reason associated with Sue’s Marriott account.
After we had gotten settled in to room #361, we dined (at my suggestion) at the Mexican restaurant that I had visited while participating in a tournament before the pandemic. It took us only a few minutes to arrive at La Hacienda del Rio on the Daniel Webster Highway.
I ordered a combo plate that contained a beef taco and a beef burrito. I washed them down with a margarita. I forgot to tell the waitress that I wanted the frozen version of my beverage, but otherwise I really enjoyed the meal. The service was good, everything was tasty, and the price was reasonable.
As usual, Sue ordered much more than she could eat. This time it was three flautas. Two were chicken and one pork. She complained that she could barely tell the difference between the two. She also had a margarita. That surprised me because she almost never drinks any more.
Our room was almost as far away from the elevators as possible. We were also on the opposite end of the building from the playing area, and so the stairs were not an option. Sue called the front desk and asked if we could move to a closer room. The staff eventually offered room #324, which was within a few yards of the elevator. However, by that time Sue had unpacked. I did not care one way or the other, but Sue had no energy left for the task of repacking and moving.
The hotel had been a Radisson on my previous visits. Now it had reverted to its original branding as a Sheraton, which had been purchased by Marriott International in 2016. We noted four significant problems with the rooms:
There were no microwaves outside of the lobby.
The refrigerators were tiny and difficult to open.
Getting in and out of the shower was difficult and dangerous for septuagenarians like us. Worst of all, the closet was in the bathroom.
This bizarre arrangement disrupted the normal protocol that Sue and I have used in hotels for years. It inconvenienced both of us.
I slept pretty well on Tuesday night. At one point I was awakened by the cacophony produced by the blower on the air conditioner, Sue’s oxygen unit, the CPAP machine, and the television set that she had left on. I located my earplugs and was able to get back to sleep within an hour or so.
I spent the hour before game time at a table near the partnership table in order to interact with people who wanted to sign up for the Pro-Am game on Friday evening. Only two signs were on the table at which I sat. One advertised signing up for the Bracketed Pairs (not possible yet); the other incorrectly announced the date of the Board of Delegates meeting as Saturday. There was no signage about the Pro-Am game.
Sue never arrived until after the game had started.
I sat at the table from 9 until 10 every morning. Eventually a very nice sign was affixed to the mirror behind the table at which I sat. A few Pros told me that they would play “if I needed them.” I matched one or two up with Ams who had contacted me directly or through someone else.
Steve appeared at the table at about 9:40. I called Petko Petkov, the only person for whom there was a card at the partnership table indicating a desire for teammates for Wednesday’s Open Swiss. It happened that he was just entering the building. He called me back, and Steve and I ended up teaming up with him and Bunny Brogdon after Petko verified that we would be a C team. Petko and Bunny had driven down together from Maine. We bought the entry and took our seats for the first round.
Our first opponents were another C team. We beat them by 20 imps. I suppressed my excitement. Sometimes it is not a good idea for a C team to win its first match easily. We were forced to play the team captained by Ethan Wood. Steve and I faced Adam Grossack and a client. Evidently the North-South pair at the other table made some reckless bids that Petko doubled. At our table we had a misunderstanding on one hand. I opened 1♦. They bid 2♦, which showed hearts and spades. Steve bid 2♠. We were playing Unusual over Unusual. We had not talked about the details, but the commonly used meaning of that bid was that he had at least invitational values and diamond support. Since I had seven diamonds headed by the AKJ, I jumped to 5♦. The client bid 5♥ and went down four. Steve actually had five spades and only one diamond. Adam called the director, Bob Neuhart, but he let the result stand. We won the match by seven imps.
The third match was the low point of the morning. We lost by two imps to a C team captained by Ann Johnson. I teamed up with her and her partner, Chris Pettingell, in the bracketed pairs game on Sunday. The margin was all on one hand on in which we defeated 3♥ by three, but Ann and Chris made 3NT. Either Steve or I should have doubled. If we had, we would have won by seven or eight imps.
The highlight of the whole event (in fact, the whole tournament) was the fourth round. We defeated Tom Gerchman’s team, which included Linda Starr and Bob and Ann Hughes. At the lunch break we were in second place, one victory point behind Ethan Wood’s team.
One of the best parts of playing in teams games is that occasionally your team finishes early, and there is time for conversation. I had given my calling cards to the other players. During a break Steve asked me what the designation “papal scholar” on my card meant. I bragged that I knew a lot about the popes—all of them. He disclosed that his first name was actually Cletus. He wondered if I knew anything about one of the very early popes, whose name was Cletus. I explained that Cletus had been removed from the list of popes at some point in the twentieth century. Apparently he and Anacletus, who for centuries had been listed after Clement I, were actually the same person. The current list showed Anacletus as the third pope after Peter and Linus. I wrote about this in Chapter 1 of Stupid Pope Tricks.
Then Petko made the mistake of asking how I got interested in Popology. I explained how I had listened to A.J. Jacobs talking on the radio about the famous trial of Pope Formosus (as I have related in this entry). Petko was rather familiar with the history of Eastern Europe. He verified that Prince Boris of Bulgaria tried to determine whether the Greek or Roman flavor of Christianity would best suit his country.
At lunch I bought a so-called Caesar salad (no anchovies) and a Diet Pepsi. I paid for both, but I left my can of soda on the counter. I went back after finishing the salad, and the man running the cashless cash register handed me the Diet Pepsi. The salad was edible, but the price was obscene. From my perspective it fulfilled the requirement of keeping my digestive system busy without supplying soporific carbohydrates.
We won both the fifth and sixth rounds after lunch. We were bumping along in second place. Unfortunately we got undressed by Greg Klinker’s team in the seventh round. At our table Cilla Borras and Alex Taylor bid and made three slams in the eight hands. Two were cold, but we could have set one of them if I had played my honors in a side suit differently. Our teammates only bid one of the slams.
We won the last round. We ended up third in A, second in B, and first in C. We had beaten both of the teams ahead of us. We won 4.73 gold masterpoints. What a great start for a new partnership!
In the evening I ate a roast beef sandwich from Sue’s grocery stash and potato chips from a bag that I had brought from home. I drank half of the water in the free bottle that came with the room. By the time that I had finished my little supper and dealt with my emails it was pretty late.
On Thursday morning Sue and I drove to the Dream Diner for breakfast. When we entered the restaurant only one woman was on duty waiting tables, but more arrived presently. I ordered a ham and Swiss omelette. Sue had hash and eggs. It was a pleasant listening to the pre-Beatles music while we ate.
We saw Al Votolato and Grace Charron sitting in a nearby booth and greeted them as we exited. I had played against them many times over the years.
On Thursday Steve and I played in the Open Pairs. Nothing else was available except the knockouts, to which our new friends from Maine had committed to play. The Open Pairs had a very large field of 31 tables that included several big names.
Steve and I scored a 55 percent game in the morning. That put us in fourteenth place (out of sixty-two) and sixth in B. The highlight was getting to play against Michael Dworetsky, one of my principal partners a decade or so earlier, and Joe DeGaetano, who was splitting his time between Florida and New Hampshire. The low point was the very last hand, in which I made an embarrassing defensive error against two of the very best players, John Hrones and Bob Lurie. They finished the session with a 70 percent game.
Our afternoon game was even better. We were East-West and followed the two newest members of the Hartford Bridge Club, Bart Bramley and Kitty Cooper2, two experts who had recently moved to Avon, CT. I remember two of the rounds. In one we played against Jane Verdrager, who runs a club in New Hampshire. She and Steve made arrangements to play together on Sunday. The other round was against Jori Grossack, mother of the two great professional players from Newton, MA. She thanked me for what I had done for bridge over the years.
We ended up in tenth place, fifth in B. That was worth 3.39 gold points. Lurie and Hrones won the event, a result that did not surprise me a bit.
Sue and I should have eaten supper together on Thursday evening, but she did not want to.
On Friday Steve and I played in the very first occurrence of an experimental event, the Bracketed Pairs. We were assigned to bracket #2, which consisted of nine tables that included a large number of players whom I knew very well. Steve and I played very well. I circled only one hand in each session. We had a 55.65 percent game, which tied us for third place.
We played the same direction in the second session as the leaders. After the last hand the BridgeMate reported that we had a 61 percent game and first North-South. So, we definitely had picked up some ground on the leaders. When the “final” results were posted, we were listed as the overall winners. However, an hour or so later a new score was poster, and we were second. The margin was 1.5 points, much less than one percentage point. We were happy with the 11.74 gold points that we earned, but first place paid an incredible 15.65 points.
After the game I talked with Steve about future tournaments. He said that he might play in the Ocean State Regional in Warwick because his son lives in Providence. I certainly hoped that we could arrange something. He said, however, that he does not like to stay in hotels, and he does not drive at night. Those are very limiting factors.
Sue and I played together in the Pro-Am on Friday evening. We did not do well.
We should have gone to breakfast on Saturday morning, but Sue could not get moving in time. I received a phone call from long-time friend and former partner, Judy Hyde. She and Ann Hudson (another former partner) had finished second in Bracket 2 of the knockout, and they wanted to team up with Sally and me on Saturday. I promptly agreed. Even if we did not do well, it would certainly be a pleasure to play with them.
We won our first match by 3 imps and lost the second one by 5 to a strong B team. In the third round we were hammered by Ethan Wood’s team, but we came back to win the fourth round. We were only a little below average, but we found ourselves in a three-way for the first two rounds after lunch. We were pummeled in both matches. We won the seventh round over Joe Brouilliard’s team. We also won the last match. Sally and I played against Eli Jolley and Judy McNutt. So, our foursome won four out of eight matches, but we finished way out of the money. We could hardly complain; we played against none of the best teams.
At some point on Saturday morning Sue hooked up with Shirley Wagner, a very nice person from Central Mass with whom I had worked on the Executive Committee. They did not do well in the morning session, but they improved in the afternoon after Shirley advised Sue to concentrate on “restraint”.
The Executive Committee meeting was painful. I was Connecticut’s only representative. Bill Segraves attended for a few minutes by Zoom. Denise served soda and cheese and crackers. The district has $158,000 in cash, but it can no longer afford to buy supper for the committee. Moreover, they expect the attendees to play in the evening games after the meetings.
Sue Miguel passed out a list of items that she and Denise had accomplished. She highlighted a new committee of unit presidents. They reportedly had a “fabulous” meeting on Thursday evening. This group is precisely identical to the Executive Committee minus Joe, Carolyn, Brenda Montague, and me, the four people whom she cannot count on for unthinking support.
Mark Aquino talked about his research on the previous sites of NABC tournaments. Because of his position on a committee he thinks that he might be able to salvage an NABC in Providence at some point in the future. It sounded quixotic to me
Sunday morning’s BoD meeting was more of the same. A lot of people from Connecticut were in attendance. At the very end I tried to draw people’s attention to the district’s huge pile of cash and emphasized that, in my opinion, some of this should go to supporting clubs. I didn’t think that anyone was listening. After the meeting I learned from the owner of a club that the drive from his house to the club’s site was not as long as the half hour that Steve claimed.
I learned that the Fall tournament will be at the Holiday Inn in Norwich, CT. The district had never held an event there. All three flights of the district’s NAP qualifying events will also be held there.
My partner on Sunday was Paul Burnham. We had sat at the same table at the BoD meeting and agreed on a convention card for the Bracketed Swiss. We met Ann Johnson and Chris Pettingell at the partnership table. I totaled up the points and bought an entry using four different credit cards. We were in the lowest bracket, but there was some pretty tough competition there. Evidently the less experienced players had not learned the lesson that the best way to get gold points was in bracketed events.
The bridge is mostly a blur. I remember that on the first hand I opened 1NT with only one small club. I was still discombobulated from the meeting and the chaos at the registration table. One of my spades was sorted next to the singleton club. I only went down one in an impossible 3NT contract, but miscues at the other table caused us to lose this and three of our other four matches.
At lunch Paul and I sat with Ann, Chris, and some other woman. The conversation was extremely tiresome. At no point did I have anything to contribute. Eventually Paul stood up and announced that he wanted to “take a walk.”
The only round that I remember rather clearly was the fifth, which we played against Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider. I quickly explained the WavaDONT defense to Paul. I needed to take at least a half hour because, believe it or not, they opened 1♣ three times in eight hands. On the first occasion I overcalled 2♦, which meant that I had diamonds and a higher suit. I had a seven-loser hand, which is my standard for this bid, but I had no time to explain that to Paul. After Jim bid 3♣, Paul, who had four cards in both majors, bid 3♥, which Mike doubled. I corrected to 3♠, which Mike also doubled. I went down four for -1100. Disasters ensued on several other hands. On the last hand I tried a 6♥ slam3, which also went down. It was the only slam bid my me or any of my partners during eleven sessions of play.
We won the last round to salvage a little respect. Our opponents were from Connecticut. Paul and I played against Marie-Jose Babouder-Matta and her husband Nadim. At the other table were Rick Seaburg and Gayle Stevens. They were shocked that, despite the fact that they had won only two matches, they were assigned to play against Paul and me.
The drive home was not too bad. Sue, who had played in one session of the Gold Rush Pairs, wanted to stop for supper. We could not think of a good place anywhere on the way back to Enfield. We ended up at the Longhorn Steakhouse, where we spent $100 on a lackluster meal that we ate while shivering in a booth in which the temperature was at most sixty degrees.
This was the best tournament, in my opinion, since the pandemic, but I still felt sad and somewhat bitter about the meetings.
Ocean State Regional in Warwick RI
I was hoping to use my large collection of IHG4 Rewards points to pay for my attendance at the district’s most popular tournament, the Ocean State Regional. The tournament was held annually at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Warwick, RI. It was usually held before Labor Day, but in 2024 it was scheduled for Tuesday, September 3, through Sunday, September 8. Unfortunately, although I tried to do so more than a month in advance of the tournament, I was unable to score even one free room. I immediately turned my attention to the November tournament in Norwich. I used points to buy four nights. IHG threw in the fifth night for free.
As I was I looking up the dates for the Norwich tournament, I was surprised to learn that the schedule (which can be viewed here) was a throwback to the simplistic schedules of 2021. I resolved to find out at the Executive Committee meeting whether this was a deliberate move by the people who design the schedules. I hoped that the dominance of open events was a temporary measure, and a real schedule would be forthcoming.
Jim Osofsky asked me and Judy Hyde to play with him and Mike Heider on four of the six days. Jim and Mike did not want to play on Tuesday, and they had already arranged to play with another pair on Saturday. I had not played with Judy since 2017. We agreed to play the card that she customarily used. We played together at one online game sponsored by the Northampton Bridge Club and did pretty well. We later cleared up via email and a phone call a few matters concerning the convention card that I had created and sent to her.
I received a bizarre email from Sue Miguel about the use of paper by the district. It stated that the Secretary of the Executive Committee would no longer hand out reports to attendees. Pdf files would be sent by email, and each member would be required to print his/her/their own copies. She also wanted to eliminate as much paper as possible at tournaments as well. This was supposedly going to create a greener ecology. In my opinion the best way to save paper would be to buy scoresheets with room for results of pairs games on both sides. The other side of the ones that they distribute currently have blank convention cards, which are almost seldom needed by tournament players.
Before I left for Warwick I made sure that all of the household bills were paid and that the invitational email for the game at the Simsbury Bridge Club was scheduled on MailChimp for release on Friday morning.
I consulted Google Maps to determine how long the drive to the Crowne Plaza would take. Its answer was one hour and forty minutes. I was ready to leave at 7:15 on Wednesday morning. I wanted to give myself some time to consult with Judy before the first round.
I went in to the bedroom to ask Sue where she had put my laptop. On my way I noticed that two HP laptops were on the table that she had been using for paperwork in what was at one time our dining room. She was using my laptop in bed. I loaded the rest of the stuff in the car while she finished what she was doing and powered it down. I had to wait a few minutes for her to complete this task. As usual, she could not make the program she was using do what she wanted and was cursing at it.
I left at 7:30. The remote for the garage-door opener in my car successfully opened the door but failed to close it. I had to turn the car off, use the button on the wall inside Sue’s garage to close the door, unlock the door that led from the garage to the house, walk through the house, exit by the door that faced Hamilton Court, lock it, return to the car, and start it. I then tried to engage Google Maps on my cellphone. It reported that Maps was “not responding”. I was pretty sure that I knew the route, or at least all but the very end. I finally hit the road at 7:45.
I had forgotten how unpleasant it was to drive east on sunny mornings at this time of the year. The sun was directly in my eyes for most of the trip. I wore my flip-down sunglasses, and I deployed the car’s visor, but on several occasions I was blinded for a second or two. Part of the problem was that the front window was smudged enough to diffract the sunbeam.
While driving on Route 190 I found my car stuck behind several trucks in Somers and three school buses in Stafford. One of the buses made several stops to pick up students. While waiting for its flashing red light to be turned off, I tried Maps again, and this time it connected. I later ran into a delay for construction on Route 74 in Connecticut.
I arrived at the hotel at 9:35. I had intended to stop at McDonald’s for my customary breakfast sandwich, but there was not enough time. After I had parked the car near the playing area I was unable to find my car keys. I looked everywhere in the vicinity of the driver’s seat. When I stuck my hand between the seat and the console I bruised my right hand in several places. I also checked on the floor in the back seat and on the passenger seat. I tried to start the car. That worked, which meant that the key fob was still inside the car. I walked to the back of the car, where I had set down my backpack and portfolio. I dumped everything from the backpack. No keys.
It suddenly occurred to me that it was pretty warm out. I remembered that I had worn my jacket when I left because the temperature was in the forties. After.it warmed up I had doffed it and cast it onto the carpet in front of the empty passenger’s seat. I went back inside the car and quickly found the missing keys n the jacket’s right pocket. I gathered my gear, locked the car, and went inside.
I was still pretty frazzled when I entered the playing area in the hotel and found Judy sitting by herself at a table. She had paid for my share of the entry. I promised to pay for both of us on Thursday. I got a cup of free coffee at the concession stand and then discussed with Judy a few items on our convention card. I realized that the card that I had inserted into my blue convention card holder was obsolete. However, i was able to locate the correct one in the portfolio that I had brought in from the car.
Twenty teams played in the Open Swiss. The field included many good players, but most of the pros and other stars were playing in the contemporaneous second day of the knockout. Our team won all four of its matches before lunch. None of the wins was decisive.
Sue had made a sandwich for me. I sat by myself and ate it with a handful of Utz potato chips from a bag that I had placed in my backpack. I also bought a 12 oz. can of Diet Coke for $2 at the concession stand and drank it. Cindy Lyall and her mother, Sandy DeMartino, came to my table, seated themselves, and asked me how the unitwide games worked in Connecticut before the pandemic. I explained them as thoroughly as my seventy-six-year-old memory could muster.
We also won the first three rounds after lunch, but we were only tied for second place behind a team that we had already beaten—the one that Cindy and Sandy played on. However, we had already played most of the A teams. We had a good eighth round against a so-so opponent, and we actually finished first overall. It was the very first victory in an open event at a regional tournament for me and (I think) the other members of my team.
Room #644 was was the second window from the right in the wing on the right.
I left the playing area before the final results were posted. I drove my car to a spot closer to the hotel’s main entrance. I then retrieved my suitcase from the trunk, went inside, and registered. They assigned me room #644, which may be the highest number that they had. It was at the far west end of the building. There were rooms beyond mine, but I don’t think that they rented them out. The Housekeeping headquarters was directly across the hall from #644 and beyond it was a small lobby that contained an elevator and a microwave oven.
I unpacked and then called my wife Sue. She previously had informed me that she would “probably” drive up to Warwick on Wednesday, but it did not surprise me in the least that she had not left yet. She described her encounter with a musician friend of hers who was living in upstate New York. Sue had offered to let him house-sit while we were at the tournament.5 She also said that she did not want to drive during the traffic of the morning rush. She would “probably” leave for Warwick at about 4 a.m.
Sue was duly impressed when I told her that we had won all of our rounds. I then spent a few minutes trying to get her to hang up so that I could meet up with my teammates in the hotel lobby. We planned to drive to the Bertucci’s near the airport for a celebratory dinner. We all ordered drinks. Mine was a Guinness. Jim, Mike, and I ordered small pizzas. Judy asked us to share a piece with her. I gave her one willingly, as did Mike. I don’t think that Jim did. Judy announced that two pieces was just right for her.
I asked Jim what he had done when he worked in advertising. He said quite a few words, but he never quite answered the question. I concluded that he had been an account rep, but he might also have been involved in planning. He said that he was quite good at helping clients launch new products.
On the return drive to the hotel I asked Judy what she had done in real life. She related that she had taught English for a while. She got married when she was very young (and later to Tom Hyde). She described both of her husbands as very quiet men. Somehow she got into social work, where she concentrated on dealing with parental abuse of children. On one occasion a man shot his own child in her office. It was a traumatic event for Judy. Recently she has become closely involved with the prevention of enslavement of children worldwide. This affirmed what I have always said: “Nearly everyone in bridge has an interesting backstory.”6
In my room I watched episode 5 of season 3 of the spectacular German television series, Babylon Berlin, on the MHz Choice website on my laptop. I had already seen it, but in the previous week I had discovered that I had accidentally skipped episode 2. So, I watched episode 2 over the previous weekend, and I had rewatched episodes 3, 4, and now 5. They made much more sense the second time.
I got this from the HBC’s library.
I took a shower and then read a chapter or so of Gene Wolfe’s Pirate Freedom. I had no trouble sleeping until about 6am. I then went down to the playing area, grabbed a bagel and coffee and sat with Jim. It wasn’t much of a breakfast, but it was free.
On Thursday our foursome was scheduled to play in the knockout. We found ourselves in the second bracket, which was our hope. We would have expected to get clobbered in the top bracket, which had only six teams.
Seven teams were assigned to our bracket. Many of them were familiar foes. We played in three three-way matches. We comfortably won the first two rounds, which gave us ten wins in a row. We were also in the lead in the two half-matches before lunch.
I retreated to my room and ate the second sandwich that Sue had made for me and some more potato chips. I drank tap water upstairs and purchased a Diet Coke to consume in the afternoon matches.
At some point I realized that I did not have my cellphone. In a panic I went back down the elevator to the playing area and searched around the table at which we had sat all morning. There was no sign of it. In the end I found it in my backpack. I can not imagine why or when I had placed it there.
This is the mechanical pencil that I brought in from the car. The rubber grip was mushy and eventually fell off. A month or so after that the metal tip broke off while I was using it. I guess that the grip was holding the pencil together.
I returned to room #644 to brush my teeth. This time I realized that I was missing the mechanical pencil that I had been using for at least five years. I never found it, but I remembered that two similar pencils had been in the console in my car for months. So, I retrieved a blue one that was sort of gummy and used it for the rest of the tournament.
We won the second half of both half-matches. However, our winning streak of twelve consecutive matches was ended in the last three-way. We were decisively defeated by Susan Mullin’s team, but we won the other match. That made us the top seed of the four teams that qualified for the knockout portion on Friday.
I paid for our entry, but I let Mike Heider pick our opponent in the semifinal round.7 He decided that we would play against Susan Liincoln’s team that we had defeated in the first round rather than Susan Mullin’s team that had brutally vanquished us in the three-way.
Sue arrived at the tournament at some point after lunch. She was miserable because she had totally missed the morning session. She blamed Google Maps for sending her in the wrong direction on a detour. While wandering around southeast Rhode Island she had been talking over the phone with her partner, Nadine Harris. When she came to our table I gave Sue a room key so that she could could bring her stuff up to the room.
Judy had other plans, but Mike and Jim asked me to go to a restaurant for supper with them. I said that I would let them know after I talked with Sue. She was very upset about life in general, but she was also an extremely sociable person. So, we decided to join Jim and Mike. We all drove to the Hibachi Grill & Supreme Buffet in Warwick. It was a pleasant and stress-free change. I had won ton soup and a plateful of other Chinese items. Despite all of her trials and tribulations Sue was her usual cheerful self.
On Friday Sue and Nadine decided to play in the experimental event, the Bracketed Pairs, in order to try to get some gold points.
On Thursday I noticed that Debbie Prince, whom I knew from the HBC and the Board of Governors of the CBA, was in attendance. Before going downstairs I placed my copies of The Book of Evidence and The Sea by John Banville in my backpack. On my way to get coffee I saw Debbie and gave the books to her. She was very happy that I did so. I did not know it at the time, but this was the best moment of my day.
Our team played the semifinal of the knockout. As Judy and I sat down to play against Steve Kolkhorst and Carl Wikstrom in the hallway just outside of the main ballroom, Sue came over to me and asked for the key to the room. I could tell that she was almost in tears.
The first set of the match was a disaster. Over the course of only three hands we lost a total of twenty-five imps. The other nine were OK, but we faced a deficit of twenty-one imps when we resumed play.
In the second through fourth hands of this match I had the following distributions: six hearts and zero diamonds, six hearts and zero diamonds, and six hearts and one diamond. These were “shuffle-and-deal” hands shuffled by three different players, one of whom was myself. I will try to remember this for times in which someone at the table claims that computer-generated deals are not random.
We came roaring back in the first half of the second set. Our opponents made a series of big mistakes, including missing a very easy grand slam. Unfortunately, Jim and Mike did not bid it either. Even so, we erased all but five points of the lead. However, they won most of that back in the last six hands, which were poorly played by our teammates. I made a costly mistake on the last hand as well. So, we lost and had to play in the consolation match in the afternoon.
The tournament’s concession stand is famous for offering hot meals at lunch. My favorite has long been the sausage, peppers, and onion grinder. I bought one and brought it up to my room to eat with the potato chips. I drank water from the faucet.
I was mostly a spectator in the consolation round against our old nemesis, the Sattinger team from the Albany area. I played what I called a D&D match—defense and dummy. I declared only three hands. We won five imps on those three, but we surrendered enough on the other twenty-one so that we once again lost.
As I was searching for Sue I encountered Sally Kirtley in the hotel’s lobby. She asked me if I was going to the Executive Committee meeting. The materials that I brought with me said that it was on Saturday, but her reminder made me realize that that designation had been corrected in a subsequent email. I had looked for a sign about it in the area of the partnership desk, but there was none there. There was a sign near the main entrance, but I did not look there.
The meeting was called to order by Denise Bahosh because Sue Miguel was busy with one of her dozen or so responsibilities. The only food served was cake for Sue’s birthday. Her Majesty arrived fashionably late literally shouting her own praises.
A vote was taken on whether the Executive Committee would support some amendments to the bylaws. Everyone supported the changes, which appeared to be trivial.
Mark Aquino, after a few minutes paying tribute to how fabulous things were, announced that he wanted to go easier on alleged online cheaters because the number of members of the ACBL was decreasing! The problem was that people are “flagged” by a faceless algorithm and then offered unappetizing choices. They are often choosing to give up their membership.
Sue did not answer my questions about Norwich schedule. Instead she complained that the ACBL would not let her run the events that she wanted to run or to advertise them the way that she wanted. Meanwhile I had to look at Sue’s bare foot on the chair that separated us. I felt very sad and frustrated.
The meeting ended with Sue Miguel ordering everyone to play in the night game without eating supper. However, she did not say, “Let them eat cake.”
My wife Sue and I ignored her instructions and ate.supper at the noisy Texas Road House. I could not use my ear plugs because Sue’s voice does not carry at all. I liked the baby back ribs but not the atmosphere.
Burt Saxon.
On Saturday we were in Bracket 2 of the Bracketed Pairs. We did very poorly. There were only two high points. The first came at the very beginning. I got to talk with Burt Saxon and his partner, Steve Emerson from Pennsylvania. Burt formerly was a columnist on the CBA’s bridge newsletter, The Kibitzer. I wrote to him once when he asked for experiences people had had with the Flannery convention. He published my note and responded to it. He also wrote often about his games online and in person with Steve. We also played against Burt and Steve at the very last table. I should have given him my calling card, but I forgot.
The other enjoyable moment came just before lunch. I noticed that Jill Marshall, who had appeared on the cover of the September Bridge Bulletin, was sitting near us. After the last hand I retrieved my copy and asked her to sign. She did so, and she told me that I had made her day. She even went up to one of the directors and borrowed a Sharpie to make the signature memorable.
Sue also had a terrible day in the Bracketed Pairs. She was in a very low bracket but still did poorly.
Sue and I ate supper at Chelo’s on Route 1. I had a Reuben sandwich and a tall Narragansett. Sue had some kind of seafood that she rated as below average. Sue took three boxes and a small cup of chowder back to the hotel. The refrigerator in the room was already full before she crammed her leftovers in.
I was not a bit surprised to discover that Texas creamed the reigning national champions at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. Evidently the game was not even as close as the lopsided score indicated. I watched a bit of Iowa State’s comeback against Iowa. Then I turned the television off and watched episode 6 of Babylon Berlin on my laptop.
On Sunday morning I woke up at 3 a.m. I went into the bathroom and wrote up notes for this journal entry. The last three words were “Sick of life.”
I fell back asleep at about 4:30 and did not arise for several hours. At 8:00 I packed, got ready, walked with my luggage to my car, and then went to the playing area. Sue’s plans at that point were unclear. She had apparently put in a request for a partner, but she did not get any responses.
The event was held in the hotel’s “pavilion”, which was actually a huge tent with rather easy access from the hotel. It was constructed about forty feet from the first floor of the hotel. Access was pretty easy.
One thing that the pavilion was missing was restrooms. The closest one was next to the hotel’s restaurant. That was quite a hike. Two rooms were also left open and reserved for players to use. They each had only one toilet. So, unisex lines formed there. This was not a popular arrangement.
The other problem was that it was quite breezy that day. One side of the tent was left open, and the tables near there, where Judy and I played the last round, were quite chilly. I zippered up my nylon jacket, and I was still cold.
Paula before she became proud of her white hair.
Before the bridge started I reminisced with Paula Najarian, who was my teammate in a similar event the last time that the tournament used the pavilion on the last day. I think that it was in 2009 or maybe 2010. My partner was Steve Smith, and she was playing with Marcia West. In the last round we faced Ron Briggs’s team. They were in first place; we were close behind. On the last hand Steve had bid a risky major-suit game that was impossible to make. He was slowly leading out cards in a side suit in hopes of getting an idea. I noticed that Ron had revoked on the ninth or tenth trick. So, Steve in fact made the bid, and, in fact, we won the match and the entire event! I have always used this as an example of great dummy play. Marcia and Paula were shocked and elated by their victory.
In 2024 our team was assigned to the third bracket of the Round Robin. Seven teams were in our bracket; so, we played six rounds of eight boards each. We won our first two matches, but then we lost two. We also split the last two. The only saving grace was that in the last round we soundly defeated the HBC team of Sally, Donna Feir, and the Hugheses.
Other things made me miserable, but I enjoyed playing with Judy. She indicated that she also liked sitting across from me. I asked her if she would be available to play in the regional scheduled for Norwich, CT, in November.
The drive home was even more brutal than the one on Tuesday morning. The traffic was not a problem, but the setting sun was awful.
One of the first things that I did after arriving home was to send to all members of the Executive Committee an email explaining my attitude about the schedule for the Norwich Tournament. Here is the text:
I don’t think that in the ExComm meeting I explained my concerns about the schedule for Norwich schedule very well. Here, for reference, is the schedule for the five-day event in Mansfield, the last time that the NAPs were held in conjunction with a tournament.
On Wed. there was a 2-2 schedule. Thursday started a knockout. Sunday had a three-flighted Swiss. Was this schedule illegal?
The Norwich schedule for the first four days is the following:
Monday seems to have a 2-1 schedule, Tuesday a 2-2 schedule (assuming the practice counts as a flight), Wednesday a 1-1 schedule (assuming the NAP does not count as a flight), and Thursday a 1-2 schedule (assuming the NAP does not count as a flight).
My questions are: 1) Is it not possible to have 2-2 or 3-1 schedules on one or more of these days? 2) Is it not possible to schedule a knockout?
Her reply struck me as nonsensical, but I knew from all my experience as a debater that it was foolish to get into an argument with the person doing the judging.
I hear what you’re saying and agree whole-heartedly if this were a normal, traditional tournament.
We need to realize it’s just not 2019 anymore. Not only that, this is a new tournament, in a totally new city/state on a new date AND new days of the week. Each of these changes tends to drop attendance, never mind having them all at once. Not only that, it’s the week before Thanksgiving. That gives us an potential problem on steroids.
To mitigate the potential damage and maximize our chance for success, we decided to go with a streamlined, simple schedule – focus on getting people out for the NAPs – and keeping them for the other events. This way the events will be bigger. We can’t afford to slice a small pie into tiny pieces.
We also can’t run mid-flight/GR events when we are sending people into NAP B/C. An encouraging the C to also play in the B and the B to also play in the A.
As a result, this isn’t your normal tournament.
It’s all about encouraging people to come ready for NAP, NAP, NAP! And stay for the rest. Let’s concentrate on making this fun, challenging and create buzz for next year. Once we live through the experience, we can expand our offerings where it make sense on non-NAP days. Not to mention, we’ll be on a more traditional Tues-Sun and well away from holiday schedule.
Hope that enlightens.
It didn’t. The remark about not being 2019 any more really frosted me. It is not 2021 any more either. I think that an organization with over $150,000 in liquid assets owes it to its members to provide a quality product.
A few weeks after this exchange it occurred to me that in previous years schedules developed by the Tournament Scheduling Committee (TSC) for upcoming tournaments were presented to the Executive Committee by the vice-president, whose primary duty was chairing the TSC. That had not been happening recently. The schedule for Norwich would not have even been mentioned if I had not brought it up.
I dug up my copy of the bylaws and the proposed changes. One of the revisions was to eliminate the concept of a “standing committee”, which presumably persists from one regime to the next. One of these committees was the TSC.
I had resigned from the TSC during the lockdown because the meeting times conflicted with my only evening activity, the bridge game in Simsbury. I asked Sally Kirtley if the TSC meetings had been occurring in 2024. She replied that they had not.
It occurred to me that perhaps the bylaw revisions were devised, at least in part, to provide legal cover for the dissolution of the TSC. I wrote to Lois DeBlois, a past president of the New England Bridge Conference about the meaning of the term “standing” and how it pertained to the responsibilities of the TSC. Most of what she wrote back I already knew. She also sent me a copy of the bylaws, which, of course I already had. However, the one thing that really struck me about her reply was that the TSC was a really big thing in her day.
For a while I considered making a crusade of restoring the TSC to its historical function. I thought that that would be a good idea, if only to provide some kind of buffer against the kind of schedule proposed for Norwich.
I gave up on the idea because, in the first place, I did not like the notion of being the initiator of conflict. Furthermore, I was uncertain of the audience . The vote would presumably be taken by the Board of Delegates at a meeting of the Board of Delegates in Norwich. The last such meeting was attended mostly by people from CT. However, there was no guarantee that that would be the case. Furthermore, I would have to contact people and explain my positions. Why was the committee important? I could think of a few reasons, but none was exactly compelling.
I won’t be wearing this badge any more.
So, I decided not to pursue the matter. In fact, I decided to resign both from the Executive Committee and the Board of Delegates. Even though this essentially meant that I was abandoning my quest to save regional bridge from the demographic and technological tendencies that threaten it, I just could not face dealing with the current administration any more.
The Harvest regional was scheduled to be held from November 18-23 (Monday through Saturday) at the Holiday Inn in Norwich, CT, a hotel that had never been used for a regional tournament before. As mentioned above, I used my IHG hotel points to reserve a room for all five nights.
I had difficulty finding partners for the event. Eventually I put together a schedule that had me playing with Abhi Dutta for three days and with John Lloyd, Xenia Coulter, and Eric Vogel for one each. Our teammates for four Swiss events were scheduled to be Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider.
However, I was ill all day on Sunday, November 17. I eventually ended up cancelling my entire schedule for the tournament. The details have been posted here.
I had heard that the attendance at the tournament was well below expectations. I did not check before I started writing this portion of the entry. I was shocked to discover just how bad it was. The finals for the three NAP flights had 9 (A), 13 (B), and 4 (C) tables. The turnout for flight C was scandalously low. For as long as I have been associated with the district, we have never had such poor attendance at these qualifiers. So, the approach of a vanilla schedule did not help the NAP attendance.
The attendance at the regular events was hardly any better. Even the two bracketed events had only five brackets between them. It occurred to me that if I had attended, I probably would not have enjoyed it much.
1. Sue brought an unbelievable amount of stuff to New Hampshire. Her huge blue suitcase was filled to the brim. She also brought her oxygen unit, her CPAP machine, two canes, and at least three shopping bags filled with food, utensils, and all kinds of other stuff.
2. Bart and Kitty won more masterpoints than anyone in the tournament.
3. This slam was a move prompted by desperation. I figured that we were probably going to lose by a wide margin, probably a blitz. Unfortunately, our auction made it impossible for me to get much information about the possibility of success. I opened 2♣ to indicate a very strong hand. We played that his response showed “controls”. He bid 2♥, which betokened an ace or two kings. Since I had all four kings, I knew that he had an ace. I had two of them, and so I knew that we had only one certain loser. I also had six hearts headed by the AK, but only one outside jack. I needed to know about his queens and jacks, but there was no way to get that information. So, I just bid 6♥ and hoped for the best.
4. The InterContinental Hotels Group owns the Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza hotels, as well as many other. I had a Chase credit card that provided reward points that could be used for free rooms at those hotels.
5. If this sounds incredible to you, you do not know Sue.Taking in strays is one of the primary aspects of her personality. Many of our pets were strays. Most of the rest were gifts from people who were desperate to get rid of them. I have often thought that Sue took me in when I was a stray. I certainly was different socially from the other actuaries with whom we worked.
6. Maybe not actuaries.
7. This was, rather incredibly, the fourth time in less than three years that I had been in the position of selecting an opponent for the semifinal of a knockout. Twice we had lost both the semifinal and final matches, but at the 2023 tournament in Warwick we won both matches.
The AS/400 hardware, the OS/400 operating system, and the and DB2 database were introduced in 1988. The AdDept system that TSI developed for the administration of the advertising departments of large retailers was one of the very first systems developed … Continue reading →
The AS/400 hardware, the OS/400 operating system, and the and DB2 database were introduced in 1988. The AdDept system that TSI developed for the administration of the advertising departments of large retailers was one of the very first systems developed on and for the AS/400. At the time TSI was an IBM Business Partner for its GrandAd system on the System/36. Earlier TSI had been one of the first software companies to be recognized as an IBM Business Partner for the Datamaster.
Prior to the late nineties the only requirement for a company to become a Business Partner was to have some successful accounts that were using its software or services. At times it was a huge advantage to be an IBM Business Partner. At other times IBM employees treated the partners as competition.
At some point the concept of Value-Added Retailer (VAR) was introduced. VARs were at first allowed to order and sell systems for which their software or services had qualified as adding value to the sale of IBM equipment. Too many bad sales by VARs prompted IBM to take away the ability to take orders from smaller companies such as TSI. Instead they were assigned to a “Super-VAR” who vetted and placed the orders for them. In 1999 TSI was assigned to a company called BPS, which shortly thereafter renamed itself Savoir.
The next, but by no means last, set of restrictions imposed by IBM was to require any company involved in sales of IBM equipment to have at least one employee who had passed proficiency tests for the the equipment. At the outset there were two levels with separate tests, one for sales personnel and one for technical.
My partner Denise Bessette and I judged at the time that it was critical to the future marketing of AdDept and any other future product that we continue to participate in IBM’s partnership program. I knew more about the hardware offerings than she did, and so I was chosen to study up and take the technical test. It made little sense for a different person to study for the sales one, which was reportedly much easier.
I think that I must have taken the exams in the first half of 1999 or late 1998. I have a lot of notes from the second half of 1999, and there is no mention of them.
IBM still publishes Redbooks. I think that WAS was in version 1 in 1999.
IBM published study guides for both exams. One or two Redbooks may have also been on the syllabus. I remember that there was a considerable amount of technical material about several things with which I was not at all familiar. One was the cabling required to connect two AS/400s. The other was setting up partitions on a single AS/400 so that each partition had a separate file system. It was more complicated than it sounds because each device needed to be defined in each partition that used it. I remember practically nothing about either of these topics, but we did encounter partitioning at Dick’s Sporting Goods (introduced here).
I spent as much time as I could bear going over the course material. Hardware and operating systems have never really been my thing. It took a lot of discipline to force myself to understand the details of things that we would never use.
The day arrived on which I was scheduled to take the tests. I drove to an office in Farmington that specialized in administering exams for corporations. I had already consumed one 20-ounce bottle of Diet Coke before I arrived, and I brought another with me.
I gave my registration document to the receptionist. She asked me which test I wanted to take first. I selected the sales test. I seem to recall that each test lasted for about ninety minutes. All questions were multiple choice. I was required to enter my answers on a PC.
The sales test was not too difficult; I reported back to the receptionist ten or fifteen minutes before the deadline. She told me that I had passed.
I told her that I wanted to take a break before taking the technical test. I went to the men’s room and sat in the lobby. I drank my second Diet and tried to clear my mind. Then I took the second test.
It was much more difficult than the first. A few questions were beyond my ken. I skipped them. I read all of the others carefully and only answered after I was fairly certain. I used up nearly all of the allotted time. I was pretty relieved when the receptionist assured me that I had passed both tests.
It doesn’t look familiar.
So, I was certified by IBM as knowledgeable about both the sales and technical aspects of the AS/400. If I ever had physical certificates, I certainly have not seen them for a decade. TSI’s Sales Manager Doug Pease told me that his contact at Savoir had told him that almost nobody ever passed the technical exam on the first try.
I am not sure how much good my success did us. I am not sure that TSI sold any new hardware at all in the rest of the time that we were in business. We might have ordered an upgrade or two through our Super-Var.
On the other hand, we did get to go to the PartnerWorld convention in San Diego. That adventure has been described here.
I always took the route from our house in Enfield to the airport that Google claimed took 28 minutes. At 5:30 AM I could make it in less than 20.
My routine: I always flew from Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, CT, which was usually identified on the departure boards at airports as “Hartford-Springfield” or BDL. We were fortunate in that almost every major airline had a presence at Bradley. The last to arrive was Southwest, which began its service at Bradley in November 1999.
I usually took one of the first flights in the morning, often around 6:00. At first Sue drove me to the airport and picked me up, but this became tiresome for me. I soon elected instead to park at Executive Valet Parking, the only lot that was north of the airport. It was easier on both of us.
The people who worked the early morning shift at Executive came to know me pretty well. The driver was usually an extremely friendly and loquacious guy named Larry. His style was too much for me at that early hour. I mean, it wasn’t even 6:00 yet. I was never in the mood for chitchat. Vacationers probably appreciated his approach more than business travelers.
The lady at the desk knew me well enough that I did not even need to show my frequent-parker card when I checked in. She even knew what I drove.
On every trip I brought exactly one suitcase and one briefcase that was large enough to hold my laptop. For several years my suitcase was a large bright blue fabric one with wheels. It was large enough to hold my pillow. I always had a hard time getting to sleep after a stressful excessively caffeinated day dealing with problems or requests at the client’s office. Having a familiar pillow helped. The suitcase’s bright color also made it easy to spot on the luggage belt, and the design made it light. I only got rid of it when the zipper broke.
When I arrived at the terminal, I checked in at the ticket counter. In the nineties I flew enough that I could use the express lane at Delta or American. Later, of course, the airlines installed kiosks that made the check-in process much easier.
Security was a breeze before 9/11/2001 (described here). Even during the busiest times (early in the morning and around 6 PM), it seldom took more than a minute or two. Since the employees worked (directly or indirectly) for the airlines, they were always courteous and tried to make sure that passengers arrived at their gate expeditiously. After 9/11 it was a good idea to plan for an excruciating period of at least twenty minutes.
In the first few years of my flying days Bradley had two terminals. Terminal B housed American Airlines and a few small carriers that I never used. Later this terminal was demolished and Terminal A was greatly expanded with two long “concourses” that connected to the central area.
In the mornings I usually bought a sausage biscuit with egg sandwich at McDonald’s in the airport. I also purchased a large coffee even though the restaurant at the airport did not participate in the long-standing promotion of “$1 for any size coffee” available at most McD’s in those days. If I was in a hurry I brought the breakfast bag onto the plane.
If I had a lot of time, I would try to find a place to sit near an electric outlet. Most airports were not designed for the electronics age. In the nineties almost no one brought a computer onto an airplane, and cell phones were even rarer. Furthermore most of the devices in those days could not hold a charge for more than a couple of hours. Consequently, as the use of electronics grew, those few seats near electrical outlet were in great demand. I knew the location of most of the outlets at BDL.
An inviolate rule was to use a men’s room in the airport before every flight. The restrooms on airplanes were not pleasant, and waiting in line in the aisle when you had to go was very annoying.
I tried to reserve window seats. I liked to look out and try to identify cities. Of course, no one wanted a middle seat. When I sat on the aisle someone always seemed to hit my elbow. I usually tried to get on the port side. If no one sat in the middle I could stretch out my right leg under the middle seat in front of me.
I always brought my computer, my Bose headphones, my CD player, several magazines, and at least one book. Some flights showed old television shows on a screen; I never watched or got a headset. I played opera music on my CD or the computer while the plane was in flight. I also played music in my hotel room, while I was running, and especially during the periods between flights in noisy airports. On one of my last trips I had been listening to Mozart’s Così fan tutte when it was time to board the plane. I left under my seat in the waiting area the CD player that contained the opera’s third CD. I never got the player back or bought a replacement for the CD.
I almost never slept on the flights out to the client’s location, but I regularly dozed on the return flights even when someone occupied the middle seat. I found the most comfortable position in close quarters was to lean my head against the little pillow that was provided to my seat braced against the window or side of the plane.
I never put anything in the overhead compartments. My briefcase, which had all my electronics and other diversions, was under the seat in front of me. If the plane was crowded, it was sometimes difficult to extract the stuff that I wanted. If I had an overcoat or a jacket, I used it as a lap rug.
I usually took the stairs down to the Baggage Claim area.
Most of the time my return flights landed late, sometimes very later. I tried to get to the baggage area before most of the other passengers in order to occupy a position near the beginning of the belt. I knew which direction all the belts ran. No airline ever failed to deliver my luggage1 on a return trip. Nevertheless, by the time that my bag arrived—no matter how well the trip had gone—I was always angry at everyone and everything. For me air travel for business was inherently stressful.
There were a couple of banks of phones in the baggage area. Each parking lot and hotel had a direct line. I just picked up the phone and read the number on the ticket that I had been given when I checked in at Executive and told them which airline I had been on. Within a few minutes (usually) the shuttle bus would arrive. Executive would almost always have my car warmed up by the time that the bus reached the lot. Executive charged the credit card that I had on file there. The receipt would be on the seat of the car. My drives home were always uneventful.
I recognized quite a few celebrities while I was in airports or on airplanes going to or from AdDept clients. My spottings are documented here.
Weather and other close calls
In the winter I tried to avoid scheduling flights that required stops in Chicago, Detroit, or Minneapolis. Nevertheless, on quite a few occasions I ended up missing my connecting flight back to Hartford. Since my return trips were almost always in the evening, on most occasions there were no other flights that I could take. This was a nuisance, but after a while I came to appreciate that the inconvenience was just part of the aggravation inherent to traveling for business. The airline always found a seat for me on a flight in the morning and put me up at a nearby hotel for the night. I can only remember one bizarre exception. I have described it here.
Once, however, the disruptive weather had subsided in Chicago long before my United flight from Des Moines touched down at O’Hare. Earlier that day the winds in the Windy City had exceeded fifty miles-per-hour, and O’Hare had been closed for a short period. It was about 8:30 PM when my flight effected its landing there, and my next flight was not scheduled to leave until 10:00. So, even though United connections in O’Hare could require very long walks, I was not very worried about arriving at my gate in time to board my flight to Hartford.
Most of my horror stories involved United.
I did not account for what happened next. The plane usually taxied around for a few minutes and then pull into the designated gate. Not this time. The pilot parked it on the tarmac out of the way of the other planes. He then announced that there was no gate available for our flight. He did not explain why; he merely stated that he had been ordered to park where he did. Every few minutes he would make an announcement on the intercom, but fifty minutes elapsed before we finally reached the gate.
My recollection is that I ran from one of the B gates in Terminal 1 to an F gate in Terminal 2.
At that point there was almost no chance that my checked bag would be transported to my connecting flight. That failure had happened to me a few times. The airline just delivered it to my house later in the day. The big question was whether I could make it to the gate before the plane departed. I knew that it would not be easy as soon as I saw that my flight to Hartford was in a different terminal. On the other hand I was in the best shape of my life. Even carrying my quite heaby briefcase I rated that I had a pretty good chance.
I wasn’t as fast as O.J, but I was certainly not about to have a heart attack. They should have just let me board.
In fact, I did reach the gate ten minutes before the scheduled departure time. I was dismayed to see that the door was already closed. I went up to the desk with my ticket to demand that the two female agents let me on the plane. I was, of course, out of breath. One of the ladies told me to calm down. She warned me that I might have a heart attack.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I assured them. “I am a runner. In a minute or two I won’t even be breathing hard.” This was true.
They refused to open the door. That was bad enough, but they then also refused to authorize me to stay overnight at United’s expense. They claimed that it was weather-related and therefore not the company’s fault.
I explained that my flight had landed on time, but it then parked out on the tarmac for almost an hour because United did not have enough gates. The bad weather had ceased long before this happened. The agents were intractable. I have seldom been so angry. I might have said something inappropriate.
They weren’t abandoned that night.
Fortunately for me, United had plenty of customer service desks in O’Hare, and they stayed open very late. I walked over to one and explained the situation to the clerk. He told me that he did not understand why the ladies would not give me vouchers for a hotel room and breakfast.
I understood the reason very well. They were planning to leave ten minutes early, and they were already packed up. Dealing with me might actually have required them to stay another ten or even fifteen minutes.
The customer service guy issued the vouchers without hesitation. I stayed at a hotel and arrived in Hartford the next morning on the same plane that had my luggage.
Tornado
I cannot remember even one occasion in which weather prevented me from arriving at a client’s office by the scheduled time. The one time that my plane faced really serious weather was when I was flying to Des Moines in the late afternoon. A serious tornado was approaching Des Moines from the southwest at about the same time that my plane was approaching from the east. The plane was forced to land in land in a much smaller airport in Cedar Rapids. Our aircraft and crew were going to spend the night in Cedar Rapids. The flight to Des Moines would resume in the morning. So, the luggage stayed on the plane. There were no flights available to Des Moines on the evening that we arrived.
“Go out the exit. Go south until you hit I-80. Then go west.”
I needed to be at the client’s2 offices at the start of business in the morning. I decided to rent a car and drive to Des Moines. I usually patronized Avis, but Avis had no office in the Cedar Rapids airport. So, I went to the Hertz counter and rented a car. The agent assured me that I could return it at the airport in Des Moines. He also gave me a map and indicated the route. This was Iowa. You can always get from one place to another with only a few turns.
I was not too worried about the tornado. Airplanes cruise at about 30,000 feet. At that altitude a tornado is quite wide. The chances of it engulfing an airplane are good. I was driving at an altitude of five feet or less. The swath of a tornado when it touches down—and many never touch down—is usually not very wide. My chances in the car were much better than ours in the plane.
In fact, I encountered some wind and rain, but not enough to bother me or my vehicle much. I made it to my hotel not much later than I would have if the flight had continued in Des Moines. The problem was that I was wearing shorts, sneakers, and a Bob Dylan tee shirt. I had everything that I needed for work in my briefcase, but all my clothes were still on the airplane in Cedar Rapids.
In the morning I checked the phone book in my hotel room. I discovered a Walmart within a couple of miles of the hotel. I drove there at about 8:00 and purchased a pair of pants and a shirt. They were not exactly elegant, but they would pass for one day. The people would just need to put up with my inappropriate footwear.
The advertising director told me that it would have been fine to come in my tee shirt and shorts, but he was not familiar with the condition of that outfit.
Takeoff or bounce?
The only time that I felt a little frightened on a business trip involved a landing at National Airport in Washington, DC. I had heard that the runways at the airport were shorter3 than those at other major airports, and the pilots did seem to apply the brakes rather hard as soon as they touched the runway. On this one occasion, however, the US Airways pilot did not hit the brakes at all. The plane did not roll on the runway; it bounced. The pilot then immediately placed the aircraft in takeoff mode. The plane cleared the far end of the runway, rose steadily, circled back around, and eventually landed.
The pilot never explained what had happened, and the extra circuit only cost us a few minutes. Maybe we were coming in too “hot’; maybe something was on the runway. Who knows?
Food
Most of my flights occurred before 9/11. The longer flights offered meals in those days; on the shorter ones snacks were served. If the meal had more than one choice, my initial strategy was to take the one that sounded the most appetizing. After several disappointments I reversed course and chose the one that seemed less appetizing. That seemed to work better.
In the morning I ordered tomato juice with ice and black coffee. At other times I chose Diet Cokes (or Pepsi)—with the can if they would let me. I never ordered an alcoholic beverage in coach, but I usually had one Scotch on the rocks if I was in first class and on my way back to Hartford.
If the flight offered only snacks, my choices were—in order—potato chips, peanuts, and Biscoff cookies. I always passed on pretzels and anything that I had never heard of.
I substituted broccoli for the French fries.
I actually liked the food at restaurants at a few airports. I liked the babyback ribs at the Chili’s in Concourse F in Atlanta. The Usinger’s brats at the Milwaukee airport were outstanding. The Italian beef sandwiches in the American Airlines section of O’Hare were delicious. I frequented a Mexican cantina at DFW. The Taco Bell in the Baltimore airport sold beefy burritos for a while.
I found something tolerable at most of the other airports. Chicken wraps of some kind were usually reliable. I avoided fried foods and tried to eat some fruit. I usually enjoyed Chinese food, but I had bad luck with it at airports.
Puddle-jumpers
Most of my flights were at least an hour long, and I usually rode on full-sized jets. I did have a few memorable trips on smaller planes.
I flew on a small plane from Fort Meyers to Naples when I was asked to make a presentation to the Frederick Atkins Group. That flight was uneventful. I also once took the very short flight from Minneapolis to St. Cloud, MN. That flight hardly even seemed to get off of the ground. On subsequent trips to Herberger’s I rented a car in Minneapolis. The short flight was from LA to Fresno provided me with my first view of both LA smog and Bakersfield.
One short trip was momentous, not for me, but for my flying companion, Doug Pease. The Continental flight from Bradley to Newark was pretty choppy. I was gazing out the window the whole time, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Doug reach for the air sickness bag5. After we landed he nonchalantly threw the bag in a trash can. I asked him, “Don’t you want to keep that as a souvenir?”
Miscellaneous: For some strange reason on at least three occasions a woman with a young child waiting to board a flight approached me. Each woman asked if she could entrust the kid to me while she went to the ladies’ room (or maybe to the bar for a quick stiff one). Nothing happened.
On another occasion I sat next to a boy flying alone from Washington. I don’t remember the destination. The weather was terrible when we took off, and we bounced around quite a bit. It dd not seem to bother him at all. He had books and toys with him and was a perfect little gentleman the entire time. I had the impression that he had flown as much as I had.
Once on a trip from Bradley to, if I recall correctly, Chicago I sat in the very last row next to another computer programmer. We both ran small software companies. Although he worked on Macintoshes, and our clients used IBM mini-computers, we discovered that we had experienced similar frustrations in trying to get our businesses off the ground. We were lucky to find a niche market that lasted just long enough.I wonder how his turned out.
I could just imagine the agents at the ticket counter saying, “Oh, God, here’s another one. Put him in the back row with that other geek.”
My trip to Portland OR, on February 21, had several strange features. This is from my notes:
I drove to the airport Sunday evening and discovered that there was no place to park. I went to six parking lots. They were all full. I ended up parking in short-term parking. It costs $20 per day. Although this is outrageous, it will hardly make a dent in the cost of this trip. My plane from Hartford was totally full (most of the passengers appeared to be high school-aged). I assumed that at least some people would miss the plane because they couldn’t find a place to park, but I was wrong. From now on I guess I have to call Executive Valet Parking before I leave. If they don’t have any room, I will just leave my car at 7B and call a cab. It’s bound to be less than $140.
I wonder where all the people parked. Bradley has closed off half of the short-term parking and all of the B lot.
By contrast, the plane to Portland had only about forty or fifty people on it. …
This is a first. The crew on the flight from Cincinnati to Portland also was on the flight from Hartford to Cincinnati. Different plane; different gate; same people.
To get from the airport to the parking lot after a trip I had to call Executive. Someone ordinarily answered on the first ring. One night no one answered the phone. I hung up, waited a few minutes, and called again. The third time that I called it rang ten or fifteen times before a breathless woman answered. She took my information and said that she would be there as soon as she could. About thirty minutes later the bus arrived, and she was driving. She explained that three or four people ordinarily worked the night shift, but the others did not show up that evening. So, she had to answer the phone, go out in the lot to find the cars, drive them to the office area, and then drive the bus to the airport to pick up the customers at three different locations.
Four or five of us were on the bus at the same time. No one gave her any grief. Nothing similar ever happened again. I stuck with Executive, but I imagine that the company lost a few customers that evening.
If I could arrange it, I would work in a visit to my parents on the way to a client. This was often feasible for trips to Texas or California. Direct flights to DFW, Houston, and LA were available from Kansas City’s airport.
Yes, my signature on the back might have been more legible 25 years ago, but …
I arrived at the ticket counter at Bradley for one of those KC trips, and, to my dismay, I could not find my driver’s license. The agent would not give me my ticket without proof that I was the person who had purchased it. They would not accept my many credit cards as proof of identity. In the end they accepted my library card from the Enfield Public Library. They said that it would suffice because it was issued by a government organization. Yes, but it did not have my name on it anywhere! Isn’t the purpose of a piece of identification to show that the name on the card matches the name on the ticket?
Needless to say, I did not object. However, I knew that this acceptance only deferred my day of reckoning for a couple of days. I would certainly need to produce real ID to fly from KC to LA.
Delaying worrying about the problem was a good approach. My driver’s license was actually resting comfortably in my shirt pocket the entire time. I had placed it there that very morning so that I would not need to dig through my wallet to find my license. This was a good example of being “too clever by half.”
Luggage
A different trip that included a stop in Kansas City resulted in the most frantic half hour that I ever spent in an airport. My final destination was Des Moines. Because there were no direct flights to Des Moines from KC, I decided to rent a car in KC and drive to Des Moines. I would arrive sooner than if I flew, and I could set my own schedule. I must have played golf with my dad on that trip. I remember that I had brought my golf clubs with me.
At the end of the training/support/research session in Des Moines I flew back to Hartford on TWA. This meant that I had to stop in St. Louis. By coincidence the flight to St. Louis continued on to Hartford. This was a rare occurrence. I almost always needed to change planes when we reached the hub airport.4
At some point after I boarded the flight to St. Louis I noticed an anomaly on the baggage check that had been stapled to the envelope holding my ticket. Although the destination on the ticket was Hartford, the bags were designated for St. Louis. I pressed the call button for the flight attendant. When she arrived I explained the problem. She conferred with other crew members and then advised me to go to baggage claim in St. Louis (leaving my briefcase on the plan), retrieve my checked luggage, bring them up to the ticket counter, check the bags again, go through security again, walk to the gate, and reboard the plane.
I guess that there was no way to tell them not to unload my luggage.
I did all that, but it was exhausting. I had to drag my suitcase and my golf clubs up the stairs to the ticket counter. Fortunately, I found a short line there, and the trip back through security was not much of an issue before 9/11. I made it to the gate with perhaps five minutes to spare, but I was completely spent. The rest of the trip was blessedly uneventful.
On quite a few flights a crew member attempted to say something humorous over the airplane’s intercom. I only remember one who was really able to pull it off. The flight was on United from Bradley to Chicago. My recollection is that it was in the evening. The head flight attendant was absolutely hilarious. Almost all of the people in the cabin—who usually pay little attention to announcements—were in stitches. I only remember one line. It occurred when she was advising us to fasten our seat belts to prepare for the landing. She began with, “The captain reports that he has found an airport…”
1. On one flight to Pittsburgh, at the time a hub for US Airways. I could not find my big blue bag on the conveyor belt. I went to the agent. She found it for me. She said that it was the only piece of luggage on my flight that was not directed to another flight.
2. The client was Younkers, a chain of department stores based in downtown Des Moines. Much more about the AdDept installation at Younkers is posted here.
3. In fact, the longest runway at National Airport was less than half the length of the runways at the other major airport in the Washington area. It was also much shorter than the runways at Bradley.
4. I can remember only one other time that my flight continued to my final destination after a stop at a hub. It was a Continental flight from Bradley through Cleveland to Houston. I was the only passenger who stayed on the plane, but the crew for the second leg was the same. This was in the days that the airlines served food. The flight attendant apologized to me because the meal on the second leg was the same as she had served me on the flight from Hartford. I ate both meals. I have almost never turned down free food.
5. While I was working at TSI I never got sick on an airplane. However, on our vacation in Tanzania in 2015 I had an absolutely awful experience on the first leg of our journey from Serengeti to Katavi. The tale of woe is told here.
