The Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) was recognized as the oldest such group in the American Contract Bridge League, the governing agency for contract bridge in North America. The club had more than five hundred members before the pandemic. Unlike most bridge clubs, it was a member-owned organization. The club had a manager, but her contract specified no salary.1 The decision makers consisted of the usual four officers—president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer—and six “trustees” who usually served three-year terms. Nominees were selected by a committee and elected at the club’s annual meeting in the fall. Additional nominations were possible, but usually the entire slate was elected.
In the fall of 2021 I was asked to serve on the HBC’s Board of Trustees. My three years on that board have been chronicled here. One of the most frustrating experiences for me and for everyone else was the fact that the club, which, had no definite notion of which people were actually members. The count done by the treasurer, Trevor Reeves, was significantly less than the “official” number reported by the club’s manager, Donna Feir. Both were well short of five hundred. No one could find a way to reconcile the two in a systematic manner.
Donna kept track of membership using the ACBLscore program provided by IBM. Its primary purpose was to set up different types of games and tabulate results. It was written decades ago, and it had been updated occasionally. It was written in dBase or something similar that ran in DOS or windows. It did not employ a relational database. The files were in a proprietary format.
The discrepancies persisted throughout the next two years. Near the end of 2023 I decided to try to provide a solution. I interviewed most of the major players. I did not interview Donna because my experience was that she was very nervous about anything that might upset her day-to-day activities. I learned the following:
The club had several lists of members. No automated method connected them:
The ACBLscore list that Donna maintained. It could be used to print phone lists and masterpoint lists if those fields were kept up to date.
The contact list associated with the club’s gmail account.
The “audience” used on the MailChimp account for mailings to all members.
The list used by the financial people.
Other ad hoc lists.
Layout of the member file.
Transaction layout.
I determined that a relatively risk-free system composed of a membership file and a transaction file stored on relational database that everyone could access could probably address many of these issues without a great deal of work. In addition to the main files, I envisioned three background tables:
A table for transaction types that contained the fiscal year2, a description, and a code designating the main type.
A main type table to discriminate between memberships and contributions. There were not many of the latter, but better to plan than neglect.
A user table for security.
I envisioned only one output program that could produce a list on the screen, a count of the number of items selected, or create a csv3 file to be downloaded. If that proved insufficient, I felt confident of being to add more options later.
I also saw an opportunity to integrate data from my ACBL roster. So, users could easily compare what was on the system’s members file with what the ACBL had: address, phone numbers, email address, masterpoints, etc.
In my heyday I could have whipped this sort of thing out on the AS/400 in less than a week. However, I had done almost no programming at all since the beginning of the pandemic and precious little in the previous four or five years. Furthermore, I would be working in a less forgiving environment than what I was accustomed to. I would not have the AS/400 tools and support, and I had never designed an Internet-based system to run on php scripts, a MySQL database, and an Apache server. It also did not help that I was in my mid-seventies and becoming more senile every day.
In early 2022 I had asked for a csv file that contained one record for each active4 member of the club. I received it in early February. I was able to use it to populate the “HBC?” field on the players table. I used this information to provide the club with accurate breakdowns of the number of active players in various masterpoint ranges.
1. An annual “honorarium” was voted annually to the manager and other officials.
2. The club’s fiscal year began on November 1. Thus fiscal 2025 ran from 11/01/24 to 10/31/25.
3. A file with the extension “.csv” contains rows that are formatted identically. Fields (columns) are separated by a comma or another delimiter. Spreadsheet programs such as Excel can read these files.
4. Some club members were not required to pay the prescribed annual dues in order to participate as members. I assumed that every person on the file had paid the dues, but there were doubtless some who were not required to.
My activities for the first part of 2023 are chronicled here. On May 13 Neil Montague finally succeeded at using MailChimp to send out an email for the New England Bridge Conference! My travails in trying to turn over my … Continue reading →
My activities for the first part of 2023 are chronicled here.
On May 13 Neil Montague finally succeeded at using MailChimp to send out an email for the New England Bridge Conference! My travails in trying to turn over my responsibilities in these and other matters involving communications are detailed here. This was a great relief for me. Some of the emails that I had sent in the previous few months promoted online events that paid gold masterpoints. Each one made me cringe.
On the same day Dan Jablonski finally sent me an email casting the deciding vote in the Weiss-Bertoni award. You can read the details and discover who won the award in this blog entry.
On the 17th I mowed the lawn for the second time. The high pollen content of some areas of the yard made it somewhat difficult, as it has in every May for the last decade or two, but I completed the task without resting.
June
On June 1 I tried to beat the heat by departing for my 5-mile walk at 8:30AM. I nevertheless found it as much as I could bear,1 and there was precious little shade. I noticed that the SmartFuel gas station on the north side of Hazard Ave. near the South Road intersection had closed after only a few months of operation. It replaced the Shell station that had occupied the location for decades. Signs said that it would become a Big Y Express station.
Raveis Realty, located in a house a little bit to the east of of the station, has also apparently one year. A few years earlier a spectacular display of tulips appeared near the west side of the Raveis building.
Zillow’s photo of 2 Park St.
The corner house on Park St. (the street address is 2) is somewhat mysterious. It had appeared empty with no “For Sale” sign for months. I saw two girls there the previous week. It seemed empty again on this occasion.
In the last quarter-mile I was passed by a female walker. I was pretty sure that that had never happened to me before. I did not like it, but I was too exhausted and hot to try to hold her off. My speed and endurance both decreased noticeably as I got older.
It was still very hot on the 2nd, but then it turned much cooler with a misty rain. I attended both days of the sectional in Johnston, RI, and played with Abhi Dutta. Details have been recorded here.
On June 7 forest fires in Canada were causing in the local area thick haze from the smoke. It was quite eerie and absolutely unprecedented, at least in my lifetime. Two days later the air quality still poor.
I learned that day I should have closed my dad’s IRA account at Country Club Bank in Kansas City earlier. There was not much money in it, but it took weeks to get them to send me a check. .Deidra Tossato finally sent me the form fifteen days after I requested it.
The Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) scheduled an individual game for June 20, the first day of of the regional tournament in Nashua, NH. I played at the HBC, but I did not enjoy myself, and I did not score well. My adventures in Nashua are recorded here.
On June 28 I played with two new partners—Jim Macomber at the HBC in the morning and Barb Gallagher at the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC) in the evening.
On June 29 and 30 my nose ran all day. Despite this I had no trouble sleeping. I had no fever or any other symptoms of Covid-19.
July
I woke up on July 1 after ten consecutive hours of sleep, close to my all-time record. I experienced a little dizziness when I arose from bed, but it disappeared shortly thereafter. I tested negative for Covid-19 using the rapid antigen test that the federal government supplied for free.
Sue’s cousin from Michigan (on the Locke side) was in town. Sue visited with her, but I did not go. We visited her, her parents, and her sisters on our trip to Michigan in 2008, as described here.
Up to nine inches of rain fell in sections of western Connecticut on July 10, but Enfield received hardly any. The weather definitely seemed more extreme in the twenties, but it is still rather mild in southern New England.
The next morning the temperature dropped to 66° at 4:30. It was the first time that it had been below 70° in weeks. It rose to 90° that day and much hotter on the next. There was no bridge game at the SBC on either the 5th or the 12th.
On July 13 at 5:44AM the bookshelf in my bedroom came crashing down. It missed my head by about two inches. If it had hit me, I would have been seriously injured. The shelf disappeared into the black hole of Sue’s “sewing room”.
On July 14 thunderstorms began at 2:30AM. Flooding wreaked havoc in the northwest part of the state. The Connecticut River was 6′ above the flood level. Damage, however, was minimal.
John Willoughby, the president of the HBC, died on July 14. Both Sue and I had been his occasional bridge partner. I worked with him on the Planning Committee when he was the vice-president.
On the following day I heard Steve Jarmoc, a local farmer and ex-politician, on the radio complaining that the flooding in Enfield had caused him crop damage. The land around our house, which was perhaps two miles from his farm, was absolutely dry. Furthermore, Jarmoc mostly grew tobacco—an addictive drug that caused cancer and other ailments. In the previous few years he had converted much of his land to fields filled with solar panels. I seriously doubt that he suffered much damage, and what if he did? Every business suffered occasional setbacks.
I had a horrible bridge day on July 23. Donna Feir reported that the HBC now had 415 members2. It was 89° and sunny when I left after the conclusion of the Board of Trustees meeting. Up to 91° on I-91. By the time that I reached home it had fallen to 68°, and it was raining buckets. I was very relieved to find that there was no flooding in our basement.
August
On August 3 I discovered a document with my notes about the San Diego vacation that Sue and I took with Sue in March of 2006. In the evening I also found a paper bag with flyers and souvenirs from the same trip. I deleted the 1,000+ words that I had previously written about this adventure and started the entry, which you can read here, anew. It was rather thrilling to relive that week.
On the next day I walked five miles in the Enfield Square Mall. A strange new store, Da Money Pit, had opened. They seemed to sell sneakers, ball caps, and sweatshirts.3 The sneakers on display were wrapped in plastic, for no obvious reason that I could see. My “ghost walks” in the mall have been detailed here.
On the 5th the HBC held a memorial to honor John Willoughby. One dog and lots of people, including a surprising number of children, who were relatives or friends of John’s attended.
The next day I learned that Maria Van Der Ree, who was over ninety, had Covid-19. She recovered within a reasonable period of time.
At the HBC John Calderbank and I had a 54 percent game on August 8. That was by far our best performance up to that time. On the next day I scored 58% at the HBC with Barb Gallagher. There was no game in Simsbury because we only five pairs registered to play.
On August 9 the big news was about the devastating fire on Maui. The most destruction was in my favorite town, Lahaina, where 217 buildings destroyed or damaged. The gigantic tree that was the symbol of the town was badly damaged, but there was hope that it would recover.
Mark Oettinger.
On the same day I learned that Mark Oettinger had “resigned” as vice-president of the New England Bridge Conference. I later learned that Peter Marcus and his friends had pretty much forced him out at a meeting of the Tournament Scheduling Committee that I was unable to attend. This news saddened me greatly. I liked and respected Mark.
On August 12-13 I played in the Western Mass sectional in Great Barrington. That adventure has been described here.
On my birthday I played with the woman whom I had been mentoring. Fran Gurtman (introduced here). We did not do well. Sue bought me three shirts and some shorts from Kohl’s. Sue and I ate supper at Francesco’s in Suffield. I ordered Linguini d’Alessandro, which was chicken, sausage, peppers, mushrooms in wine sauce. I really enjoyed it.
On August 23 Sue brought cake to Eno to celebrate my birthday, but she did not arrive until just after 6:15. We had 4 tables.
On August 24 Fran and I had a 52 percent game, which was an improvement of 18 percentage points in our previous game. I made a costly mistake on the last hand.
On August 26 fifteen pairs came to the HBC for the Saturday afternoon game. We played a Swiss with 7.5 tables. It was the biggest turnout on Saturday by far since the pandemic. Peter Katz and I had a 76.1 percent game, by far my best score ever. More details can be found here.
The Ocean State Regional tournament was held August 29-September 1 in Warwick, RI. My adventures there have been cataloged here.
September
September must have been a boring month. The only notes that I recorded concerned the loss of my Costco Visa card from Citi. The details of this remarkable event have been recorded here.
The University of Michigan football team, one of the favorites for the national championship, started the year with five easy victories. They defeated East Carolina 30-3, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas 35-7, Bowling Green 31-6, Rutgers 31-7, and Nebraska 45-7.
Coach Jim Harbaugh did not participate in the first three games because he had purchased lunch4 for a prospective player. Four interim head coaches were assigned. Jesse Minter coached the first game and Sherrone Moore the second. Jay Harbaugh (Jim’s son) and Mike Hart each coached for one half in the third game. A random co-ed could have coached for all three games, and Michigan would still have won them all easily.
October
On October 3 and 4 I moved all of my programs and data files from my Lenovo desktop that was running Windows 10 to the Asus computer running Windows 11. I documented the experience here.
On October 10 I discovered that Windows did not want me to use Shuffling, the Dutch program that I had downloaded to creates pbn files. I did anyway. However, I also received an error in Dealmaster Pro. I had to reconnect the Lenovo box and run it there. This problem was fixed, but I did not record how.
I decided not to play with Alan Godes at the regional tournament in Marlborough. It turned out that he could not play on the only day that I needed a partner. I asked Ros Abel to play in the sectional in Orange, but she was not available. .
As usual, I started my preparation for lunch by boiling water for ShopRite’s store brand of chicken noodle soup. I was shocked to discover that the package contained no noodles at all. I have opened hundreds of these packages over the years, but this had never happened before.
This box in question bore the ShopRite brand, but at some point in the year the store stopped selling the product. A short time later a new brand called Bowl & Basket appeared. The price of a box containing two envelopes of soup was $.99 before the pandemic. As of October of 2024 the price had not changed, and the quality and quantity of the contents remained the same, at least apparently. I could not name another food item of any description that maintained its pre-pandemic price.
I woke Sue up at 6:30AM on October 11: She was scheduled for jury duty in Hartford. She left the house at 8:08. When she arrived she learned that her service was not needed. That evening Kathie Ferguson returned to the SBC on that same evening after a lengthy illness..
Throughout the last few months my car had repeatedly flashed the message that one of my tires was low on air. In the past this had happened once or twice a year. On those occasions I had just brought my car into Lia (without an appointment), and told them about the message. They checked all four tires, filled whichever one was low, and I drove away. The process took perhaps fifteen minutes.
On October 23 I brought it in to Lia Honda again. Because it had happened several times in the recent past, I asked the mechanic to tell me which tire was low. He reported that one of the tires needed patching and told me to sit in the waiting area. After 2.5 hours the work was completed, but the attendant told me that there was a problem with the brakes. I made an appointment for three days later to address this problem, which necessitated spending another few hours in the waiting area.
On October 27-29 the Connecticut Bridge Association held its fall sectional in Orange, CT. The details are posted here.
After only one day of rest I attended the regional tournament in Marlborough, MA. It ran from October 31-November 4. My thoughts about this event have been recorded here.
The Wolverine juggernaut continued with three more easy victories. They defeated Minnesota 52-10, Indiana 52-7, and Michigan State 49-0.
November
On November 16 I sent a recap of the attendance at the sectional in Orange. I have posted it here. The only person who responded to it was Cindy Lyall, who agreed with my assessment.
From left: Jan, the drummer, Peggy, the bass player, and Patty.
On the next evening my wife Sue talked me into attending a concert by the Patti Tuite band at the public library in Ellington. Although I was not crazy about the music, which was mostly blues, I definitely appreciated the skill of the two main musicians—Jan on the synthesizer, flute, and key-tar and Peggy on the alto sax, violin, and harmonica.The band also had a guy on bass guitar and a female drummer. The one number that I really liked was an instrumental with a complex melody that was unlike anything else that they did. Sue liked the entire performance. Patti announced the name of it, but my notes did not record it.
On November 18 I emailed to members of the Executive Committee my attendance analysis for the tournament in Marlborough. It has been posted here. Both of these reports required quite a bit of work because I no longer had access to the ACBL’s files that provided attendance information in a comprehensive fashion.
On the next day Sue and I decided not to drive up to Burlington, VT, to visit with the Corcorans on Thanksgiving. They had invited us much earlier. However, their house would be full of relatives, and we would probably be “fifth wheels.” We felt our of place the last time that we joined them.
On November 22 my Honda warned me that the battery on the fob was low. Over the next two days Sue located a suitable batter. I managed to replace the old one without much difficulty.
November 23 was Thanksgiving. Sue cooked a turkey. We ate our meals on TV trays and tried to think of something that we should be thankful for. I did not record that anything occurred to us.
A very strange thing happened in the last round of the game at the HBC on November 29: Eric Vogel and I were playing against Tom Gerchman and Lea Selig. After the bidding Tom announced that his integrity was intact because his partner Lea Selig bid 6♥, not he. He then disclosed that he had previously overheard Mike Carmiggelt talking about the hand.
I put my cards in the carrier, said “I quit”, got in my car, and drove home. Tom later sent me an email in apology. I replied, “No harm, no foul.”
That same night Ken made many strange bids at the SBC game. He invited to game knowing that we had a maximum of 24 points and only 8 trumps. I recorded that I did not see how the SBC would be able to hold any games in December. I was right. All of the games for the month were canceled.
Michigan finished its Big 10 season with four more victories to finish the regular season undefeated and ranked #3. They defeated Purdue 41-13, Penn State 24-15, Maryland 31-24, and Ohio State 30-24. Sherrone Moore was the head coach on the sidelines for the last three games because Harbaugh was suspended because of a ludicrous sign-stealing incident engineered by a rogue staff member named Connor Stalions.
December
The new month was welcomed by the first flower on the larger Christmas cactus that had been in Denise Bessette’s office. The other one displayed its first flower on the 18th.
On December 2 Michigan shut out Iowa 26-0 in the Big 10 Championship game. It was U-M’s third consecutive win in that game, and the tenth consecutive win for the team representing the East Division. Michigan, now seeded #1, was scheduled to play Alabama in the College Football Playoff semifinals in the Rose Bowl on January 1. There was some controversy because Alabama was chosen to play over undefeated Florida State despite the fact that the Tide had lost to Texas in September.
The temperature on December 15 and 16 reached the fifties. I walked five miles outside on both afternoons.
I learned on December 17 that Eric Vogel had contracted Covid. I wore a mask at bridge all week.
On December 20 the electrical connection for my cellphone’s charger stopped working. I had to plug the cable into a USB port on Asus. This was only a minor inconvenience; Asus has many ports, four of which are in front. I was astounded to learn that Sue had no recollection of my previous phone dying while I was on the 2022 cruise that has been described in detail here. We went to the Verizon store together, and the salesman showed me that the Pixel 2 I had been using was swollen in the middle. He said that it was probably dead. A little later Sue bought me a refurbished Sony Galaxy. I found this lapse of memory quite concerning.
On December 29 I received an mail from someone named Frank Wilson5 asking about downloading a zip or pdf file of Stupid Pope Tricks. I tried to reply to his reply address, fdmw@gmail.com, but it was blocked because the address was not valid. I had no idea what that was about.
On the next day I (and many others) received a shocking email from Peter Marcus that indicated that he was resigning from all his posts in the New England Bridge Conference. This reportedly had something to do with scheduling conflicts with another district”s tournament.
1. At least once in the nineties I ran more than five miles when it was over 100°. When I was in my twenties I considered no temperature to be too hot for any athletic endeavor. Boy, has that changed!
2. It was incredible to me that the HBC did not actually know how many people were officially members. Eventually, I wrote a set of programs that would allow the club to keep track of the membership—dues, contact information, and other things. The story of that system is documented here. The number of members exceeded 500 in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year.
3. The store is still open in October of 2024, but in all my trips to the mall I had seen fewer than a handful of customers.
4. This infraction was widely ridiculed by Michigan fans and called Hamburgergate. It was common knowledge that many large programs arranged for players to be paid under the table. By 2023 the NCAA had ceded the rights to the names, images, and likenesses (called NIL) of the players to the players themselves. By the next year some of them were earning upwards of $1 million to play their favorite sport for a few months out of the year.
5. Of course, I immediately thought that this might be J. Frank Wilson, who, with support from the Cavaliers, in 1964 recorded the remake of Wayne Cochran’s “Last Kiss”. It made it to #2 on Billboard.
In “Pro-Am” events one player in each pair has a limited amount of experience, usually short of Life Master rank. Bob Bertoni ran such contests on Friday evenings at the sectionals sponsored by the Eastern Mass Bridge Association. As an … Continue reading →
In “Pro-Am” events one player in each pair has a limited amount of experience, usually short of Life Master rank. Bob Bertoni ran such contests on Friday evenings at the sectionals sponsored by the Eastern Mass Bridge Association. As an officer of District 25 he brought them to regional tournaments. The first one few were moderately successful. The last one before the pandemic, held in Nashua in June of 2018, was a huge success—21 tables! I attended the first Pro-Am, the last one, and all in between.
The last item discussed at the district’s Executive Committee meeting at the 2023 Gala in Marlborough, MA, was how to attract people to the evening games. At the last minute I, remembering that the Pro-Am had attracted so many players before the pandemic, suggested trying a Pro-Am pairs game. Susan Miguel, the district’s vice-president at the time, asked after the meeting if I would volunteer to “run it.” Thinking that she meant at the next tournament in February in Southbridge, I agreed.1
Well, the district’s February tournament was not held in Southbridge; it was in Mansfield, MA. Furthermore, it was not a real regional—it was limited regional with a simultaneous open sectional. So, there no Pro-Am was on its schedule.
There was a tournament in April in Southbridge, but Susan, who by this time was the president, wanted to have the Pro-Am at the June tournament, the Granite State Getaway, in Nashua, NH. I guess that I could have said no, but I did not want to go back on my word. She let me choose whether the event would be on Friday or Saturday. My wife Sue, who agreed to help with the project, and I selected Friday. I sent the first promotional mailing on Saturday, April 6. It is posted here.
While researching the 2016 event I discovered that one of the big attractions was the half-price entry fee. I emailed Sue Miguel to ask whether we could offer a similar incentive in 2024. Here was her incongruous reply.
This time we’ll charge the full amount BUT we’re going to make sure we have LOTS of things making it fun and are will be [sic]great to advertise.
For starters we’ll have special food. We can also offer raffles, prizes and a little trinket everyone can receive just for playing.
As soon as we wrap Southbridge, we’ll put our minds on it.
Let’s see if we can find a theme to run with…
This sounded horrible to me. The atmosphere at a Pro-Am is less relaxed than the atmosphere in an Open Pairs game, but the theme is well established. Pros are there to give tips and confidence; Ams are there to get better. Both are there to get acquainted with someone from the other group.
That’s the theme!!!
I’ll make an ad but I need a couple of days to regroup and recover.
Directors in Hawaiian shirts, themed party food and gifts. Everyone gets a lai [sic] at the door.
Can’t wait….
Anyone for bridge?
I had to wonder if she had ever been to a luau. Most people who vacation in Hawaii for a few days attend one, but no one ever goes more than once. The hula dancing and the juggling of flaming torches are rather spectacular, but the food is secondary.
When I told my wife about this scheme, she had the same reaction that I did: “Are they going to make people eat poi?”
Anyway the only way that I could imagine to connect luaus to Pro-Am events was that professional hula dancers in grass skirts often tried to train unsuspecting (and usually intoxicated) amateur tourists in the art of hip swiveling. I doubted that we could persuade many people at a bridge tournament to participate in anything similar.
So, I decided to keep promoting it as an event with interesting bridge and painless learning without emphasizing the luau angle. Several people responded to my first email. Two volunteered as Pros. I was able to match Curtis Barton up with the only Am who responded, Daniel Sheinen. So, counting Sue and me, we now had one full table and one extra Pro.
On April 29 I received an email from Stuart Showalter, who had been appointed editor of a newsletter that Sue Miguel dreamed up.
Sue Miguel tells me you could write a short piece for the District 25 newsletter concerning the Pro-Am returning to Nashua. I think something about 250- 300 words would work well. See the attached copy of our March issue. Your article could be along the lines of the “Bridge Fest Returns” article in that issue.
Thanks, and let me know if you have any questions.
I composed about 250 words and sent them to him with a bunch of photos. He thanked me, but I never saw a newsletter that contained any of them. Before writing this I looked on NEBridge.org for newsletters, but I found nothing.
On May 20 I sent an email to all of the non-Life Masters in the district with less than 750 masterpoints. It featured a photo of the hotel, some gold bricks that I found on the Internet, a full-width photo of the Pro-Am event in 2018, and a photo of a wahine throwing a shaka. I argued that Friday was the best day for a non-LM to attend the tournament. They could pick up some gold in the morning and afternoon at the Bracketed Open Pairs and get some tips from “pros” in a fun setting. It is posted here.
This email received quite a few responses. The one that I received from Sue Miguel was totally unexpected.
The countdown has begun to the Pro-Am. I can’t wait. Already have a date to play with Denise.
As much as we appreciate everything you’re doing to make the event a success, I have to remind you that the only person who is authorized to send out emails on behalf/for the District is Neil Montegue.
In addition, we added a new communications protocol to our governance routine…..ALL emails from EVERYONE (even me) need to be reviewed by Denise before they are sent. In this case, she would have pointed out you omitted Bridge FEST! from the list which is now going to create much confusion. Also, we already had an email scheduled to go out today. We promised our members we wouldn’t be over sending emails and we need to adhere to what we promise.
Let me know if there is anything you need for the Pro-AM and keep us in the loop about the level of BUZZ you’re feeling.
Thanks again,
I immediately crafted this response:
I was unaware of any such “protocol”. I certainly never tried to edit or approve emails sent by authorized others when I was Communications Manager. Nobody approved any emails that I sent.
The only BridgeFEST event on Friday is the bracketed pairs, which I definitely highlighted (although I did not use the term because I sent the email to all “Ams”, some of whom would presumably not be considered “New and Advancing Players”). It is difficult to promote a full-price red-points-only event held in the evening at a regional. I expect few (if any) players to participate who did not play on Friday. The only other event on Friday is an Open Swiss that is unlikely to appeal to many Ams. So, the focus of the email was on the unique bracketed pairs and the Pro-Am. I mentioned the Hawaiian theme, but I could not think of a way to tie it in to the Pro-Am, and the best Hawaiian foods are fresh fruits and freshly caught fish, neither of which are likely to be served in Nashua.
I hope to send out an email to Pros by the end of the weekend. I plan to emphasize three things: the bracketed pairs, the pleasure of playing with “advancing players” (unless you are married to one), and a wager that Sue and I have made as to whether more pros or ams will attend. I will send it to you and Denise for approval.
I had a few positive responses to the first email. One person asked if the pros could play for free. I matched up one pro with an am.
I did not mention that if she had told me that I would not be able to do my own marketing, I would never have agreed to manage this process in the first place. For the last couple of years I have submitted my emails for the Connecticut Bridge Association to the unit’s Communications Committee. The only negative comments were from Esther Watstein, and they always encourage more “WOW!”
The email that I proposed was ready to go on May 26. Denise, whom I hardly knew at all, kept it a few days and then sent it back to me with much of it rewritten. I was frankly insulted. Who did she think she was? I have written scores of emails promoting bridge. No one has ever tried to rewrite one. One of her complaints was that it was redundant. Nothing was internally redundant. Did she mean that it repeated information that was available elsewhere? It certainly did, but is that wrong? Of course not.
I replied as follows: “This is lifeless.”
She replied:
I am not sure what you are stating. Most of your email has remained. The lei insinuations have to be taken out. Some of our members would be offended. Pls consider a happy medium and let me read another draft. I have offered to help. I am at the partnership desk every morning and during the break between games. I would be happy to discuss this.
She left her phone number. The last thing that I wanted to do was to “discuss this” with her over the telephone. I would be trying to persuade her that I had much more experience and knowledge about how to persuade bridge players than she did. What do you think were the chances of being able to do that?
I wrote the following: “I am not going to argue about this. Send whatever you want, but leave my name off of the bottom.”
What they did send, a few days later was the following image with no text whatever:
Please note that it does not say anywhere where this will be held or the date. The email address on it was mine, but the reply-to address was not. Every inquiry that I received asked where and when it was. I had to apologize to them that that information had not been included.
I would never have sent an email that used the word “kahuna” to refer to a bridge event. Since the word has religious connotations, I probably would have avoided it entirely. Also, I noticed that the definitions of the three categories had changed from what Sue Miguel had told me previously. I had relayed the (suddenly erroneous) information to a few people who had asked about the event. All of this made me pretty angry because it made me look stupid or incompetent.
I decided to compose my own email and send it using my free MailChimp account. I made sure to make it clear that it was my personal requests, and I used my personal database and account. It did not violate the dictum: “the only person who is authorized to send out emails on behalf/for [sic] the District is Neil Montegue [sic].” On June 7 I sent it to all Life Masters in New England with more than 750 masterpoints. It is posted here.
910 people (68.3 percent of the addressees) opened this email, an astonishingly high number. I received many very positive responses. Some people volunteered to be Pros. Others said that they would have volunteered if they were going to be at the tournament on Friday.
On Monday June 10 I received an extremely disconcerting email from the ACBL. I scanned it and decided not to let it ruin my tournament. I postponed dealing with it when we returned from Nashua. The email and my response are discussed in the section below.
Sue and I divided the partnership task into two parts—making sure that everyone knew about the event and matching up “Pros” with “Ams”. Before the tournament we primarily used email to achieve the first goal. At the tournament we primarily relied on word-of-mouth. Sue also was asked to give an impromptu speech at one of the “”Fest” events.
I decided that we should use index cards to keep track of the people who wanted to play. There may be other ways of organizing a Pro-Am. If anyone had ever documented the process, I was unaware of it. I bought a pack of 100 at Target for the astounding price of $.80. According to the rules that Sue Miguel published, there would actually be three categories. Group 1 was composed of all non-Life Masters. Life Masters with over 750 masterpoints were in Group 3. Group 2 was the other Life Masters. In actual fact the only player in the middle category who contacted me was John Lloyd. He played with an Am.
We filled out a card for each player. I bought a Sharpie with a very wide nib. On each card we placed a very prominent P, A, or 2 to designate the category that the play was in. I waited until June 7 to do this so that I could use the most up-to-date rosters for the ranks and masterpoints.
If both a Pro and an Am contacted me, I sent an email to the Pro and asked him/her/them to contact the Am. Only one Pro told me that “it was not a good fit”. Every other Pro contracted the Am in question and both agreed to play. By the time that the tournament started we had matched up enough Pros with Ams that we were fairly certain of at least a four-table game. I used a paper clip to keep the matched-up pairs together.
I had also heard from several Pros who reportedly were not only coming but were actively working to increase attendance. I expected to discover a lot of activity concerning the event in Nashua. When we left on Tuesday afternoon I was projecting ten or so tables, a very respectable turnout that would mean that we could have a standard Mitchell movement.
Sue had a different idea about contacting people. She asked me to provide her with a database of Ams that she could manipulate on her ancient Hewlett-Packard laptop. She had somehow obtained a copy of Word and Excel, but she had almost no idea how to use them. I made a CSV file for her, put it on a flash drive, and gave it to her. I then showed her how to upload it into Excel. She spent several days working on this, and I had to be available for technical support for this entire period to teach her the control keys, how to select a large number of cells rapidly, and the vagaries of sorting.
She planned to contact people whom she knew personally, but she apparently ran out of time. As far as I know, she only talked with one or two people and received no commitments. Still, she invested a great deal of time, at least as much as I did.
This poster was attached to the mirror behind our table when I arrived on Thursday morning.
On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings I arrived at a table in the information/partnership area of the hotel at 9am. I brought with me a resealable plastic bag that contained all of the index cards and the Sharpy. On all three mornings I got a cup of coffee and, except on the morning that Sue and I ate breakfast together, a bagel or roll from the concession area that was right across the hall from our table. No one ever approached the table to inquire about the Pro-Am game. It was a complete waste of time.
A better strategy would have been: 1) create handouts that explained the essence of the events and 2) wear something that identified me as the Pro-Am guy. I should then have gone out at 9:10 and 9:40, milled about with the players seated at the tables, distribute handouts, and inquire about interest and questions. This might have gotten a few more Ams interested in playing and would have made me feel less like an idiot for sitting idly at the table.
Meanwhile my wife never made it downstairs before the games started at 10. I was never sure what she did all day long while the rest of us were playing, but later discovered evidence that she had tried to put together her own list of who was going to play with whom on Friday evening.
Friday was different. By that time I had four or five unmatched Pros lined up and no Ams to pair them with. I abandoned the card system and instead kept two lists—one of unmatched Pros (memorized) and one of unmatched Ams (written). As soon as I learned of an Am, I chased down a Pro and tried to create a match. By Friday evening I still had a few matches to make. I was not too surprised when four or five pros came to the event unannounced. They were all friends of mine or friends of friends. I matched up as many as I could. In the end we had thirty-three pairs.
Even though someone allowed a pair of Pros to play together to avoid a sitout, I still had to send away a handful of unmatched Pros. The dismissal that bothered me the most was John Berry, a New Yorker who often attends events in New England. He had contacted me earlier in the week. I had given him a card with the name, email address, and phone number of an Am2 who had contracted me just before we left for Nashua. John tried both methods of communication, but he received no replies.
Three or four times I encountered an unmatched Am in the few minutes before the game I immediately sought out John Berry. On every occasion I could not find him in the chaos, and instead I placed them with the first unmatched Pro that I encountered. When I saw John on Saturday I apologized to him.
The Pro-Am game was a seventeen-table Mitchell. We played nine two-board rounds. Sue and I sat at table #2 North-South.
Every few rounds Sue Miguel interrupted play to present Hawaii-oriented door prizes to people. One went to the oldest player (99); one went to people who had been to Hawaii since the pandemic. I don’t remember the others.
The winning pair consisted of two guys from New Hampshire, Dan Maguire (one of the very first Pros to tell me that he would attend) and Graham Woerner. Note: When putting the finishing touches on this entry I tried to use the index page for the winners boards on NEBridge.org to find a photo of Dan. It had been deleted without warning.
I brought my camera, but I never felt like taking any photos. I didn’t feel like playing either, but I had committed to do so.
The “hospitality” consisted of two items. I tried the pizza that contained chunks of cheese and pineapple after the event when it was quite cold. I found it abominable. The other was chicken wings kept in a metallic semi-cylinder that clanged shut with a very large bang several times during the event. Neither Sue nor I tried the wings, but Sue noted that someone sitting South who had played the cards that she received must have. Her cards were sticky.
There was no coffee. I asked Sally Kirtley, the Tournament Manager, about this. She said that she thought that she had ordered it.
A renowned party-pooper, I found the interruptions and the theme-oriented food quite annoying. However, I must admit that everyone else seemed to be having a good time.
Here is the email that I received on June 10 from Gwynn Garthright, who identified herself as a “Marketing Specialist at the ACBL”:
Dear Mr. Wavada,
We have been informed of a recent communication you distributed to members of District 25 regarding an upcoming bridge event, which appears to have been sent on behalf of a club.
As stipulated in our Terms of Use, clubs are only permitted to use the personal contact information of members who have played at that specific club. We have received complaints from members who have not played at this club but nonetheless received your email.
Furthermore, while you are member of the District 25 Board of Directors, only district officers are authorized to use this list to promote a sanctioned bridge event. According to our records, you are listed as a teacher, and any communications you send to this list should be restricted to matters related to learning bridge.
Please remember that privacy laws regarding email marketing are very strict. When a member joins the ACBL, they only consent to what is outlined in the privacy policy and terms of use. Violations of these policies may result in disciplinary action by the ACBL, as per the ACBL’s Code of Disciplinary Regulations, and could potentially lead to civil lawsuits.
Note that merely having an unsubscribe option does not suffice. The policy explicitly prohibits contacting members who have not played at your club.
Any further violation of the ACBL’s Terms of Use may be reported to the ACBL’s Ethics Department.
Thank you for your attention in this matter.
I deliberately postponed researching an answer to this email until after the tournament. I did not want to spoil my concentration, and I did not want it to make me so angry that I was unable to enjoy anything about the experience.
I checked the “Terms of Use” that are currently posted on the “My ACBL” website that allowed me to download roster. Sure enough, the version dated September 2023 stipulated that only officers of districts and units could send out emails and that club owners/managers could only send emails to people who had already played at the club.
I sent this email in response:
It is hard for me to respond to this email since I do not know who you are. What does a Marketing Specialist do? I find it surprising that you would be involved in suppressing marketing.
Let me introduce myself. I have been a member of the ACBL for over twenty years. I belong to two clubs. I am on the Board of Trustees of the Hartford Bridge Club, which is the oldest in North America and the largest in New England. The other club is the Simsbury Bridge Club, an informal group that tries to scrape together a game on Wednesday evenings. I have been on the Board of Unit 126 for at least a decade. I am also on the Board of Delegates and the Executive Committee, the governing organizations for District 25, and have been so for several years. Prior to 2023 I spent ten years as the webmaster, database manager, communications chairman, and bulletin writer for the district. I also served as the email marketing director for the Summer NABC in Providence, RI. I have been on the ACBL’s Goodwill Committee for about a decade.
I apologize for the delay in responding to this email. For the last week I have been in Nashua, NH, at the regional tournament. My wife and I organized and promoted the Friday evening Pro-Am game, which attracted seventeen tables.
Over the last decade I have sent well over one million emails promoting bridge events in New England on behalf of both clubs, the unit, and the district. I think that it is fair to say that I actually invented email marketing for bridge events. Before I began downloading rosters in 2013 I read the Terms of Use very carefully and consulted with the officers of the district and unit to make sure that what I was doing was within what was allowed. I have never made a penny on any of these projects. Incidentally I have received hundreds of complimentary comments about my email projects. NO ONE has ever complained to me about them except for two people who thought that I should not have mentioned the Lone Ranger’s faithful Indian companion, Tonto, in one of them.
I am not really a teacher. For two years I volunteered to teach bridge at two middle schools in Springfield, MA, with the late Bob Derrah. I received no pay, but they did honor us as the Volunteers of the year in the Springfield school district. I have mentored many newer bridge players over the decades officially as part of the HBC’s mentoring program and unofficially because I love the game. I am NOT a professional teacher, and I have never received a penny for my efforts in that area.
I have sent no emails for the unit in the last year or so. The only emails that I have sent for the district were to promote the Pro-Am game described above. I probably will never send another email for the district. It took over a year to find people who were willing and able to do what I had done for a decade, but they are now handling those areas. I sometimes advise them on technical matters, but they make the marketing decisions.
That leaves the clubs. I have promoted two events for the HBC. The first was a set of limited sectionals that were held at the club’s building. These one-day events were wildly successful, drawing 57, 35, and 50 tables of non-Life Masters. The other was to promote the beginner lessons that were conducted by one of the club’s teachers. I wrote to players within fifty miles of Hartford asking them if they knew anyone who would be interested in taking these lessons. Unfortunately, the response was less than we hoped to achieve.
So, I must assume that the complaint is about my emails to potential players at the Simsbury Bridge Club. I have no access to any list of players at the club, which struggles to attract more than three or four tables to its weekly games. So, I have sent invitations to players in the area. Does the ACBL really want me to stop doing this? I have received dozens of replies from people who received them. Nearly all expressed thanks. A few people asked me to take them off the list (which they could have done themselves with one click). I, of course, promptly complied in every case.
The SBC has only one game per week on Wednesday evenings. No club within driving distance conducts games at that time. No one could conceivably have been materially injured. Could you please provide me with the name of the coward who contacted you about this? In America people are allowed to confront their accusers. I can hardly believe that someone would take legal action about something as innocuous as inviting people to play bridge on Wednesday evenings. If he or she had contacted me in person–nearly all bridge players in the area know me–I am sure that I could have addressed their concerns. If they wanted help with their own marketing, I probably would have helped. I have done it several times.
I must say that the rule that clubs can only contact people who have already played in their games is profoundly stupid. How in the world does the ACBL expect existing clubs to attract enough people to sustain the game if they cannot use direct marketing? Moreover, what if I wanted to start a new club? I have been asked to do so in my home town of Enfield, CT, many times. Are you telling me that I would not be able to use my email marketing skills and experience to promote it? If your specialty really is marketing, can you not realize how inane this is?
If the ACBL decides to take civil action against me, I should warn you that it will not be lucrative. I have never received any income whatever from any of my efforts.
Emails like yours infuriate volunteers like me and often impel us to wash our hands of the bureaucratic nonsense that has caused appreciation of our beautiful game to to deteriorate over time.
I copied Bronia Jenkins, the ACBL’s Executive Director, Regional Director Mark Aquino, Donna Feir, Sally Kirtley, and Peter Marcus3.
The only one who replied was Peter. His harangue included an accusation that I was hostile to Hawaiians because I made fun of poi.
In the end I told Gwynn that I would never do any marketing for the district and that I would only send emails to members of the clubs to which I belong. Only the second bothered me; I had no plans to volunteer for anything at the district level ever again. The restriction on club mailing will, in my opinion, probably lead to the demise of the Simsbury Bridge Club. It may also have a severe effect on the success of the HBC’s limited sectionals.
Nobody with whom I have talked thinks that the concern about privacy is a reasonable justification for the ACBL’s restrictions on direct marketing.
This whole affair left me depressed about the state of bridge. I had a hard time convincing myself to get out of bed in the morning.
1. This was a mistake. I should have remembered the admonition from my drill sergeant on the very first day of basic training: “Never volunteer for anything.” Of course, he amended that a few minutes later, as described here.
2. Suresh Subramanian, of Action, PA, attended the tournament and received .55 masterpoints. I do not understand why he did not return John’s calls and messages. I searched through the results to try to figure out what event(s) he played in, but I was unsuccessful.
3. At first I thought that this might have been about weekly emails that I sent for the Simsbury Bridge Club. However, Peter’s vituperative response made me think that it was actually prompted by my “personal” email about the Pro-Am. Sue Miguel probably talked with Peter about it and the emails that I sent out promoting the Hartford Bridge Club’s fantastically successful non-Life Master Sectionals (documented here). I could be wrong, but it now seems clear to me that she and Peter ratted me out to the ACBL. She was probably upset that I bypassed the “protocols” for emails that she invented, and he still felt enmity about the humiliation that resulted from the brouhaha about Tonto. They both were, in my opinion, bullies.
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.
