2013 Bridge: Webmaster for District 25

Posted on June 17, 2023 by Mike

Webmaster, database, email, comm comm, bulletin. Continue reading →

2012 was long before “ACBL Live Results”¹ made it easy for bridge players to find out within an hour or so the results of tournaments.Late in that year I saw a notice on the NEBridge.org² home page that District 25 (i.e., New England) was seeking someone to post on the website the results from its tournaments as the tournaments were running. It asked interested players to contact the president of the New England Bridge Conference (NEBC), Ausra Geaski. I did, and after a short training session from Bob Bertoni, who owned and operated Megaherz Computer, the company that designed and implemented the website, I took over the responsibility.

On the evening of each day of the 2013 Knockout Regional in Cromwell I posted the results. The tournament director sent me a text file for each event. I amalgamated them into one large file text file using a program that had been provided to me. I made an HTML file that had an index at the top with one line linked to the anchor for each event that I had inserted at the top of the appropriate text. It was more basic HTML than rocket science.

Bob thought that I had done a good job in getting the results posted promptly. He told me that someone who was webmaster at one of the other units had tried to do it at a previous tournament and had made a big mess.

I subsequently told Ausra, whom I occasionally saw at the Hartford Bridge Club³ (HBC). that I was willing and able to do more. Shortly thereafter another notice was posted on NEBridge.org. This one said that the district needed a webmaster. Bill Braucher was resigning from the post that he had held for seven years. I let Ausra know that I thought that I could do it. I also told her about my own website, Wavada.org (which was introduced here), but I don’t think that anyone ever checked it out.

One evening at a tournament Bob spent about an hour with me explaining how the district’s website was structured and how the built-in page editor worked. During this session he discovered that I already knew HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.⁴ He exclaimed, “Oh, you can code! You won’t have any trouble with this.”

A little later we realized that we had something else in common. Bob had attended Boston College on a debate scholarship.⁵ His coach was Tuna Snider, whom I knew fairly well. In the end Bob offered me the webmaster job at the same salary that Bill had earned.⁶ I countered with a demand for a 75% raise, and we settled on 50%.

The bridge world was very different then. The district’s website was its primary method of communicating with its members. It did not publish a newsletter, and it had no program for using email. For the most part postcards and flyers were snail-mailed to the clubs. The district relied on their owner/managers to pass the information on to the players. This method was somewhat costly and totally unreliable.

Furthermore, the webmaster was not allowed to post any material unless the website editor, Allan Clamage⁷, had checked it for style and errors. Allan also taught me about standards that the district had established to govern the decisions. For example, the website never published an obituary or promoted any unit’s tournaments or other events.

The Website Committee (Allan, Bob, District Director and NEBC Treasureer Rich DeMartino, and myself) had a strategy meeting during one of the lunch breaks at every tournament. I don’t remember much that transpired at these meeting, but the other members mostly endorsed my ideas for improving the website. After three or four meetings Rich declared that we seemed to know what we were doing and disbanded the committee. At about the same time Allan began to review what I posted only after the fact. I considered that show of trust as a great compliment. I only embarrassed him a few times, and he never got angry at me.

My primary goal was to attract more eyeballs to the site. Expert players Harold Feldheim and Jay Stiefel allowed me to post articles that they had written for The Kibitzer, the newsletter of the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA). I also received material from Frank Hacker, Steve Rzewski, Bill Braucher, and a few others.

I began writing The View from B-Low under my nom de plume, Single Session Swiss⁸. After each tournament the webpage for The View whimsically recounted my own completely inexpert experiences. Most were true; a few were fish stories. Most of those articles still exist.⁹ The index to them is available here.

Database Manager: I remember that during one of my conversations with Allan, I exclaimed, “We don’t know who our players are!” He disagreed. He then showed me how he downloaded csv¹⁰ files of the entire ACBL roster every month. He then arranged for the ACBL to allow me to do the same. Allan used spreadsheets, but I undertook the major task of designing a MySQL database for use by the district and myself. At the time I wasn’t quite sure what I would do with the information, but I knew that we needed it.

I maintained two copies of the database, one on my local hard drive and one on the Wavada.org website that I had purchased from iPower so that I could share my travel journals with friends, family, and fellow travelers.

The database’s primary table had one record per player. Every table in any database should have a “key”—a field that uniquely identifies the record and cannot be changed. On the player table the key was the seven-digit ACBL number. Using it as the key would be a small problem if I wished to add records for non-ACBL members. Fortunately, if that ever happened, I could assign them a bogus number less than one million. The ACBL never used those numbers.

When a new roster was released I updated both the local and remote copies of the players table using scripts that I wrote in php. At first I did this only for currently active players in New England, but after a few months I decided to expand it to cover all of North America. The script¹¹ that updated the players table also wrote records on a history table that contained each player’s point total at the time that the roster was posted.

One of my jobs as webmaster was to post a list every month of the New England players who had advanced in rank during the month. I decided to maintain a sub-table for these advancements using the file that was sent to me by the ACBL.

I soon realized that what I really wanted to know was who had been attending the tournaments in New England. I knew that the results posted on the district’s website as well as on the websites of the units listed all players in attendance. There were two major difficulties: 1) the ACBL numbers were not on the lists; 2) the formats were not consistent. It was an ugly project, but I eventually came up with scripts that could handle nearly all of the entries on all of the lists.It wasn’t close to perfect, but it was much better than nothing. I convinced myself that it was worth the effort.

I created two sub-tables for attendance: one for players whose ACBL numbers I was able to deduce from the name and town on the list and one for the others. The biggest problem was people with more than one address. The second-biggest problem was people who changed their names. I figured out ways to handle these problems, but they were labor-intensive and introduced the possibility of mistakes. Since I knew from the beginning that the table would not be perfectly accurate, I felt that I could live with this approach.

I also went through the same process for the three NABC tournaments that were run every year. Those files were much larger. It took me a day or more to process each one. I learned the importance of processing them promptly. If even a month elapsed, a lot of addresses changed.

Sending emails: Eventually, I wanted to use the database to send emails promoting the district’s tournaments. The first problem was that the email addresses on the ACBL’s database were incomplete. I reached out to my acquaintances throughout the district and found correct email addresses for at least half of the ones that were missing. I also went through the wooden box containing index cards with member data at the HBC and found a few there. To make sure that my good addresses were not overridden by the ACBL’s blank, confidential, or wrong addresses, I added a field to the player’s table for the source of the email and changed the php script so that it only used the email address on the roster if the previous source was “ACBL”.

The second problem was that I had no authority and no budget for anything like this. At about the same time District 25’s president, Mark Aquino, had created a “B’s Needs Committee” to address the reasons that lower-level players (like myself) avoided attending the district’s events when their masterpoints exceeded the 750-point maximum for the “Gold Rush” games. Mark attended some of the meetings. I told the committee about the database that I had created, and I mentioned that I would like to send emails to promote the events sponsored by District 25. I was very pleased when Mark said, “Go for it!”

The great thing about php was that it was—even in those days—thoroughly documented on the Internet. I discovered a way of sending emails through php. My first project was to promote the 2014 Senior Regional/Cape Cod Sectional in Hyannis, MA. The chairperson was one of my partners, Ginny Farber (then Ginny Iannini), who was introduced here.

I sent the emails to all members of District 25 and to anyone who, according to the attendance table on the database, had attended a recent tournament in New England or a national tournament. Realizing that I needed to be careful about being considered a spammer, I stated quite clearly in the email that anyone who wished to be removed from the list should reply to the email with that indication, and I would take care of it. I added an “OK to email?” field to the players table. I never mailed to anyone who had asked to be removed, and I was scrupulous about keeping this designation up to date..

The emails were very well received, and the attendance at the tournament exceeded expectations. The chairperson of the next event, the Summer Regional in Nashua, NH, was Sarah Widhu. She asked me to promote that event, and I did so. It was also well received, and the attendance was quite good. I was pretty sure that I had this whole process was worthwhile.

Email problems: The php script that I executed on my Wavada.org account was not completely fool-proof. Every so often it would send up to fifteen copies of the email to one person. This was, to put it mildly, quite annoying. I contacted iPower about it. Because I was unable to reproduce the problem for them, they could not solve it. However, it eventually went away. I never understood how this could have happened.

Unfortunately, this problem was completely dwarfed by another issue that raised its ugly head shortly thereafter. There were no errors, but none of the emails went out! Once again I contacted iPower. It took several weeks, and they never told me what they did, but the support team somehow fixed this.

However, after a few successful executions, the problem appeared again. After several weeks of interchanges with iPower support, I was finally informed that my account had been black-listed as a spammer by someone. Therefore, the iPower email server did not send out my emails.

I used the one phone call that I was allowed to tell Bob Bertoni that I was in email jail, and I asked if he could bail me out. He did some research and eventually negotiated a contract with MailChimp, a company that specialized in sending mass emails for businesses and non-profits, for the purchase of two million “credits” for emails for only $2500. The Executive Committee approved the appropriation. From that point on I never tried to send emails directly from iPower.

MailChimp: My credentials on the district’s MailChimp had a user ID of Guastafeste, which is the Italian term for party-pooper. I taught myself how to use the software to create the lists, which MailChimp called audiences, and the body of the emails, which MailChimp called campaigns. For the first few years the account was allowed to create as many lists and emails as we wanted. I created a new list for each email until MailChimp prohibited me from creating any additional lists.

I generally sent out the first set of emails five weeks before the event. A second set would be sent two weeks later. Each set would consist of a few slightly different emails to groups based on geography, masterpoints, and/or tournament attendance. The content sent to each group would differ, at least a little.

Because I was accustomed to composing my emails in HTML, I always used the “Code your own” template. I always wrote the code for the emails in UltraEdit on my PC and pasted the HTML code into the editing window on MailChimp. The editing program would immediately display the way that the email would look in the window on the left side of the screen. This method allowed me to position and size images exactly. It also allowed for the use of tables and almost anything else that could be done on a webpage. An unanticipated benefit was that if someone who needed to promote something had sent me an email that was already formatted, I could extract the HTML code, tweak it a little, and then paste it into the HTML editing window.

I reported one bug that I found in this process. If I tried to change the color (or anything else) for part of a word, MailChimp inserted a space between the two parts. The example was GOLDmother, which MailChimp changed to GOLD mother (with a space before the “n”). MailChimp refused to fix this obvious problem. By the way, it was not easy to get WordPress. which is the product used for these blogs, to produce this effect either.

The oldest HTML file that I found in the MailChimp folder on my PC was dated July of 2015. I suspect that the first tournament promoted on MailChimp was the Individual Regional in 2015. From that time through 2021 I composed, tested, and sent almost all of the emails promoting District 25’s events. They were amazingly successful, and I became known in New England bridge as “the email guy” rather than “the webmaster”. All told, I sent over one million emails.

Other projects: The database also allowed me to undertake posting on NEBridge.org photos¹² of winners of events or strats at regionals (Winners Boards). The first tournament for which I implemented this feature was in the Knockout Regional in Cromwell in 2014. My plan was to ask winners to come to a spot where I could take their pictures with my point-and-shoot Canon. Only one or two complied.

There were several other problems. My friend Bob Derrah volunteered to help me chase winners down, but he had no camera of his own, and he could not figure out how to use mine. Eventually I discovered that the best time was either right after the round or the next day before the start of play. Still, I was lucky if I got photos of half of the winners.

I usually spent the better part of the week after every tournament assembling the five or six webpages of winners’ photos. I sent emails to every winner whose photo I lacked. A very high percentage of them responded, especially among the newer players. For the others I either pieced together substitutes from photos that I previously took or just put up an empty spot for them. The HTML code for the pages themselves was generated by a php script that ran off of a set of tables that was itself generated from a spreadsheet on my PC.

Was it worth the effort? I don’t know. I strongly believed that the regionals should be special, and the winners boards—and a lot of other things—contributed to making them feel that way to a lot of people. Most of those things disappeared during the pandemic. To me the post-pandemic regional tournaments seemed vacuous whereas before they always excited me.

The ACBL had two annual contests that rewarded the players in each of the fifteen ranks that had accumulated the most points. One exclusively counted points won at clubs. The other included all points. I decided in 2017 to create an award for each rank for points won in the events sponsored by District 25. That included the NAP and GNT qualifiers as well as the four regional tournaments and the two hybrid events—the Rainbow Weekend and the Senior Regional/Cape Cod Sectional.

My ability to do this without a great deal of effort was due to the access that I had to LZH files from the ACBL. An ACBL employee named Keith Wells provided me with these files that had all the information on the “masterpoint winners” lists that I had been using to populate the attendance tables, plus they had both the ACBL numbers and the total number of masterpoints that the players had at the time of the event. They also included players who had attended but earned no points. I was trained by Peter Marcus, the district’s chief director, in how to use the ACBLscore program to create csv files from the ones that I received from Keith.

It was pretty easy to keep the fifteen totals in the database. The only real difficulty I encountered was when a player who had participated in events in foreign countries was awarded masterpoints that the ACBL used solely for the purpose of eligibility. After each event I sent out emails to everyone in each of the fifteen masterpoint categories that listed the top fifteen players in that category. At the end of the year I created certificates honoring the winners.

I doubt that this effort by itself induced more than a few people to play, but, like the Winners’ Boards, they helped to contribute to the special atmosphere of regional events.

BridgeFinesse.com, a company in Florida established by Jay Whipple¹³, somehow got involved with sending emails to all players who had achieved a new rank in the previous month. The emails, which were signed by the appropriate district director encouraged the recipients to respond to the emails with their own ideas. Rich DeMartino was D25’s District Director (DD) when this process began. He asked me to post each comment that he received and to ask each player for whom I did not already have a suitable photo to send one. I did this for Rich and for his successor, Mark Aquino.

When Bob Bertoni became DD, he posted the comments he received on his own website. When he died in 2021, his temporary successor ignored the comments, but when the position was eliminated in favor of a Regional Director, the first one, Mark Aquino, asked me to post the new comments. I retrieved the ones from Bob’s website and posted them on NEBridge.org. I also posted the ones that Mark received.

The disaster: In October 2015 the system that hosted NEBridge.org suffered a catastrophic hardware failure. In the 30+ years that I had spent in the business I occasionally had to face some really bad situations, but I never had to deal with anything like Bob needed to address with this one. I told him that if I were he, I would be looking for a tall tree and a short rope.

NEBridge.org was the least of his problems. We were trying to get people to play our favorite card game at our events. His other customers’ depended on their websites for their very livelihoods.

Nevertheless, Bob got the district’s website back up and running pretty quickly, but most of what I had posted in the first few years was not recoverable, including all of the articles by Frank and Steve. I could have gone back to original sources and salvaged some of it, but all of the new projects that I had started left me no time to attempt more than I did.

Bob temporarily allowed me to use FTP to send files from my PC to the server. That saved me a lot of time. The new version of the website had a slightly different editing program for the pages. I liked it in some ways and hated it in others.

The Communications Committee: At the last meeting of the B’s Needs Committee Bob, who at that point was president of the NEBC, announced that he wanted to form a marketing committee. He then asked me to be its chairman. I wanted to be on the committee, but I had never been the chairman of a committee. I suggested Allan, but Bob was rather insistent. I eventually agreed, but I wanted it to be called the Communications Committee or, better yet, Comm Comm.

Beginning in 2016 a group of us met at tournaments for several years to talk about all aspects of communication—website, emails, tournament Bulletin, posting of results, guest lecturers at tournaments, signage, microphones, etc. I found the meetings useful, but a subsequent president, Jack Mahoney, decided that they were no longer necessary. I think that the biggest problem was that almost everyone on the committee was also on other committees. It also did not help that the only time available for the meetings was at 8:30 a.m. on Saturdays.

Bulletins: In 2018 I was asked by Lois DeBlois, NEBC president, to begin editing the Bulletin for tournaments. Previously it had been published every day, but Lois wanted to reduce it to one publication that covered the entire tournament. The results that had been printed in the daily editions were by then available online. So, it was not necessary to provide a daily edition. I took on the responsibility of creating it in the new format as well as the setup for online bulletins that were provided by the same service that provided Live Results.

After the pandemic the Executive Committee considered the cost of both bulletins to be excessive. I wrote one last Bulletin for the Optical Regional in Southbridge, MA, in November of 2022.

In November of 2021 I informed the Executive Committee that I intended to resign as webmaster and all of the other positions that I held at the end of 2022. I feared that it would be difficult to find people who were willing and able to keep going many of the things that I started. The story of that process has been recorded here. I did not immediately resign from any of the committees.

1. ACBL stands for American Contract Bridge League, the governing body for competitive bridge in North America. The Live Results program was run by BridgeFinesse.com, a private company in Florida.

2. NEBridge.org is the website of the New England Bridge Conference, the governing body of competitive bridge for District 25 of the ACBL.

3. At the time I was still working at TSI and playing bridge only on Tuesday evenings and weekends. Ausra also played in some of those games, but my skill level was far beneath hers.

4. HTML (hypertext markup language) is the language of browsers. JavaScript is an object-oriented language used for screen design. CSS (cascading style sheets) allow for organization of styles.

5. Bob was eight years younger than I was. He probably graduated from BC in or around 1978. Therefore, he was probably at the party that Don Huprich, Stewart Mandel, and I attended at BC in 1977. That hair-raising adventure was described here. Bob died in 2021. His obituary can be read here.

6. I hate to explain the jokes, but it may not be obvious that neither Bill Braucher nor I was paid anything as webmaster. I did get $100 for each Bulletin. They were always around twenty pages.

7. I later learned that Allan was also a Wolverine, but he was nineteen years older than I was. He was shocked to learn that I had been a math major. He died in 2018. His obituary can be found here.

8. Every tournament that held knockouts also scheduled Single-Session Swiss events. They were team events held in the afternoon for players who had been eliminated in the morning session of the knockout. The event was commonly called “Loser Swiss”.

9. Unfortunately, as of 2024 this statement is not true. Someone deleted or moved almost everything that I posted during the ten years that I managed the website. He/she/they did not notify me of their intentions, and I cannot conceive of any reason to do this other than spite or obsessive concern about disk space. However, I also recalled that the first thing that I did in my first professional programming assignment was equally foolish. I removed all comments from a program created by my predecessor. The details can be read here.

10. A csv (comma-separated values) file was a text file in which each element of data in a record was separated from the others by commas or other delineators.

11. Web-based programs are for some reason called scripts. The ones that I wrote for the district were all in the php (personal home page) program language that could be downloaded at no charge.

12. The website committee was eventually cool to the idea of publishing photos. Some members were worried about showing favoritism towards some players. Rich insisted that the criteria for inclusion be very clear. When I explained that I wanted to include anyone who won any strat or flight in any event and that I would send emails to solicit photos from players whom I could not reach at the tournament, he agreed to the idea.

13. Jay eventually became president of the ACBL. He visited the district’s tournament in Nashua when Mark Aquino was district director.

2013-2019 Members of the Simsbury Bridge Club Part 2

Posted on December 12, 2021 by Mike

David and Sally run the SBC Continue reading →

This entry describes workings of the Simsbury Bridge Club between 2013 and 2019. It also lists players who first played at the club in those years who were not my partners. The experiences with my partners for that period are enumerated here. The lists are probably incomplete because the results sheets for 2011 and 2012 are apparently lost.

The following people were playing at the SBC in 2013. Some may have begun in 2011 or 2012 or even earlier. Sally Kirtley was the director, and David Rock was the manager.

Elisabeth Barnicoat played with Carolyn Newell a few times. Carolyn also played with Sue Wavada at least once. I occasionally saw both Elisabeth and Carolyn at the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) as I left after an open game in the morning. They were entering the building for a limited game in the afternoon.
Pat Carey played with Jan Rosow. Over the years she has played at the SBC with Jan and a few others. She did not play at the SBC in 2021, but she sent me an email indicating her intention to return in 2022.
Med and Kathy Colket always played together. They only played once a month or so, but they continued to play at the SBC through 2021. They were pretty good players, but their bidding techniques needed a little modernizing. I think that they both went to Cornell at the same time that I was an undergrad at Michigan. Med also has a PhD from Princeton. His LinkedIn page is here. They played together at a few tournaments and did quite well. Med came up with the idea of registering vaccinated players for the reboot of the SBC in 2021, as described here. Kathy has also played pretty often at the HBC.
Patty Connolly played with Louise Jackubosky. I remember Louise clearly, but not Patty. I am pretty sure that Louise is the sister of Aldona Siuta, a regular player at the HBC. Louise has not played at the SBC in a few years.
Karen Emott played with Margie Garilli quite a few times. I know who Karen is, but I can’t remember much more than her name.
Carol Foley and Denyse LeMare paid the SBC a visit one Wednesday evening. They were en route from their homes in New Jersey to a bridge tournament somewhere and stayed overnight at the Hampton Inn in Enfield. They played Precision, but on the hand that we played against them they did not get to use any of the gadgets. I overheard one of them remark that there must be a better way to drive back to Enfield than the way that they came. I assured them that there were several, but they were all rather complicated. I advised them to follow my car back to Enfield, which they did successfully. I have never seen them since.
Kammy and Vj Goel played together several times at the SBC. Vj died in 2017. His obituary is here.
I think that 2013 is the year that I asked Ken Leopold to play with me, but our longstanding partnership might have begun in 2012. He had previously played with a couple of other people. Much more about the adventures Ken and I shared are provided here.
Karen Harrison played at the SBC with Linda Dragat. I don’t remember either of them at the SBC, but I distinctly remember Karen’s cringe-worthy stories at the Life Master party that she shared with Nancy Narwold in 2012. Karen now lives in Florida. I have played against Linda many times at the HBC, where she is still an active member in 2021.
James Lee played with Donna Lyons. James had the very peculiar habit of balancing his scoresheet and pencil on his lap. Since he crossed or uncrossed his legs at least once per minute, the scoresheet and pencil were constantly falling from their perch. I found this amusing, but some people were annoyed. He also liked to underlead aces just because no one expected it. I played with him in one pairs event at the regional tournament in Cromwell when my partner had canceled at the last minute. James never seemed to have a steady partner that I remember. He had been to Tanzania and shared some of his photos with me before our Africa trip in 2015. Our trip is documented here. I don’t know where James is in 2021.
Debbie Ouellette (ooh LETT) almost always played with David Rock. She got a lot better over the years. She and David ran the partnership desk at the regional tournament in Cromwell for many years. They got married in 2020. Sue and I were invited, but we could not attend because of the pandemic. At the time there was no vaccination, and the treatment modalities were mostly guesswork.
Toby Schuman sometimes played with her husband Art both at the SBC and in special events at the HBC. Sue Rudd told me that Toby was an excellent athlete. She was also a much better bridge player than her husband.
Lea Selig played at the SBC on one occasion with Sheila Mark. I don’t remember Sheila at all. Lea is a regular at the HBC. She often plays with Jeanne Striefler or Aldona Siuta. Lea is a good bridge player, but I would never play with her. She is very tough on her partners.
Mike Winterfield played with my wife Sue. Mike was my first boss back in 1972 at the Hartford Life. Those days are described here. He also participated on our departmental sports teams, the Mean Reserves, as recounted here. I also played with Mike at least once at the Pro-Am event of the regional tournament in Cromwell. We did pretty well. Mike got divorced from his wife Jane at some point. He is a rather active member of the HBC.
In her SBC debut Mike’s wife Jane Winterfield played with Clara Horn. She also played with Mike a few times at the SBC and the HBC. Hers is a sad story. She had physical problems that culminated with her death. I could not find an obituary.
I have no recollection of the following players:
- I don’t remember Edie Sherman at all.
- Robert Van Gorder played once with Jerry Hudson. I recall nothing about him.
- Phyllis Vignone played with Carolyn Newell. I do not remember Phyllis.

The following people began playing at the SBC in 2014.

Dan and Becky Koepf played together a few times. I knew Dan pretty well from the years that I played on Tuesday evenings at the HBC. Dan often played in those games with Dave Landsberg. I asked the two of them to play with Jerry Hirsch and me in the Flight C qualifying tournament for the Grand National Teams. We did exceptionally well when one takes into account that neither pair had any experience in the event whatever. My partnership with Dave is documented here.
Reba Stock played with Alden. They both played in 2020 as well.
Stan Stolarz, a resident of Southwick, MA, is still a fairly active member of the club in 2021.
Fred Striefler is a physicist and a very smart guy. He is also Jeanne’s husband. He plays with us at the SBC when we need someone to fill in. Jeanne is much more serious about bridge than Fred.
Maureen Walsh mostly played with Jan Rosow. Moe’s Life Master party at the SBC in 2019 set a modern day attendance record. Jan and Moe still come to the SBC about once per month.
I have no recollection of the following players.
- Sue Shipley played with Ida.
- Andrea Saxon (Ron’s wife) played w/ Ellen Dworetsky.

The following people began playing at the SBC in 2015.

Al Carpenter played with a number of people at the SBC. I think that he found our game through an unsanctioned daytime game at Eno Hall. He was a big boisterous guy with a hearing problem that seemed to cause him to talk a bit too loud. I think that he worked for Enterprise Rent-a-Car. His last partner was Rollin Shank. I don’t know why Al stopped coming to our games.
Yan Drabek and Allison Ryan came down from Massachusetts to qualify to play in the NAP. I have subsequently had many email exchanges with Yan, who manages the website for Unit 196 (Western Mass). I once arranged for her to meet bridge expert Harold Feldheim at a CBA sectional tournament. She was interested in taking some lessons from Harold. I played with Allison once. I think that it might have been at the SBC.
I was surprised to see that Betty Kerber once played at the SBC with Pat Carey. Her regular partner at the HBC and at tournaments was Don Muller, but she has also played with other people.
Aaron Leopold is one of Ken’s sons. He has played at the HBC with his dad a few times. He is an officer in the Army. I think that he flies helicopters.
Lori Leopold is Ken’s wife. I don’t know why she has let me play with Ken every week for so many years. She was a very important figure in the renaissance of the SBC in 2019, as described here.
Everyone was a little shocked when top players Alan Rothenberg and Geof Brod came to the SBC for an NAP qualifying game. To no one’s surprise they finished first and earned their Q’s.
Rollin Shank played with Robert Webber in his first appearance at the SBC. I don’t remember Robert, who never returned, but Rollin played fairly regularly, mostly with Al Carpenter, for several years. After that he often teamed up with Tina Yablonski at the HBC and at local tournaments.
Ronit Shoham has played fairly regularly at the SBC, mostly with Lori. They still play together pretty often, both at the SBC and the HBC. Ronit is famous for paying her table fees with $2 bills. If she arrived at the game at 6:29, she was early. She insisted that Israelis were always late.
I don’t remember the occasion, but Felix Springer first played at the SBC in 2015. I have played with him many time and played on teams with him even more often. Those experiences are described here. In 2021 he is the president of the HBC. So, in a way he is my boss.

I am positive that I did not take this photo of Moe Walsh and Jan Rosow. Do you know why?

The following people began playing at the SBC in 2016.

I did not realize that Frankie Brown (a woman) had ever played at the SBC, but she is listed on one of the results sheet in 2016. She has been a member of the HBC for a long time, but I have not seen her in 2021.
Nancy Calderbank played at least once with Sue Wavada. In 2021 she still plays often at the HBC and once a month at the SBC with Xenia Coulter.
Debbie Katz played with Lori at the SBC. Debbie was a regular at the HBC and at local tournaments before the pandemic, but I have not seen her in 2021.
It must have been a special occasion when Dave Landsberg played with Felix at the SBC. He must have had a long drive from and to his house in Higganum. Dave was one of the best people whom I ever met. More details about our relationship are collected here.
Joe and Rachel Peled first played together at the SBC in 2016. They came back a few times after that, but mostly they played at the HBC and at tournaments. I have seen Rachel at the HBC in 2021. I heard that Joe had physical difficulties that restricted his play to online.
Chuck Pickens played with Diann Wienke fairly often before the pandemic. I even played one night with Chuck when Diann and Ken were not available. I have not seen either of them in 2021.
Trevor Reeves made his debut at the SBC with Felix. I have played with him quite a few times at the HBC and at tournaments. The details are here.
Norm Rosow played with his wife Jan at the SBC a few times. I have seen him once or twice at the HBC in 2021.
I do not remember the following players who played at least once at the SBC in 2016.
- Betty Friedman played with Ken.
- Bruce Meade played with Rollin.

The following people began playing at the SBC in 2017. The list is almost certainly not complete.

Richard McClure played with Allison Ryan. I know him from tournaments.
Helene and Hank Thompson were regulars at the SBC in the early months of 2017.
Kathy Fahey played with Sue Wavada in 2017, and they have kept in touch since then. They have played online at the HBC games in 2021.
Ginny Basch played with Sue Wavada in 2017. I don’t think that she came to the SBC again, but they have enjoyed many breakfasts together since then at a “greasy spoon” in Somers, CT.
Lesley Myers played with Jeanne Striefler. Lesley is one of the best players at the HBC. I played with her there once. She was the only person who noticed the flesh-covered golf ball on my left elbow, as I recounted here.
Brittany Stahely played with Lori Leopold. I don’t remember Brittany.

2018 began with a bang. On January 31 the SBC held a party to celebrate Moe Walsh’s achievement of the rank of Life Master. The Youth Room was wall-to-wall bridge players. We had nine tables, and for the first time in many years we were able to play a Mitchell². Here are the people who came to our Wednesday evening game for the first time that night.

Two top players from the HBC, Tom Joyce and Y.L. Shiue, joined our group for the first time. Before I really knew him I once sat beside Tom on a long Continental flight from Houston.
Gay Godfrey played with Ida that night and on quite a few subsequent occasions in 2018.
Sue Wavada talked one of her HBC partners, Marianne Hope, into sitting across from her.
John Calderbank, with whom I have played quite often, played with his wife Nancy. In 2021 John is very active in the management of the HBC and also, with Nancy, runs a bridge game in Glastonbury.
Marie Abate played with Ron Talbot. Marie still plays regularly at the HBC. Ron, a former president of the HBC, has moved to Naples, FL
Tina Yablonski played with Rollin Shank that tournaments and at tournaments. Tina and her husband went on a few trips with the Strieflers. Tina was a member of the HBC’s Planning Committee on which I served before the pandemic.

Unfortunately, the rest of the year did not yield anything like that. No new players came during the rest of the winter or the spring. The summer was disrupted somewhat by remodeling of the basement of Eno Hall. We were able to play, but the game was sometimes moved to rooms that were not nearly as nice for bridge as the Youth Room. A few new players came in the late summer and fall. Here is the list:

On August 1 Linda Starr, whom I first met at the Tuesday night games at the HBC ten years earlier, brought Gordon Kreh to play at the SBC. Linda was (and is) a fine player who later became a director and communication specialist for the HBC. Gordon, like so many others, picked up the fundamentals of bridge decades earlier, but he was having difficulty adjusting to the new conventions and the more aggressive approach to bidding. They did pretty well at the SBC for the rest of the year.
Three weeks later Joe Brouillard and his wife Linda Ahrens played in the Wednesday evening game and took home all the marbles. I played once with Linda in the Senior Regional in Hyannis, MA. Our game was not that memorable, but I recall that she actually walked to the tournament that day, and Joe brought us both lunch. We also played together once in a club game in Warwick, RI. Joe is also a good friend. Not only has he served for years as the District 25’s treasurer—in which role he was instrumental in rescuing the NEBC from years of dwindling assets, but he also served as chairman of both the 2014 and 2022 NABC tournaments in Providence. I have also played against both of them many times at regional and sectional tournaments.
On October 3 Jessica Koob played with Jeanne. She did not return, and I don’t remember her at all.

By the spring of 2019 the club was a shadow of its former self. We often seemed to face the prospect of the dreaded two-and-a half-table game with the five-board sitout. I remember several two-table games that we scored using IMPs¹, a format that I actually enjoyed. At least once I drove out to Simsbury, and there were not enough people for even that kind of play, and once we were locked out of the building. Some games were canceled because of lack of interest just before Wednesday.

As far as I can tell, only one new player appeared at the SBC during the first part of 2019. On May 1, 2019 Mike Carmiggelt played with Jeanne. Mike played with Linda Starr for years on Tuesday nights at the HBC. During the pandemic he contacted me by telephone (!) to suggest that we have an informal game in Eno Hall, which was still closed at the time. In 2021 his is still a familiar face at the tables at the HBC, but I have not seen him at Eno.

The club was on life support by May of 2019. Dave Rock had moved to West Brookfield, MA, which was more than an hour away from Eno Hall. He and his partner Debbie Ouelette were obviously not willing to make that drive for a two-table game. Sally Kirtley wanted to keep the club going, but she now had weighty responsibilities in her new position as the district’s tournament manager. The SBC was badly in need of new blood and resuscitation.

Fortunately, that is exactly what happened, as is described here.

1. IMP is an acronym for International Match Point, a way of scoring commonly used in team games. It is described in some detail here.

2. In a Mitchell movement each pair is assigned a permanent designation as East-West or North-South. The latter stay at the same table throughout the session, and the East-West pairs move. It requires a certain number of tables for a reasonable game. The other common movement at club games is a Howell. Most pairs in a Howell play North-South in some rounds and East-West in others. Almost everyone moves after each round. The objective is to allow each pair to play against as many pairs as possible.

2010-2019 Partners at the Simsbury Bridge Club Part 2

Posted on December 10, 2021 by Mike

Further adventures in and out of the SBC. Continue reading →

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do the following three famous people have in common?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In 2023 Helen lived in Bluffton, SC.

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

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

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

Chuck died in 2022. His obituary is posted here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. The journal is posted here.

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

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

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

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

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

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Tag Archives: Feldheim, Harold

2013 Bridge: Webmaster for District 25

2013-2019 Members of the Simsbury Bridge Club Part 2

2010-2019 Partners at the Simsbury Bridge Club Part 2