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.

2022 July: The Providence NABC 7/20-24

Posted on November 24, 2022 by Mike

Providence NABC part 2. Continue reading →

The tale of woe that describes the first five days that I spent in Rhode Island can be read here.

Wednesday July 20: I checked the Daily Bulletin to see if more COVID-19 cases had been reported. This was the alarming news:

The ACBL is modifying its COVID reporting policy, such that cases from the Providence NABC will be reported in the Daily Bulletin instead of by email.
Each of the following cases were reported by players to NABC@acbl.org. Anyone testing positive for COVID should follow the same protocol. For information on testing locations, visit
providenceri.gov/vaccinate/.
The ACBL has received reports of at least eight players who have contracted COVID since the Sunday issue where previous cases were reported. These players and staff members have participated in contests in multiple playing rooms across several days at the NABC in Providence.

So, at least a dozen people were spreading the disease in many events across multiple days. I could not help but think that this was just the tip of the iceberg. The question was whether this sobering news would impel more people to wear masks while playing. I tended to doubt it.

My partner for the next two days would again be Paul Burnham, who is a very good player. In boxing terms, he fights above his weight. Our miserable performance together on Monday did not discourage me. I liked our chances in the Bracketed Round Robins scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday. The unknown variable was whether our makeshift teammates would hold up their end.

On Wednesday I had arranged to play with Abhi (AH vee) Dutta. His partner was, according to Abhi, “a good player, but he does not have much experience.” The young man’s name was Jaan Srimurthy. I did not know him, but I had met his father, Vik, who was a good player.

We did not yet have partners for the game on Thursday. I went to the Partnership Desk to fill out a card. Carol Seager told me that she and her partner, Michelle Blanchard, were looking for teammates. I had played against Carol several times and I actually had partnered with Michelle once at a sectional in Auburn or Watertown quite a few years ago. I quickly agreed.

We purchased an entry. We were the fourth seed (out of nine) in bracket #2 of the 0-3,000 Bracketed Teams event. The morning session was terrible, but we played better in the afternoon. In many of the matches our teammates were just overmatched.

The most interesting thing that happened was when we played against a woman whose nametag identified her as Terry Brooks. She revoked and then protested vehemently when Paul insisted on calling the director.

In the end we won three matches for a total of .57 red points. Jaan said almost nothing all day. It was not a good day.

I drove back to Warwick after another frustrating day. Paul and I would only have one more chance to accomplish something together.

For supper I ate the remaining half of the grinder that I had purchased on Tuesday at Stop and Shop. I received an interesting email that evening from Sohail Hasan, my partner for the final three days:

I have a pair to play teams with us on Friday and may have another for Saturday but not sure yet.
My experience with pickup partners is pretty negative.

So, I wasted no mental energy worrying about teammates for the weekend.

I really enjoyed the first half of Interlibrary Loan. It made me want to reread A Borrowed Man.

Thursday July 21: As usual, I started the day by reading the Daily Bulletin online. I was looking for news about COVID-19 when I saw an article about an award for best teaching tip that was presented to the same Terry Jones who complained so much when Paul called the director after she revoked. She must have known that the Bulletin was going to feature her in Thursday’s edition.

The article about COVID-19 was precisely the same as the one that had appeared in Tuesday’s edition.

Paul and I met up with Carol and Michelle. We bought an entry in the same event that we played in on Wednesday. This time we were the second-seeded team in Bracket #1. We ended up in fifth place with 80 victory points—exactly average. We needed to finish fourth to make the overalls, but we were 12 points short. I don’t know what happened at the other table, but it seemed to me that whenever our opponents did something stupid—and it happened several times—they would come out smelling like a rose.

So, I had to say goodbye to Paul on that rather bitter note. It was beginning to appear that my entire tournament would be a fiasco.

I picked up another pizza from Bertucci’s for supper. It was as good as the first one.

Friday July 22: By this time I had amassed a fairly tall stack of discarded food containers in my room at the Crowne Plaza. Fortunately, I had eaten everything that I bought. There was no noticeable (at least by me) odor.

I read in the Daily Bulletin that the last three days of the Summer NABC coincided with the Youth NABC. In Providence the Youth NABC was held in some rooms in the Omni Hotel that shared the garage with the RICC.

Exactly the same notice about numbers of cases that was in Thursday’s Bulletin was printed in Friday’s again.

I munched on my breakfast sandwich on the way to Providence. I had to leave early. This was one of the days on which I was scheduled for volunteer duty. When I reported to Linda Ahrens, the volunteers co-chair, she said that they needed people at the Youth NABC. Bob Lavin, who had helped me with the bridge program at Duggan Academy in 2016, walked over to the Omni. Another fellow whom I did not know accompanied us.

After we located the designated area, we had to fill out some forms. Then they sent Bob and me to help with the registration. There was only one seat available behind the desk. Bob quickly seized it. The other seats were occupied by ACBL people. My job was to direct people to the registration desk. I stood around for about twenty minutes twiddling my thumbs. It was obvious to everyone where the registration area was. When I asked if I could leave, they told me that I could go back to the RICC.

After a few unplanned detours I found my way back to the Partnership Desk. They did not need me there either. So, I stood around and waited for Sohail to appear. I had only played with him once before—at the Harvest Regional in Mansfield in 2019. There I learned that he had attended the University of Wisconsin and then worked on Wall Street. He lived on the
Cape, at least in the summer. He had asked me to play with him in the online regional qualifying for the North American Pairs in 2021, but I had no interest in that. Don’t get me started on the subject of online bridge.

Shazia has a very impressive LinkedIn page.

Sohail arrived at about 9:45. He told me that our teammates were already inside the playing area. They introduced themselves as Lauren Friedman, who had a lot of masterpoints, and Shazia Makhdumi. We found ourselves in the top bracket of the Open Bracketed Teams event. Both of our teammates were from California. I don’t know how Sohail linked up with them. There were twelve teams in our bracket, the worst possible number. Only four of them would place in the overalls, the same number as for a nine-team bracket. We were the #10 seed. Our work was definitely cut out for us.

The hard card to play is supposed to be the Jack.

I remember details from several rounds. We won our first round, but then we faced the team that ultimately won the event by twenty-four victory points. Three of them I knew very well from the Hartford Bridge Club: Trevor Reeves, Joel Wolfe, and Tom Joyce. The fourth was Mark Smith, who lived in Florida but directed online games for the HBC. We lost our match with them by 39 imps, but it could have been a LOT closer. On one hand Joel had bid a slam, and Sohail doubled. Sohail was on lead. He held the ♦A in his hand, and I had the king and a low one to signal with. However, he chose to make a passive lead, and Joel scrambled for twelve tricks in the other three suits. Afterwards Trevor asked me in private why Sohail did not lead the ace. I admitted that I did not know.

I also remember the match against Chris Apitz and Ellen Dilbert, a couple who lived in Arizona in the winter and Massachusetts in the summer. Sohail got into a tiff with Ellen. I don’t remember what the original disagreement was about, but it was not of much consequence. Most of the argument was about which of them was being obnoxious about it. At the time I thought that this was just a one-off.¹

We only lost one other match. On one hand Lauren bid a little too aggressively. She jumped to an unmakeable slam. Sohail got quite angry at her and admonished her to read the article in that day’s Bulletin, which, he averred said never to bid slams in teams.

One of the teams that we played included Sally Meckstroth, a pro in her own right. Our foursome ended up tied with her team, but we won our match against them.

I don’t remember who our opponents were for the most memorable hand of the tournament. I actually wrote the hand up and sent it to the editors of the Daily Bulletin. Even though Saturday’s Bulletin solicited material from players, the email, which I sent Friday evening, said that it had been received too late to be included. Here is what I wrote:

The most amazing hand that I have ever seen was #2 in round 7 of the Victor King Bracketed Round Robin on 7/22. I held six hearts to the Q-10, six clubs to the J, and the ace of diamonds. No spades. My partner, Sohail Hasan, opened 2C. I responded 2D, which showed something better than a bust. Sohail bid 2S. I bid 3H. Sohail bid 4D. Aaaargh! He had bid twice in suits in which I had exactly one card in total. What should I bid–hearts again or that ragged club suit? I did not fancy either of those bids. We were past 3NT already, and all I really knew was that I did not like either of his suits, and he probably felt the same about mine. It was cowardly, I know, but I passed 4D.
Here was the hand Sohail set down: S: AKxxx H: AK D: QJxx C: AK. So I had accepted the invitation to play in a five-card fit at the four-level.
I somehow scrambled to nine tricks for down one, which was minus 50. I suspected that Sohail was peeved at me for putting us in such a hopeless contract. However, when we compared scores with our teammates, we actually won four imps on the board. Our teammates, Lauren Friedman and Shazia Makhdumi, had led a diamond to the 6NT contract, and the poor declarer never saw the board again. The result was down four.
It turned out that an unrecognized advantage of playing in a five-card fit was that the opponents were less likely to lead that suit at trick 1. In fact, I used my ace of trump to ruff a worthless spade, but not until I had unblocked the hearts.
A little later I gave our teammates ten guesses as to what our final contract was. They gave up after five or six incorrect attempts.

Tying for third was worth 11.53 gold points. Just think, though. If the ladies had somehow realized that their king, two queens, and two jacks could take five tricks in a notrump contract, they could have doubled. Then we would have gained thirteen imps on a non-swing hand. It would have been enough to put us alone in third place, within one victory point of second.

Sohail told me that he had secured partners for Saturday’s game just before I said goodbye to the ladies from California.

My drive back to Warwick was much more pleasant than the previous six journeys on southbound I-95.

I went to KFC for the third time and ordered another four-piece dinner. I then wrote an email to Sue describing the hand in the same detail that I submitted to the editors.

Saturday July 23: The ACBL finally began to come clean about the extent of the spread of COVID-19 among bridge players in Saturday’s Daily Bulletin:

The ACBL has received reports of dozens of players who have contracted COVID at the Providence NABC. Many more have not reported becoming infected. These players and staff members have participated in contests in multiple playing rooms across several days at the NABC in Providence.

When I arrived at the RICC I overheard many players talking about others who had become ill. Several people from the Hartford Bridge Club were reportedly stricken. The percentage of people who had donned masks on Saturday might have been a little higher than before, but not much.

Our teammates in the 0-3,000 Bracketed Swiss Teams were from Ottawa, Lisa Hebert and Mark Lacroix. Mark was a Tournament Director and an employee of the ACBL. I was fairly certain that we would be in the top bracket, and I was right. There were nine teams in our bracket. Every team played four three-ways. We were the #5 seed, but the seeds did not mean much. The winning team was the #9 seed. They outscored us by twelve victory points, and we bested the third-place team by thirteen. It had been tight throughout, but the winners pulled away at the end.

We garnered another 9.83 gold points. We all agreed to try to return and play together on Sunday in the last Bracketed Round Robin. I saw no reason why we should not win our bracket.

I had another pleasant drive back to Warwick. I then ordered a combo supper from On the Border. I drove there, picked it up, and ate it in my room at the Crowne Plaza. It was very good. In fact, every supper that I had on this trip was good. The atmosphere of the dining room was not great, but the food was excellent.

Sunday July 24: The headline on Sunday’s Daily Bulletin was “Yu Wins Mini-Spingold”. This immediately sprung to mind:

Abbott: Yu won the Mini-Spingold!

Costello: What? I didn’t even play.

Abbott: No, no. Watt didn’t qualify, but Ai lost in the semifinals.

Costello: Then who won the event?

Abbott: Hu was disqualified. So Yu won.

Costello: How could I win if I didn’t play.

Abbott: Ai lost in the semis. Yu won!

Costello: Nonsense!

Abbott: Eliminated in the first round.

The Bulletin repeated the language about “dozens” of cases, but I now had the sinking feeling that the Providence NABC might have been a super-spreader event.

When I arrived at the tournament site my worst fears were realized. Sue Miguel found me in the exhibition hall that was used for teams. She told me that both Joe Brouillard and Lois DeBlois had COVID-19. On their behalf she gave me a swag bag that had a lot of nice little stuff in it as well as a $100 gift certificate for Amazon.

Sohail showed up only a few minutes before game time. He said that both Mark and Lisa also had COVID-19, and they had gone home. We would have to play in the Fast Pairs.

For the first time Sohail wore a flimsy mask, and he complained about one woman who was coughing.

I am not going to write about the rest of that experience. I had never played under those rules before, and we got behind. I made lots of mistakes. It was very cold. Somehow we won some red points in the morning, but at the end I just wanted to get out of there.

I arrived back in Enfield before 6PM.

Epilogue: It definitely was a super-spreader event. Both Mike Heider and Jim Osofsky got COVID-19 and had to leave early. Mike was quite sick for a while. He passed out, and Jim had to drag him into bed. Dozens of people from the Hartford Bridge Club were also stricken, including several people who were quite careful.

I was lucky, I guess, but I was also very careful. I wore an N95 mask at all times that I was not eating or drinking, and I almost always drank alone. The supper on Sunday evening with Mike and Jim was the only time that I was unmasked in a public place.

To tell the truth I don’t know if it was worth it. A lot of people got sick. I don’t know if anyone died of it, but almost certainly someone contracted the disease in Providence and spread it elsewhere. the BA.5 variant of the virus was extremely good at transmitting and avoiding defenses.

The one thing that this really proved was that the vaccination check was a joke.

1. I later played with Sohail in Warwick later in the summer. I found his behavior on that occasion intolerable.

2022 January-July: Providence NABC Preparation

Posted on November 20, 2022 by Mike

The super-spreader in Providence. Continue reading →

In the spring of 2019 the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) named Providence as the site for the summer North American Bridge Championship (NABC) in 2021. The bridge players in New England were very excited about the prospect. It had been a very long time since a summer edition of the NABC had been held in New England.

At the time of the announcement Bob Bertoni was the District Director, and Lois DeBlois was the President of the New England Bridge Conference (NEBC). Bob immediately appointed as co-chairs Lois and Joe Brouillard, who had shared the same responsibility for the 2014 Fall NABC that had been held in Providence. Their first acts were to notify the state and local officials that the tournament would be held in Providence in July and to reserve space in the Rhode Island Convention Center (RICC), the same site that had been used in 2014.

Joe, who was the Treasurer of the NEBC, also was in charge of finance. Hospitality was to be handled by Helen Pawlowski, who had the same job in 2014, and Sally Kirtley, the district’s Tournament Manager. Sponsorships were assigned to Phyllis Chase, another veteran of the 2014 event, and Megan Mihara DiOrio. Brenda and Neil Montague reprised their roles as chairs of registration and prizes. Sue Miguel was again in charge of the Intermediate/Newcomer program.

I immediately volunteered to help with the massive project of organizing, promoting, and running the tournament and anything else that they wanted me to do. I was not on the first list of committee chairs. At that point I was one of the “ministers without portfolio”. The other member at the outset were Bob, Jim Rasmussen, Meg Gousie, Paula Najarian, Sonja Smith, Linda Ahrens, and Paul Burnham.

At some point Joe asked me to write and send a few sets of promotional emails using the database that I had developed for the district. I was happy to take that on. It meant a lot of work preceding the tournament, but I was still full of vim and vinegar, and I had enjoyed working at the 2014 NABC in Providence immensely.

This was an all-star cast if ever there was one, and it only got better over time. The first meeting was held during the lunch break on Friday, August 30, 2019, at the Ocean State Regional in Warwick, RI. The emphasis was on the need to begin planning and execution as soon as possible because July of 2021 was not that far away. I think that the logo had already been designed by then. Everyone at the meeting liked it.

I attended several of the meetings at regional tournaments, but I did not participate much. I was there to get ideas about marketing the event in Providence. I remember that at one meeting the discussion was about what type of souvenir shirt should be sold. A few samples were passed around. Someone asked for my opinion, but I deferred to the others, explaining that “I have no taste.”

On June 30, 2020, a one-year-out Zoom meeting was held with Mark Hudson of the ACBL. The only additions to the committee at that point were David Rock, who had been the Partnership Chair in 2014, and Debbie Ouelette. I did not attend the meeting.

COVID-19’s effect: At least since I had been involved with tournament bridge, the American Contract Bridge League had every year sponsored three NABC tournaments—one in March, one in July, and one in November. They were dubbed “spring”, “summer”, and “fall”. Each lasted ten or eleven days. Games were available for players of all ages and experience levels. At the beginning of 2020 everyone planned on three NABC events.

COVID-19 forced the cancellation of all three NABC events in 2020—March in Columbus, OH, July in Montreal, and November in Tampa. Even so, plans continued to be made for the July event in Providence. By the end of the year incredibly effective vaccines were being produced, and seniors—by far the dominant age group for bridge players—were among the first in line to receive them. My most pressing question was when I should start promoting the “Big Deal” in Providence.

Then in fairly rapid succession two important events took place. In an abundance of caution the ACBL canceled the NABC scheduled for March 2021 in St. Louis. The Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C., that had hosted the 2016 Summer NABC and was scheduled to do so again was no longer available. So, despite the fact that the number of new cases decreased rapidly in the late spring and early summer of 2021, the NABC scheduled for Providence was moved to July 13-24 of 2022. We received notice of this in February of 2021. No NABC was held in the summer of 2021. In fact, the ACBL also canceled all sectional and regional tournaments through the end of August, thus wiping out the Ocean State Regional, District 25’s largest tournament.

So, the organizers of the Providence tournament were provided an additional year to prepare for the big event, but the committee members would have little or no opportunity for face-to-face communication for much of that period. Because of the ACBL’s action, there would only be at most one regional tournament in District 25 in all of 2021. In fact, however, the one tournament, the Harvest Regional in Mansfield, MA, that might have been allowed by the ACBL was also canceled by a vote of the district’s Executive Committee.

The other event that dramatically affected the preparations for NABC Providence was the death of Bob Bertoni on June 29, 2021. He had been our direct link to the ACBL, a role that Lois and especially Joe had to assume.

The ACBL resumed holding NABC tournaments in Austin, TX, in November of 2021 and in Reno, NV, in March of 2022. Vaccination cards were checked at both tournaments. Masks were required in Austin, and the number of new COVID cases reported was relatively small. In Reno masks were not required, and the number of cases was much larger. By that time the protocol was determined by the CDC rating for the incidence of new cases for the county in which the event was held. Since Washoe County was rated low throughout the tournament, no masks were required¹ in Reno.

Attendance at both of these tournaments was very low by historical standards. People at both ends of the spectrum were upset by the ACBL’s approach. Roughly one-third of the United States refused to get vaccinated. The percentage of the anti-vaxers was probably lower among bridge players, but it was significant. A significant percentage of the rest of the players had great difficulty with wearing masks. Some found them unbearably uncomfortable, and some just did not like the idea of never seeing a smile. On the other hand, a large number of bridge players, including me, thought that the ACBL’s policy was too lax. I thought that the event in Austin was lucky to escape with few infections and that the idea of hold a tournament in a casino in Reno was crazy. I did not attend either event, but both Joe and Lois attended both events, and Sally attended at least one.

In MailChimp you can paste your code in the window on the right, and it displays the email on the left.

The first email campaign: I exchanged a few emails with Joe about which vendor to use to process our emails. I was most familiar with MailChimp; he had used a different vendor in 2014. There were a few things about MailChimp that annoyed me, but the district already had a contract that provided an incredibly cheap rate of 800 for $1. If we used another service, it would be at least a little more expensive, and I would need to learn it. MailChimp allowed me to design my emails in HTML. I could therefore make sure that their appearance was exactly what I wanted. If we used another service that did not allow this, I would undoubtedly have felt frustrated. Joe agreed with my choice of MailChimp.

I questioned whether it was permissible to use the district’s account—which at the time contained enough credits for over one million emails—for this project. Joe assured me that it was kosher. I trusted his opinion. After all, he was also the district’s treasurer.

The database² that I set up for District 25 contained one record for each ACBL member. It also contained records for tournament attendance at events in New England and for NABCs, including the 2014 event in Providence. My plan was to craft several emails based on whether players had attended any recent NABCs and whether they were within driving distance of Providence. New England players would receive separate emails depending on whether they had attended the previous event in Providence.

I began working on the first batch in January of 2022 and communicated my basic strategy for the first mailing on January 21:

I plan four distinct emails:
1. Attended 2014 Prov: 1,067 players.
2. D25 not in 1 above: 4,826
3. D3, D24 (at least 50 points) not in 1 above: 2,838 + 2,327
4. Attended recent NABC not in 1, 2, or 3 above: 10,107
I will send tests for approval as I finish them–probably today.

Joe, Lois, and Sue provided feedback on the four emails. They asked me to swap out a few of the photos that I had chosen. I don’t recall that they asked me to change any of the text. We had to hold off sending for a while because the ACBL had not published a schedule yet. Then when they did, the schedule for the first Saturday was obviously wrong. The emails finally were sent on February 5, 2022.

A sample of #1 can be viewed here. It was opened by 60.9 percent of recipients. 11 percent clicked on one or more of the links. A sample of #2 can be viewed here. It was opened by 46.9 percent of recipients. 2.9 percent clicked on one or more of the links. A sample of #3 can be viewed here. It was opened by 46.4 percent of recipients. 2.7 percent clicked on one or more of the links. A sample of #4 can be viewed here. It was opened by 43.1 percent of recipients. 4.2 percent clicked on one or more of the links.

The reaction was mostly positive. Quite a few people asked about the COVID-19 policy, which the ACBL did not publish until March. Joe and Lois received the following email from Joann Glasson, Grand Life Master and President of the ACBL:

Hi Joe and Lois,
I just received the terrific email about your upcoming NABC. I hope this got a wide circulation – did it go to all ACBL members?
The website looks great as well – really professional. I can’t wait to get to Providence this summer… Thanks for all your great work.

The locally maintained website³, which you can visit here, certainly was professional. Joe did all the work on it.

The one complaint was in regards to the captions on a few of the photos. There was nothing wrong with the code, but some email clients (including Microsoft Outlook, which is what I used on my desktop PC) did not interpret the code correctly. I spent several hours trying different methods of displaying the caption, but I never was able to get them to display correctly. You can see how email #3 looked when it was opened and then printed in memo form in Outlook here. So, I very reluctantly decided not to use captions on subsequent tournaments.

Hotel Reservations: On February 28 I felt confident enough that the ACBL would not cancel the tournament that I made hotel reservations. I decided that I would like to play in (or at least be around for) ten of the eleven days of the tournament. The schedule for the first Thursday did not appeal to me.

I redeemed 170,000 IHG Rewards points to pay for seven nights at the Crowne Plaza in Warwick, which is about fifteen minutes south of the site of the tournament. I also redeemed some Hilton Honors points at the Warwick Hampton Inn for the two preceding nights. I had to pay an additional $155. Since the lowest bridge rate in downtown Providence was $179 per night, I felt that nine nights for $155 was a pretty good deal.

Months later Joe offered to provide a free hotel room for me in Providence. I told him that I had already cashed in my hotel points. In addition I preferred to stay in Providence while I was playing.

The Partnership System: Joe wrote a program to handle requests for partnerships and teammates. It was tested out during the district’s first regional in Marlboro, MA. Denise Bahosh managed partnerships there and deemed the programs to be working successfully. Since I was on my European River Cruise (documented here), I was not part of the testing process.

Meanwhile, the Chairs of the Partnership Committee for the NABC had been named. Jan Smola handled pairs, and Carol Seager was in charge of teams.

Partners: In the previous few NABC tournaments that I had attended I designed my schedule around playing in a couple of national (as opposed to regional) events. However, the schedule for Providence did not provide any national events—other than the GNT, which required qualification at the district level—that appealed to me. I had too many points for the Red Point Pairs and the lowest flight of the Life Masters Pairs. So, I would just try to play in as many bracketed team events as possible.

Shortly after making the hotel reservations I sent notices of my schedule to all of my usual partners and a few others with whom I had played at tournaments. Responses were very slow in arriving. The first confirmation came from Sohail Hasan. I had played with him in Mansfield in 2019, and we did pretty well together. On June 20 we agreed to play together the last three days of the NABC in Providence in team games if we could find teammates.

At about the same time Paul Burnham, with whom I had played a handful of times, agreed to play with me on Monday, Wednesday, and (the second) Thursday. That still left open Friday, Saturday, Sunday, on the first week and Tuesday.

Donna Lyons, whom I have known for years, finally claimed the first two spots. Mike Heider and Jim Osofsky had asked me to play teams with them on the first Saturday and Sunday. So, Donna and I planned to play with them on Saturday. I decided to take Tuesday off.

This was my schedule going into the tournament.

I tried to use the tournament’s partnership system to secure a partner for the bracketed team game on the first Sunday. I had to decide whether to fill out the partnership form or the team form. Since David Rock had told me quite clearly many times that the first step is to get a partner, I tried to fill in the partnership form. I was stifled when I had to specify the event, a required field that did not allow specification of a team event.

So, I filled in the team form and specified that our team was looking for one person. The only person that Carol paired me with was Abe Fisher. Here is the email that I got from him:

Hi Mike—
While in principle I’d love to play with you, if I’m reading the thread correctly, you’ve got 3 and need a 4th. I’ve also got 3, and need a 4th. So that doesn’t seem like it works.
Good luck,
Abe

I asked Carol if it was OK for me to fill out a pairs form and lie about the event. Then I might be able to persuade the prospective partner to play in the team event instead of the pairs. She said that was not allowed. I told her that, in my opinion, this was a very large flaw in the system.

So, the new partnership form failed both Abe and me. At the start of the tournament I still had no partner for Sunday. Nevertheless, I was not too worried. I expected a large number of people would have filled out cards for themselves by Friday or Saturday.

The second emailing: Here is the email that I sent to Joe and Lois about the plans for the email to be sent in April of 2022, three months before the tournament.

Joe and Lois,
I have set up segments for the next set of emails. There will be five basic emails based on masterpoints:
2-300: Emphasize 299er, Gold Mine, and Bracketed Round Robin. Sent to districts 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 24, and 25. The D25 one will be a little different from the one for the other districts. 18,140
300-750: Emphasize Gold Mine, and Bracketed Round Robin. Sent to districts 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 24, and 25. The D25 one will be a little different from the one for the other districts. 5,255
750-2500: Emphasize bracketed Round Robin, three-flighted events, and some national events. Sent to all districts. The D25 one will be a little different from the one for the other districts. I don’t know this number yet. 19,480
2500+: Emphasize national events. All districts, but D25 one will be a little different. 6,077
Players who have attended a recent NABC or the 2014 Providence NABC will be excluded from the four just listed.
NABC attendees (all masterpoints): Emphasize national events and why Providence is different, but D25 one will be a little different. 12,071
It bothers me that this misses a lot of snowbirds, but I don’t know how to find them.
I tried three new approaches to captioning images. All of them work fine in the displays inside MailChimp, but my Outlook client did not display any of them correctly. So I will not use captions for now.
I have almost finished the 299er version. I will send it to you some time today.
Mike

Joe, Lois, and Sue all liked the approach, but they had small but important suggestions for the photos and the copy. I incorporated them before I sent them out.

Samples of the mailings: 299er, 300-750, 750-2500, Over 2500, Attended NABC. I made an embarrassing mistake in the dates for one of the more obscure national events, and no one caught it before it went out. I communicated with a few people who noticed it, but I decided that it was not critical enough to send a correction.

Site visit and walk-through: On May 25 I received this email from Joe:

The ACBL site visit in Providence will be on June 2 at 10 am. If you will be working during the NABC please plan to attend if you are available. If your committee work will be completed prior to the NABC you are welcome to attend but not required. We will meet on the third floor which is the level the exhibition halls are on.
Please let me know if you will be attending by Friday, May 27, if you will be attending.

I quickly responded that I would attend. I had a few questions to ask the ACBL people about educational events at the NABC. At that point they had posted very little information about that area. I also wanted to take some photos of the site. Most of all, I wanted to see other members of the committee. I had great respect for all of them, and a few of them were good friends. I had not talked with any of them (except Sally Kirtley, the director of the Simsbury game) for more than two years. I decided to bring both my camera and my audio recorder.

My one misgiving concerned Sally. I knew that she had recently tested positive for COVID-19. I wondered if she would make the trip. Although she now lived fairly close to me, I certainly did not volunteer to car pool with her. Whether she was there or not, I definitely intended to wear my N95 mask.

I slightly underestimated how long it would take me to reach Providence. I arrived at the parking lot a few minutes before ten and parked on the fourth floor, which matched up with the third floor in the RICC. I saw the Montagues in the parking structure and said hello to them. Before I joined the group, which did include Sally, I visited the men’s room to dispose of the large coffee from McDonald’s that I had consumed on the drive from Enfield.

Sara Beth Raab left the ACBL a few months after the NABC in Providence.

In attendance were, by my recollection, all of the Chairs. That group now included Paula Najarian, who created the restaurant guide, and the two Chairs of volunteers, Linda Ahrens and Meg Gousie. The ACBL sent Sara Beth Raab and at least one other person. Lisa Watson represented the RICC. Erin Degulis of the Convention and Visitors Bureau was also there.

The traveling “Beyond Van Gogh” exhibit⁴ was occurring in the RICC while we were visiting. Therefore, we would not be able to see some of the playing areas. Everyone on the committee remembered them from 2014. The setup for playing was simple. The 299er and Gold Rush games would be held in one of the big rooms on the third floor. The other two big rooms would be used for team games and pairs games. The meeting rooms were on the fourth floor. The national events were on the fifth floor.

A good bit of the visit was devoted to determining the best places for the ancillary activities and exhibits—the partnership desk, the vendor area, the “In Memoriam” exhibit, etc. Others had strong opinions about these matters. Since I was only tangentially involved, I kept my mouth shut.

Afterwards we met in one of the fourth-floor conference rooms. I took advantage of this opportunity to ask about the educational programs. Sara Beth consulted her phone and then replied that the list of speakers and events had just been added to the ACBL’s version of the website for the tournament. When I returned to my house that evening I checked the website. There was no such list. I kept checking for three weeks, but nothing appeared. I sent an email to Joe to see if he could check up on this.

Eventually it did appear. They put it under the Intermediate and Newcomer (I/N) section. I guess that someone at the ACBL decided that once you have earned a few hundred points, you no longer have a desire to get better at bridge

The best part of the day, from my perspective, was the lunch at Murphy’s, a pub that was within a block or two of the RICC. I sat on the end of a long table. I made sure that Sally was far away from me. On my right was Paula, one of my favorite people. No one was on my left or across from me. Across from Paula was Lisa Watson, our contact at the RICC.

Lois and Paula won the Mid-Flight Pairs at the Presidential Regional in 2018.

Paula had not heard about my vacation in Europe. So, I actually had something to add to the conversation. I also told her about my two clients in East Greenwich, her home town.

The food was good, too. I had a huge Reuben sandwich and broccoli on the side. People were amazed that I cleaned my plate. I told everyone that if I had left food on my plate, my sainted mother would haunt my dreams.

This might have been my most enjoyable day since the pandemic hit.

Email campaigns in June: On June 5 Sue Miguel sent me the materials for an email that she wanted sent to 299ers. I had figured out how to do this for her. I opened the email in Outlook. I then took print screens of each image in the email, made jpg files of them, and stored them in the MailChimp folder. Then I saved the HTML code for the email as a text file. I removed the parts of the email that were not meant to be sent. I loaded the jpg files up to Mailchimp using the “Content Studio”. Then I replaced the URL’s on the “src=” parameters of the img statements in the email with the ones on the MailChimp server. I then enclosed the entire email in a table with one column that was six hundred pixels wide. That last step seemed to be the only way to set the width of any email in a way that all email clients recognized.

I selected all members of D25 with between 20 and 299 masterpoints. A sample of the email that was sent on June 7 can be seen here. 813 the 3,000 emails were opened, and 13 recipients clicked on a link. Those are not good results, but one must remember that most of those people had probably never played face-to-face bridge. It would not be an easy task to convince them that they should try it out at a national tournament.

On June 12 I received an email from Linda Ahrens, who was the co-chair with Meg Gousie of the Volunteers:

I was hoping you could use your creative genius to send out an email to everyone in District 25 requesting volunteers.
For every two-hour shift we will provide a $5 chit towards an entry fee. Volunteers will be able to play in any event as they will be scheduled prior to events or directly afterwards.
To sign up they should go to ProvNABC.org and then click on the blue volunteer tab on the left hand side of the page.
There is youth bridge on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday of the second weekend and we need volunteers for either half days or full days to work with beginners to provide support at the tables as they play. These volunteers will probably not be able to play on those days.
Meg and I will send out a schedule ten days prior. Volunteers will be asked to go to the volunteer/information desk prior to their shift where they will check in, get their assignments and upon completion of their shift they will get their chit.
If you need any more info please let me know. This might be too much info for one email so I will defer to what you think is best.

I wasted no time composing the email that you can view here. It was sent to about 6,000 people. 3,189 people opened it, and 51 clicked on the link.

Lois and Sue decided to sponsor a Zoom call that they labeled as an “Open House”. Sue designed the following image to serve as an invitation.

This went out to 6,000 New Englanders. Although only 38.2 percent opened the email, 110 clicked on the image, which allowed them to download the link.

On June 27 I finally received the email from Sue that she wanted to send to players with less than twenty points. You can view it here. I sent it out on the same day. Of the thousand or so recipients, 476 opened it, but only two clicked on a link.

In May Lois had sent me an email asking if I possessed or knew someone who possessed high-resolution photos of two recently deceased players from the Boston area, Bill Hunter or Shome Mukherjee. They were needed for the “In Memoriam” area of the tournament site in Providence. I looked through the photos that I had posted on the website, but I did not find anything that was usable.

A few weeks later she was frantic about obtaining the photos. She asked me to send an email immediately. I sent the email that is posted here on June 13. It went to about 1500 players in the Eastern Massachusetts Bridge Association (EMBA). 824 of them opened it, and six clicked on the link. She was only looking for two photos, and eventually one of the respondents helped her obtain them.

In 2022 I was on the Board of Trustees of the Hartford Bridge Club. We voted to sponsor a day at the NABC to honor Victor King, a Grand Life Master who was a member of the club. He had been murdered in his own house by a tenant. I was asked by Felix Singer to send an email to people in the rest of New England who might be interested in donating to the project. I wrote and sent an email to players in central and eastern Massachusetts with over 1,000 points. Quite a few people donated. Al Muggia offered to curate the photos.

Steve Diamond, a player from Shrewsbury, MA, who knew me pretty well, sent a large check to my home address. I put it in the bottle with the rest of the donations. I overheard Felix telling someone that he could not believe that one of the participants in the novice group had been so generous. I told him that this was a different Steve Diamond.

Emails in July: Lois provided me with a list of items that she wanted to make sure that the people who were planning on attending the tournament knew about. I composed an email that contained these “nuggets” as well as the link to the ACBL’s well-hidden schedule of celebrity appearances. On July 1 I sent short emails to players in D25 and its two neighboring districts in the United States, a total of approximately 14,000 players. About 45 percent of recipients opened the email, and over six hundred clicked on one of the links. A sample has been posted here.

A week later I was asked by Sue Miguel to send an email to people in the district to promote the “Learn Bridge in a Day” program. I am not sure why the ACBL could not do this, but not enough time remained to argue about it. I sent out roughly six thousand emails. You can view the email here.

The last email that I composed and sent was designed to promote a play written by bridge teacher, columnist, and professional playwright, Adam Parrish. Bridge to Nowhere was scheduled to run for three nights in a small theater near the RICC.

This innocuous email, which I have posted here, generated as many replies as any that I had sent. Several tournament veterans challenged my claim that an NABC had never included a play about bridge. I deferred to their superior knowledge.

One person, who did not sign the email, said the following:”Remove my name from your mailing list. This email is an abuse of the bridge federation list if that is where it came from.”

Here was my reply:

I have done as you asked.
I have no interest in this play. I do not know the author or anyone associated with the theater. I sent the email at the request of the co-chair of the tournament committee in order to apprise potential attendees of a last-minute addition to the entertainments available in Providence during the NABC.

The Providence NABC Tournament Chairs: Here is a complete list of the chairs and co-chairs of the local committee.
Tournament: Lois DeBlois and Joe Brouillard
Hospitality: Sally Kirtley and Helen Pawlowski
Sponsorships: Megan Mihara and Phyllis Chase
Welcome and Prizes: Brenda and Neil Montague
Volunteers: Linda Ahrens and Meg Gousie
I/N and Gold Rush: Sue Miguel
Partnerships: Jan Smola and Carol Seager
Email Marketing: Mike Wavada.

Volunteering: I knew that I would be in the area for ten days. I volunteered to help whenever I might be useful. I also said that I had had a lot of experience working at partnership desks. When I filled out the form on the website, I indicated that I would be available from the first Friday through the second Sunday, but I would like to take Tuesday off. On July 1 I received the following email from Meg Gousie.

Thank you very much for volunteering at the Providence NABC. Your assistance will go a long way to helping make this event a big success! We notice that you have generously offered to volunteer, and have taken the liberty of assigning the following shifts to you:
Saturday, July 16.    1:30pm.   Registration Desk
Sunday, July 17.    8:30a,    Partnership Desk
Tuesday, July 19.    1:30pm.   Partnership Desk
Thursday, July 21.    8:30am.    Partnership Desk
Please review and confirm your availability ASAP so we can plan accordingly.
Please plan on going to the volunteer desk 15 minutes before your scheduled assignment. The desk is located on the third floor by the escalators. After your scheduled shift, please come back to the desk to pick up your $5 chit which is good for $5 off an entry fee in Providence. You will also receive discounted parking.

I persuaded them to remove me from the Tuesday afternoon assignment. Shortly before I left for the tournament I checked my emails again and sent the following to Meg and Linda:

The email that you sent on 6/30 had me listed two shifts on 7/16: registration in the morning and partnership in the afternoon. The email sent on 7/1 had me working on registration in the afternoon on 7/16.
Two questions: 1) What is my schedule for 7/16? 2) Do I have any additional responsibilities other than the ones for 7/17 and 7/21 that are on this email?

By the time that I shut down Outlook my desktop computer⁵ before leaving for Providence I had not received a reply. I figured that I could check on it when I arrived.

My adventures at the Providence NABC itself are chronicled here.

1. Of course, only a very small percentage of the players at the tournament in Reno were from Washoe County. More than a few were from Europe or Asia. Using the rating for the county was like the old joke about the drunk looking for a lost coin under a lamppost that was a block away from where the coin was dropped—because the light was better. Furthermore, the event was held in a casino.

2. Starting in 2014 I designed and implemented every aspect of the database using MySQL and php.

3. The ACBL also had a webpage for the tournament, but it could not hold a candle to the one that Joe designed and implemented.

4. No one in our group went in on June 2. A description of the exhibit is posted here.

5. Incoming email was configured to download automatically downloaded to the Outlook application on my desktop computer in Enfield. If I did not close down Outlook, I would not be able to get email on my laptop for either of my email accounts.

2021 Part 2: The Pandemic Strikes Back

Posted on May 26, 2022 by Mike

Living with Covid-19 in 2021. Continue reading →

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Almost all my horror stories involved Unite.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 7: Bob seems nearly fully recovered.

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

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

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

The Meyerson team. Bernie is on the right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On July 13 I played bridge at the H

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Tag Archives: DeBlois, Lois

2013 Bridge: Webmaster for District 25

2022 July: The Providence NABC 7/20-24

2022 January-July: Providence NABC Preparation

2021 Part 2: The Pandemic Strikes Back