If you are not familiar with competitive duplicate bridge in North America, you may wish to read the entry posted here first.
Because of the threat of COVID-19 only two bridge tournaments were held in all of New England in 2021. Both were three-day sectionals in Watertown, MA. 114 people won masterpoints in the first one in October. 178 people won points at the Holiday Regional in November. This was better, but still unspeakably bad attendance. In the last tournament held in Watertown in 2019 exactly twice as many people won points—356.
The tournaments in Watertown were run by the Eastern Massachusetts Bridge Association (EMBA). I was not a member, and I attended none of the three tournaments listed above. However, I was a member of the Board of Directors of the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA), the “unit” for the state of Connecticut. The CBA ordinarily held six sectionals per year. Two of them were restricted to players with less than 199 masterpoints.
The June Tournament: I am pretty sure that the unit’s official bylaws required that the final decisions about the scheduling of tournaments be voted on by the board of directors. I can say without fear of contradiction that no such votes were taken between March 8, 2020—the last day of our last pre-pandemic tournament—and June 2022. In point of fact the board did not meet at all during that period. We did not even have a Zoom meeting.
Somehow a decision was made, probably after consultation between President Frances Schneider and Tournament Manager Cornelia Guest, to hold a three-day tournament on June 3-5, 2022 at the St. Barbara Greek Orthodox Church in Orange, CT. The schedule was essentially the same as used in 2019-2020. I don’t know who, if anyone, approved the date. The Rhode Island Bridge Association (RIBA) held a tournament the same weekend. The district was supposed to prevent conflicts like this, but someone evidently fumbled the ball.
The first notification of the tournament went out on May 8. Here was the text of the email.
Dear Michael,
CONNECTICUT 2022 SECTIONAL
June 3 – 5
St. Barbara Greek Orthodox Church
480 Racebrook Road Orange, CT 06477
See the attached flier for tournament information.
In my opinion the notification should have been sent earlier, and more effort could have been put into content of the email. For over a year the people whom we needed to attract had been paying only a few dollars to play bridge. Persuading them to return to face-to-face play and pay a lot more would require more effort than this brief announcement displayed.
As usual I sent an email to dozens of my partners past and present, but I only one responded to the invitation to play in Orange. Sonja Smith said that she could play with me in the pairs games on Saturday. She was a very good player, and I knew that she and her husband Chris were planning to move to North Carolina before the end of the summer. So, I jumped at this chance to play with her.
I was also committed to making the trip to Orange on Sunday if only to attend the board meeting that had always occurred on Sunday morning before the Swiss teams game. Chris brought Sonja to Exit 38 on I-91, and I drove the rest of the way. On Sunday I drove myself. I planned on offering to play if they needed me.
I was quite excited at the prospect of playing in duplicate bridge tournaments again. During the drive to the tournament Sonja and I discussed our convention card. We agreed on a set of conventions that was much reduced from what we had played the last time that we played together. I had pretty high hopes that we could do well.
Sonja Smith.
I was not expecting the large crowds that the unit’s sectionals had been experiencing before the pandemic, but the turnout was still disappointing. The open pairs had only thirteen tables, and the 299ers had to play a three-table Howell. Friday had been even worse. The Open Pairs had fourteen tables in the morning and twelve in the afternoon, but there were not enough 299ers to play in either session. Their games had to be canceled. They either had to go home or play against the Grand Life Masters.
Sonja and I had some difficulties in the morning. Most of it was my fault. The competition, as expected, was very good. They avoided mistakes and took advantage of ours.
In the afternoon, however, we rallied with a score of over 62 percent, but that was only good enough for fifth overall out of twenty-six. Still, we both had a very good time, and we returned home with a couple of silver points.
Jan Rosow.
The Sunday meeting was the usual frustrating session. Everyone was morose about the attendance, but only Jan Rosow had a workable suggestion for improving turnout. She suggested changing the upper limit on the limited game to 500 points. We all agreed, and Cornelia was directed to arrange for a sectional in October.
The other main outcome of the meeting was to appoint a committee to prepare a slate of new board members. I managed to avoid participating in that endeavor. Frances had been president for much longer than she expected and was obviously ready to pass the baton to someone else. In fact, she had asked me if I would do it. I had to decline because of commitments to the district.
After the meeting we were all pleasantly surprised to see a fairly large group1 ready to play in the Swiss. Sixty-seven people were waiting to play. John asked me if the offer to play still stood. I said that it did, and I played a very simple card with him as my partner. Our teammates were Barbara Federman and Jim Levitas, who were from California2. She was an experienced player, but he had less than ten masterpoints at the time.
We entered here for both tournaments.
We bumped around the middle of the pack until round six out of seven, which we won with a blitz. In the last round we met an A team that was much more experienced than we were. We would have won if not for the last hand that John and I played. Debbie Benner stretched her nineteen-point hand to open 2NT. Her partner, Art Crystal, who had over 5,000 points, had passed in the first round, but he jumped to 6NT.
The cards sat favorably, and Debbie was able to bring home the slam. At the other table Jim and Barbara did not bid as aggressively. We lost the match by one point.
We won the B strat, however, with 81 points. We also tied for fourth in A, which was very good for a patchwork team. I was very happy with the 6.7 masterpoints that I won in just two days of work. In fact, the drive home was probably the most pleasant experience that I had had in Connecticut since the start of the pandemic.
The board’s reaction to the first sectional: Treasurer Cindy Lyall released a report on the financial hit from the first sectional on June 21.
As requested at the Board meeting, please find below an accounting for the Orange Sectional Tournament that took place from June 3-5, 2022. A spreadsheet version will be included as part of my next Treasurer’s report. If you have any questions in the meantime, please feel free to reach out to me or Cornelia. Unfortunately, the loss from the tournament was just over $4,000.
Thank you,
Cindy
Revenue:
Table Receipts: +$4,984 based on 89 tables (26 on Friday, 29 on Saturday and 34 on Sunday)
ACBL Related Expenses:
Less Fill ins: -$112 Less Tournament Director’s Hotel Accommodation (3 nights): -$631.35 Less Tournament Director’s Per Diem: -$258.75 Less Tournament Director’s Fees ($210 per session): -$1260 Less Sanction Fees: -$281.88 Less ACBL Duplicated Hands: -$32 Less Sectional Surcharge: -$180 Less Caddies, Clocks, Supplies, Boards, Bridgemates, Predups, Hand Records, Free Plays, Pizza: -$935.23 Plus amount Paid to ACBL: +$30.21
Net: +$1323
Additional Unit Expenses:
Cornelia Stipend: -$250 Gene Remuneration: -$750 Snack Expense: – $266.28 Marketing: -163 Venue: -$4160 (Space $3000, janitorial service $700, Table rental $210, security deposit $250 which will be applied to next event)
Total Additional Unit Expenses: -$5,589.28
Loss of $4,266.28 – Please note that the $250 security deposit for this event has not been returned as it is being applied as a deposit to our next event, as such the “loss”for this event is $4,016.28.
In early September the second sectional was announced in the same pedestrian manner as the first. I sent the following email to all board members:
I see that in Orange the limited games have been expanded to under 500. By my calculation this increases the target audience (for unit 126 and 188) from 2235 to 2607. That might help, but it might also reduce the open attendance if people drop down.
Are we doing anything to attract the under-500 group? Many of these people have never played F2F. I propose that someone arrive a half-hour early each day and conduct a lesson in the mechanics of F2F play: bidding boxes, BridgeMates, alerting and announcing, how to avoid leading out of turn, how to prevent your partner from revoking, etc. I will volunteer to create a syllabus and do it on one of the days.
I also think that we need to send two sets of emails targeted to this group, one this week and one in two weeks. If this is already planned, fine. If not, I will volunteer to do it.
Have fliers been sent to the clubs? I have not seen one at the Hartford Bridge Club.
If we don’t want another financial fiasco, we must act soon.
I sent two emails to players in Connecticut and Westchester County, NY. I then sent the following email to board members.
I have attached three things. On 9/16 I sent Email1 to 1,600+ players from CT and Westchester. 64.8% of them opened the email, and 1.3% clicked on the link to the flyer.
On 9/30 I sent Email2 to the same people. 56.3% opened it, and 2.2% clicked on the link to the flyer.
In the emails I mentioned that “an experienced player” would be available on Friday and Saturday to explain the differences between F2F tournament play and online play. The attached F2F Outline contains a list of things that I could think of and a full-page picture of a Bridgemate. I can be there both days. If anyone wants to help, I would appreciate it.
Email1 can be viewed here. Email2 can be viewed here. The F2F Outline is posted here.
Peter Marcus.
During the period between the tournaments the unit’s nominating committee came up with a list of candidates for the vacancies on the Board of Directors, but the information was promulgated to neither the membership nor even the board. Peter Marcus, of all people, would be the new president. Phyllis Hartford would be vice-president. There would be five new members: Phyllis plus Roger Caplan, Linda Green, Linda Starr, and Debbie Prince. This would give the Hartford Bridge Club five members of the board, the most in the ten years that I had been involved.
Great Barrrington in August: I don’t remember exactly how or when the arrangements were made, but Abhi Dutta, Jim Osofsky, Mike Heider, and I agreed to play in the Swiss event on Sunday at the Western Massachusetts sectional tournament at the Berkshire South Regional Senior Center in Great Barrington, MA, on Sunday, August 14. Abhi and I also agreed to play in both sessions of the open pairs to be held on Saturday.
On previous visits to this tournaments I had taken the back roads through Suffield and points west. This time I decided to take the Mass Pike to Lee and then go south to Great Barrington. That was a good plan, but I became engrossed in the opera to which I was listening on Saturday morning, and I drove all the way to Northampton before I realized that I had missed the exit for the Mass Pike. Fortunately, I had left early enough that I still arrived in GB with ten minutes to spare, but Abhi was quite nervous.
Abhi and I played pretty well in the morning session, but we fell apart in the afternoon. However, Mike and Jim had a good day. They placed fifth overall.
I remember one startling fact about the morning session. There were two occasions on which we bid one of a suit, and the opponents overcalled 2NT. In the twenty-first century virtually everyone who played in open events treats that as the “Unusual Notrump”, showing at least five cards in the two lowest unbid suits. In both of these cases, however, when we asked about the bid the opponents said that it was strong and natural. Yes, that was what the bid meant when I was playing in the sixties, but what are the odds of being dealt a twenty-point balanced hand with stoppers in the opener’s suit? They are not good, and the happened to us twice, and both of those opponents were playing this defense. As of this writing I have been playing duplicate bridge for almost nineteen years, and I have never encountered this bid before.
The other thing that I remember was that in the first round of the first session we were East-West against a couple from Connecticut. I had played against them several times in sectional tournaments there, but I had not seen them for years. They told us that they had never used the BridgeMates to record the score before! They said that they always sat East-West at tournaments. So, I had to give the man a very brief lesson on how to use the machine, and I had to help him record each result. I don’t remember the names of the couple.
The Swiss was, from our perspective, absolutely amazing. There were eight six-board matches, and, unbelievably, we won our first seven. Our lead over the field after the seventh round was so large that we could have been blitzed in the last round and still won. We did lose the eighth round badly against a very weak team, but we still won the event by twelve victory points over two good teams from the Boston area.
My most vivid memory is of the match in which we played against John Debaggis and Motoko Oinaga, two Western Mass players who had occasionally played at the HBC. John had opened 2♦, which Motoko alerted as a Flannery bid showing five or more hearts and exactly four spade. John actually had six spades and four hearts. After the hand Abhi called the director and claimed that John had psyched (which is legal in a tournament). John agreed to this. Tim ruled that psyches were not legal when a conventional bid had been employed and penalized John and Motoko.
After the tournament I approached John and asked him if he really psyched. He sheepishly admitted that he had made a mistake. I advised him that he should always admit to mistakes in such situation. I then told him about the times that I had accidentally opened 1NT with two diamond suits (and no hearts). No penalty was imposed either time.
The October sectional: The second sectional was scheduled for October 14-16. The venue would be the same church in Orange that was used for the first such tournament. Eric Vogel told me that he could play on Friday and Saturday in the open pairs. On Sunday Linda Starr and I would be partners in the open Swiss. Our teammates were Abhi Dutta and Paul Johnson, who was Abhi’s partner when he lived in Connecticut a few years ago. I liked this arrangement’ I would get to play against the best players, but we would be in the B strat3 in all five events.
I got to St. Barbara’s at about 9:15 on Friday. I sat near the director’s table to see if anyone appeared to need help. The attendance seemed to be much better than in June. I did not end up giving any kind of a class. The same thing happened on Saturday.
Eric Vogel.
The competition on both days was very good. Eric and I had a miserable morning on Friday. We played better in the afternoon, but our score was not quite good enough to qualify for a place in the overalls.
Our play on Saturday morning was better. The highlight was when I doubled Joe Grue, one of the best players in the world, and he was unable to make the contract. However, we once again failed to win any points. I made one very stupid play against one of the best teams.
Everything came together for us in the afternoon. For the first time in the three days (one in June, two in October) that Eric and I played together, we seemed to get some breaks in the form of mistakes by our opponents. Of the thirty-two players who played in that session, we were the only ones to score above 60 percent. We won 9.35 silver points. This was only the second time that I had won a pairs event at a sectional. The drive back to Enfield was very pleasant.4
The board meeting on Sunday morning was more interesting than usual. Peter talked about the sectionals for next year. He indicated that clubs could run limited sectionals. They could set the limit to any number of points up to 750, and they could exclude Life Masters if they wanted. I ended up on a communications committee, but we only communicated by email. I was also confirmed as one of the unit’s delegates to the district’s Executive Committee.
Linda Starr.
A guy named Bill Segraves was the new webmaster. I had never met him before. He seemed very eager and competent. The board was badly in need of someone with those attributes.
The new board members attended. I knew all of them well except for Debbie, whom I played with a few weeks later, and Phyllis, who—despite her surname—was from Stamford, a very long way from Hartford.
Our team played pretty well in the Swiss. We received a very bad draw for the seventh round. Linda and I had to play against the pair of Steve Becker and Larry Bausher, two of the very best players in the state. Our teammates had an even worse draw. Their opponents were Rich DeMartino and Geof Brod, both of whom were Grand Life Masters—the highest rank in bridge.
We played well enough to win, but we were once again defeated by a clever bid by one of our opponents. Linda opened a nineteen-point hand by bidding one of a minor—as I would have. We ended up in 2NT. At the other table Geof upgraded his hand because of his five-card suit and opened 2NT. Rich raised to 3NT. Both declarers scored nine tricks, and the game bonus was enough to give them the victory.
Steve Becker and Larry Bausher
Rich DeMartino and Geof Brod
We ended up fourth in B, which was worth 1.98 silver points.
152 players earned points at the tournament. That was a big improvement from the 116 that won points in June. However, it was still far short of the 248 players who won points in the sectional held in March of 2020. Cindy Lyall later reported that the unit lost a little under $2,000 for the tournament.
1. In all 116 players won points. In the last sectional in Orange before the pandemic the number was 284. So, attendance was down almost 60 percent!
2. I don’t know how they heard about the tournament. Someone told me that they were in the process of moving to Connecticut. However, as of December 2022 their addresses were still both in California. Jim was not even on the December ACBL roster, which meant that he had not paid his dues. I learned that Jim was a University of Michigan graduate who was a little older than I was.
3. Some events at tournaments had more than one “flight”. Some flights had a limit on the number of points each player may have. If not, they were called “open”. Each flight was usually divided into two or three “strats”. The lower strats had limits on the average number of points. In Connecticut the cutoff between the A strat and the B strat was usually 3,000 masterpoints, but sometimes the directors assigned different levels.
4. The only unpleasant part was the first few minutes. There was not a cloud in the sky, and after I turned onto the parkway I was going straight east. In several places the sun in my rear-view mirror or the one on the left was absolutely blinding.
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.
Senators Manchin and Sinema.
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.
No screens online.
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
Stay away, Fluffy.
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.
Not in Flight B.
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.
Eric and Victor Xiao in 2019.
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.
Bob Sagor.
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.
Yoga and Big Bubba.
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.
Me, Felix, Eric, and Trevor.
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.
John Willoughby.
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.
Stuart Whittle and Saul Agranoff.
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 90th 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.
Brenda Montague.
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 73rd 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.
Med Colket.
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.
Me and Ann.
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.
Donna Feir.
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.
Discontinued but not forgotten.
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.
This entry contains information about the partners with whom I played regularly at tournaments before the Pandemic. Many experiences with those people have already been described elsewhere. Part 2, which is posted here, is about partners with whom I played at tournaments only once or twice.
I enjoyed playing in pairs games at the clubs for the first few years when I was still working a very large number of hours. During this period I read the Bridge Bulletin from cover to cover every month and tried to make sense of the dazzling array of tournaments that were being held around the country. When I started playing at the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC) with Dick Benedict (introduced here), he had already put together a group of people who played in tournaments together. He asked me to join that group, and I was eager to do so.
Partners from the SBC: I am not positive, but I think that the first tournament in which I played was with Dick as my partner in a 299er (restricted to players with less than 300 masterpoints) game in the Knockout Regional at a hotel in Cromwell, CT. That would probably have been in February of 2008. I remember that it was held in a separate room across from the main ballroom. During a break Dick escorted me across the hall to see what the players there were doing. I found the vista stupefying. The place was huge, and it was full of bridge tables. At each one were seated four people, most of whom had huge heads. I have never heard anyone discuss this aspect of bridge, but it was the first thing that I noticed. I felt that this was where I belonged.
The game in the 299er room was run by Sue Miguel. She reminded me of a grade school teacher. She was very proud of the fact that the candy that she offered to her charges contained more chocolate than could be obtained elsewhere. The 299er games seemed rinkiy-dink to me. On the one hand, the games seemed less challenging than the ones at either the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) or the SBC; on the other I had a hard time understanding what the opponents’ bids meant. After just a few sessions I determined that although I found the concept of tournaments fascinating, I wanted more than the 299er rooms had to offer. In retrospect I must admit that this was probably hubris.
At first Dick’s preferred partner at tournament was Virginia Labbadia. She was, as I recall a retired salesperson for Xerox. I played on a few teams with them. Dick offered to help her make Life Master if she would help him. He was shocked that she turned him down, and so he asked me.
Eventually Dick and I had great success together playing in bracketed team games (knockouts, compact knockouts, and round robins) with Robert Klopp and Brenda Harvey. Many of our adventures have already been described here. Dick already knew Robert and Brenda when we started playing together. He probably had played against them at tournaments.
One of the regulars at the SBC, Sonja Smith2, recommended that her son, Steve Smith,3 try playing with me at the games in Simsbury. Shortly thereafter Dick, who was a Life Master by then, decided he did not want to play with me in Simsbury. Steve and I started playing there and on Tuesday evenings at the HBC. We also attended several memorable tournaments together. Most of those exploits, including our trip to Reno, NV, have already been described here.
One thing that I neglected to mention was that Steve seldom carried any cash with him. More than once I had to pay his table fees for him. Of course he paid me back. Cash to him was an old person’s money.
Steve bought a house in the Forest Park section of Springfield, MA. He rented out his spare bedrooms to other guys. When I drove there to pick him up I never knew what I would encounter. In at least one case I had to wait for him to get dressed.
Nearly all of our car trips to tournaments were interesting. I remember that Steve told me once about an idea that he had for a dating app. He was serious about developing it and marketing it. I thought that he was crazy. I never learned whether anything ever came of it.
Steve and I were both fans of Phil Hendrie, a radio host from Los Angeles, who conducted outrageous and offensive interviews of himself using other voices. After a few minutes he would invite people to call in. Many people did, and the results were hilarious. Phil’s regular listeners never called because they knew that it was a stunt.
Steve and I both occasionally listened to Art Bell on his Coast to Coast AM radio show. Steve once played for me a recording of Phil Hendrie interviewing himself as someone accompanying Art Bell on a mission to find aliens that had landed near Las Vegas.
I also played bridge with Steve’s mother Sonja a few times We were partners once at the SBC and once or twice at the HBC. We also played together for two sessions at the sectional in Orange that was held in June of 2022. That event has been documented here.
I went to quite a few tournaments with Sue Rudd. When we started playing together I was a Life Master and she was not. This was in spite of the fact that she had joined the ACBL seventeen years before I did. I have written extensively about my long relationship with Sue. You can read about many of the experiences here.
Sue stopped paying dues to the ACBL in 2010. She was the only person whom I ever heard complain vociferously about the cost of playing bridge. Then again, she also complained about the cost of gasoline and just about everything else. I suppose that it was difficult for her to manage her expenses on the fixed income that she received as a former employee of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. On the other hand, one of her sons paid for quite a few foreign vacations for her, and she often mentioned how many famous ski resorts on different continents that she had visited over her lifetime.
Sue still played bridge occasionally at the end of 2023, but I don’t know of any sanctioned games in which she was participating other than occasional appearances at the SBC.
My occasional partnerships with Jerry Hirsch were documented pretty thoroughly here. As of November 2023 he still played with Sally Kirtley nearly every Tuesday morning at the HBC and Wednesday evening at the SBC. His smiling face has not been seen at a tournament for some time before Covid-19 arrived.
My last (as of November 2023) regular partner at the SBC was Ken Leopold. I have recounted some of our many adventures together here. Ken was still working as a physician as of late 2023. Since the Pandemic I have not played with him in any tournaments, although he asked me to play in the 2023 Gala Regional in Marlborough. I had to decline because of a previous commitment to another player. Most of the time he has played with his wife, Lori.
In the fall of 2023 Ken started directing the Saturday afternoon pairs game at the HBC. It was sort of an experiment.
Partners from the HBC: The stories about my partners from the HBC that are recounted here include many recollections about tournament play, as well.
I played with Tom Gerchman at quite a few tournaments, including the NABC in Boston in 2008, at which time I had less than fifty masterpoints. That experience and many others have been documented here.
After I had stopped playing with Gerch I was subjected to one more instance in which I had to sit across from him. Both of us were playing in the Individual Regional Tournament in Newton, MA, in January. In individual events players have different partners for each round. So, in a session of twenty-seven boards they would play with nine different partners. By chance one of my seven was Gerch.
On the first hand he opened 3♦, a preemptive bid that indicated a below average hand with seven diamonds. The player on my right passed. I also passed, which told Tom that I had fewer than three diamonds, and I did not think that we could take ten tricks. The player on my left bid 3♥.
Tom’s first bid had limited his hand. That made me the captain. Nevertheless, he channeled his inner Mister Christian and he bid 4♦. The ONLY excuse for doing this would be if he discovered that he had actually had eight diamonds. He didn’t.
After two passes the player on my left reluctantly bid 4♥. This raised the stakes a lot. Now our opponents might potentially get 620 points for a game contract as opposed to 140 or 170 for the three-level bid. Tom did not hesitate. He took the 5♦ card from his bidding box and set it on the table. The next player immediately doubled, of course.
I really felt like calling the director and asking him/her if I could join the opponents in the double. I had played nothing but pass cards. Now I was going to be the dummy. Why must I be punished for my partner’s reckless and totally unilateral bidding?
Now that I have had time to think about it, I should have redoubled. We were going to get a zero anyway. Why not make Gerch sweat a little more.
In fact, Tom and I ended up getting zeroes on all three hands. This was an astounding result. Of all the pairs playing these three hands—probably at least ten—we did worse than all of them all three times. I am happy to say that that was the last time that I ever had to play across from Gerch.
My first team event was at a regional tournament at the Hilton Hotel in Danbury, CT,4 in the autumn of 2008. Dick and I played together. Our teammates were Virginia and Inge Schuele (ING uh SHOO luh), one of Dick’s regular partners at the club. Our team had a total of less than 600 masterpoints. Our opponents had at least ten times that amount. We got pasted.5
Inge Schuele.
The match lasted all morning. Afterwards the four of us ate lunch in the hotel’s restaurant and discussed what to do in the afternoon. There was a 199er pairs game in the afternoon. Both Inge and I had less than 200 points, and so we could play in it. The fact that we had not played together was not of great import. We used the card that Inge played with Dick, and I adjusted. I seem to remember that Dick and Virginia played in the pairs games for seniors, which at that time was anyone over 60.
After lunch I insisted on finding a quiet place at the hotel so that I could take a short nap. In my working days I always did this.
Our opposition in the 199er event was several steps below the level of our opponents in the knockout. They made many mistakes. When all was said and done Inge and I had a score well over 60 percent, and we were first overall. We were presented with small trophies, and out photos were taken. Our pictures appeared in the next day’s Bulletin for the tournament. This was the only trophy that I ever won in bridge, and it was the only time that my photo appeared in print until the time that my image appeared on the cover of a bridge book written by a Canadian.6
Although I don’t think that I ever paired up with Inge at the HBC, I am positive that we played together at several tournaments. I learned that Inge spoke Italian and in days gone by had conducted tours of parts of Italy. Her husband, Werner (VAIR nair), was a retired airline pilot who flew for Lufthansa.
I vividly remember one hand that Inge and I played together in Sturbridge, MA. It might have been at the qualifier of the North American Pairs that was held there every year. Inge had opened 1♣. I had four clubs, but my primary responsibility was to bid a four-card major (hearts or spades). She rebid her clubs, and the opponents then entered the auction. I used the principles of Losing Trick Count7 (LTC) to determine that we could probably make 5♣, and that was what I bid. Sure enough, she was able to win the requisite eleven tricks, and there was no chance for a twelfth.
LTC does not always work, but it is a good tool for estimating the total number of tricks you probably can take in a suit contract. Inge had never heard of this technique, but she later told me that Werner, who also played bridge, had heard of it and used it.
Inge has not played in a tournament since 2018, and she stopped paying dues to the ACBL in 2022, at which time she had reached the rank of Bronze Life Master. I have not seen her at the HBC since the reopening in 2021, but she might still play elsewhere.
I must close this section with a startling fact. My wife Sue told me more than once that she had been jealous of Inge and had worried that I would run off to Italy with her.
Shortly after I stopped playing with Tom Gerchman I asked Michael Dworetsky to be my partner on Tuesday evenings at the HBC. After that he sometimes worked me in when his regular partner was not available. However, we did play quite a bit in tournaments. The most memorable of those occasions have been documented here.
I recently discovered that Michael won the Barb Shaw trophy in 2011. It was annually awarded to the Flight C player who earned the most masterpoints at a designated sectional in Connecticut. The CTBridge.org website misspelled his last name, capitalizing the W and leaving off the D. I told the webmaster about the mistake a month ago, but a month or so has now passed, and it had not been rectified.
The tournament took place from March 4 through March 11 in 2011. I played with Michael all three days. We had a terrific tournament. On Friday afternoon we finished second in C in the open pairs. On Saturday morning we finished second in C in the B/C pairs. In the afternoon we won the B/C pairs, outscoring the other twenty-five teams. In the B/C Sunday Swiss we teamed up with Tom Gerchman and Linda Starr and finished first in a field of eighteen teams. All told, we won 11.49 points, which was more than all but eleven players at the tournament. All of them had a lot more experience and masterpoints than I did. I was not eligible for the trophy because I was already a Life Master, and so Michael got to keep it for a year.
The most dramatic moment that I ever experienced in bridge was when I was playing in a Swiss event with Michael as my partner. Our opponents were Jade Barrett, a professional from South Dakota, and a female client. Our teammates were Bob and Shirley Derrah, who in that match were playing against two experts from Connecticut.
The match was fairly tight until the last hand, which had remarkable distribution. Michael and I had a lot of hearts. Our opponents had spades. We bid to 4♥. The client bid 4♠.. Eventually Michael bid 6♥., and she bid 6♠.. Michael passed. I had a void in a side suit that I had not mentioned and the ♠A. I was pretty sure that, if all of the suits were distributed as seemed apparent from the bidding, that our side could take thirteen tricks as long as hearts were trumps. So, I bid 7♥., and she doubled.
Michael had to play it very carefully, but every suit was as I expected. He managed to get all thirteen tricks. At the other table our counterparts stopped at 6♥., and the Derrahs did not double. The swing was large enough for us to claim a victory in the match. It was a huge upset. What made this very special was the fact that it was not a fluke. I used what I knew from the bidding and rightly determined that we could take all the tricks.
While researching the 2016 NABC I discovered that Michael and I had played together in that tournament in two bracketed Round Robins. In the first one we teamed up with a couple from New Jersey and won our bracket. In the second one we played with the Derrahs and finished third.
Michael and his wife Ellen moved to Palm Beach Gardens, FL. Michael still seems to play a lot of bridge. He even made it back to New England for the Granite State Regional in Nashua in 2023. I also saw him at an event in Auburn, MA, shortly before the Pandemic.
Dave Landsberg was not my best partner, but he was my favorite. I liked him a lot, and I admired him. Our adventures together have been chronicled here. Included there are the few times that I played with Pat Fliakos. I met both of them in the Tuesday evening games at the HBC.
On the last day of the Fall NABC in Providence in 2014 I played with Dave in bracket #7 of the RIBA Bracketed B teams event. The previous day the team that we were both on had narrowly won a similar event that is described here. On that occasion we were just teammates. On the last day we played as partners; our teammates were Felix Springer and Ken Leopold. This event was not nearly as close. What I remember most about it was that Felix and Ken filed two protests of director’s decisions, and both were rejected. That score of 114 is astoundingly high, much higher than the scores of winners of any of the other brackets.
I played with Felix Springer at many tournaments. Most often he was a teammate, but we also were partners quite a few times, especially at NABC events. Felix had played at high-level events when he was at Columbia, and he developed the same taste for national competition that I had. Our most successful pairing was for the 0-1500 Mini-Spingold in Washington that is described in the Paul Burnham section.
In the autumn of 2019 we played in the NABC in San Francisco. For some reason I did not keep notes for this tournament. So, I must rely on my memory.
Our primary objective was to do well in the Super Seniors pairs and the Mini-Blue Ribbon pairs. We came very close to making it to the second day in each, but we fell just short of both of those goals. However, we did finish fifth in the Saturday BC pairs and the Thursday BC pairs. We also teamed up with Bob Sagor and Judy Hyde to finish a very close second in bracket #1 of the Wednesday bracketed teams. All told, we won 26.23 gold points together.
When I arrived at the airport it was late in the evening, and I was very sleepy. I was tricked into using a credit card skimmer that was attached to the machine that sold BART tickets. I had to cancel the card, but I did not lose any money.
The tournament was the last NABC in which NABC events like the two that we played in were scheduled for afternoon and evening as opposed to morning and afternoon. I had great difficulty maintaining my concentration in the evening sessions. I consumed a lot of coffee. There were no concessions in the basement in the evenings. When I needed a coffee I had to race up the escalators to the first floor.
I remember several ancillary details about the tournament. The games were in the basement of one of the two Marriott hotels. One morning while I was taking the escalator down to the playing area my Goodwill Committee pin fell off and landed pin-side down between two metal bars on the step in front of me. I had a coffee cup in one hand and papers in the other. I tried to reach down to save it, but I was unable to grasp it before it disappeared into the bottom of the escalator. Felix and I walked both stayed in the Marriott across from Union Square. At the time I was still bothered by foot pain after a half mile or so.
Felix gave me a bottle of wine that he had won by winning a section in an evening side game. I saved the bottle as a souvenir. He also let me share his Uber ride back to the airport. Our driver was from Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Tournament partners from outside of the Hartford area: I played a lot more tournament bridge than most of of my partners at the HBC and SBC. Listed in this section are the people with whom I had more than a passing relationship. That is, I played with them for more than one or two sessions, and we spent some time making sure that we agreed on our methods.
I met Ginny Iannini in 2013. At the time she was playing with her wheelchair-bound husband, Bill King, in some of the same events in which I participated. They won the Gold Rush Swiss in the Knockout Regional in Cromwell, CT, in February of 2014. This was the first tournament at which I launched my program of taking photos of the winners of events and posting them on the NEBridge.org website. I dutifully took the photo8 of their team with my point-and-shoot Canon camera.
Only one other winning team came to see me for a photo in that entire tournament. It made me realize that I would need to hunt down the winning pairs and teams and beg them to let me snap a photo of them. That meant that this project would entail much more work than anticipated, but I was committed to do it, and I committed to doing it for eight years.
I enjoyed working and playing with Ginny. After her husband’s death she became pretty devoted to bridge. She lived in Brewster, MA, which is on Cape Cod. She took bridge lessons there from a very fine player, Steve Rzewski..9 I learned the Blooman convention from her, as well as Spiral (which we called Q&Q, short for quantity and quality).
At one point Ginny asked me in an email if I was married. I pointed her to an abbreviated form of the journal that I had kept of one of our Larry Cohen cruises, entitled “Honeymoon for One.” The whole journal is posted here. She occasionally talked about her problems with her first husband, a doctor as I remember. She made it clear that she took him to the cleaners when they got divorced. She also told me about a dentist whom she had been dating while we were playing together.
In those early years Ginny was pretty active in the administration of bridge in New England. She was elected to the Board of Directors for the Eastern Massachusetts Bridge Association (EMBA), she was a member of the Tournament Scheduling Committee, and she was the tournament chairman of the Senior Regional on Cape Cod at least once. The very first email that I sent out in support of a regional tournament was that one.
Ginny and I did pretty well together. We won numerous events, including one at the NABC in Providence in 2014. My original write-up of the most exciting and nerve-wracking event of my bridge career was lost in the catastrophic computer crash of 2015. I will need to try to recreate it from memory. We were playing in bracket #6 of the Mary Carter Bracket B Swiss on Saturday, December 6, 2014. Our teammates were Dave Landsberg and Pat Fliakos. We were doing well throughout the event, but a team of players from the Montreal area was only a little behind us when we played against them in the last round.
Ginny and I were playing against two ladies. Dave and Pat faced two men. The match seemed to come down to one critical hand. Ginny opened the bidding and then reversed, showing a strong hand with at least seventeen high-card points. She had that, but barely, and some of her holdings were a little shaky. She had no aces. We ended up a slam that I had to play, and I was unable to find a way to make it. When the last hand had been played, we were crestfallen as we walked to the other table to compare scores with Dave and Pat.
It was as we feared. Our counterparts had stopped in game and easily made their contract. That swing offset some small positives that we amassed on other hands. We clearly lost the match. However, because of the lead we had coming into the match, we still would be ahead by two victory points. The captain of the Quebecois team brought the tabulation card to our table for confirmation, but he claimed a significantly larger margin of victory than we had calculated. I walked with him back to their table and discovered that the ladies had made a mistake, and we did indeed win by two victory points. To put that in perspective, the two teams that tied for third were 29 points behind the Canadians. Furthermore, their score would have won any other bracket.
I always enjoyed playing with Ginny. I think that I might have been too intense or too ambitious for her. She never officially dumped me, but she stopped accepting my invitations, and eventually I got the message. Another factor was that after she remarried, she played a lot less bridge. She still seemed to be playing somewhere in 2023, but she has not attended any tournaments since 2019.
I did receive an email from her when I solicited nominations for the Weiss-Bertoni award (described here). She was the first person to nominate Joe Brouillard, the eventual winner.
We all sat at a round table at Siena.
We enjoyed several suppers together during tournaments. I remember a few distinctly. The first was at Siena, a very nice restaurant in East Greenwich, RI. Bob Bertoni, who was the D25 president at the time, was in attendance, as well as several people from the Boston area. Two of them were quite drunk. Ginny found it curious, but I found it unpleasant.
We also ate at a restaurant called Il Forno in Providence with people from the Cape whom Ginny knew and had arranged to be our teammates. The woman was named Ginny O’Toole. I have forgotten the guy’s name. That was another rather strange occasion.
We ate at least twice at Cafe Fiore, a restaurant in Cromwell, CT, near the hotel that hosted the regional tournament there for many years. On the last of those occasions I disclosed my idea for a novel about Pope Benedict IX (posted here). She had a strange and disturbing reaction: “You want to be the pope!”
I once made the mistake of admitting that when I first met Ginny I had considered her likely to be “high maintenance.” However, after I got to know her I judged that my initial judgment had been wrong. I considered this admission as a compliment to her, but I think that she was at least slightly offended.
Ginny was very active in fundraising for the preservation and/or restoration of a historical piece of property on Cape Cod. I think that it was a captain’s residence or something like that. I never learned what happened to that project.
Ginny was tall and thin. Opponents often thought that we were married. Her fingers were preternaturally long. Her span was almost a match for mine, and the span of my left hand is eleven inches.
I was astounded to learn that Ginny was ten months older than I was. She certainly did not look it. She kept in shape by doing yoga. The last thing that I remembered her saying to me was that from that point on she would always wear yoga pants to tournaments. I haven’t seen her in several years, and I definitely miss her.
Paul Burnham was a lawyer who lived and worked in the town of Wilton, CT, a long way from Hartford. Nevertheless, he has recently been a member in good standing of the HBC. He hardly ever makes the drive to play in anything except special games. I know that our first time as teammates was in the 0-1500 Mini-Spingold in Washington, DC, in the summer of 2016. I somehow set Paul up to play with Charlie Curley from the Boston area while I played with Felix Springer. We made it to the semifinals of this event. The last match was the first and only time that I played with screens. It made me quite nervous because my handwriting had already deteriorated somewhat, and my notes to my screenmate were difficult to read.
At some point Paul and I committed to play as partners in a tournament. In preparation I drove to a town in southeastern Connecticut where there was a club game that Paul frequented. The competition was tough, and we were not used to each other’s styles. We did not win any points.
I also played in an open pairs game with Paul either at that tournament or at a subsequent NABC tournament in Toronto. I used the Flannery convention, but Paul was unaware that it was on our card.
I also played with Paul for three days at the summer NABC in Providence in 2022. For some reason we were not able to click on that occasion either. The story of that experience begins here.
I am not sure why Paul and I have had so little success as a partnership. It would seem to me that are styles are compatible. I like to play with him, and I hope to get another chance to do so.
I don’t remember how I met Jeanne Martin, who lived in the Worcester area. Her husband was an expert player who died several years before I met her.
Perhaps we were set up by the partnership desk at some tournament in the late teens. We played together at several tournaments. I remember that we were in a team event in Mansfield, MA, and she finally appeared about ten minutes after the first round was scheduled to start. She said that her car’s GPS gave her instructions that sent her in circles. In the age of Google Maps it astounded me that she used a built-in GPS in her car rather than the one that comes free with every cellphone and is supported and maintained by Google.
We did not win any events together, but we both seemed to enjoy playing together. I drove up to Auburn, MA, which was the site of the sectionals and unit-wide games for the Central Massachusetts Bridge Association (CMBA). Our results seemed to get worse over time.
Jeanne once appeared in a cameo role in a feature-length move. She was in an ice cream parlor. She sent me a file that contained a video of the scene.
Before the Pandemic Jeanne was on the board of directors for unit 113 (CMBA). She told me that she did not get along with some of the other board members and wanted to resign.
Jeanne attended the 2022 Gala Regional in Marlborough, MA, but she did not win any points. She still seemed to be playing bridge online or somewhere in 2023.
The team of Trevor Reeves, Bob Weld, me, and Bob Sagor, won Bracket 2 of the Thursday-Friday knockout in Nashua in 2019.
I played with Bob Sagor at tournaments in Nashua, NH. He lived in Greenfield, MA, which is on I-91 near the Vermont state. His principal partner was Judy Hyde. They often played together at events sponsored by the Northampton Bridge Club and at tournaments. He sometimes played with me when Judy was not available.
I do not have many specific memories of the bridge games that I played with Bob. Since I had also played with Judy, it was rather easy for us to agree on a card. I vividly remember that on one occasion I was complaining something stupid that one of my partners (maybe my wife Sue) had done. Bob asked me wryly, “Am I better of worse than them?” I said that I needed more time to think about it.
Like nearly all bridge players Bob had an interesting backstory. He was a couple of years older than I was, which meant that the draft was a big factor when he finished college. He and his wife Claire moved to Nova Scotia to avoid it, and they only returned when its avoidance was no longer considered a crime. In real life he was a veterinarian.
During the Pandemic Bob was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. When the bridge world reopened in 2021 he was unable to participate in live events. However, he still was very active in online play, especially with the Noho Club. An article about Bob’s involvement with bridge in western Massachusetts that was printed in the Greenfield Recorder in June of 2023 has been posted here.
I was assigned by the partnership desk to play with Sohail Hasan in the open pairs game on Thursday, November 7, 2019, at the Harvest Regional in Mansfield, MA. We hit it off pretty well. We finished eleventh overall out of fifty pairs and fifth in the B strat. The conventions that we played were quite similar. His approach to 2NT responses was much more sophisticated than what I was accustomed to. Unfortunately, we later came to understand that we had substantial disagreements about what some of the entries on our convention card meant.
I learned that Sohail had graduated from the University of Wisconsin and had been employed at a Wall Street firm (LinkedIn page here). He had a house on Cape Cod and another in New York or New Jersey. Most of his acquaintances in the bridge world seemed to come from NYC or New Jersey.
During the Pandemic Sohail asked me if I wanted to play in the NABC in the summer of 2022 in Providence, RI. I agreed to play with him in two team games in which we did pretty well. Unfortunately, our teammates in that last event contracted Covid-19 and had to drive home early. So, on the last day we played in the fast pairs, and I had a miserable time. The details of these adventures have been recounted here.
The Ocean State Regional has been held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel for many years.
Over the rest of the summer Sohail and I maintained email communications. We committed to play together in the Ocean State Regional in Warwick, RI. I have explored here the miserable time that I had at what had always been my favorite tournament. I encountered several problems with Sohail. He has a fiery temper, and he unleashed it several times at me and once in even greater fury at a pro that he knew from the New York area. He insisted that the XYZ convention did not apply when the participants bid 1x-1y-1NT. I found this preposterous. He pointed me to an article by Larry Cohen that advocated playing New Minor Forcing in that situation. I replied that LC was an outlier in this regard. Furthermore, the name of the convention was derived from the fact that it could be used in any sequence of three calls that ended with a bid at the one level: most commonly 1x-1y-1z.
The biggest problems began with the fact that he played BOSTON (Bottom Of Something ; Top of Nothing) leads, but he refused to mark them on his convention card, and if anyone asked what he played, he always answered “Standard”, which was not true. He also showed up at the very last minute (or later) for every. This bothered me a lot because I wanted to make sure that we were on the same page about everything, and we played some conventions that were new to me. Finally, he had a peculiar overhand style to playing his cards, which resulted in him sometimes slamming them on the table. When others objected to this technique, he sometimes responded with unnecessary aggression.
In short, I decided after the Warwick debacle not to play with Sohail again. He has attended two NABC events since then, but no D25 tournaments.
The adventures at tournaments that involved partners with whom I played only once or twice are posted here. The new partners with whom I have played since the renaissance of bridge after the Pandemic are described here.
Virginia Labbadia.
1. Virginia Labbadia is not in my database of ACBL members, which means that she stopped paying dues before I started downloading rosters in 2014. She definitely played at the HBC rather regularly before the Pandemic. I have no way of discovering if she ever made Life Master.
2. Sonja Smith and her husband Chris moved to Chapel Hill, NC, in 2022.
3. Steve was still a member of the ACBL in late 2023, but he only had 122 masterpoints, most of which he won with me more than ten years earlier.
4. Although Danbury is definitely part of New England and therefore in District 25, the tournament there was sponsored by District 3 (northern New Jersey and eastern New York). D25 had reportedly tried to use the site for a regional at least once, but the attendance was not good. Before the Pandemic D3 paid D25 a small sum for the right to use the site. I think that the hotel is now called Zero Degrees. D3 has not used it since the reopening.
5. What I most remember from this match was the fact that the opposition used the 2♦ bid to show a hand with 11-15 masterpoints, a singleton or void, and at least four cards in the other three suits. This hand is difficult to bid with standard methods. I remember spending hours going over hand records that I had collected and projected how I would bid hands with that distribution with or without the Mini-Roman convention. I intended to collect enough evidence to convince Dick to use it. However, my research did not disclose that it had much, if any, value. One of the best defenses is just to pass. The players who used Mini-Roman often ended up one level two high.
6. The book is called Winning at Matchpoints, and the author is named Bill Treble. I use the photo (which was taken at the NABC in Honolulu in 2017) to demonstrate my game face at the bridge table.
7. Losing Trick Count is explained here and elsewhere on the Internet and in print.
8. The photo that I took, which had an embarrassing smudge on it, has apparently been lost forever. I think that the original was on an external hard drive for which I have no power cord. The photo that was posted was lost in the catastrophic computer event on NEBridge.org in 2015.
9. Steve Rzewski won the Larry Weiss award in 2010. I also dealt with Steve when I asked the experts in the district if they could supply articles for the NEBridge.org. He was a regular contributor.
I started playing in the Wednesday evening games at the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC) in May of 2004. My experiences playing there in the early years and my recollections about the people who were my partner are recounted here. This entry describes other recollection about the club, including lists of the people who participated and my memories of them, if any.
If my recollection is correct, the club charged $5 for a membership in 2004. The membership was for life; there were no annual dues. The table fee each week was also $5 for members. Non-members were charged $6. I bought a membership the first evening. At first the director had access to the kitchen that was adjacent to the Youth Room. So, free tea and instant coffee were available.
I took this and the next four photos shown here with a disposable camera at the Christmas party of 2004 or 2005. Shown here are (I think) Paula and Kathy Colket.
Paula Beauchamp was the owner/director of the club when I joined. I don’t know much about the history of the club before that. At one time there was a plaque honoring someone who had managed the club in the early nineties. I wish that I had taken a photo of it. The plaque was removed at some point before 2019.
Here are some of the people who played in 2004 and were never my partner in SBC games:
Louise Alvord mostly played with Carol Schaper (SHAH pur) and Clara Horn. She played once or twice a month for several years. I do not know what happened to her. The Internet (in 2021) seems to think that she might still be living in Tarriffville. She was a former nun, but she did not resemble any of the nus that I knew. She no longer had any use for anything related to the Catholic Church. Carol suggested once that Louise might be interested in my book on the popes, Stupid Pope Tricks (posted here). Louise wanted no part of it. I discovered in December of 2021 that she was still playing in the unsanctioned game at Eno Hall.
Carol and I played as partners a couple of times, but not at the SBC. She later played for several years with Maureen Denges. I liked Carol a lot, but she always claimed that she and Maureen were doing very badly whenever we were at the same table. Carol still lives in Simsbury, but she and Maureen stopped coming in 2019 or earlier.
In 2004 and for a year or two afterwards Maureen played with Pat Matthew. Pat was an extremely slow player, but they were both pretty good. I nearly lost it one time when Pat started harping on me to play faster on one hand. Pat died. I think that Maureen is still living in Granby.
Lila Englehart played a version of Schenken’s Big Club with Kay Hill. They also played at tournaments. I am pretty sure that Sue Rudd and I teamed up with them at least once. Lila was a large lady who drove a very large Buick SUV. She died at some point in the teens. Kay played more than Lila. For a while she partnered with Sue Rudd. She was still playing at the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) when the pandemic caused it to close in March 2020. Kay was good at playing the cards, but her bidding was very old-school. She sometimes mentioned that she carried a gun. The story of my partnership with Sue is told here.
Mel Hirsch sometimes came up from Florida to play with his brother Jerry. More details of the games that I played with Jerry are provided here. Mel was a good player. He and Jerry often finished first.
I was surprised to see the names of Patty and Mark Howland. I did not remember them, but I played against Mark when he was assigned to play in an open game at the HBC in December 2021 with Jeanne Striefler. More about Jeanne can be read here.
Jerry Hudson (female) played regularly at the SBC with Jeanne Striefler. I think that she died a few years after I started playing. I remember only that she was astounded when I took off my game face and put on my silly tie at the Christmas party. She said, “You’re like a whole different person.”
Bob Nuckols‘ wife died the week before I started playing at the SBC. Everyone was talking about it. Bob returned to play with Bill Moody and a few other people including, for one game, me. He then played for a few years on a regular basis with Mary Lou Pech. I don’t remember too much about Bob except that his coffee mug had the black and gold colors of Purdue. He died in 2012. His obituary is here. Mary Lou was not a great player, but she was an awfully nice person. I remember that I made my first actual Endplay against her. She died in 2019. Here obituary is here.
I would have liked to get to know Joanna Overbaugh better. She only showed up a few times a year to play with Dorothy Clark. She spent the rest of her time on around-the-world cruises! I played with Dorothy once when Joanna was cruising. I wrote about it here. Dorothy was also one of the judges in the Hartford Courant’s story contest that I entered in 1989. That event is described here.
Helen Pawlowski was a very good player. I never played as her partner, but I got to know her pretty well when she took over as owner-director of the SBC. She was also the tournament manager for District 25 of the ACBL. In that role she found sites for our regional tournaments, negotiated the contracts, and dealt with the hotels in which we played. Soon after she took over the club in 2008 she began giving free classes before the games at Eno Hall. They were very popular. I always tried to show up early enough to listen to the lesson.
Laurie Robbins played a few times at the SBC, always with Paul Pearson. I don’t recall any occasion on which they finished below first. I never played as her partner, but I often played against her with almost uniformly bad results. In 2021 she is a teacher and director at the HBC. Much more about Paul can be read here.
David Rock is another exceptionally good player. He played in tournaments for several years with Sonja Smith. David was also very active in the administration of the district. He was vice-president of the New England Bridge Conference (NEBC) and was instrumental in setting up the smooth operation of the North American Bridge Championships held in Providence in 2014. David teamed up with Sally Kirtley to run the SBC in the teens. That period is described here. David moved to West Brookfield, MA. After that he only attended one game at the SBC.
Sonja played with Jean Seale at the SBC for many years. After Jean moved to Colorado Sonja came to only a few games at the SBC, usually playing with her son Steve. Much more about Sonja is posted here.
Shirley Schienman often played with her son, John Schienman. I never got to know Shirley—who always reminded me of Shirley Jones in her Partridge Family days—very well, but I had some good conversations with John. After John stopped coming to the SBC Shirley played with a variety of partners. Shirley died in 2017. Her obituary is here.
The North-South seats at table #1 at the SBC were usually occupied by Ellen and Tony Tabell. When the subject of Moysian fits came up during one hand, they told me that they had known Sonny Moyse in New York. They moved to Exeter, NH, and, for a time ran a bridge club in the area. Tony died in 2020. His obituary is here.
Claire Tanzer played almost every week with a few regular partners. I recall the details of only one conversation with her in December of 2009. It is recounted here.
Don Verchick and Nancy Campbell played a strong club system that they called “Precision”. C.C Wei would not have recognized it. They never opened 1NT! Nancy played with various partners at the HBC through 2020.
I was surprised to see that Mary Witt played at the SBC at least once with Tom Gerchman. Much more about Tom can be read here. Mary was the tournament coordinator for the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA), which meant that she found sites, negotiated contracts, and brought the predealt boards to the sectional tournaments. Once she asked me to perform the last task for her. I was very flattered. Mary moved to Cary, NC. I have corresponded with her via email a few times.
I don’t have any clear recollections of any of the following players whose names appeared on at least one results sheet in 2004.
Robert and Ruby Cheah played together several times.
Roger Evarts played once with Don Verchick.
Dick and Joan Harris played together several times.
I should remember Clara Horn, who played with a number of partners, but I don’t.
I cannot place Maryann Joyce.
Jean Marecki played with Lila Englehart.
Alice Rowland played with Claire Tanzer.
Ruth Schwartz played with Marylou Pech. Ruth played quite a bit, but I cannot picture her. I discovered in December of 2021 that she was still playing in the unsanctioned game at Eno Hall.
Marcia and Norman Samuels played together.
Martha Stout played with Claire Tanzer: I get Martha and Alice Rowland mixed up.
Carl and Dorothy Suhre played together several times.
Russ is at the far right. Paula is by the door. I think that Nancy Campbell is seated near the wall.
Below are listed people who began to play at the SBC in 2005. Paula was still the director.
Fred Bird played regularly with Jean Little. They were married. After Fred died in 2011 Jean played at the SBC and the HBC with Max Horton and others. Jean died in 2018. Her obituary is here.
Rita Bowlby played at the SBC only once. I don’t remember her. Her partner that evening was Dick Benedict, whom I remember very well. Those recollections are posted here.
I am sure that I conversed with Jim McGarr several times, but I don’t remember any details. I can picture him pretty clearly. He died in 2015. His obituary is here.
Jay and Luetta Gould owned a residence in Torrington, CT. They rarely came to the SBC, but I remember their visits were in different years. Jay also ran a game in the Berkshires in the summer. In 2021 they appear to live in Delray Beach, FL.
Roger Holmes played with Dick Benedict for several weeks. Then they had a falling out. Dick once told me what they argued about, but I don’t remember.
I was surprised to see Ausra Geaski’s name on the results sheets. I played as her partner in one pairs event at one tournament in 2014. I have played against her innumerable times. She was president of the New England Bridge Conference (NEBC) when I became the district’s webmaster in 2013, and she chaired the B’s Needs committee that helped revitalize the tournaments.
I don’t have any clear recollections of any of the following players whose names appeared on at least one results sheet in 2005.
Frank and Jean Catudal played together several times..
I have no recollection of Ray and Sym Gallucci.
Jack Gensheimer played with Jim McGarr once;
Dick Kronk played with Bill Moody.
Barbara Lynyak played with Dorothy Clark.
Phyllis Martin also played with Dorothy Clark.
Dennis McVickers played with Roger Evarts.
Marcia Scarles played with Lila Englehart.
Lou Urban played with Bill Moody.
Rita Wolak played with Ausra Geaski.
On the left are Dorothy Clark and Shirley Schienman. On the right are Mary Witt and Helen. The other woman at their table might be Margie Garilli.
Below are listed people who began to play at the SBC in 2006. Paula was still the director.
Betty Angel played once with Mary Witt. Betty is still an active member of the HBC. I don’t think that she ever played at the SBC again.
Sue Gerchman was Tom’s mother. She played off-and-on with her son, who picked her up and drove her to the games. She also played once with her sister, whose first name was, I think, Benvenuta (Beni) Lostocco. I am pretty sure that they played in the same 299er game at the regional in Cromwell in which Dick Benedict and I played. A few years later, when I was playing with Tom, Sue died. I drove out to Avon for the wake. Some of Tom’s golfing friends were there, but I did not see any other bridge players. Beni died in 2014. Her obituary is here.
I don’t remember the occasion, but on one evening in 2005 Stan Kerry played with Bob Tellar at the SBC. Their better halves, Sandy Sobel and Carol Tellar also played together. I think that Bob and Carol played together a few times at the SBC. They also played at the HBC, Carol more often than Bob. Stan is best known as the director and owner of the West Hartford Bridge Club, which directly competed with the HBC. I played there a couple of times, but I did not enjoy it much. In 2012 Stan and Sandy went on the same Larry Cohen Regional-at-Sea Cruise that my wife Sue and I took. My journal for that trips is posted here. Sandy died in 2017. Her obituary can be found here.
Sally Kirtley made her debut at the SBC (at least to my knowledge) in 2005. We played together a few time, but not at the SBC. Sally became the director of the club in _____. She also directed in 2021, as was documented in considerable detail here.
Judy Larkin played fairly regularly with Lisa Audolensky for a number of months. They were both new to the game and eager to learn how to play better. They invited Dick Benedict over to coach them. In exchange they agreed to cook supper for him. Dick readily agreedJudy has been playing again in the reborn SBC of 2021.
I don’t have any clear recollections of any of the following players whose names appeared on at least one results sheet in 2006.
Norman Hargett played one night with Ruth Schwartz; I don’t remember him.
I have no memory of Matt Perry, who played with Roz Sternberg and Dick Benedict.
Robert Wise played with Russ Elmore. Much more about Roz, Dick, and Russ can be read here.
I am not sure of any of these people.
Below are listed people who began to play at the SBC in 2007. Paula may have started as the director, but early in the year Helen Pawlowski took control. Helen continued the policy of guaranteeing a partner for everyone. Eventually she quietly abandoned the $5 charge for membership and raised the table fee to $6. Attendance reached ten tables on several occasions.
Ida Coulter began playing with various partner, one of which was my wife Sue. Ida has been playing with Judy Larkin in the 2021 version of the club.
Trudi Brown usually played with her husband, Lou Brown. I played with Lou in the afternoon Open Pairs game at a CBA sectional in Hamden. His partner from the morning went home at lunch time, and my partner stood me up. We finished roughly in the middle, but we might have done better if Lou had not revoked even after I warned him that he was not following suit. Lou was serving his two-year term as president of the CBA at the time. He treated Trudi brutally whenever she made a mistake at the table. I asked Trudi whether I should say something to him about behavior that violated the ACBL’s zero-tolerance1 guidelines. She asked me not to and indicated that it was like water off of a duck’s back to her. Lou told me in 2010 that he could not attend my Life Master party because he had to call numbers in a bingo game in which his mother played. Trudi made Life Master in 2012 in a knockout at the regional tournament in Cromwell, CT. I played on the opposing team. My description of the match is posted here. Lou and Trudi moved to Delray Beach, FL, shortly thereafter.
Dan Finn played with Richard Finn, who was Dan’s brother (or maybe father) in one of the biggest games that we every had at the SBC. Dick and I played against the Finns at a card table that had been set up in the lobby. I also played with Dan at least twice, once at a tournament (described here) and once at the SBC.
I don’t have any clear recollections of any of the following players whose names appeared on at least one results sheet in 2007.
Dot Horton played with her husband Max. They were not great players, but they were very nice people. I remember that they took a river cruise in the south of France. They said that they had a great time. Dot once confided that when they started playing at Simsbury she was afraid of me. She died in 2015, but not from fright. Max continued to play with several other people at the SBC and the HBC. I almost got him to go to a tournament to play in a Pro-Am game once. Max died in 2021. I could not find an obituary.
Karen Largay played with Sheila Gillin at the SBC pretty often until the Largays moved to the Cape. They also played with their husbands occasionally, but the ladies were more serious about the game. Dick Benedict and I teamed up with them for tournaments a few times. I also played as Karen’s partner once at the Senior Regional on Cape Cod. I warned her before the first hand that if the opponents had bid and raised a major suit that I might bid any weak hand with a five-card suit. She forgot and raised my bid. The opponents doubled and we got a bad score.
I don’t know Steve Noble and his wife Chris Noble very well, but I have seen them at the HBC once in a while. I don’t know why they stopped coming to the SBC. I think that my wife Sue played with them in team events.
Art and Marylin Noll played together at the SBC at least once. Marylin was a good player and a semi-regular at the HBC, but I have not seen her since the pandemic hit.
Susan Pearson played with her husband Paul a few times.
Jan Potts played with a few different partners. In the late teens she was a frequent partner for Jan Rosow.
I had no recollection of Joan Brault playing at the SBC, but she attended several sessions. Her partner the first time was Beth Rotko, whom I do not remember at all. I played with Joan fairly often at the HBC. Those games are described here.
Arline Small played frequently at the HBC. She occasionally played with her husband Stuart at the SBC.
I don’t have any clear recollections of any of the following players whose names appeared on at least one results sheet in 2007.
Janice Boyko played with Ida.
Lillian Clark finished first out of ten pairs the evening that she played with Maryann Maikowski. They also finished at the top on at least one other occasion, but I don’t remember them.
Bill and Lenore Davis played together a few times.
Mary Fanette played with Helen once.
Art Marglies and Hannah Marglies played at least once, but don’t remember them.
Gladys McFetridge played with Dorothy Clark several times.
Margaret Milch played with Ida.
Rosa Shields played with Roz.
It seems like I should remember Donna Summer, but when I try to visualize her, all that I can see is the disco singer.
Barbara Steckler and June Rosenblatt don’t ring any bells either.
Elena Thompson played once with Carol Soucy.
Lisa Woods played once with Ida Coulter.
I think that the couple might be the Catudals. The woman on the right is Jeanne Striefler. Helen and Mary Witt are in the background.
Helen’s second year of directing was 2008. Listed below are some of the new players.
Michael Dworetsky played with Dan Finn and then with his wife Ellen. I played at many tournaments with Michael and as often as possible at the HBC. Our exploits together are assembled here.
Linda Kessleman played with Margie Garillli. Later Linda played pretty often with Mary Witt, Dick Benedict, and a few other people. I think that she was a real estate agent. Margie ran some games in the area and filled in as a director at the SBC. She played pretty often with Donna Lyons before the pandemic.
Sandy Macri played with someone else first, but eventually she teamed up with Karen Sterrett. I liked both of them a lot. I had to like Karen; she was a fellow Wolverine. They are both active members of the HBC.
Jeff Morris and Ron Saxon were both doctors. I went to Ron once when I had a build-up of wax in my ears. He was friends with Michael Dworetsky. Jeff sometimes played with his wife, who was very intense.
Jeff Oakes played with Sue Rudd. I don’t remember Jeff. Details about my long and continuing relationship with Sue are posted here.
Alden Stock played with Michael Dworetsky. He later played at the SBC with his wife Reba.
Louise Sunter played with Helen and Donna Lyons. I don’t remember Louise at all, but Donna is one of my favorite people in the world. I played with her a few times at the HBC and in a few tournaments. The details can be read here.
I don’t have any clear recollections of any of the following players whose names appeared on at least one results sheet in 2008.
Mark Johnson played once with Helen.
Susan Lewis played with Shirley.
Howard Mark and Sheila Mark played together, but just once.
This and the following photos were taken at the 2008 Christmas party with my Canon point-and-shoot camera. Shown are (left to right) Helen, Sally, Sheila Gillin, Karen Largay, and Jerry Hirsch.
Helen continued as owner-director in 2009. Listed below are some of the players who first played at the SBC that year.
Judy Goff played with Louise Alvord. Judy later became one of my wife Sue’s regular teammates. I think that they were partners at one or two tournaments.
I can hardly believe that Len Helfgott played at the SBC one night with Roz. He is a very good player. I played against him on Tuesday nights at the HBC a few times. I also recognized his name from reading a question that he submitted to the column in the Bridge Bulletin written by great Eric Kokish. On one hand that I played against Len I used “restricted choice”2 to determine which way to finesse. It worked, and Len remarked that bridge players know the play, but no one else would believe it.
I definitely remember Anne and Paul Melvin, but I don’t have any stories about them.
Barbara Perez played with her sister, Donna Lyons, a few times. Barbara lives in Mexico, but she asked me to keep her apprised of developments in bridge in the area.
Jan Rosow played with Joan Rusconi in their debut at the SBC. Jan became a Life Master in 2014. In 2021 she came to the club about once per month. Jan is also very active in the CBA. I don’t remember Joan playing at all in subsequent years, but I often saw her at the HBC.
I don’t have any clear recollections of any of the following players whose names appeared on at least one results sheet in 2009.
Beverly Lapioli and Sharon Smith played together one evening.
Peter Milliken played twice with Helen and once with a few others.
Doris Rothe played with Donna Lyons.
Mike Schwefel played with Jeff Morris.
Helene Wade and Lil Nolan played together.
This is Jerry Harrison.
Helen was still director in 2010. Listed below are some of the players who first played at the SBC that year.
Tim Largay played with his wife Karen. I think that he was more interested in golf than bridge.
Vivian Leshin played with Nancy Campbell. Vivian was a regular in the Tuesday night game at the HBC. She was the first person who warned me there that “Getting old is not for sissies.” I did not remember her playing in Simsbury. I was in attendance when she earned Silver Life Master at the Senior Regional in Hyannis. Her partner for that event was someone she had just met at the tournament’s partnership desk. I think that that was Vivian’s last tournament.
I don’t have any clear recollections of any of the following players whose names appeared on at least one results sheet in 2010.
Tina Cheffer played with Judy Goff.
Caroline Collins played with Ruth Schwartz.
Connie Fictner played with Louise Lapioli.
Kay Yaznac played with Tina Cheffer. I don’t remember them.
Bob Tellar & Linda Kesselman
Sue Rudd, Ken Leopold, Kay Hill, Jan Rosow, Elisabeth Barnicoat, & Carolyn Newell
Elisabeth Barnicoat & Kay Hill
I have lost the records for 2011 and 2012. The lists continue with 2013 here.
Tom Gerchman
Paul and Sue Pearson
Dick Benedict, Helen, & Jerry Hirsch
Photos at my Life Master party in 2010.
1. In 1998 the ACBL instituted a policy designed to make for a friendlier and more pleasant environment at all levels of duplicate play. It is posted here.
2. The principle of restricted choice is explained pretty well in the Wikipedia article that is posted here.
My adventures playing with members of the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC) before I became a Life Master at the end of 2009 are recounted here.
I met Jeanne Striefler at the SBC in my first few weeks there, but I don’t think that we ever played as partners there until much later. She seldom played with anyone besides Jerry Harrison during that period. We did play together at the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) a few times, mostly when her regular partner and my regular partner were not available. I have no vivid memories of any details of those occasions.
I definitely do recall the holiday parties that she and her husband Fred held at their house in West Simsbury. Since we had played together seldom, if at all, I was flattered and surprised when she invited Sue and me to join the celebration. I particularly remember the one that celebrated her achievement of Silver Life Master (1,000 masterpoints), a party that she shared with Susan Seckinger, who had recently become a Gold Life Master (2,500 masterpoints). Susan remarked that it was not a big deal; it just meant that you had been playing a long time. That is not precisely accurate. In most cases it meant that you had played a lot in tournaments—and done fairly well. It has always been very difficult to amass thousands of points in club games, even if you usually finish at the top of the list.
Jerry, Jeanne, CJ, and me. In the photos that I took at tournaments I NEVER cut off a head.
I have a pretty strong recollection that the biggest thrill that Jeanne and I had experienced was as teammates in a Swiss Teams game at the regional tournament in Cromwell. However, I was unable to locate such a result. On the other hand, I did discover that we won a Compact Knockout in 2011. I played with Jerry Hirsch, and Jeanne played with CJ Joseph. Someone even took our photo1.
I have also played with CJ once or twice at the HBC. She attended the University of Michigan; I think that she graduated two years before I did. She does not live in New England any more. In 2021 she has a house in Florida. I seem to remember that she also had one in the Chicago area.
Jeanne is my age, and she grew up in the state that is just north of where I did. She met her husband Fred at the University of Nebraska. Fred was a professor at the University of Hartford.
I am not sure that I ever played opposite Donna Lyons at the SBC, but I have included her in this section because she has played there for a long time, and she still supports the club. In December, 2021, in fact, she was driving up from her winter home in Florida with the intention of playing in a few games in December at Eno Hall. I am sure that this was not the only reason that she was making the trip, but I like to think that our little game was the focal point.
I was disappointed to receive the following email from her on December 11:
Had to turn back after 6 hours, little dog not doing well. Sorry, won’t be there till May games, happy holidays, Mike!
I learned some time ago that Donna formerly taught Latin at Enfield High School. She actually knew my Italian teacher, Mary Trichilo (TREE key low), as well as one of the other continuing ed students who also formerly taught languages in Enfield. How big of a coincidence is that?
I can’t remember the first game in which Donna was my partner. Before that she had been playing with Michele Raviele, among others. I do remember playing with Donna in both games of a Connecticut sectional. We did not do very well, but I remember that one of our opponents, a guy from the Worcester area, later asked me about her. She must have made a strong impression.
Donna made a great impression on me because she obviously read—or at least looked at the photos there—one of my travel journals. I wrote about the star-crossed tour that Sue and I took in 2011 of South Italy that began with a few days in Rome2. Donna liked a couple of the photos that I took in Rome and Paestum. She asked me if she could use them for a project that she was doing for an association that promotes the study of classical periods. I enthusiastically agreed. She later gave me a SWAG bag that contained the resulting notebook and cards and a few other things. I still have all of these.
Donna was not a great player when she started. I have the feeling that she did not spend enough time in college at the bridge table. For some reason she seemed to consider me something of a guru. Over the years she sent me questions about various aspects of the game, mostly bidding. I always answered them, and she seemed very appreciative.
We got Sue to take this photo.
Whenever I could not find partners for tournaments, I sent out emails to people whom I enjoyed playing with. I had an opening in my schedule for the 2019 Ocean State Regional in Warwick, RI. Donna volunteered to drive all that way just to play with me for one day, August 28, in the Mid-Flight Pairs.
We had a pretty good session in the morning. We were definitely among the leaders. We also got off to a good start in the afternoon session. With only a couple of rounds to go we faced a husband-and-wife team from Vermont, Steve and Karen Hewitt Randle. We all took out our cards from the first board and started to bid the first hand. Before we got very far Karen announced that she did not feel well and needed to be excused. She left the room, and Steve went with her. When the round was almost over, and they had not yet returned, we called the director, who gave us a “No Play” on all three hands.
Not long after that the Randles returned. Not only did they finish the round, but they also had the best score of all the pairs and vaulted up among the leaders.
When we finished playing the last hand, I checked our score on the Bridgemate. Our percentage was about the same as what we had scored in the first round. I told Donna that that should be good enough to finish first or second.
I was stunned by her reaction: “I don’t want to be second. I’ve never been first at anything. Since I made Life Master playing with Margie, I haven’t even won any gold points.”
Donna got her wish. We won by a very narrow margin. I wondered how we would have fared if we had actually played the three hands against the Randles. Their score in the second round was considerably better than ours.
The Ocean State Regionals in 2020 and 2021 were canceled. If Donna wants to defend her title in this event in September 2022, she will need to find another partner. I now have too many points to play in Mid-Flight games.
In the summer of 2021 I played in one face-to-face game at the HBC with Donna as my partner. We did pretty well, but Donna told me that she preferred to play online. One reason was that it was safer, but she also disclosed another one that might have been nearly as important to her. “I don’t have to put on lipstick.”
After Dick Benedict told me in 2010 that he did not want to play at Simsbury any more, I looked around for a new partner. I decided to ask Sue Rudd. Sue was ten years older than I was and had played a lot more bridge than I had, but she was not yet a Life Master. So, I resolved to help her get the gold and silver points that she needed. We went to quite a few tournaments together. We had some success, but we never won an event together, at least not that I can remember. Come to think of it, I think that those years that I played with Sue were the only ones in which I failed to win at least one flight or strat in an event at a tournament.
I learned that Sue formerly worked for the Massachusetts Department of Revenue. She had two sons. One lived in Boston, the other in Minnesota. Sue lived in an apartment in West Springfield that was not far from the house occupied by my sister Jamie’s family. Later Sue moved to a condo complex that was only about two miles from our house in Enfield.
Sue was in good shape. She was an avid tennis player and cyclist. She told me that she had skied all over the US and Europe when she was younger. She also took several international vacations.
Sue insisted on driving half of the time. I agreed, but I never felt comfortable when she was driving. If there was snow, I drove. On one occasion the trip began with a light drizzle. It got heavier, and the visibility was not too good. She was driving at first, but when it began to get a little difficult, she agreed to let me finish the drive.
It is strange to say, but I cannot remember ever eating supper with Sue. I know that we went to at least a few overnight tournaments, but I cannot remember going to a restaurant together. Sue usually stayed with Helen Pawlowski, who by then was the Tournament Manager for the district. Maybe they ate together. I was still working. So, we must have gone to regional tournaments—the only ones that pay gold points—on weekends. Therefore, there would have only been one supper per tournament.
There was almost always ice or snow on the sidewalk and parking lot in Cromwell.
I remember only a few specific incidents. We were in Cromwell playing in a compact knockout event. that required us to play twelve hands against the same pair. One of the opponents on the other team was a little bit rude, especially to Sue. Sue got flustered and played badly. We lost the match.
I mentioned this to Helen. She immediately knew whom I was talking about. She said that she wished that she had heard about it earlier. She also said that I needed to protect Sue from people like her. This gave me pause. I wasn’t ready for that role. At that point of my life I had pretty much abandoned the tactic of arguing with anyone about anything. I would make my case, but if they could not accept my point of view, I almost never pressed the point. The reason was that my voice had a tendency to get much louder than I realized in situations like this, and the scene quickly became uncomfortable for everyone.
Harold Feldheim.
I remember encountering Harold Feldheim3 in the men’s room at a tournament. He asked me how I was doing, and I frankly replied that I was frustrated with my partner. He said that in his years of experience he had concluded that whenever someone felt that way, he should look for a new partner.
Sue and I won a few gold points together. She was getting very close to what she needed for Life Master. I am not sure which tournament it was, but we were playing in the last round of a bracketed Swiss teams event. We were in contention to finish first or second in our group. The bidding on the last hand of the last match had convinced me that my spade support and runnable club suit provided a good chance for a slam in spades that I did not think that most people would bid. It was risky, but I decided to bid 6♠. It turned out to be a good contract. The only problem was that Sue had to play it.
She had to begin by drawing trump, which she did. Then she had to take her ♣K, which she did. Then she needed to lead a low club to the board and take the ace and queen. She made both of those plays. I could see that the clubs split 3-2, which made the three remaining clubs good, guaranteeing the needed twelve tricks. At this point she could have tabled her cards and claimed. The opponents would have conceded without an objection.
But she didn’t claim. She thought about the situation for what seemed like a very long time. Then she started leading red cards and fell short of the contract.
As I suspected would happen, our counterparts at the other table had only bid 4♠, but they made six. So, instead of getting a positive swing that would assure us of winning gold points, we suffered a double negative swing that dropped us out of contention—all because she could not count the clubs.
This was not a mistake of inexperience. There were no distractions; it was early in the play of the hand. There were only two possible explanations. Either she did not count the clubs, or she forgot that every suit had thirteen cards. I was completely exasperated. The situation was so perfect, and I had analyzed it correctly! I could not hold back my frustration, and my reaction was so intense that even the opponents castigated me for it.
After the long mostly silent drive home I sent her an email in which I apologized for the way that I acted and stated that we should not play together any more. It was just too frustrating for me. Years later she told me that she was very tired that afternoon because she did not sleep well the night before. Fine; that is why coffee is always available at tournaments.
Sue did not give up. Some months later she won enough gold points for her Life Master playing with Sally Kirtley. I don’t think that they ever won anything in the “overalls”, but they did finish first in their section a couple of times. Those two awards were enough to push her over the threshold. I don’t think that she ever won any gold points4 at all after that.
Since then I have driven Sue to games in Simsbury almost every Wednesday before the pandemic and after the club reopened in the fall of 2021. I have even played with her a few times at the HBC. I also gave a little speech at here LM party there. Here is the text.
Sue sometimes rides with me to bridge games at local clubs, and almost always I have remembered to bring her home. During one those rides some years ago she confided to me that her goal was to have “Life Master” in her obituary. So I looked in the Hartford Courant’s Future Archives for her obituary. It took quite a while, but I found it.
Susan F. Rudd–I’ll skip the dates–worked in the Collections Section of the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, where she was known as Rudd the Ruthless. After retirement she divided her time between her family and her many hobbies. She is survived by her sons Paul and David, eight grandchildren, twenty-seven great-grandchildren, forty-two great-great-grandchildren, and one great-great-great grandson.
Susan is best known as being the only woman to win the American women’s super-senior tennis championship as an octogenarian, a nonagenarian, and a centenarian. However, her proudest accomplishment was to become a Life Master in bridge, a game without electronics that was popular in the twentieth century.
My wife Sue and I attended her eightieth birthday party in 2018. She asked me to reprise the LM speech, and I was ready to do so. However, Sue’s daughter-in-law, who organized and ran the fete, put the kibosh on the idea without telling anyone.
Sue left her car in this parking lot.
By the way, it was true that on one occasion I drove Sue Rudd to the HBC for a Tuesday evening game. I had a bad game playing with a different partner and left in a foul mood. Just as I reached the bridge over the Connecticut River on I-91, I realized that I had left Sue back at the club. I turned around at exit 44 and returned to the club. It was all dark and obviously empty.
I learned the next day that Sally Kirtley had driven Sue to TSI’s office in East Windsor, which is where she had left her car.
I had no difficult whatever in deciding whom I should ask to play with me at the SBC. By then Ken Leopold had been attending somewhat regularly, and he seemed like he knew what he was doing. The good thing was that he was younger than I was—his memory still functioned. The only drawback was that he wasted a lot of time on his family and his job. He and his wife Lori had six kids, a couple of whom were still living at home. He also had an unhealthy commitment to the idea of helping his patients beat cancer. He was a doctor, you see. He worked (and still does in 2021) at Hartford Hospital in the field of radiation oncology.
Ken wore a blue shirt to the Christmas party at the HBC in 2013. The two ladies at the table are Sue Rudd and Kay Hill.
So, Ken and I mostly played together just on Wednesday evenings at the SBC. I attended almost every tournament within driving range, and i always asked him to play, but I usually had to settle for his participation in the Sunday Swiss events.
On most of these occasions our team consisted of Ken, me, Dave Landsberg, and Felix Springer. Much more about Dave and Felix can be read here. Sometimes I played with Dave, and Ken played with Felix. Often we had to rearrange things to accommodate a different fourth.
We did amazingly well, and our results formed a pattern. We were almost in the lowest group, the C strat. I was on the board of the Connecticut Bridge Association (CBA), which always met before the Sunday Swiss. I would generally emerge from the meeting five or ten minutes before game time and frantically scan the playing area for the rest of “the band”. When I found them I fished some bills out of my wallet and reimbursed whoever had paid my entry fee. Then I had only a few seconds to peruse the convention card to refresh my memory about what conventions we were playing.
I almost always made mistakes in the first round, which we usually lost. We then almost always won our next two matches, which forced us to face a pretty good team in the fourth round. I am not sure that we ever won a fourth round. So, we would invariably go into the pizza break in the middle of the pack. We then almost always won two of the last three rounds to finish in the top half, which, for a C team, was good enough to win quite a few silver points5. It was truly remarkable how often we did this. Here is an example from the Swiss held in Hamden on March 1, 2015:
I just loved playing with these guys. Earlier in the tournament Felix had played in pairs games with both Dave and me. I am not even sure who played with whom in the Swiss. I don’t think that Ken ever played with Dave, but any other combination was possible.
My fondest memory of the four of us is from the North American Bridge Championships held in Providence in November and December of 2014. On both Sundays at the tournament some or all of us played together in the bracketed Swiss events.
The band: me, Felix, Ken, and Dave.
I am disappointed and embarrassed to report that I can find very little documentation of those two events. I am absolutely certain that I posted detailed write-ups of them on the NEBridge.org website as part of my “View from B Low” series. Unfortunately, all of the web pages posted between January 24, 2014, and July 22, 2015, were lost during the catastrophic system failure of July 2015.
I thought that perhaps a draft copy of this work was on my desktop computer, but I could find no trace. I then looked for the photos that I took on those two weekends. I found about forty of them, but I am pretty certain that I took more than that if only to add more atmosphere to the “View” article. I suspect that I moved the best of those photos somewhere to facilitate uploading them to the NEBridge.org website. The uploaded copies are gone for good, but the originals should still be on my computer. I just can’t locate them.
Ginny Farber.
So, I must rely on my fading memories and the results that I found on the ACBL website. My partner for the first weekend, November 29-30, was Ginny Farber6, whose last name at the time was Iannini (eye ah KNEE knee). She lived on the Cape. We had played against each other at tournaments a few times. After her husband died shortly after the Cromwell tournament of 2014, we began playing as partners at tournaments.
Ginny and I played in pairs games on Saturday, but we did not do too well. For the bracketed Swiss on Sunday we were joined by Dave Landsberg and Pat Fliakos, both of whom I had met in the Tuesday evening games at the Hartford Bridge Club.
Pat Fliakos.
We played well through the first six matches. We won them all. However, we could not rest on our laurels. In the last round we faced a foursome from Montreal that was only four points behind us in the standings. I don’t remember the situation precisely, but I do recall that there was one critical hand in which Ginny had reversed, a bidding sequence of two different suits showing a strong hand in which the first suit is longer than the second. An example would be 1♦ followed by 2♥ after partner has responded 1♠ or 1NT.
Somehow we ended up in an impossible slam, and the contract failed. I was certain that our counterparts at the other table probably did not bid the slam, which would provide them with a big swing. Ginny and I were extremely nervous at the end of the match when we went to the other table to compare scores. Fortunately, Dave and Pat had had a good round. We lost the match, but only by two points
Imagine our shock when the opponents came over to get us to agree that they had won the match by ten points, not two. It turned out that they had recorded a 0 on one hand in which both of our pairs had actually won three points. When we pointed this out to them, they were, of course, bitterly disappointed, and our relief was palpable.
As the results clearly show, the third-place teams were not even close. In the second weekend our team was Felix, Dave, Ken, and me. I cannot remember who played with whom on Saturday when we lost in the semifinals of a compact knockout. On Sunday we played in another bracketed Swiss. I played with Dave, and Ken played with Felix.
This time a very weird thing happened in an early round. There were repeated director calls on one hand. Then the same thing happened on a subsequent hand. Dave and I finished long before Ken and Felix. After we compared the scores they explained that the director had twice ruled against them, and they had appealed both rulings. Evidently neither appeal was successful. I don’t remember the specifics. Ken and Felix weren’t exactly angry about it, but they weren’t satisfied with the ruling either.
It hardly mattered. This time I knew that we were doing well, but I never checked the scoreboard. After the last round Ken checked the scores. He reported that “We lapped the field.”
So, the tournament had the best possible ending for “the band”, and it left us hungry for more. After that we played together whenever we could.
Ken made Life Master in July of 2015. The HBC sponsored a party for him and Felix, who achieved the rank a little earlier. It was a five-round team game using the Swiss format. Dave and I were their teammates. Ken and Felix sat North-South at table 1 in the A section. We sat East-West at table 1 in the B section. We won our first three matches, but we did not have any big victories.
Then there was a break for food and speeches. Dave said to me sotto voce, “Did you see their résumés? Why do they play with us?”
Of course, what I thought was, “What do you mean ‘us’, Paleface?”, but I didn’t say any thing. A little later I took the floor to give my little speech. I began with a trivia question:
What do the following three famous people have in common?
Champion golfer, Phil Mickelson, who can consistently hit a golf ball 300 yards.
Four-time Pro Bowl quarterback, Michael Vick, who can throw a football 80 yards.
World-class physician and Life Master bridge player Ken Leopold.
I told them to think about it. I would come back to it at the end. Meanwhile, I had a survey that Mark Aquino, the District Director, asked me to conduct:
“Are you aware of the procedure at a regional or national tournament for appealing a director’s ruling?” Most people were.
“Have you ever appealed a director’s ruling?” About half the players raised a hand to indicate that they had. I pretended to count and record the result.
“Have you ever appealed more than one director’s ruling in the same tournament?” Only Felix and Ken still had their hands raised.
“In one very short eight-board match of a bracketed Swiss event, commonly known as a Round Robin, have you ever appealed more than one director’s ruling?” Still only Ken and Felix.
“Have you ever won such an appeal?” They both sheepishly lowered their hands.
I then asked if anyone knew the answer to the trivia question. Dave, of all people, piped up, “They are all left-handed.”
“No!” I said. “Actually, they are all right-handed. Mickelson swings left-handed and Vick throws left-handed, but they both do everything else with their right hand. Similarly, Ken plays bridge left-handed, but his right hand is dominant.”
We won the fourth match, but our margin of victory left us a couple of points behind the first place team. We faced them in the last round. Our opponents were Laurie Robbins and Tom Lorch. The hands were not very exciting. The match came down to a hand in which the West player had to decide whether to accept a game try. I passed, and my counterpart at the other table bid the game. Since the tricks for game were not actually available, we won the match and the event. As I have often said, most of my best calls are green.
Donna Feir, the manager of the HBC, announced that never before in the history of the club had the players being honored ever won a team event, and never had they won all five matches..
A few years later Ken thought that we should play a weak 1NT opening. I think that he got this idea from Doug Doub, a pro who gives lessons at the HBC. I went along with the idea, mostly because I already played a different version of that approach with Peter Katz7 on Saturdays at the HBC. Ken sent me the link to a detailed write-up of how it worked. We have been playing that weak 1NT system ever since, and I review the manuscript before each game. Even so, I sometimes forget that we are playing it.
Ken also insisted on playing the Wolsey defense against strong 1NT openings because that was what he played with Lori, and he alleged that he could not remember two different defenses. I much prefer a more disruptive approach, especially in the balancing seat, but I have agreed to grit my teeth and play Wolsey.
Ken was one of the driving forces behind the resuscitation of the SBC in 2019. That story is told here.
The spreadsheet that contains my list of partners includes a line for Helen Pawlowski, and so I must have paired with her at least once, either when she was running the club or when she dropped in to play after she no longer did. It is also possible that I might have played with her at a tournament or at the HBC.
I find it remarkable that I have no recollection of the occasion. Helen was a very good player, and playing with her would have been a big deal at any point in my career.
In 2023 Helen lived in Bluffton, SC.
On at least one occasion before the Pandemic, when Ken could not play, I played opposite Al Carpenter. Al was not a great player, but he was very enthusiastic and gregarious. He had a hearing problem, and so he often was speaking too loudly for the size of our room.
At the time that I played with him Al was working for Enterprise Rent-a-Car. I seem to remember hearing from someone that Al died, but I could not find an obituary or any other reference on the Internet. .
Chuck Pickens.
Chuck Pickens played at the SBC occasionally before the Pandemic. I played with him once when Ken was not available.
Al Gee began playing regularly at the SBC after the Pandemic. His usual partner was Kathie Ferguson. On one evening Kathie had another commitment, and so did Ken. So, I played with Al.
I learned that he had taken up bridge after his wife died, and he credited the game with getting him through that crisis. He originally played at the Newtown Bridge Club, but he found the SBC after moving to the area. Al was retired from a career at 3M.
We played Al’s convention card, which was not very sophisticated. We finished last.
Al was still playing pretty consistently at the SBC in late 2023.
Shown at left is a photo of Al that I took at the Limited Sectional at the HBC on March 26, 2023. Al and his old partner from Newtown won their section in the morning session of the 199er Flight. The fellow behind Al is Howard Howard Schiller, another regular at the post-Pandemic SBC.
Allison Ryan came down from her home in Northampton, MA, to play at the SBC on an evening on which I happened to be available. This occurred before Covid-19. She was a new player at the time, but she obviously had a lot of potential. I don’t recall how we did, but I don’t think that we were last.
In 2023 Allison was retired or at least mostly retired from her career as a neurologist. I have seen her a few times at tournaments. My wife Sue and I had a very pleasant supper with her and her bridge partner at the tournament in Nashua, NH, that has been described here.
On many occasions I drove Maria Van der Ree from her apartment in Enfield to the games at the SBC on Wednesday evenings. On almost every occasion she played with either Sue Rodd or my wife. Once, however, she got stuck playing with me. Line most new partnerships we had a few misunderstandings in the bidding.
In 2023 Maria turned 93. She had difficulty with new bidding concepts, but she was still quite good at playing the cards. Sue Wavada saw her often at the non-sanctioned games in Somers and East Longmeadow.
1. I found this photo in the bag that contained the ones that I shot in my disposable-camera days. However, by this time I had been using my Canon point-and-shoot camera for six years, and I was too cheap to have prints made. So, someone probably took the photo with Jerry’s camera, and he gave me a print.
3. Harold Feldheim died in 2019. Much better than his obituary are the comments from fellow bridge players that are posted here. After I had been working for District 25 for a few years Harold paid me one of the nicest compliments that I have ever received: “If more bridge players were like you, everyone would enjoy the game a lot more.”
4. To put this in perspective, as of the end of 2021 I had 697.41 gold points.
5. Through the end of 2021 I have amassed 548.03 silver points, almost all of which were won at sectional tournaments, and the bulk of those in the Sunday Swiss games.
6. Much more about my partnership with Ginny can be read here.
7. Details about my adventures with Peter Katz are posted here.
