2025 Bridge: Sectional Tournaments

Silver point games. Continue reading

Still under construction.

The first tournament of the year was held in Johnston, RI, on the weekend of February1-2. I had no interest in playing in the pairs game on Saturday. Abhi Dutta asked me to team up with him and his partner, Vipin Mayar. I was pretty certain that Eric Vogel would not want to play on Sunday, and so I asked John Lloyd again. The four of us had played in a sectional at the same location in September 2024. That adventure has been described here.

John and I again agreed to meet at the Park and Ride lot on Route 32 near I-84, this time at 8:45. Since John had driven from there to Johnston in September, I volunteered to drive this time. I was a little worried about the return trip. My cataracts had recently been diagnosed, and some kind of precipitation was expected.

I arrived at the lot seven minutes late. It was completely my fault, and I apologized. I left a minute or two after I planned. I planned on stopping at the McDonald’s in the Scitico shopping center, but I missed the turn from Taylor Rd., and when I passed it on Route 190 there was a line. So, I decided to keep going and stop at the one in West Stafford.

A feared sight in Somers and Enfield.

Unfortunately, I found myself two cars behind a NETTTS truck2. We only followed it as far as Somers, but its still cost us another five minutes or so as it poked along at 25-30 mph on Route 190.

There was also a slow-moving line at the West Stafford McDonald’s as well. I lost at least another five or ten minutes there.

No, thanks.

The worse news was that they messed up my order. Instead of the sausage biscuit with egg that I always ordered, they gave me a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit. The bacon was tasteless, I don’t like McD’s cheese, and the biscuit had been hardened by time under the heat lamp.

I drove as fast as I reasonably could the rest of the way, but I did not arrive at the parking lot until 8:52. The rest of the trip was uneventful, but it was 9:55 by the time that we reached the Johnston Senior Center. I gave my credit card to John and parked the car. I then got my materials from the back seat. The lunch that I had prepared was there, but I could not find my convention card holder, which contained our convention card, old scoresheets, and my mechanical pencil. I was almost certain that I had remembered to place it there, but I could not find it, and I had no time to spend searching.

We were, of course, the last of the twenty-four teams to register. After a fair amount of effort I found our table, which was U12. John gave me back my credit card, and I then went back to the registration area to obtain a scoresheet and little golf pencil.

One opponent informed us that he had only played in one or two previous team games. His partner did not even know how to keep score. We were scheduled to play eight rounds of six boards. In the first round they bid and made several games that seemed unremarkable to me. Afterwards I told John to compare without me; I intended to search for my convention card holder. My scoresheet was unreadable anyway. I could not write legibly with that tiny pencil on bare paper.

I could not find the convention card holder. Our second assignment was at the same table. I was shocked to learn that we had decisively lost the first round. Usually I am a good judge of our performance. We did, however, win the second round in a close match.

I could not believe the team that we drew for our third round—a team of A players from the Hartford Bridge Club. John and I played against Tom Gerchman and Lesley Myers. Our teammates faced Doug Deacon and Bob Hughes. I did not think that we played well enough to win. I was shocked that our teammates had scored +1700 on the first hand. Evidently Doug and Bob had a disastrous misunderstanding that got doubled. So, after three of eight rounds we had two wins.

We lost the fourth match. I made a serious error in the play. I then ate lunch by myself.

We won only one match in the afternoon. We played against two ladies. John was late getting to the table, and I had painfully shuffled at least one deck at every table. I refused to shuffle again and left the deck for John. He arrived a minute or two later, during which time I had to listen to my LHO declaim about shuffling in spite of the fact that she had arthritis.

That one victory was taken away from us by the director, Tim Hill. On the crucial hand John opened 1. The lady to my right bid 2. I doubled. When the arthritic opponent asked what my double meant, John hemmed and hawed and then said, “I think that that was a support double for my hearts.”

They ended up playing in a notrump contract. After the play ended, I announced that they had received erroneous information. I had made a negative double showing at least four spades, not a support double showing three hearts. I told them that they could call the director if they felt damaged. They did. Tim took the board to see if their claim as being damaged was legitimate. This took such a long time that we ended up playing on five of the six boards. The ladies complained loudly about this.

Tim later explained to me that there were so many ways that the hand could have gone that he could not determine whether they were damaged. He said that the law said that in that case the party that gave the wrong information gets an average minus. We ended up losing three imps and the match.

At the end of the last frustrating mach I was just ready to hit the road immediately. Fortunately there was no bad weather for the drive back. I had no difficulty whatsoever.


Connecticut’s first tournament was scheduled for the last weekend in March, beginning on Friday the 28th, in Orange. I was on the tournament committee, chaired by Cindy Lyall, that planned and marketed this event. The marketing part was previously handled by the communications director, Ken Steele, who had resigned. Bill Segraves, the president of the Connecticut Bridge Association, said in an email that the communications committee, of which I was a member, was no longer functioning. That was news to me.

I did not really care what was sent to the players with more than 500 masterpoints. They were probably familiar with CBA sectionals. They just needed to know the dates and where to find the flyer. I volunteered to write an email to be sent to the players with less than 500 masterpoints in February. I composed them in HTML for my MailChimp account. I sent a test version (posted here) to the other members of the committee. They all seemed to like it a lot. Well, almost everyone liked ti. John Lloyd thought that it was too long, and Cornelia Guest did not like the phrase “less than 500 masterpoints”3.

Unfortunately, Bill wrote that “Mike is not authorized to send the email.” So, I had to rework the text to use Pianola to send it. Since I never received the email itself, I was not able to post it. The text is posted here. I asked for the photo of the playing area to be included. Even with that, I think that the final version was better than nothing, but it was a poor substitute for my original submission.

Early in the year Eric Vogel agreed to play with me in both pairs sessions on Friday and Saturday. I sent emails to the usual suspects concerning a partner and teammates for the Sunday Swiss. Joan Brault agreed to play with me, but the only nibble that I had for teammates was an email from Cornelia Guest, the CBA’s tournament coordinator, that Joel Wolfe was looking for teammates. I immediately sent him an email to see if he was interested in teaming up with Joan and me, but he never responded. That was quite disappointing. Prior to the pandemic I had always played in the team game on Sunday, and nearly always I had a very enjoyable time.

On Friday morning I fixed myself a sandwich of corned beef, Swiss cheese, and lettuce and inserted it into my backpack along with a bag of Utz potato chips. I left the house at 8:15. The traffic was lighter than I expected, and the construction area south of I-84 posed no difficulty. I made my usual stop at McDonald’s in Cromwell. The price was $.11 cheaper than in Hartford and much cheaper than at any of the three stores in Enfield. I arrived at St. Barbara’s Church in Orange, CT, at a little after 9:30. Eric was already in line to purchase our entries, the cost of which had risen to $18 per person per session.

Eric and I had recently revised our approach to slam bidding when we had a fit in a major suit. Previously we had leapt to game to show a minimal holding. Instead jumps in the major suits would show Picture Bids—a high honor in the trump suit and a strong side suit. Our approach to bidding of controls was also changed slightly. This approached was recommended by Vic Quiros in a series of columns in the Bridge Bulletin.

In the morning session on Friday we sat East-West. We had two opportunities within the first six hands to put our new methods into practice. On hand #12 I opened 1 in the West chair. Eric bid 1. I bid 1NT. Eric could have put in the game force by bidding 2, but he elected to bid 4. I was not sure what it meant. I bid 4, and he just jumped to six. This was exactly the kind of thing that we wanted to avoid. We got 79 percent of the masterpoints, but we could have done better.

If he had bid 2, I would have bid 2, and he would have known that we had nine hearts. Then after a couple of exchanged cue bids, he could have visualized thirteen tricks and bid the granny.

On hand #16 I opened 1, Eric bid 2. I rebid hearts. He used Kickback to determine that I had the three missing key cards. He then bid 6NT.

Since we were already forced to game, I think that he should have bid the cheapest control, which was in spades. I could bid 3 to show the ace. He has the K to show, but he must bid at the four-level. I would bid 4 to show a control. After he bid 5, it would be time to put up or shut up. I have not yet told him about my other two heart honors, had he still seemed interested in continuing. I was in a bidding mood that day. I think that I would have bid 7NT.

The other interesting hand in the morning was #22. Eric and I got am undeservedly good score on it because not only did our opponents not find the game in spades, they also took only nine tricks. Don’t ask me to name the tricks that we took.

Shekhar Rao asked me how he and his partner, Shashank Srinivasamurthy, could have bid the spade game with the North-South cards. They had been playing in the limited point game. After examining the results I told him that only one of the fifteen N-S pairs in the open section accomplished that feat with 22 points and a seven-fit, and they were not considered one of the better pairs when it came to bidding.

I took advantage of the opportunity to explain to the guys that they needed to have an agreement about what a preempt in the fourth seat would show. It cannot be strictly preemptive because both of the opponents have passed. So, it should probably show a minimum opening hand with six pieces. Bidding at the one-level and then rebidding the same suit at the two-level would show at least one trick extra. So, if responder had invitational values, he should be looking for game after that sequence.

For the morning session Eric and I scored a little above 51 percent, which was rewarded with 1.14 silver points.

Eric also had brought a sandwich for lunch. We ate together and discussed a few of the hands. Joel Wolfe came by and asked if he could have some of my potato chips. I said, “Of course.” He did not say anything about playing on Sunday.

Bill and Linda Green, the Vice President of the CBA, announced the winners of some of the awards over the last year. Linda was actually standing on the chair at which I ate lunch. I found this method of distributing awards annoying, but, then again, I have become a real curmudgeon since the pandemic and especially since the last presidential election.

Our first two hands in the afternoon session were against Bill and Paul Proulx. I knew that they played an unusual system in which the 1 opening had multiple meanings and could be made with only one club. The responses were transfers. Eric and I had discussed this at lunch. We decided that our interference at the one level would be transfers, at the two level DONT for two-suited hands, and natural at the three-level.

As it happened, I, sitting South, opened the bidding on both hands, but Eric had two weak hands. On the first one Paul, East, played 3 and made it. On hand #6 I opened 1NT and Bill overcalled 2, which was followed by two passes. I probably should have just passed. If Eric had a suit, he would have bid.

Bill redoubled, but I did not see it. I rarely miss a bid, but I definitely missed that one. Eric took his time, but then passed, as did Paul. I was somewhat upset that the bidding was over and picked up my cards.

Before Eric Bill led, Bill asked to see Eric’s convention card. He asked Eric whether our doubles, which the card says are negative at the three level were also negative at the two level. Eric incorrectly stated that they were negative at both levels. I began to correct him, but Bill stopped me. The whole thing was embarrassing.

In the end Bill made the bid, we received another very bad score, and I was flustered. If I had seen the redouble card, I would have bid 2, and the result would have been better. It took me several rounds to regain my equilibrium.

I found out in the evening about the redouble, and I apologized to Eric on Saturday morning about my pass.

I made one other costly miscue in my opening lead against Mike Heider and Mark Blumenthal on hand #16. They had bid 3NT.

The standard lead in this situation was fourth from longest and strongest, which in this case would have been the 7. However, the stronger hand would be on my right. I did not want to give away what might be the setting trick. Also I did not have a likely entry outside of the spade suit.

Instead I selected the singleton 10. Since East did not use Stayman he was unlikely to have four hearts. So, my partner probably had at least five. My 10 might be good enough to set up the suit for him.

As you can see, my lead allowed them to take the first ten tricks. If I had led the spade, we would have taken the first five.

We did much better on the other hands. We finished with a 55 percent game and won 1.52 silver points. It had been a long time since I had scored above 50 percent on two consecutive sessions of Open Pairs at a CBA sectional.

The drive home was uneventful. I did not sleep too soundly. I found myself awake at 3am. I got up for a while, read a chapter or so of Rain Dogs by Adrian McKinty, and went back to sleep.

On Saturday morning I fixed myself a sandwich of the remainders of a roast beef dinner before I left. I arrived at the tournament at about 9:30 and bought our entries.

Our results on Saturday were remarkably similar to what we did on Friday. In the morning our score was 51.74 percent, which left us just our of the money because the three top scores in our section were registered by B players.

We got off to an unbelievably good start on the first hand I somehow convinced myself that Eric, sitting East, had a very good hand. Since I held a six-loser hand with support for his clubs, I used Blackwood to ask for key cards. When his response indicated that he had 0 or 3, I figured that we had all the key cards and bid 6 without even asking about the queen of trump.

As you can see, Eric actually had a minimum opening bid. The opponents held three aces. Fortunately, South decided to lead the A, which allowed him to pitch his spades on diamonds. He also led hearts from his hand, which allowed him to finesse the ten. So, we got 100 percent on this hand. Incredibly, one other pair stumbled into this horrible contract, but they were defeated by two tricks.

By our new method of bidding these hands our auction should have been 1-2; 2-3; 3NT (non-serious game try)-4 (very reluctant).

One of our worst hands was #8, played against two players whom I did not know, Paresh Soni and Justine Robertson. I was in the West chair declaring 4. The same contract was played by all of the other pairs in our section.

At trick 1 Paresh led the 4. I counted my losers—two possible in hearts and one in clubs. Then I thought again. What if South had four clubs? If I ducked, she could give him a ruff at trick 2, and I would be down if the hearts were poorly placed.

Then it occurred to me that North was leading fourth-best, I would still lose a trick to North’s king. The only times that playing the ace was wrong was if North began with the king and one or two others. Who would lead low from either of those holdings? No one that I played with. I would be willing to bet that no other North player selected that card to lead. Anyway, I played the ace.

Eric bought a lunch at the tournament. We ate together again. I explained why I only took ten tricks on hand #8. Bill gave out more awards.

Our best session was the last one. We scored 56.47 percent, which was good for fifth, but it was only 1.51 percentage points before the pair in first. We received 2.9 masterpoints.

The most astounding hand of the tournament occurred in the fourth round of the second session. We were sitting North-South. Eric was awarded the privilege of bidding the hand shown at the left. Our opponents were Victor Xiao and Lin Li.

After I opened 2 Eric bid 2. We played Kokish relays, and so his response indicated a bust—no aces, no kings, and at most one queen. I bid 2. Eric thought that his four trumps and a singleton was enough to raise to game. It wasn’t. I only made three. The field was pretty evenly divided between the game bidders and those who stopped at (and made) three.

When Eric lay down his 4-4-1-4 masterpiece I exclaimed “Wow! Eight high!” I then proceeded to count the pips in the center of of the cards: 17 (7+5+3+2) in spades, 19 in hearts, 7 in diamonds, and 16 in clubs for a total of 59. I told the table that this was the second-worst hand that I had ever seen.

After the hand Victor asked me about it. He was struggling to compute the lowest possible total. I explained that it was three sets of 2-3-4 combinations plus one 5 for a total of 41.

We bid and made one slam, but I thought that we might have bid another on hand #16. Eric, sitting north, opened 1. I had enough to bid Jacoby 2NT, but I was determined to take it slow. I bid 2. I don’t remember the details, but eventually Eric jumped to 4.

If he had shown his diamond singleton, I would have bid 2 to set trump. He could then show a club control. I would bid 2NT to show a high spade honor and no more controls. He could then bid 3 to show both a heart control and a club control. I would bid 4NT, and after he showed 0 or 3 key cards, I would know all fourteen of his points and have no worries about trumps. I would almost 4certainly have bid 6.

Afterwards, Eric asked why I did not just bid 2NT to start with. He would have shown his singleton by bidding 3. I would be forced to use Blackwood immediately or bid 4. The former is a big non-no with a worthless doubleton. The latter will probably induce him to sign off at 4.

I checked the results to see if this would have made a significant difference. We finished in fifth place, which was pretty good, but if we had bid 6, we would have vaulted past everyone in front of us, including the winners, who were the only pair that found the slam.


Cindy Lyall called for a “debriefing” meeting of the tournament committee. The only bad side to the tournament was the poor showing of the 499er group on Sunday. I volunteered to ask the director, Tim Hill, whether I could get a file of the results for specific events. He never responded, but I figured out how to “scrape” the web page that provided “recaps” of the events. I shared the information with the rest of the committee.

A big problem for the tournament in August is that no one on the committee wants to act as tournament manager. I remarked at the last meeting that I did not understand why anyone would want the position. I wonder what the other units do.

Since I was no longer on the HBC board, I tried to keep Linda Starr (who was) apprised of the board’s attempt to nail down dates for sectionals in 2025 and 2026. There were conflicts with the HBC’s annual meeting in the fall of 2024.


1. For the first time in recent memory the time for the Sunday Swiss event was moved from 9:30 to 10:00. So we arranged to meet a half-hour later than previously.

2. NETTTS is the New England Tractor Trailer Training School, which was the bane of drivers in northeastern Connecticut. Trucks driven by students are often seen struggling to reach the speed limit on heavily traveled roads. I once saw one that was in the first spot at a stoplight with its right turn signal blinking. When the light turned green the truck executed the turn successfully, but not one of the six vehicles behind it was able to enter the intersection before the crossing traffic had the green light.

3. My opinion was that the 0-500 group needed to be persuaded to attend. The other players merely needed information. Since we were essentially offering the same product as on previous recent occasions, presumably they would come if they wanted to. The phrase “less than” is stylistically appropriate for anything that is not countable, in the sense of 1, 2, 3, not in the sense that rational numbers are countable. Thus, one would say less than $50, but fewer than fifty one-dollar bills.

4. The worst was a 53-pointer that I held at the Simsbury Bridge Club back when I was playing with Dick Benedict.

2013-2018 Bridge: The Larry Weiss Award

D25’s old award. Continue reading

In 2013 I was still working full-time at TSI. My bridge was mostly limited to evenings and weekends. My involvement with District 25 (New England) was mostly limited to maintaining the NEBridge.org website, but I did accept an appointment to be one of the people who represented Unit 126 (Connecticut) at the twice-yearly meetings of the Board of Delegates. The big attraction was the free breakfast.

The Larry Weiss award was about eighteen inches in diameter.

The Larry Weiss Award was actually instituted in 1982. Its history is recorded here. The first presentation that I witnessed was at a Board of Delegates (BoD) meeting in 2013. The winner that year was Frank Hacker1, an expert player from Vermont whom I had contacted about contributing materials to the district’s website. The presenter was the previous winner, Jim Rasmussen. Frank seemed shocked and a little embarrassed to receive it.

I read about the award on NEBridge.org. It was named after an expert player who had a national reputation for being very congenial at the table. The evident purpose was to recognize a good bridge player from New England who had similar comportment. In those days2 an accomplished player who was also friendly was rare.

Jim Rasmussen.

I was fascinated by the award, which was the only physical trophy given out by the district. I examined the list of previous winners. Most of the names were not familiar to me.

Not long after receiving the award Frank moved to Florida. No award was presented in 2014 or 2015. In 2016 someone retrieved the tray from Frank, and Jim Rasmussen was pressed into service to find a suitable recipient. I posted a notice on the website for him asking people to submit nominations to Jim’s email address. I submitted two names, mainly because I was afraid that no one else had bothered to respond.

Luke Gillespie.

A few months later I was taken aback when Jim called me aside at a tournament and asked me if I would be amenable to him just selecting the person to receive the award. I said that I certainly had no objection. The award that year was given to Luke Gillespie, whom I had played against a couple of times. I was a little surprised that he won. I had only seen him at a few tournaments. I had also encountered him at no meetings or in any of my undertakings as webmaster. Luke was very surprised when his name was announced. That was the only time that I ever saw him at a BoD meeting.

Both of Jim’s presentation speeches were brief. He described the award, but he never went into any details about the process used to determine the winner.

In 2017 I was again asked by someone on the Executive Committee to post an item on the website soliciting nominations for the award. This time I did not nominate anyone. The award was presented at the BoD meeting in Nashua NH in June. Earlier in the week Jack Mahoney had greeted me in an elevator with “Congrats on the Weiss!” I don’t remember what I responded. However, this revelation game me a day or two to think about what I would do if they actually gave me the award.

At the end of the meeting Luke Gillespie presented me with the Larry Weiss award. When he introduced me, he admitted that he did not actually know me. In fact, I had only played against him once or twice. The memorable occasion was in Johnston, RI, at a sectional. I distinctly remember one hand. He was playing with Sheila Gabay. My partner, Steve Smith (introduced here), had opened 3. Sheila had bid 4. I raised to 4. Luke ventured 5, and Steve said 5, which was doubled.

Sheila Gabay.

As I lay down the dummy, I remember my exact words: “I don’t know; I don’t think that they are making 5. Afterwards, Luke and Sheila gently chided Steve for usurping my captaincy.

I was well aware of the criteria for this prestigious award, at least one of which I did not in any way meet. I gave a little speech in which I argued that if they were going to lower the standards to consider a Bracket 4 player, they should have chosen my friend and frequent teammate, Bob Derrah, who had established successful youth bridge programs at two middle schools in Springfield. His devotion of time, energy, and his own money for this and other projects was truly “superior behavior.” His wife (and bridge partner) Shirley had also been a great help, but Bob had been the driving force.

Shirley and Bob Derrah.

At the very end I emphasized that I felt honored, but Bob would have been a better choice. I spelled Bob’s last name so that the fill-in secretary, Beth Bertoni, would be certain to get it right in the minutes. Sandy DeMartino said that I made a good point in that players should be encouraged to nominate people that they thought were deserving of the award.

Early in 2018 I followed the instructions that were posted on the NEBridge.org website. I organized a committee of nine players that had representatives each of the eight units in Di25. My first choice was Luke Gillespie. The text describing the award indicated that preference should be given to former winners. Luke agreed. The other members were Susan Smith, Shirley Wagner, Jack Mahoney, Wayne Burt, Linda Ahrens, Karen Hewitt Randall, and Bob Sagor.

Ausra Geaski.

I once again posted a notice for the submission of nominations. This time I asked people to reply to my email address.3 Only nine people responded; seven nominated one person, and Carolyn Weiser nominated Wayne Burt, Dick Budd, and David Rock. The other nominees were Paul Harris, Sabrina Miles, Joe Brouillard, Bob Derrah, Don Caplin, Pat McDevitt, Felix Springer, and Frank Merblum. I nominated Bob Bertoni and Ausra Geaski. No one was nominated by more than one person.

I created a pdf file of all of the nominations, included the arguments provided by the nominators and sent it with the following email to the members of the committee.

I received thirteen nominations for the Larry Weiss Award. I have enclosed them in a pdf file and a Word doc file. To some of them I have appended comments when I had personal knowledge of the recipient.

I think that the next step is to gather comments from committee members. No one can know everyone, and so in some cases we must rely on the judgments of others. Please read the documents and send me whatever comments you might have this week. During the week of April 9 I will assemble a new package that includes them. Then we can start the balloting.

One note: The last ten winners have been men. No woman has won the award since Jane Smith in 2003. This seems peculiar to me, since there seems to be nothing in the criteria that would predict such a bent.

Thanks for your participation.

There were only a few comments, but one person was very upset that one of the nominees was even under consideration and asked that I include that comment without attribution. Since I had said that I would allow anonymous comments, I did. The subject of that comment, who was also a voting member of the nominating committee, offered the opinion that only positive comments should be accepted. I did not remove the comment.

In the first round of voting I allowed all members to name up to three nominees who best, in their opinion, met the criteria. Only three people were named by more than one person: Joe Brouillard, Ausra Geaski, and Bob Bertoni. Bob and Ausra were named more often than Joe.

So, the final ballot was between Bob and Ausra. Ausra got four votes; Bob get five. I would have been happy with either result. In retrospect it seems remarkable to me that if I had not been on the committee, they would not have even been considered.

I announced on the website that the award for 2018 would be given out at the meeting of the Board of Delegates at the Granite State Getaway ( a regional tournament held in Nashua, NH) on Sunday, June 24, 2018. I did not disclose the winner’s name to anyone—not even my wife Sue.

I brought the award with me to the Senior Regional in North Falmouth, MA. When I gave the trophy to Carolyn Weiser to be engraved, I had to tell her who had won. A big smile appeared on her face.

My presentation of the award to Bob has already been chronicled here (search for “Weiss”), but that account did not include my actual description of the winner: “My friend, my boss, my guru, my hero, Bob Bertoni.”

This was the last presentation of the Larry Weiss award. Bob died in 2021. No one seemed to know where the silver-plated tray ended up.

My relationship to the award that replaced it has been described here.


1. I also played against Frank in a sectional in New Hampshire. He told me that he was an actuary. He also asked me if I knew Joel Wolfe. I did know him from the Tuesday evening games at the Hartford Bridge Club, but I was terrified of him. I never told Joel about the encounter in New Hampshire.

2. Behavior was apparently much less friendly in the eighties. In 1988 the ACBL instituted a set of laws governing behavior at the bridge table called the Zero Tolerance policy. Over the next three decades bridge gradually became a much more friendly game as it became “bad form” to be rude or abusive to the others at the table.

3. I am not sure why I did not send a district-wide email asking for nominations. The district certainly had its MailChimp account by that time, and I had been maintaining the database for many years. The description of the award says that the website should be used to ask for nominations, but when that admonition was written the district had no way to send a large set of emails. Perhaps I was worried about the cost, which would have been about $7.50.

2022 July: The Providence NABC 7/20-24

Providence NABC part 2. Continue reading

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


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

The ACBL is modifying its COVID reporting policy, such that cases from the Providence NABC will be reported in the Daily Bulletin instead of by email.

Each of the following cases were reported by players to NABC@acbl.org. Anyone testing positive for COVID should follow the same protocol. For information on testing locations, visit
providenceri.gov/vaccinate/.

The ACBL has received reports of at least eight players who have contracted COVID since the Sunday issue where previous cases were reported. These players and staff members have participated in contests in multiple playing rooms across several days at the NABC in Providence.

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

Paul Burnham.

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

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

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

Abhi Dutta.

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

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

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

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

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

I have a pair to play teams with us on Friday and may have another for Saturday but not sure yet.

My experience with pickup partners is pretty negative.

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

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

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

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

Carol Seager.

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

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

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


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

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

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

Bob Lavin.

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

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

People in Madison love this crittur.

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

Shazia has a very impressive LinkedIn page.

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

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

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

Ellen and Chris.

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

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

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

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

The most amazing hand that I have ever seen was #2 in round 7 of the Victor King Bracketed Round Robin on 7/22. I held six hearts to the Q-10, six clubs to the J, and the ace of diamonds. No spades. My partner, Sohail Hasan, opened 2C. I responded 2D, which showed something better than a bust. Sohail bid 2S. I bid 3H. Sohail bid 4D. Aaaargh! He had bid twice in suits in which I had exactly one card in total. What should I bid–hearts again or that ragged club suit? I did not fancy either of those bids. We were past 3NT already, and all I really knew was that I did not like either of his suits, and he probably felt the same about mine. It was cowardly, I know, but I passed 4D.

Here was the hand Sohail set down: S: AKxxx   H: AK   D: QJxx   C: AK. So I had accepted the invitation to play in a five-card fit at the four-level.

I somehow scrambled to nine tricks for down one, which was minus 50. I suspected that Sohail was peeved at me for putting us in such a hopeless contract. However, when we compared scores with our teammates, we actually won four imps on the board. Our teammates, Lauren Friedman and Shazia Makhdumi, had led a diamond to the 6NT contract, and the poor declarer never saw the board again. The result was down four.

It turned out that an unrecognized advantage of playing in a five-card fit was that the opponents were less likely to lead that suit at trick 1. In fact, I used my ace of trump to ruff a worthless spade, but not until I had unblocked the hearts.

A little later I gave our teammates ten guesses as to what our final contract was. They gave up after five or six incorrect attempts.

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

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

No drink, please.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abbott: Yu won the Mini-Spingold!

Costello: What? I didn’t even play.

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

Costello: Then who won the event?

Abbott: Hu was disqualified. So Yu won.

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

Abbott: Ai lost in the semis. Yu won!

Costello: Nonsense!

Abbott: Eliminated in the first round.

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

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

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

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

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

I arrived back in Enfield before 6PM.


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

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

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

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


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