Because I had no team for the knockout, and no partner for the silver point games, I skipped the first day of the Cape Cod tournament. Instead, my wife Sue and I attended the HD showing of Cav/Pag. Cavalleria Rusticana was disappointing for two reasons: 1) the production was ludicrous; 2) Maria Callas is dead, and no one else sounds right as Santuzza. Pagliacci, on the other hand, was very entertaining. Marcello Alvarez was excellent in both operas.

I was a little surprised not to have received an e-mail with Wednesday’s results by the time that I had to leave on Thursday morning. The drive to the Cape was a little strange. It was warm and sunny when I left; then it got cloudy and cool. At one point on I-495 it was even raining a little. By the time that I arrived in Hyannis, it was nice again.

I checked in to the hotel and waited for my new partner, Linda Ahrens. We needed to go over a few things before the first round. Linda arrived right on time, and we ate lunch together and went over some details on our convention card. I had had to learn three new conventions: Reverse Namyats, Mexican 2♦, and Reverse Rosenkranz.

I learned two surprising things at lunch. First, Linda was probably the only person who walked to the tournament. She has a house in Falmouth. I also discovered that we were playing simplified versions of all three of the new conventions. As much as I dislike odd-even discards, I also agreed to use them for one day.

It is hard to believe, but all three of the new conventions came up. I bid 4♥ to show a strong hand with eight hearts, and Linda put me in an easy slam that few players found. The 2♦ bid got us in a 3NT contract that almost everyone else also found. I missed the Rosenkranz redouble that Linda made in the evening session. We did not find a makeable game on that hand, but I doubted that it was due to my failure. At any rate, we scratched in both sessions and won a little more than one silver point.

When we played against Sandy DeMartino, I was delighted to show her that I was wearing my Goodwill Committee pin. She could not say the same.

A small bit of excitement occurred on Thursday afternoon. The fire alarm went off, and we got to see firemen using a 100-foot ladder to climb onto the roof of the hotel, which is no more than fifty-feet high. A desk clerk told me later that a heater in the steam room had been smoking, but there was no fire.

Although I felt very tired during the last three rounds on Thursday evening, I had a lot of trouble sleeping. Bridge provides an excess of mental activity and a dearth of physical activity.

On Friday morning I was up at an ungodly hour and struggled with the coffee maker. Incredibly, I found a used coffee bag in the water compartment, not the coffee compartment. I fished it out, put in water and coffee, and turned on the machine. However, I did not close the coffee compartment completely, and it made a big mess.

After cleaning up I drove to Mickey D’s to get my usual sandwich. OMG: It was closed for renovations! Fortunately I was able to find the one on 132. I had no plan B for breakfast.

The e-mail from Marilyn Wells containing the results was in my Inbox when I got back to the hotel. I uploaded them to the Fast Results page, but I was unable to save them on the old Tournament Results page. I wonder if anyone will notice.

For the rest of the tournament I played with Dave Landsberg. Our teammates were Bob and Shirley Derrah. We found ourselves facing very stiff competition in Bracket 1 of the 0-4000 knockout, and by the time that I sat down I realized that I had misplaced my mechanical pencil. I was only a little annoyed; I had brought a spare.

We managed to advance in the morning three-way even though the net of our two scores was -8. All three teams won one and lost one. The net scores were +19, -8, and -11.

We also escaped elimination in the second session. We had an even worse net score than in the morning, but one of the other teams lost both matches. So, we got to play in the semifinals on Saturday. We were all pretty pleased with our good fortune.

The Derrahs went to the Brazilian Steak House for supper. They invited us, but the way that the food is served there really bothered me. Dave and I went to a new Italian restaurant, Il Maestro. The Scallopini Marsala was quite good, and the place was nearly empty.

I had trouble sleeping again. On Saturday morning I made an egregious error. I accidentally made myself decaffeinated coffee. I blame my poor play in the first few hands of the semifinal match on this gaffe. We found ourselves behind by thirty points at the end of the first set.

The second set provided us with enough materials for a comeback. On three of the twelve hands I had to decide whether to try for a slam or to stop short. All three of my choices were correct, and my counterpart at the other table only got one right. This would have been enough to close the gap, but there were double swings on quite a few partials. In the end, we did not make up any ground at all.

Dave and I did, however, bring an end to the criminal career of the notorious Yesley Gang. About halfway through the second set I noticed that Marlene was using a pencil just like mine. My MP experience paid off as I got her to admit that she had “found” her pencil on the previous day. Since she did not object when I confiscated it, I let her off with a warning.

Then Dave, who had up to that point been playing the “good cop,” sprang into action. He nonchalantly asked Mark if his pencil had the word “Fenwick” on it. Mark was forced to admit that it did. That’s right: Each of the Yesleys had stolen pencils from one of us!

We called the director, but she claimed that nothing in the rules provided for forfeiture of a match due to theft. So, we were eliminated and forced to play in the silver point game in the afternoon.

We finished eighth in that game; the Derrahs, who passed us boards all afternoon, were seventh. We would have been quite a bit higher except for an unusual bid by one of our opponents. I described that one in detail here.

I met with Bob Bertoni for a few minutes about my problems with sending e-mails. I really like the way that I have been doing it, but I know that I cannot risk damaging the NEBridge.org website. So, I agreed to try using Mail Chimp, a product with which he was familiar.

The Derrahs wanted more Brazilian food, and so Dave and I went to Sam Diego’s, which was packed and lively on Saturday evening. I consumed an outstanding beef burrito, and we both had a great time.

On Sunday morning I ran around taking photos of winners. We then played in Bracket 2 of the Round Robin. In the first round we lost to the eventual winners. That was our only loss, but we were never able to make up the difference, and so we finished second.

I had a great time. Tournaments seem much more fun now that I know so many people. The drive was not bad either. The bridge was a breeze. The only traffic that I encountered on either trip was due to some construction on I-91 one mile from my exit.