I had a problem. Neither of my regular tournament partners, Dave Landsberg and Ginny Iannini, was available to play in the Summer Regional, and I hoped to play all six days. I talked Judy Hyde, with whom I had played a few times, into playing with me Thursday through Saturday, and Sarah Widhu took pity on me and agreed to sit across from me in the Open Pairs on Wednesday. Tony Norris, whom I had never met, contacted me through the Online Partnership Desk software on the website. He signed up for Sunday. That left only Tuesday still open. Even though I had made myself available more than a month ahead of time, no one ever contacted me. I later discovered that the tournament chair, Wayne Burt, had been using ACBL’s software, not the district’s software to keep track of people who contacted him.

As it turned out, it was probably a good thing that I did not find a partner. Mrs. SSS and I planned to leave on Tuesday at 7 a.m. Mapquest alleged that the drive from Enfield, CT, to Nashua should take one hour and fifty-one minutes. That should have given us plenty of time, enough even to stop for my usual sausage biscuit with egg. However, the spousal unit was not ready until 7:33, and two horrendous traffic jams on I-495 ate up another half hour. We arrived at the Radisson at 9:58. I left Sue off at the door to find the 299er room and her partner, Judy Cavagnaro. Meanwhile, I took the car, which was running on fumes at that point, to a gas station and then McDonald’s. I then kibitzed Sue and Judy’s table for the last few rounds of the morning session. Although they did not end up with a good result, they played fairly well while I was watching.

At about 1:55 Sue informed me that someone needed a partner for the afternoon session of the Open Pairs. I rushed to the desk where they were selling entries. There I met Doug Clark, who had already bought the entry. He handed me a revised yellow card that he played. I was a little dismayed that it included no notrump defense and said that preempts were “not used,” but I played it as well as I could. We scored a little less than 50 per cent, but that was good enough to scratch. Although I was so intent on memorizing the card that I forgot to reimburse Doug for my share of the entry, I managed to find him on Wednesday to give him the $14 and the copy of his card.

The lighting in the ballroom was a little better than in 2014, but it was still less than was needed by old people trying to discern ♣ from ♠. The hotel rented some strong portable lights on Tuesday evening. Most people probably rated the resulting luminosity as close to adequate. I was quite disappointed. I love this hotel, but sometimes …

Judy, Sue, and I drove to Bertucci’s for supper. The hotel’s map had its location wrong, but we found it and had good food and a good time. When we arrived back at the room, I took time to study Sarah’s card. There was nothing on it that I was unfamiliar with.

After breakfast at the IHOP I located Sarah. A lot of the top players seemed to be in the Open Pairs event, which was a very disappointing indication that too few teams had signed up for the Open Knockout. When I saw Bob Bertoni playing, I realized that the 0-4000 Knockout must have also failed to attract enough teams. The resulting competition was too tough for our first-time partnership. We failed to earn points in either session.

At lunch Mark Aquino asked me if I wanted to play a session with him. It was a tough decision: should I spend the evening searching for something tolerable on TV or play a session with the very affable reigning NAP champion? We agreed to play in the Side Game that evening. It was remarkable for three things:

1. Mark said that we could play Sarah’s card, which specified upside-down attitude and standard count. Mark misheard that as standard attitude and upside-down count. For the first three rounds we were misinterpreting each other’s signals.

2. On separate boards each of us had to lead from a hand that held an ace-empty suit and one headed by ace-queen. I chose to lead the other suit. Mark chose to cash the unprotected ace. Both decisions were wrong. If we had each gone the other way, we would have scored much better.

3. Hand#26: The bidding was as follows:

East	Me	West	Mark
Pass	Pass	1♠	P
2♠	3♦	Pass	3NT
Pass	Pass	Pass

I had a six-card diamond suit headed by the QJ and the ♣K. Mark had ♦AKx of diamonds, the ♣A, the ♠K, and three worthless hearts. He was probably hoping for a spade lead, but he got a club. Nevertheless, he took the first eight tricks in the minor suits, and he managed to score the last trick with his ♠K. Fortunately for us, West, who was on lead, held ♥AQJ. Almost no one would lead from that.

We ended up with almost a 63% game, but we were far behind Lon Sunshine and Ivanie Yeo. I had a great time, and I learned quite a bit. I don’t know if I will ever have the guts to make the bid that Mark did, but if you want to be a national champion, you have to be able to bring home a twenty-point 3NT contract once in a while.

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday form a sort of blur in my memory. I played in team games with Judy Hyde (my eleventh different partner in my last ten days of bridge) and the Derrahs. We did not seem to be making many mistakes, but our results were dismal. I made one huge gaffe when I failed to take out the board’s only trump in the first round of one of the Compact Knockouts. It kept us from advancing. The low point, however, came when we finished dead last in my namesake event, even behind Mrs. SSS’s team. We did have very nice suppers at Bahama Breeze and Carrabba’s on Thursday and Friday evenings.

On Saturday morning the B’s Needs committee spent most of its time discussing the Pro-Am event. It will probably be tried again in Cromwell. I wanted to describe my e-mail problems, but there was not enough time.

The heavily promoted Pro-Am event occurred on Saturday evening. Everyone worried that there would not be enough “pros,” but in actuality more Life Masters were available than “ams.” Just about everyone at each of the twenty-one tables seemed to be having a great time. I played with Sue, and I wore my Barça hat to remind me that this event was designed for entertainment and education, not cutthroat competition.

Sue and I were actually in a position to place going into the last table. Then we had this unfortunate bidding sequence against Adam Grossack and Talia Hirsch:

Talia	Me	Adam	Sue
1NT (15-17)	2♦*	Double	3♦
Pas	Pass	Double	Pass
Pass	Pass

Sue and I were playing DONT, so my bid showed diamonds and a higher suit. Sue was still a little shaky about how to use this convention. She should have inquired as to what the double meant, but most of the people that she plays with play stolen bids. Her 3♦ bid was meant to make it more difficult for the opponents to determine what the right level of their heart contract was. The ill-fated result was that I was forced to play in a six-card diamond fit at the three-level when we had an eight-card spade fit we could have played at the two-level. I minimized the carnage (our opponents could make 3♦ themselves) to -800, but it was still a zero.

Sue was understandably distressed by this turn of events. As luck would have it, she had to declare the next hand, and she messed it up for another bad score. So, we ended up with only a 46.81 percent game.

The Board of Delegates meeting on Sunday morning was rather lively. Many people voiced some intriguing suggestions about how to increase income or decrease expenditures. Everyone agreed that better processes needed to be in place to deal with the increasingly common situation in which Knockouts attracted too few teams. Rich DeMartino mentioned that he thought that the attitudes of the current members of the Board were the most positive and cooperative that he could ever remember. I think that everyone recognizes that many people are doing yeoman’s work to try to address the attendance problems.

On Sunday I got to play with Tony Norris. We had communicated rather extensively via e-mail, but we had never met or played together online. I located him at the partnership desk, and eventually we also located the Derrahs. It was hectic, but we did have a few minutes to gather our thoughts before they handed out the entries for the Round Robin. Oh, boy: they put us in Bracket #1. It was a little hard to understand; the limit was 3,000 masterpoints. No one on our team had half of that.

In the first round we faced the team that had won Flight B of Thursday’s Swiss. Somehow we beat them 25-0. After that it was back and forth over the next four rounds. We had added three more victories, but none was decisive. As it turned out, everything depended on the last match. Tony and I, who had experienced almost no misunderstandings up to that point, played against Jan Smola and Kathleen Kenney.

Two hands made the difference. On one I, playing in my fourteenth session of the tournament, made a bidding mistake. Tony’s card specified that a 1♦ response to 1♣ denied a five-card major. I did not realize that that also implied that a 1♠ response guaranteed a five-card major. So, I responded 1♠ with Axxx, and we ended up in a Moysian 4♠ contract. Tony held Kxx. 3NT would clearly have been better. The Bridge Gods smiled on us, however. Spades split 3-3. I was able to save the thirteenth trump for the last trick, and we scored ten tricks. At the other table 3NT made nine tricks.

We tallied up the results and concluded that we had lost by five. We sat around the table waiting for the other team’s captain to ask us to verify the results. When a few minutes had transpired, I walked over to their table, and they informed me that our team had, in fact, won by two points. On the very last hand Tony and I had stopped at 3♥, our best contract. The Derrahs had set their opponents by three tricks. What we had scored as a 140-150 push was actually a plus 290.

That two-point victory was just enough to bring us into a tie for first place with the Magee team from Maine. So, after five days of frustrating bridge we finished with a very positive result. I had never won a Bracket 1 event before. Do I need to come up with a new title for these notes now?

The Derrahs forgot that they had agreed to give me a ride home. I had to chase them down in the hotel’s parking lot. If I had not been able to locate them, I don’t know what I would have done.

I sorely missed playing with and hanging around with Ginny and Dave in Nashua, but I still had a great time. I learned a lot from playing with Mark, from the panel discussion from Harold Feldheim’s lecture, and from my own mistakes. I made some new friends, and I cemented some old friendships. I cannot remember a single negative incident. I was happy to see some new faces from CT, but I was very disappointed to discover that the total attendance was fifteen fewer than last year.

The demographic problems faced by the district may be insurmountable. At breakfast in the Dream Diner on Saturday, one of the locals remarked that a few years ago his wife liked to play in bridge tournaments, but now her back problems restricted her to playing online. What can I say?