Although Sturbridge is less than 45 minutes from my house, I decided to pass on Wednesday’s games. I am not that enthused about playing in pairs games, and I wanted to have a little left in the tank for the NAP qualifier on Sunday. On the other hand, I did eagerly check the results from the morning to see if the attendance was good. The news was mostly positive. The A game, which I was the most worried about, had ten tables. This is certainly not a record-breaker, but I was afraid that there might not even be enough players for a reasonable game. The tournament was originally designed to be exclusively for players with less than 2500 points. When the ACBL put the kibosh on that, a new schedule was developed at the last minute (or even, by traditional standards, after the last minute). A large effort was made to notify A players that there would be events for them, and evidently it paid off.

Attendance by players with between 750 and 2500 points has not been good at recent tournaments. The turnout for the 0-2500 game was therefore what most people were interested in. Twenty tables was a respectable showing, but hopes were a little higher.

The other thing that I focused on was whether there actually was a 49er game. Alas, it was, as usual, folded into the 199er game. However, the news was not all bad. My wife Sue and her partner, Marianne Hope, finished first in the 49er section of that game. So, Hope and Hopeless will forever be honored on the Winners Board.

I was scheduled to work the partnership desk on Thursday morning. Sue, who was scheduled to play with Marianne again, piloted our vehicle. Despite the fact that she and Marianne had encountered brutal congestion on I-291 on Wednesday, she decided to take the same route. The result was that I arrived just as the partnership desk opened. I was hoping to have some time to go over the convention card with my partner, Judy Hyde, but all of my attention was required to handle all of the requests for teammates and partners.

It is an ongoing frustration to me that more people do not take advantage of the Online Partnership Desk software that is available on NEBridge.org. I feel certain that this excellent piece of software could eliminate a lot of the tension and rancor that is inevitable when players are searching for partners or teammates at the last minute.

At any rate Judy and I went into our first match in the Super Gold Rush Swiss with only a sketchy understanding of what conventions we were playing. We soon learned that our first opponents played a strong club system. Judy and I knew our notrump range, but we had not talked at all about how we would bid against a strong club. I made a few suggestions on the fly, and, as luck would have it, our opponents only bid 1♣ once. We lost the match by two points, but I was not discouraged.

I thought that we had assembled a pretty good team, but we also lost the next three matches. Our lunch therefore tasted quite bitter. We won all three matches after lunch, but at that point we were playing for nothing but pride, and not much of that was left.

The attendance on Thursday was outstanding. At times the directors seemed almost overwhelmed. It was very difficult for them to score two very large games – 37 tables in the 0-2500 game and 76 in the Gold Rush. A lot of people thought that they had been short-changed. I am not sure who made the decision to play seven rounds of six boards, but I do know that the powers that be are well aware of the discontent and will take measures in the future to avoid a repeat.

I arose at 2:30 on Friday morning and felt wide awake. Fortunately I went back to sleep after an hour or so of messing around on the computer. I had fairly high hopes that Friday would bring more satisfying results. I have played with my Friday partner, Dave Landsberg, for several years in the very tough night games at the Hartford Bridge Club, and I would not be distracted by managing the partnership desk that day. A good omen was the fact that I was able to purchase my sausage biscuit with egg for only $2.54. The lady at the drive-up window entered my order as a sausage biscuit, which was on the dollar menu, with a folded egg added.

Dave and I scored over 58% in the morning in the Super Gold Rush Pairs. Our afternoon was not quite as productive until the last hand, #9, which we played against Jane Clancy and Lynda Edson from Rhode Island. I was sitting West.

Obviously North-South suffered from a severe miscommunication. Jane forgot that they were playing Bergen Raises. At the end of the hand Lynda said that she did not feel that it would have been ethical for her to correct 4♦ to 4♠. I am not sure if she was right or not, but in any case I got to write down one of the largest scores that I have ever recorded in the plus column, 1700, and we ended up ninth out of 57 players, a very respectable showing.

Once more I was up in the early morning hours on Saturday, and once more I got back to sleep an hour or so later. I had volunteered to work the partnership desk, so I arrived in Sturbridge a little before nine. To my consternation a new lady ran the drive-up window at McDonald’s, and she charged me more than a dollar more for the same sandwich that I had ordered 24 hours earlier. I wonder whether I would have received Friday’s price if I had ordered it in two pieces – “Sausage biscuit, please; uh, add an egg to that.”

I played with Ginny Iannini in the Round Robin. Our teammates, two of my regular partners who had never played together, were matched up because of a late cancellation. I introduced Ginny to Ken Leopold, whom I described as a doctor who saves the lives of cancer patients, and to Dave Landsberg, a chicken farmer.

We got off to a good start by winning the first match against Bea Karger’s team by eleven IMPs. As we waited for the other table to finish playing, Bea confided to me that she was 93 years old.

We then lost two close matches, but one of our victories was a lopsided blitz. So, we felt somewhat encouraged going into the afternoon. My teammates were jealous of the roast beef sandwich that Sue had made for me.

We won all three matches in the afternoon, and one was a blitz. Our final score of 97 would have been good enough to win in most of the other brackets, but Bea’s team had managed to accumulate an astounding 72 victory points in the last four rounds, and they edged us by three victory points. I was happy to take their photos, but I was unable to locate the winners of any of the other brackets. Nobody was giving high fives, and I recognized the name of only one of the team captains, and that team was nowhere to be seen.

I must describe a very unusual hand in the last round. As West I dealt and opened 1♣. Everyone passed. That feeble auction is rare in itself. After all, the person in the balancing seat does not need much to overcall, and the entire one-level is available. In fact, I only had thirteen points, and I saw only four in the dummy. Furthermore, although we had a majority of the cards in the other three suits. I could only see five trumps.

At the end of the hand I was beaming with pride at my outstanding play. I endplayed North when she had to trump the eleventh trick perforce. By scoring four of my five trumps I managed to make the contract.

Imagine my dismay when I learned that the exact same result occurred at the other table. I did not write down all of the spots, but I think that the distribution must have been something like the following:

Ginny, by the way, in the spirit of amity and goodwill asked each of our opponents where they were from. If she learned that they were from eastern Massachusetts she drew from her Felix the Cat handbag sets of campaign materials and gave them the hard sell as to why she should be on EMBA’s board.

I played in the NAP on Sunday, and I have already written up some notes about that event here.

Three friends. Jan Rosow, Donna Lyons, and Eileen Inman, made Life Master in the tournament. I felt very happy for all three.

The tournament was undoubtedly a success, but not an unqualified success. None of the 49er games made. Some A players who hoped to play in one of the side games were excluded, and that was not a good scene. People grumbled about the 42 boards that were played on Thursday. Perhaps the worst aspect, however, was the cancellation of the Flight A Swiss on Sunday. Some players from the Hartford area had made a special trip to play in it, and they were understandably upset about not getting to play.

These problems, with the possible exception of the shortage of 49ers, can be solved, and very competent people will be working to make sure that they are addressed. My understanding is that the 0-2500 format can now be used in one regional per year. That is all that I know about it.