Diary of a Bridge Pro #8

Louisville, March 18, 2024 
Good morning, all. 
Yesterday, the first Sunday here in Louisville at the 2024 Spring Nats, was a good day for New York bridge. Not that that is really a thing, "New York Bridge". True, New York has a lot of good and great bridge players (and many mediocre and weak ones too) but it is misleading to speak of a "New York Bridge Community" More like a loosely affiliated large group of sometimes vicious rivals. 
Or, as Gertrude Stein remarked of Oakland, California: There's no there there.

***** 
Yesterday, in the Platinum Pairs, the most prestigious pairs event on the annual ACBL calendar, first place went to a pair of capable New York pros, Kent Mignocchi and Joel Wooldridge. Winning the Platinum Pairs is, of course, a big deal. 
There were fourteen tables, twenty-eight pairs, contesting the final of the PP. Twenty times as many players were competing one flight down in the West Tower, where the larger national pair games were contested, In one of those larger events, Brad Moss and Marty Fleisher won the inaugural First Weekend Saturday-Sunday National Pair Game. Brad lives in Denver now but he is a New Yorker. His mother Gail and sister Jill are here in Louisville as well, and other relatives too numerous to count. I saw Gail a couple days ago. I asked her about the classes she is teaching back in the city and at her club in Westchester County, and she told me a heart-warming story about Brad as a teenager, and his desire to play with her in my duplicate club for his birthday present in 1984. Nice to see him notch a win with Marty yesterday. 
Brad is also the defending champ in the Vanderbilt Teams, which begins today, after his win in that event last spring. I was reminded of this when I read today's Daily Bulletin just now, which included a picture of the winning squad from New Orleans in 2023. 
Also in today's issue you can find a hand that appeared earlier in this blog series - I wrote up the hand where Ellie and I played 5H making six for 87% of the matchpoints (I guess those nine card major suit fits can be hard to find). 
In case you don't have the back blogs handy, the deal in question featured this pair of hands: Mine was the weak one, Ellie’s was the Major Suit Monster: AKQ8x, AKQxx, Ax, x opposite J9x, 7xxx, Jxx, Qxx - you can read more about it in today's Daily Bulletin (Page 12).
For a link to the March 18 Daily Bulletin, and elaboration on the news cited above, click here: https://cdn.acbl.org/nabc/2024/03/bulletins/db4.pdf 
My write-up of the deal appears on page 12 - easy to miss, it's short (appropriate, since despite the twelve tricks we made, my hand was tiny.) 
Let me speak of the hand for a moment, for it provides a great commercial for a method I have been using for at least ten years now - I predict that within another ten years it will be adapted by a large percentage of expert pairs. 
The deal in question: AKQxx, AKQxx, Ax, x (Huge hand, right?) faces Jxx, xxxx, Jxx, Qxx - Using standard methods, Ellie and I found our way to the heart game. Here’s the sequence I recommend: 
Opener: 2C (Strong Two or 20-21 balanced) 
Responder: 2H (0-4 HCP, 4+ hearts) 
Opener: 6H (Should be a good spot - I should be able to throw partner’s extra diamonds on my spades). 
***** 
I’ve been writing these blog entries for several days now. I hope they will be available today or tomorrow) to an audience on the internet through Stefan’s Intobridge site. 
Say, that reminds me of the first lines of the existential classic, The Stranger, by the French novelist, Albert Camus: 
Mother died today. Or it may have been yesterday, it's hard to say. 
Which raises a question far beyond the scope of today's blog (but maybe not tomorrow's): Why is it we do this? 
***** 
It takes a village to produce and promote a blog like this, and I've been lucky to have a wide variety of friends who've encouraged me to write these columns. One is Paul Lewis, who was partnering jazzy Jill Marshall in Fairfield last June in a regional pair game when I faced him with Walter Schenker and he encouraged me to write a memoir, and then a bridge blog like this. 
I have a “Jill Hand” to feature later in this series. Spoiler alert: Jill is a very effective player!
***** 
Yesterday I kibitzed the last few rounds of the Platinum Pairs. When Michael Xu faced the winners, Joel Woolridge and Kent Mignocchi, he had a very tricky Four Hearts to declare. 
After the hand he asked me if he might have done anything differently. Let's simply look at the diamond suit, A97x opposite Tx - this suit is best played by leading towards the ten doubleton. 
On a really lucky day, the king-queen jack of diamonds will be tripleton, and you can ruff the third round and make the nine a winner. 
On a somewhat lucky day, you will find your right hand opponent with KQ543, leaving his partner with a doubleton jack-eight. Your RHO will rise with the queen ("putz," you will mutter to yourself in your ongoing internal monologue) - and then when the eight appears on your left you will smirk with satisfaction. Summoning your inner Pepsi, later in the play you will cash the ace, dropping lefty's jack, then spin the nine from dummy's remaining nine-seven onto the table, taking a ruffing finesse against righty's remaining high diamond honor. 
***** 
When I say, "Tap into your Inner Pepsi", I mean: - hang on, as Damon Runyon titled one of his short stories, "A Story goes with it." Damon Runyon was a NY writer of the mid-twentieth century whose bailiwick was the theater district, the racetrack, and Madison Square Garden. The residents and denizens of the far west side of Manhattan, with the rotting piers facing the Jersey side and a seedy bar dating back to the Prohibition Era never too far away. 
Here are some radio shows of Runyon’s material. 
https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Damon_Runyon_Singles 
***** 
Back in 2020, around the time I first began playing online bridge, I told myself, “This would be a good time to try to get better - to go from great to greater. 
Go for the intra - finesse, the fancy ending, the winkle, the vise - don't name them, just play them, I told myself. Allow your intuitions a chance to reign. In short, I said to myself, "Tap your inner Pepsi." 
***** 
We are taking for granted that the reader knows who "Pepsi" is - we shouldn't.
We also shouldn't use the royal we in this fashion, it's annoying. Nevertheless, we sally forth, undeterred. 
Say, did I ever tell ya that back in my Australian days, I met a girl there, her parents with a surname of "Forth" had named their child "Sally" - cool name, right? They were a circus family, like the Wallendas, so it totally makes sense. 
Just sayin’. 
I sought a series of celebrities saying, “Just sayin’”, but I only found one - he does it really well, so here’s a link to a “Just Sayin’” YouTube clip by Modern Renaissance Man:

Warning: This link contains some serious social commentary. I stumbled across it simply because I was looking for a celebrity saying, “Just Sayin’”. I linked to it because I figured: 
A) The host does deliver a great “Just sayin!” 
B) it might entertain some of you, 
C) It might trigger some fresh thinking among some of you. 
#ModernRenaissanceMan 
I hope you all continue to enjoy my bridge blogs. Reader input is welcome, you can write to me directly at [email protected], or comment below if you are reading this at our Wilsonovich website.
Thought for the Day: Bring an open mind to all your affairs, in bridge and away from bridge. Engage in civil discourse with those whose views differ from your own. Allow your opinions and views to evolve, or to change dramatically, or not at all - Remember: It’s your choice!