The players included a pair who bested us in the Kalamazoo tournament, a couple of familiar faces from GR, a few very focused and alert couples, and several people with vision problems and other impairments. Julie and I had just had wine with dinner, but neither the alcohol nor the physical infirmities of our elderly opponents softened our competitive edge.
Julie and I used our favorite tokens from the Kalamazoo tournament—automatic pencils decorated with a card motif and topped with clear plastic caps both for the lead and for the eraser. Unfortunately, Julie’s eraser cap kept popping off. The clear plastic was difficult to spot on the floor; coupled with the worry that someone would step on it and break it, this caused several episodes of mini-drama at our table (we were sitting north-south). “What are you looking for?” one grouchy old man asked. When I told him, proudly showing the cap still secure on my own pencil, he dismissively retorted that “you’re supposed to throw that away after you get the pencil—why would you need a cap on an eraser, it just gets in the way.” Hmm.
Julie and I felt pretty good about our play throughout the evening, although of course we had ideas about what we should have done differently. As we waited for the last round, we noted that the pair coming up were very slow players. In fact, we played three boards before they were done with their first one. As we waited and waited and waited, we agreed that we had to get the bid at all costs in order to move things along.
When the last pair finally sat at our table, Julie was the dealer and opened one diamond. My RHO bid. I looked at my hand – I had 16 high card points, stoppers in every suit, and my partner had opened. I did not have a four card major. I pondered my bid. I could go slowly and try to figure out if we belonged in slam. However, since we do not have much practice with slam bidding, that route was fraught with possible pitfalls. Also it was imperative to move the game along. I decided that missing a possible slam was worth the risk, so I bid 3 NT. It turned out to be a good bid; Julie had a minimum and we did not have slam.
At the end of the evening, both of our pencils had clear plastic eraser caps firmly in place, and we had a score of 58%. That placed us first overall in A, B, and C. We’ll be back.
