Road Trip

I am suffering this semester.  I am teaching my first choice of classes and have wonderful students, but for the first time since I started playing bridge my schedule doesn't allow me to play during the week.  I'm playing most Mondays and sometimes on Fridays, but the last time I played was 10 days ago.  Time for a road trip!

Julie and I drove to Kalamazoo, where she regularly plays on Tuesdays (this was a Friday).  As we entered the club, Starbucks mochas in hand, Julie surveyed the room.  "Hmm," she said with a puzzled frown.  "I don't see many of the people who are usually here."

"Maybe they're at the tournament," I helpfully offered.

"Maybe," Julie conceded as we checked in and sat down.

Unlike Julie, I know very few people at this bridge club, but I immediately liked our first opponents, Jim and John.  That may have had something to do with the way they greeted us:  "Two beautiful ladies are joining us!" one said while the other nodded in agreement and smiled.

We had time for a pleasant chat before the game began, which ended with Julie giving the pair some advice.  "You should open a restaurant," she said.  "You could call it..."

"Jimmy Johns!" Jim said as we all chuckled.

Later during the game we encountered another pair of gentlemen, but this time there was no laughing; there seldom is when bidding communication breaks down.  Here's what happened.

North opened 1 NT.  I had opening and 6 nice diamonds, so I doubled (DONT).  South passed and Julie bid 2 clubs, just as she was supposed to do. North passed, I bid my diamonds and sat back, expecting to get the bid.  To my surprise, South then bid 2 hearts.  Julie passed, and then I got another surprise--North said "transfer" and bid 2 spades.  I thought it was odd, but as I had only one spade I believed him.  Since Julie didn't support my diamonds and we were vulnerable, I passed and the contract was 2 spades in the North.

When dummy came down we all saw that South's heart bid had been natural.  "This is terrible!" North exclaimed.  "Your bid was a transfer!"

"It couldn't have been a transfer," South countered.  "There were two bids in between."

Julie looked at me and quietly asked how I would have interpreted the bid.  "I would think it's natural," I said.  "But maybe it's a partnership agreement."

"Well, if I made a mistake you should have corrected and gone back to hearts.  This is terrible!" North said again.

"I don't know if I can ethically do that," South said.

"I think you can," the rest of us replied.

We proceeded to play the hand, with Julie of course holding almost all of the spades.  Later, Julie and I talked about partnership agreements and conventional play.  We are both playing more with other partners these days, and partnership agreements that are different from regular play can sometimes get you into trouble.  This case, though, seemed like simple miscommunication.  Also, it's not using unauthorized information, is it, to correct a partner's bid?  When is it unethical to do so?

Newcomer Bliss

When I first signed up for bridge classes over 5 years ago, I thought that 6 weeks was an excessive amount of time to learn how to play a card game, even a supposedly complicated one.  "Oh well," I thought at the time,  "At least I'll be an expert when I'm done."  Now I know that even 5 years of almost constant playing is a drop in the bucket of bridge expertise.  Even so, I have learned a lot since those first lessons, but oddly enough there are things about being a Newcomer that I miss.

I miss those huge advances in learning.  For example, one time Gigi sat in for someone in the Newcomer game and after a hand that involved a no trump opening, she kindly explained about transfers. Wow!  What a concept! What I don't miss, though, are times like the one when my partner (yes, it was Julie) missed my transfer and I was so dumbfounded that I left her bid in.  Down a bizzillion.  Now when I learn something new it seems excessively complicated--and by the time it comes up during play, I've forgotten how it works.  

I miss the constant encouragement.  People used to tell me how good I was doing, how amazed they were that I'd only been playing for a short time.  People I didn't even know yet would make a point of seeking me out after a good game (good being a relative term).  Now I need a game in the 60's to get any notice, and then it's mostly just my partner offering congratulations.  I feel like a middle child.  Actually, I think we should all be more complimentary and encouraging of each other.

I miss being happy with "bad" scores. It used to be exciting to have games in the mid to high 40's.  I remember Bob giving us pep talks ("You should try to be at 50%" he would tell us.  "We are trying!" I would reply.)  Now I am often at around 50%.  Well, what's wrong with that?  you might ask.  What's wrong is not the 50%, but how much harder it is to get to the high 50's and 60 than it was to get to the high 40's and 50.  And how much more awful it is to drop into the 30's.

I miss not being aware of stupid mistakes. There's something fun about not knowing exactly how stupid your bidding or play is, especially when you get a good score.  Now I (usually?) know when I've down something stupid, and it haunts me even if the score turns out okay.

Most of all, I miss the illusion that I could be a bridge prodigy.  It's not hard to become an expert in most card games, and at first I thought I could master bridge.  Now I know that even though I will continue to improve, mastery isn't going to happen. If only I had started playing when I was 5 years old, maybe I would have had a chance.

New Vocab

As we were preparing for Swiss Teams (I don't understand how I keep getting roped into these), we found out that we would be in a round robin with two other teams.  As I stood around waiting, I noticed that Mike was loitering near by.

"Are you part of this, this trio?" I asked.  I couldn't think of "round robin," even though it popped right out as I write this.

"Yes," Mike replied.  "But don't call it a trio, it's not a musical group.  It's a three-way or a rat tail," he explained with a laugh.

I thought about these terms.  Without going into why, I don't care for the sound of a bridge three-way.  On the other hand, I detest rats and I certainly don't like their tails.  Perfect!  From now on, Swiss Team round robins are "rat tails" to me.

The other term that I learned is "field protection."  I was talking to a new friend and he said that they had placed in the first pairs game, but came in dead last in the second game.  When I asked him what happened, he said there was no field protection.  He explained that it was impossible to predict what other players were doing since there were newbys as well as seasoned players.  I thought about it and agreed.  At the home club, I have a pretty good sense of what everyone else is doing; here, I made some predictions that turned out badly.  Interesting.

And if you are wondering about how short suit game try bids are going, they aren't.  They never came up!  Plus, Jim sent me some reading material and they are more complicated than you might think.  Maybe I should go back to my original list and learn splinter bids instead.

CCT Day 2

The tradition continues...I suddenly remembered that last year we did not do well in this tournament. Nothing has changed, except now we are B players. To be honest, it wouldn't be good even if we were in the C category. But as Dee keeps telling me, "But we're having fun!" Indeed we are.  Beautiful setting, good friends, hanging out in Traverse City, and best of all: Bridge!

I learned a new bid during the last round of the last game of the day. I know there is still a LOT I  need to learn and this bid does not fall into the need-to-know category, but I like it anyway. Here's what happened.

My LHO opened a spade, his partner bid 2 spades, and he rebid 2 NT.

"Alert."

I looked at him inquiringly. I had never seen tbis bid before.

"Short suit help try. I'm required to bid 3 clubs." He proceeded with the bidding.

"Wait," I said. "What does that mean?" Inquiring minds want to know.

He explained that his partner would then bid his singleton (a diamond) and then he would decide if he should go to game. Well, he went to game and they made it.

"Dee!" I exclaimed. "Let's start using this bid!"

"Okay," she said agreeably.

"Without talking about it," our opponent said disbelievingly. That's how we roll.

P.S. I was telling Mike about this miraculous new bid and he hesitatingly told me that its success rate was not very good.  He felt bad about bursting my bubble, but I am not so easily deterred. Hopefully it will come up today!

Cherry Capital Sectional

I don't sleep in tents or on the ground.  I don' t spend the night in trailers on things that come out of the wall. I don't go outside to use the bathroom. I don't camp.

And yet here I am at a YMCA camp on Lake Arbutus outside of Traverse City.  I am here to play bridge, like lots of other people.  But like only a few other intrepid souls, I am also staying on site.  I think you could say that I am camping!

Dee and I are sharing a dorm with another bridge pair. There are probably 20 bunk beds in our room; one end leads into a hallway with a bathroom, including showers (thank goodness!) and the other has a door leading onto a deck with a view of the lake.  Two friends are staying in another dormer and two more lucky players got the private staff room.

This may not sound like we're roughing it, especially since we have staff waiting on us, but we did have to bring our own wine!

Yes, I said I am here with Dee. We both regularly partner with Julie, but Julie is not here. "You couldn't pay me to stay in a dorm!" she declared. So Julie is back in Grand Rapids, communicating via text messages.


Stay tuned for bridge updates!