For any of you who have friends who might like to start playing bridge or who would like to refresh their skills, Wednesday has become the big bridge education day for the unit. Roger Boyar has three sets of lessons going from morning to night. At 9:30 there’s EasyBridge for beginners. “Thinking Bridge” for intermediate to advanced players starts at 1:00.And for those wives or husbands who’d like to get their spouses away from the TV for an evening out,there’s a series of new lessons for couples at 6:30 P.M. Singles are also welcome, of course. You can get more info by calling Roger at 877 477 4334 (toll free), 626 335 1985, or 626 214 6354.
Cordelle Goode, our efficient treasurer, announced that we actually finished in the black last year (a major triumph). She would like to remind all our regular players who have not joined the ACBL that remittances back to to the unit for membership fees are a significant source of unit income. Please help us continue to be financially viable by joining or renewing your lapsed membership. The informative and entertaining monthly ACBL magazine alone is worth the annual fee.
On the masterpoint front,the Ace of Clubs and Mini-McKinney winners for 2006 are posted and winners will be honored at the coming unit game. I’ll list all the winners next month. Ann McClelland picked up a bunch of gold points with partners Doug Hewitt and Shiu-Ming at two recent regionals, and now needs only a few club points to make Silver Life Master. Coincidentally, she and her husband just celebrated their silver anniversary with a great trip to Hawaii. Doug Hewitt, incidentally, is recovering from surgery and we wish him well. Three unit members have earned promotions in rank. Donald Naf is now a Junior Master. Suzanne Wojcik is a Club Master, and Yoon Kyun has achieved Bronze Life Master. Congratulations.
Top game of the month was a sparkling 76% effort by Penny Barbieri and Helen Wang. The Unit Game winners were Hans Hehnke-Vito Sartori (E/W and OA) and Cordelle Goode-Ann McCleary (N/S). Gary Olson and Florence Weinstein were 3rd OA. Club winners with 60% + games this month were George Altinus, James Rhodes, Susan Ruoff, Herb Stampfl, Rick Whitham, Kathy Helber, Dave Ruoff, Penny Barbieri, Vic Sartor, Abe Abramawitz, and Albert Lax. Other winners included Karen Olin, Lynne Parker, Mary Kissel, Karen McCarthy, Genise Hasan, Roger Boyar, Ben Harris, Richard Patterson, and John Tyner.
Our two Hands of the Month are being copyrighted and will be submitted to “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not”. The first occurred when a nice LOL got flustered after she doubled her RHO’s 1NT opening, was redoubled by LHO, and had the auction float back to her. Apparently forgetting she could pull it, she passed! A few minutes later, the opponents were trying to use a calculator to figure out the score for 1NT, vulnerable, doubled and redoubled, making 6! The score of 3,160 points is the highest I have ever seen. Can anyone out there top it?
Our second hand falls under the heading “Don’t Be A Smart A- - At The Bridge Table.” The auction went 1♠-2♥; 3♠-4♣; 6♠! The perpetrator’s partner led the diamond queen, and dummy came down with:
The other dummy (our hero) is sitting there with the J 7 6 3 of spades as the only cards of any value in his hand. The spots are important, as you shall see. Declarer lets the first trick ride around to his king,leads a heart to the king, and tries a ruffing finesse with the king of clubs, pitching a diamond and losing to the ace to his LHO. After long thought, that worthy decides to lead back his only trump,the 4. Dummy’s five is played perforce. And now our hero decides to make a grand gesture. After all, his partner has just finessed him out of a near-certain trump trick and allowed a vulnerable slam to make. How can he show his contempt for that trump lead? He comes up with the perfect card to express his disgust - the 3 of Spades!! After all, what could it matter? Declarer would now obviously draw trump, return to the heart ace, pitch all of his losers and claim 6. Not Quite. It seems declarer, with