NAP Flight C and NABC at Memphis
by Mathew Vea

I'm retired. I was open to new ways to fill my time in June of 2023 when Dwight Wilbur invited me to play with him in Shrewsbury, just before the game was moved to Auburn. After a little more than a year of club play, I started playing with my son Nicholas in Westminster. Nick and I had some positive results right off the bat, so we showed up for the District 25 North American Pairs (NAP) Flight C qualifier in November. To our delight, we qualified! It seemed like a great excuse to go to Memphis. My wife, Melissa, agreed and joined us for her own mini vacation.

Nick and Matt Vea

The three of us took an early flight into Memphis to give us two and a half days of sightseeing before the NAP competition. Memphis has a lot to offer visitors, and not just Graceland. Nick, Melissa and I agreed that the #1 highlight was the National Civil Rights Museum, built adjoining the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed. My second favorite was a tie between a tour of Sun Studio, where dozens of early rockers and blues musicians started their recording careers, and Beale Street on Saturday night--four blocks closed to traffic, lined with restaurants and bars with live bands, and people everywhere out enjoying themselves. Melissa and I were reminded of our much younger days when a weekend night out might not begin until 9 or 10 p.m.

The NAP competition was fun and challenging. The first thing I noticed at the start of play was how friendly everyone was. We met pairs from all over the United States, and at least two from Canada. There wasn't time for more than small talk, but it was nice to meet several familial pairs to give us something to chat about. We played against one father-daughter pair, two mother-son pairs and one mother-daughter pair, plus two pairs of spouses. One of the younger players was the talk of the first day of competition when he wore a full head-to-toe shark costume! As it happened, the opponent pair at his first table in the morning session sat at Nick and my table at the first table of the afternoon session, leading to a lively discussion.

I came expecting competitive bidding and competent play and I was not disappointed. Here is an example of the type of competitive bidding that we faced. On board 9 in the first day's morning session, I was East, Nick was West, and we were vulnerable. North, not vulnerable, was dealer and the bidding was as follows:

North	East	South	West
Pass	1♦	5♣	5♦
6♣	Dbl	Pass	Pass
Pass

 

In the space of five non-passing bids, the bid went from one diamond to six clubs, doubled! The result was down three for 500 points, but 5D makes six or seven (620 or 640 points), depending on play of the trump suit. All the bids were sound and well considered: South prevented us from inquiring about slam with his huge preempt; I guessed correctly to reach the diamond game; most impressively, North trusted her partner enough to sacrifice at 6C with five HCP, no aces or kings; finally, Nick's double was the best bid given his hand and limited information.

This board (#9) and the first day morning results for our section (II) can be found at:

https://live.acbl.org/event/NABC251/NAPC/1/summary?section=II

Although the bidding on this board was especially audacious, the quality was typical of bidding on the 108 boards over the two days. Declarer play and defense were similarly impressive throughout the tournament.

At the end of the first session, Nick and I thought that we had scored well, perhaps mid-fifties percent. It was therefore a bit of a wakeup call to find that we scored just a hair above 50%. More to the point, we placed 34th out of the 68 pairs, where the top 36 pairs qualify for the finals the next day. Yikes! Too close for comfort!

We scored a little better in the afternoon session that day. Each hand was a battle and we never felt secure, but in the end we placed 26th and qualified to continue playing a second day. As we were leaving the competition we met two players, the same pair that played against the shark costume in the morning session. They qualified (36th!) and we all exchanged high fives in mutual celebration.

At the end of the next day's morning session Nick and I looked at the printout of results. We were now in 18th place. But what was that dashed line separating the 17th place team and us? As we later learned, the top quartile pairs, the top 17 for this event, earn bonus red and gold masters points. We continued grinding in the final 27 hand session. Our score for that session was an exact 50%, which was just enough to move us up one place and earn us extra red and gold points. Yeah!

The one disappointment of the trip was not seeing anyone we knew from central Massachusetts. Even so, there was a silver lining. Neither the first nor the third place pairs who qualified from District 25 made it to the competition. That meant that the ACBL paid Nick and I the higher first place stipend—enough to cover airfare and some of our other expenses.

All three of us enjoyed our time in Memphis, and Nick and I had a great experience at our first national tournament. We would do it again given the chance. We recommend that any pair that qualifies for a future NAP seriously considers competing at nationals.

Players' Corner is a new monthly feature spotlighting a CMBA player who tells what got them started playing the great game of bridge. In March, Rich Gram shares some of his educational (and amusing) experiences playing duplicate.

• Want to be featured in a future Players' Corner? Just get in touch with Denise at dbahosh@yahoo.com.
• And be sure to visit the Players' Corner archive to access previously posted articles.

Bridge in Three Acts

In 1968 when I was a senior in high school, a friend from the neighborhood said that he was going to sign up for bridge lessons that were being offered in town at the local bridge club, and he asked me if I wanted to join him. His parents played bridge socially, so he had been around the game. He said, it is a game for smart people, and that was the hook I needed. Our teacher Elsie Mentuck was well-regarded in Boston area bridge circles. We signed up for lessons. The textbook was "Five Weeks to Winning Bridge" by Alfred Sheinwold, a book that still has an honored place on my shelf. Elsie operated the ACBL sanctioned bridge club in Swampscott, and Steven and I started playing there on Thursday nights. Everyone else in the room was an adult. Over the last few weeks of my senior year and into the summer, I won a grand total of 4.08 points. (Actually, I won a few more than that, but in early August I asked Elsie to stop sending them in so I could qualify for the Novice tournament in Boston scheduled for the Fall.)

 

Rich Gram

How I became a club legend. One night when my partner couldn't play, I showed up at the club alone, figuring that this was a chance to play with Elsie. Alas, another single player was hanging around hoping for a partner. He became my partner for the evening. Right away I observed that he was not very high functioning in life skills generally. He had a fold-out with all the bridge bids on it, and he consulted it before every bid. I observed that he really knew nothing, and I started to feel upset that I was about to waste a whole evening when I could have been home studying. "This is a joke." By Board 2 I was desperate. In a flash, I formed a plan. I would look at my hand, listen to the first couple of bids, and whenever I could, jump to a game that would make me declarer. When he opened a spade and I saw a chance for game I bid 3NT. When he bid NT, I went to game in hearts or spades. I could see that some people saw what I was doing, but they kept quiet rather than coach me on improving my bidding as they usually did. At one point my partner grumbled, why was I playing all the hands? I shrugged and said, yes, well that is just how the cards went.

By evening's end it turned out that we were top team over all. A man in his forties turned to me and asked, "Do you know who won?" I said in a cheery tone, "We did!" His eyes bugged out. He pointed at me. "You??? And him??? "Yes, and I owe it all to my partner." My partner smiled proudly. As I was leaving, Elsie, smiling, said she had been planning to refund my card fee. She said I had made it much harder for her to tell my one-night partner not to come back. When I told Steve my real partner the story, he was abashed. "You won't want to play with me anymore." I said that winning the way I did was a lot of fun, and I never want to do it again.

My spare time that summer was spent reading bridge books such as H.W. Kelsey's "Killing Defense at Bridge," and learning conventions such as Schenken 1 Club opener. Steve and I experimented with conventions, carding, and opening leads. As summer's end approached, I realized that I needed to make a decision. It was clear to me that bridge and college were not going to play nice together. We all know people who can do both, but I knew I was not one of them. I would wind up wasting my tuition money, giving almost all my attention to improving my bridge game. I could not allow this. Bridge is only a card game, right? And life has many more important things to do. Right? (The Novice tournament in Boston could wait.)

Fast forward to my thirties, working at Zayre Corp. in Framingham, nestled between the Mass Pike and the shores of Lake Cochituate. I was drawn to watching the lunch time bridge game that took place down the hall from my office. After watching several times and making comment along with coworkers, I was invited to sit in as a fourth. Then I became a regular. And then we played once a month after work, for money. A tenth of a cent a point, with a cap of five dollars and a floor of one dollar per player. My partner Eddie and I won most of these.

My favorite bridge hand of all time occurred in this game. Eddie and I played short club. I opened 1C not vul with 12 aceless points and two little clubs. It passed around, everything was offside, and I went down 7 for minus 350. My left hand opponent had about 18 points with no distribution, so she decided to wait to see what my partner and her partner would do. Eddie passed. My right hand opponent had the remaining points with club strength and no other suit to bid, so he decided to let it go. I'll bet none of you has ever gone down 7 in a one bid! It is not a fun experience during play. In the post mortem, it was hilarious.

The Seasons. In 2023 my wife and I moved to Holden, at the Seasons. The ladies at the Seasons hold a bridge game once a week in the club house, and I started playing in it. It is not really bridge however, since no one keeps score. It is more like, "bridge hands." But it did remind me which way play proceeds around the table. At the Seasons' Christmas party, Al Cooperman asked me about the clubhouse game and we talked about his experience playing duplicate. Something sparked in me, and I shared my story about abandoning the game upon graduating high school in 1968, with an interlude of rubber bridge at Zayre in the 1980's.

Al invited me to play with him in Holden at the end of December 2023. He said he would connect me with Al Berg, and that normally he doesn't play in Holden because he is above the maximum master points for our NLM game. Al C. and I played just before Christmas 2023. We scored around 40%, close to the bottom. No matter...the Spirit of Bridge had come over me. At long last, I thought, I might as well face it: I'm addicted to bridge.

I showed up in January to play in the Holden club. Al Berg connected me with a partner, and I played in Holden in 2024 until late October, when my teaching schedule as a WPI adjunct precluded playing on Mondays.

In response to an email I sent off to ACBL, a very sweet lady in the office found my 4.08 points from high school and added them to my new player number. It turns out that ACBL has paper files in a closet somewhere, and the paper has not started crumbling yet. I knew that my ability to rattle off “4.08” instead of "a few" would be persuasive. The brain is a wonderful mystery.

Teaching at WPI interferes with my bridge game, but at least now I have my priorities straight. Foolish arrogant youth that I was, I once quit playing because I thought I had more important things to do. Hah!

See you at the table!
Rich Gram