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BGonline.org Forums
skills & talents for chess & backgammon
Posted By: Jake Jacobs In Response To: skills & talents for chess & backgammon (Keene)
Date: Saturday, 26 February 2011, at 5:20 a.m.
Worse!
My partner actually became a semi-regular partner for the next six months, by which time I had some serious partnerships with some serious players. Tom was a nice guy - young lawyer, picture Paul "rotWANG" Klein but with bad teeth - but whenever he asked for a review of the bidding I knew his mind had wandered off to some dreamy place the rest of us couldn't follow. It was "fasten your seat belts" time, as no one knew what he might bid.
The other two were the director's wife, and an older guy who was a bad combination of amazingly bad, and amazingly confident in his own rightness. Sort of like George W. Bush but with more wrinkles. This fellow's regular partner had an unusual distinction: back in the day when becoming an LM was much easier she had amassed 800 master points, yet had not the remotest chance of ever becoming a life master.
The Las Vegas bridge scene back then was really fascinating. There were two and a half clubs (one meeting Friday nights only in Henderson). So it was a small world. The first night I played, in the Swiss teams event, there were nine tables. My team was undeniably the weakest, but there were a couple of others that would stink up any tournament. At the same time four of the teams were composed of pros. I remember Paul Lewis and Linda ... forget her name then, she later married Paul, but that was the year she nearly won the McKinney, before Ron Anderson nipped her at the wire. Others playing that night were Procter Hawkins and Cap Crossley, Dave Ashley and Martha Beecher, Paul Ivaska and Gerri (forget his partners name), and also Gaylor Kasle and Gary Hayden up from Phoenix. A mid-range player then was Steve Levy who later was himself a contender for the McKinney, or by then the Barry Crane.
Best story from the club: One player cuebids 6S, the other, having bid spades doesn't recognize this as a cuebid. :-) Dummy comes void in spades. Declarer apparentl finds nothing odd about this turn of events, and proceeds to cash eight side suit winners, ending in hand, then ponders how to play AJ985 opposite a void for one loser. He leads a clever jack, and LHO, holding KQ10 ducks. "Smoothly." declarer plays ace and another an "thank you very much!"
While LHO is busy explaining to his furious partner why ducking, "smoothly," was the right play, :-), the declarer, still oblivious to anything having happened that was out of the ordinary opens the traveler to score, and throws the slip down like it was a rattlesnake, about to bite him. "Goddamnit! Everyone else is in six notrump! Another bottom!"
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