Length before strength would have foiled Burglar

The victory that the Kathy Bear team inflicted on the Browns and the Chaleks in the Delaware Bridge Studio’s Thursday night (7-18-2013) Swiss team competition was so lopsided (by 65 International MatchPoints or IMPs) that no one could recall ever having seen a more humiliating defeat. It happened … [Read more...]

Squeeze play: Make 5 diamonds with 20 points

I couldn’t play on my usual Thursday night team in the Delaware Bridge Studio’s Thursday night Swiss competition this week because I was otherwise occupied, taking my granddaughter to Brown University in Providence, RI, on a college-scouting trip. Christine Matus filled in for me on our team, … [Read more...]

World beaters with a Shanghai sacrifice

WILMINGTON, DE - My partner Christine Matus and I were “Hungary” for points this past weekend (June 7-8, 2013) when the 27th annual World Wide Bridge Contest was held with the same boards being played at clubs all around the world. Because of the difference in time zones, no club was allowed to post … [Read more...]

Misfits: Bidding a powerhouse hand into a loser

WILMINGTON, DE - My partner Christine Matus and I did not fare that well at the Wilmington Sectional duplicate bridge tournament this past weekend (May 31-June 2, 2013) as we showed up for a scheduled Saturday night pairs game only to find it canceled for lack of interest (we were coming in from … [Read more...]

Swiss downer: Scaredy-cats never win

WILMINGTON, DE - For the first time in many weeks, we got our regular Thursday night four-person Swiss team together again last week (5-16-2013) at the Delaware Bridge Studio with Eileen Bickel-Thomas, recovering nicely from a minor operation, always steady Ed Maser, our fiery captain John Walston … [Read more...]

An unusual Grand Slam: Down 6 doubled, but a great bid

Grand Slam bids are pretty rare in bridge. Bidding a Grand Slam with only 1 high-card point in your hand is even rarer -- and few if any bridge players would even dream of doing such a thing. But yours truly, otherwise known as the "bridge burglar," did exactly that on Thursday night in a Swiss … [Read more...]

Stealing a win at the Blue Hen Sectional

WILMINGTON, DE - My partner Christine Matus and I seem to do best in bridge tournaments when we go some place where nobody knows us and we can fly under the radar. That wasn’t possible this past Saturday (2-23) at the Bridge Studio of Delaware’s Blue Hen Sectional when we both got mini-McKinney … [Read more...]

Psych bid: Down 2, but still a winner

Snow kept down attendance at the Wednesday night (2-13) game at the Delaware Bridge Studio and with 2.5 tables, every board was played only twice, so you got a win, a loss or a tie on the board – there were no in-between scores. With that kind of scoring, anything can happen and in this case the … [Read more...]

Stealing the bid: Is there a bridge burglarette in town?

Although I played twice last week at the Bridge Studio of Delaware with different partners and teammates and got some additional MasterPoints, I couldn’t find a good hand on the “bridge burglar” theme of stealing a bid or a contract. There was no clever trickery – if we got a good board, our … [Read more...]

Resist the urge to take that finesse!

This week’s Thursday night Swiss team game with duplicated boards at the Bridge Studio of Delaware in North Wilmington presented some challenging boards – and perhaps therefore had some surprising results. In the shark tank of the highest ranked teams, Rick Rowland, who just got his Life Grand … [Read more...]