Susan Morse is and actress and bestselling author of two memoirs: The Habit, and The Dog Stays in the Picture. Her third, chronicling a recent headlong dash into duplicate bridge, will be finished if she can just stop playing long enough to write.
Last April John Dickenson offered me an amazing bucket list opportunity: He was cashing in an old fundraiser raffle win, a game with one of our D4 Grand Life Masters, Tom Weik. Somehow it was decided that I too would play a session with Tom, at a Sectional in Allentown. I think Tom was intrigued when he heard I'd won a national Mini-McKenney race my first year playing bridge.
Winning that race was exciting and seems impressive, but the truth is I sort of went nuts and played an abnormal amount of bridge. Partners who like to speculate on the source of my aptitude for this wretched game seem to agree I have been blessed with poise, meaning, apparently, I don't get rattled easily at the table. How this supposed gift differentiates me has never been clear. I get nervous like anybody, but when I'm nervous I just keep muddling along. What else is there to do?
Allentown is where I sadly discovered what feeling rattled at the bridge table is all about.
Tom is a nice, down-to-earth guy. He doesn't play professionally - he has a full-time business managing other people's money, which makes his achievement even more extraordinary. District 4 has only nine living Grand Life Masters. Seven of
these distinguished players are in Unit 141. You don't just need 10,000 masterpoints in all the various colors to earn the title Grand. You also have to win something really big, like an
open national event. Tom's win, we learned while planning convention cards over lunch before our first event, was in a Truscott Senior Swiss, playing with teammates Rick Rowland, Ken Cohen, and Neal Satten at the 2010 Summer Nationals in New Orleans.
John and I had brought our favorite convention cards, as requested. (Recklessly, I'd decided to show off by bringing the one I play with John, because it has the most sophisticated stuff on it.) Tom's system for going over my card turned out to be basically checking to make sure I could actually bid the conventions I claimed I knew. This impromptu pop-quiz led to second thoughts on my part. I warned Tom I still haven't screwed up Lebensohl enough to feel like I own it. He decided we'd at least try, but refrained from teaching me anything new aside from one gadget, a response when partner has opened one of a minor: a splinter bid to a major at the three level showing shortness, opening hand or more, with five of opener's minor.
I dutifully penciled the new splinter in where it belongs while John went on deck for a long complicated discussion of four-way transfers, Kokish Relays and criss-cross inverted minors or something, during which time I basically checked out, attempting (futilely) to force down a few bites of my as-yet-untouched burger with melted blue cheese and jalapenos (a mistake), trying to drag the various responses to Puppet Stayman out of my memory reserves (reserves which, inexplicably, seemed to be veering off on an unexpected and downright inopportune bank holiday) and eventually giving up to stare out the window, wondering whose bright idea it was to inflict me on this nice, hopelessly brilliant guy. (John's idea? Thanks, John
.
) Suddenly we were leaving, in a bit of a hurry, and this is when I realized I'd (of course) missed the part where I was supposed to chip in on the bill.
John kibitzed Tom while I sat West; my comfort seat. Our first board turned out to be a penny-dropping moment: my first defining lesson on the Forcing Pass.
North passed, Tom opened a club, and South passed. Carefully counting and recounting my high card points, I offered a heart, hoping Tom would rebid INT so I could relax and let him play the hand. North took this opportunity to stick in a spade bid, at which point Tom jumped to 3S.
I was quite proud of myself for recognizing the splinter and alerting it, and became a little indignant when South raised to 4S. I gave myself an extra point for my 5-card diamond suit, added my 10 to Tom's known 19 or more, figuring I'd likely win the second spade trick, and raised to 5H. Without even taking a breath, Tom slapped down 6H. I was like, Wow.
A diamond was led, the dummy came down, and, well, you can see my problem.
Here's what Tom explained later: With my decent but not stellar values, what I should have done is the Forcing Pass, leaving the decision to double or raise up to him. My 5H bid signaled a much stronger hand than I actually had - a void, maybe, since he had most of the controls. Thus the slam.
There's nowhere to put Forcing Pass on a convention card. We're all supposed to know it, but it is an actual system, not particularly well understood in the intermediate circles I usually travel. When the hand belongs to you and your partner and the opponents steal it, they cannot play undoubled. So either Tom or I had to take some kind of action, and what we each chose to do would give more specific information about our hands.
Some of my usual partners (no names) get timid and are likely to surrender at face-offs like this. I've developed the bad habit of taking matters into my own hands: I'll raise or double myself unless I'm super-minimal, rather than risk having my partner lie down and die. (I am now making it my mission to end this
confusion
with a good handout.) But, with a precise partner like Tom, you push a certain button, and you get slam, and that's that.
I managed to only go down one, which was an accomplishment, but I wouldn't know that till I looked at the hand records later. I was beginning to feel an unfamiliar sensation - shortness of breath, and a vague emptiness in my stomach. Little foreign objects were scampering around in there, decidedly unfriendly, randomly jabbing me from the inside. Was it the jalapenos in the burger? Not exactly. I was pretty sure I'd finally lost my famous poise. I was
r
attled
.
Board 22: Tom passed, South passed. I had opening hand and a 4-card spade suit, meaning I was likely to be declarer again.
Darn.
I bid a diamond. North, probably sensing my unstable condition, threw in 2 diamonds, just to be nasty.
Okay, that's Michael's Cue bid
, I told myself, trying hard to breathe.
North has both majors.
Tom then bid 3 diamonds, which sort of threw me. He was clearly telling me something, but I was drawing a blank. Did this have something to do with that new splinter bid over a minor? Or was he suggesting I bid 3NT if I had both the majors stopped? And, if so, was I supposed to alert it?
Breathe!!
I stammered out a sort of half-cooked explanation to that effect under my breath, trailing off partway through when I realized no alert was necessary. South passed again. Cursing the abdominal jalapenos (evil little jackhammers) I tried 3NT, because I did have the majors stopped, after all. North passed, and then, Tom pulled a handful of something ominously substantial from the back of his bidding box.
No!!!!
I thought.
That's definitely not a pass card!!
4 hearts??!?
Mystified, trying to find the logic, I looked down at my own bids. This is when I realized that in the throes of rattlement, I'd pulled the wrong red. Using the
curvy
suit instead of the
pointy
one on my first bid, I'd opened one
heart
instead of one
diamond.
We were in game in hearts with a 2-4 fit.
Too late to claim mechanical error - that ship had sailed with Tom's first cuebid. Knowing from experience that Tom could be counted on to take all my bids at face value, I was definitely
not going to try to salvage this. Any further discussion and Mr. Grand would put me in a Grand Slam for sure.
I can't recall what was led or how the hand played - it's all a blur. I think the opponents, unable to figure me out (even
I couldn't figure me out at that point) may have offered some inadvertent gift, because I went down only 4, which is some kind of miracle. I do know that shortly after I gave up pulling trump, John began to snigger, which was most unhelpful.
Tom was decent, considering. I was actually a little flattered when he gave me my very own nickname: Hearts.
