September 2020 - 15

Stuart. In the third quarter, Stuart and
Strasberg played.
We arrived as an unheralded team,
but we did have something of an entourage. The Weis came and had a beautiful suite in the hotel where Kathie acted
as a hostess and a bit of a coach, and
we would spend time there between and
after sessions.
We won two matches to get to the
round of 32, where we met up with a
team from St. Louis. They were a squad
of well-established players, including
a very young Ron Smith, who became
a star in the bridge world. This was the
first good team we faced, but we managed to beat them quite handily, and
found ourselves in the round of 16, to
our amazement.
Then things got real! We were paired
against the No. 2 seed featuring Eric
Murray and Sami Kehela - far and away
the best pair from Canada - Edgar Kaplan and Norman Kay, who had dominated American bridge for decades, and
a third terrific pair, George Rapee (the
inventor of the Stayman convention) and
Sidney Lazard. This was imposing.
With the aid of the following deal, with
a great guess by Joel, we had an excellent first half and built up a lead of 50
IMPs:

Dlr: West ♠ A Q 5
Vul: None ♥ A Q 8 3 2
♦J72
♣A4
♠ 10 8 7 3
♠J9
♥97
♥ K 10 4
♦Q85
♦9643
♣ Q 10 6 5
♣9832
♠K642
♥J65
♦ A K 10
♣KJ7
West North
Lazard Weichsel
Pass
1♣(1)
Pass
3♥
Pass
3NT
Pass
4♠
Pass
5♠
All Pass

East
Rapee
Pass
Pass
Pass
Pass
Pass

(1) Strong, artificial, 17+
(2) Natural, 15+

South
Stuart
2NT(2)
3♠
4♦
4NT
6NT

After the strong-club start,
Stuart and Weichsel had an
essentially natural auction to
6NT.
Lazard, West, led a low
spade, which Stuart rode to
the king in order to take the
heart finesse right away. Dummy's queen lost to the king,
and East, Rapee, got out with
a diamond. This likely caused
Stuart to suspect that the ♦Q
was on his left, so he rose with
the ace, cashed the ♦K and
the ♠A Q, and then ran the
hearts, creating this end position:

♠ 10
♥-
♦Q
♣ Q 10 6

♠-
♥83
♦J
♣A4

♠6
♥-
♦ 10
♣KJ7

♠-
♥-
♦93
♣983

On the ♥8, declarer pitched the
♦10, and West was forced to let go of
a low club. When the final heart was
played, South and West both pitched
spades. Guessing that West had been
squeezed, declarer played the ♣A K,
dropping the queen offside. This was
an 11-IMP pickup when Kay and Kaplan stopped in 3NT at the other table.
Up 43 IMPs going into the last set,
the Precision quintet held on through a
rough fourth quarter to win by 17. They
had made it to the quarterfinal, but
they were in a state of disbelief.
Their next opponent was the West
Coast powerhouse consisting of Paul
Soloway-John Swanson and Kyle
Larsen-Ron Von der Porten.
I started the match with Joel who, as I
said, is a very good player ... until adversity strikes. For some unknown reason,
when things started to go bad for us, he
really couldn't seem to recover, which is
exactly what happened against Kyle and
Ron.

Weichsel, 1972
After a mistake or two, causing bad results, Joel completely lost it. We had the
worst game I've ever had. I thought we
were down about 75 and the dream had
evaporated. When our teammates came
out smiling, I was hoping it wasn't quite
as bad as I had assumed. 'We're down
100,' I said. "We're good," Steve said.
"We got crushed," I said. "We're good,"
David emphasized. After a couple more
apologies, we compared and found
ourselves down only 36. I was delirious -
the match wasn't over.
I played the second quarter with Tom
against Soloway and Swanson. We were
doing pretty well until a hand that I don't
feel all that comfortable about bringing
up, but I am, just to put into perspective that we were not all that great. l had
something like:
♠A x x ♥J x x x x x ♦Q x x ♣x.
Tom opened 1♦, limited, and which
could be short in our system, and Soloway bid 2♠. I passed, Swanson passed,
and Tom doubled for takeout. So I bid
4♥, which seemed pretty reasonable.
But then Swanson doubled. All pass.
Tom sheepishly put the dummy down
with a stiff heart. We all looked in amazement at the dummy, as I went for 1100.
Because Tom is now deceased, I don't
feel too guilty about writing this. Tom
knew way better than that, but his mind
had simply left his body on that deal.
Despite this catastrophe, we picked
up 7 IMPs in the set and were down 29
IMPs at the half.
"I went back to our room and just
collapsed on the bed. After a few hours
of rest, feeling totally invigorated, I went
back to battle. Joel had also recovered,
and we had a very good game. We were
down only 5 IMPs going into the final
quarter. Now, momentum was really
on our side. They were feeling the
September 2020 Bridge Bulletin

September 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of September 2020