Bridge

Once a year, Davenport College had a duplicate bridge tournament, with about 30 pairs competing. Although I was later to run this game, when I arrived at Yale I had never played a session of duplicate.

I decided to enter, partnered with one of my Farnam entrymates and fellow duplicate-virgin, Greg Thomas. One of the Farnam freshman counselors tried to give us tips on duplicate strategy, although in retrospect I realize he wasn’t much wiser than we were.

Greg and I used a now hopelessly outdated version of Goren, four-card majors and all. In fact, it was outdated then, but we didn’t know that. Nevertheless, when the tournament results were totaled up, Greg and I had come in second. This was greeted by everyone as a major accomplishment by mere freshmen, although as far as I can tell the only concrete result was that we now had the attention of a couple of upperclassmen – the pair who had won – who were happy to relieve us of a few dollars every week or two in a money game.

Senior year I learned that there was a campus-wide game, the first stage of something called the Intercollegiate Bridge Tournament. The winners on campus would go to a regional tournament, and the winners of the regionals would go on to a national tournament.

Tim Briney, my partner senior year, and I entered the campus tournament. We were now using a bidding system more sophisticated than the Goren I had played freshman year. Tim and I won the campus tournament, so a week or two later we were off to Worcester, Mass., for the regionals at Holy Cross. Our region consisted of New England and Eastern Canada, so the competition was tough.

At Holy Cross, we were surprised to see one of the pairs that had finished behind us in the qualifying tournament at Yale. It turned out that the top two pairs on campus moved on to the regional, a detail that had been irrelevant to us when we won the campus event. No matter. We had beat them once and we could beat them again.

After a long session of play, the scores were totaled. Damn! Tim and I were second by a hair. More than respectable, but not good enough to win that trip to the national tournament.

Who won? That second team from Yale! If one of you from that second team is reading this, please get in touch with me. I want to know how you did in the national tournament. I hope you won.