The 2018 Goldman Pairs in NYC

Steve Nellissen and I were regular partners from the late '80s through the early '90s. We could be found most Wednesday nights at the IMP pair game at the old Cavendish club on the East Side. Our highest NABC finish was 5-8 in the Spingold in Salt Lake City in 1988. Steve stopped playing as much after he and his wife Amy had their first daughter, and I went on to a succession of other partners.

Steve's children are now both out of college and he's started playing more, as well as teaching at The Bridge Table in Bergen County, a club Amy started and they now both run. Steve and I have been playing on BBO for a year or so in Jimmy Cayne's practice matches and we managed to win the Truscott BAM at the Kaplan Regional in December, though as teammates rather than partners.

We made a date to play in the Goldman Pairs in May. Started in 1929, this was for a time the most prestigious pair game in the country. Oswald Jacoby was a member of the winning pair in the inaugural event, apparently playing in his first duplicate.

Also playing in that 1929 Goldman were Johnny Rau and Billy Barrett. They caused a sensation with their use of what they termed "psychic bidding." The tactic remains controversial. Johnny became one of the ACBL's first life masters and was a regular on the Culbertson teams in the '30s. He retired from bridge in 1940 to concentrate on the insurance business. Rau returned to bridge in the mid-70s after a succesful insurance career. My early bridge mentor Richard Lessler introduced me to Johnny at the Oakland Bridge Center. We played a few club games and Regionals. As best I recall, though, he never psyched with me!

Steve and I got off to a rocky start in the Goldmans this year. Our opponents played better than we did on Saturday and we were lucky to finish 25th with 26 pairs qualifying. One thing I've learned over the years, though, is that one cannot win without reaching the final!

We played better on Sunday than we had on Saturday, and our opponents played worse. One of our good results in the morning session was

 10 9 K Q 7 6 9 A J 10 7 6 2

 Q 7 6 3 J 8 5 2 10 2 K 9 3

 J 4 2 10 9 3 K Q J 8 7 5 4

 A K 8 5 A 4 A 6 4 3 Q 8 5

Our auction (I was South):

N  E  S   W
1c 2d Dbl P
2H P  3d  P
3H P  6c

I could have probed further with 3S but 6c seemed the most likely spot for us so I blasted. I thought at the time that this was a routine result, but perhaps playing weak notrumps helped us. I knew Steve would not hold a balanced hand with 12-14 HCP. With the club king onside we scored all the tricks and 11 matchpoints on a 12 top.

We had a 60% game in the first session, 187 on a 256 top for anyone who remembers those! We also did well in the afternoon. I thought we'd be in the running in spite of a poor last board where we opened a weak NT and scored +90 with two or three spades cold our way in a 4-4 fit. When the scores were posted, though, we were second to Peter Trenka and Magnus Olafsson.

I didn't think much more about it but an hour later I got a call from Allen Kahn, one of our Spingold teammates from 1988. He asked whether we had noticed the scoring error during our round. We had not – it turned out that our two plusses had been scored as two minuses. We held most of the high cards and that gave us two zeros. Correcting the errors gave us an additional 9.5 matchpoints on an 11 top, enough to improve our session score to 65% and move us from second to first. Thanks for the game, Steve!