Author Eric Hendrickson, far right, with partner Paul Gutterman far left, and teammates Andy Caranicas and Richard Lawson, middle, following their 2010 GNT Flight B win
Eric Hendrickson sent me an interesting article the other day. When it comes to masterpoints, most people keep track of their life time total, or how many they win in a year, or at the club and so forth. Eric, however, introduced me to a new twist; he calculates how many masterpoints he has earned in his partnerships!
For this latter method of counting, Eric focuses on his long time partnership with Paul Gutterman. This is a fun read, chock full of lots of stats - plus comments about how to do your best long term with one partner.
Congratulations to Eric and Paul for reaching the big 1,000 - for their 2010 win with long time teammates Andy Caranicas and Richard Lawson in the Grand Nationals teams - and for great attitudes overall!
Here's to successful partnerships - and - Here's Eric!
1,000 and Counting
The accumulation of 1,000 masterpoints is for some partnerships an inconsequential achievement that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far away. Partnerships such as Sharon and Roger Anderson or Judy and Phil Schwarz (let's not even discuss Meckwell!) likely hit this milestone decades ago. Nonetheless, in the Minneapolis area there aren't that many partnerships (perhaps Dennis Cerkvenik and Bill Voedisch?) that have survived or been successful enough to grind their way to this quadruple-digit height. Moreover, this number constitutes more than 1/3 of my total MPs and so it seems like a lofty achievement to me.
With that in mind I felt like it was my obligation as a dutiful partner to acknowledge that at the end of December, 2017 Paul Gutterman and I — after a 7-year "ordeal" — finally managed to accumulate our 1,000+ masterpoint. Since my next most successful partnership (John Stansbury) is some 780 MPs in arrears of this number I thought that in addition to my personal appreciation, a public appreciation of Paul was warranted.
I have lived in Minneapolis for 16 years. Anybody who has played with me over that interval knows that I keep an on-going Excel spread sheet of every hand I've ever played with all my partners. So, with that in mind, as Joe Friday was wont to say, "The facts, ma'am; just the facts":
Paul & I played out first session of bridge on December 1, 2009 and scratched with an auspicious 59.9% game @ the TCBC. Since then, we've logged another 545 sessions (that's about 70 sessions/year). Obviously, we haven't scratched every session (our nadir was a 37.0% effort at a 2011 Gopher pairs event; our pinnacle a 70.7% effort at the TCBC in 2016), but nonetheless we have averaged a fairly robust 1.84 MPs per session. This includes 8 platinum, 495 gold, 101 red, 152 silver, 242 black and 8 e-points (we do not play on-line much!). Impressively, I believe, we've found success in many different formats: we've won 45 of 75 KO matches; 223 of 363 Swiss matches (averaging 58.6% of all the VPs), and 226 of 410 BAM matches (55.1% average). It is probably also important to note that Paul and I have been blessed in this team format success by having had Andy Caranicas and Richard Lawson as teammates for many of these matches; with my personal favorite being our national 2010 GNT "B" win.
At matchpoints, which I think is the most difficult bridge format, Paul and I have averaged over 229 sessions a very respectable 55.0%, which includes declaring 4,223 hands at a 57% clip and defending 4,197 hands at a 53% rate. Paul's only black eye is that he is a hand-hog; of the 4,223 hands that we've declared, I've only declared 1,995 of them while Paul has declared 2,228. This egregious breach of partnership etiquette is alas, more than compensated for by the fact that Paul is simply a better declarer than I am. Our 57% average is a compilation of me declaring at 56% and Paul at 58%. Sigh.
For a partnership to endure and flourish for 7 years, the players need to be of a similar temperament, especially when the wheels come off the wagon as they are so oft wont to do at bridge. In this regard, Paul and I have complemented each other well. With full-time jobs and families, neither one of us has the time to really take our game to the next level. But we're quite competitive and so we've both striven to play as well as we can without embarrassing ourselves. Moreover, except for a singular occurrence at the Nationals in Louisville in 2011 when I melted down after Paul got a cue bidding sequence incorrect (I felt so badly about my behavior, I bought him dinner afterwards), we've had almost no grumpy interactions. As a consequence, we can usually use the disasters as learning experiences and this has, in the long run, greatly solidified our partnership. I believe this, "I know you are doing the best you can" belief/philosophy is also the emotional glue that has kept our team (Paul, myself, Andy and Richard) together for so many years and through so many events.
So, I'd like to close by thanking Paul (and Andy and Richard) for putting up with me for all these years and to say that I'm very much looking forward to racking up the next 1,000 masterpoints. See you at the tables.