Jerry Clerkin (represented US in World Championship and won some NABCs): I knew Jerry and his brother Denny from my Bloomington IN days. This was before I became an ACBL life master. I had a few good hands against Jerry that showed him that I had a good bridge imagination, so he invited me to join his client team for two sectional tournaments. In Evansville, it was one day swiss team, so I did not get to play with him. Nonetheless, we played well enough that he invited us to play the next weekend in Indy.
The next weekend was a two-day swiss team in Indianapolis. The original plan was to have Jerry play with the client the first and last sessions, and my partner and I would play with her one session each. We were doing so well after the first, we stuck with the lineup. We won the first five matches, losing the last of the day, so we continued one more match the next day. That was another loss, so we switched to me playing with Jerry.
We lost our third straight when I did not recognize this situation properly. The auction went 2 S - 4
- P - ?, and I had the
A, a good fit for partner's hearts and a good hand. I thought this was Jerry treating me like a client - THIS is where I want to play. While he played the hand, he explained his bid, how I should have responded, and that he would have driven to the grand if I had cue bid. But he also said he understood my perspective, having only seen him playing with clients, but wanted to assure me that he would treat me as a partner. This was a great lesson for someone with only about 50 master points.
I think we won the rest of the way, but in a W/L format, it is hard to win the event with 3 losses.
The only other strong memory of the event had to do with the second loss. My partner and I were playing against one of the strongest pairs in central Indiana, and were having near perfect set. The only flaw was when I did not try for a grand slam that was biddable and on. That hand turned out to be the only push board, but even though we recognized that we were having a great set, about board 6 of 9, we both looked at each other, looked at the seat that had made all of the N-S decisions, and then looked to the other table. That was the seat the client was sitting in; and we realized that it did not matter how well we played, we were unlikely to win. Jerry was nice enough to say that we played great and (tongue-in-cheek) apologized for sitting in the wrong seat.
This event was also my first exposure to cheating. It was a peeking situation, but it also involved a player obviously leaning to see into the hand of the client - a woman who did not aggressively protect her hand from being viewed. Jerry came back to the table and said he thought about asking the director for a level; he wanted to find out why the one player's chair had such a pronounced tilt.
