Nauseating Bridge Quotes: Roger Abelson

ROGER ABELSON: (cross-referenced to Larry Edwards, Mike Levinson, Tony Rosenstein and Allan Stauber)

NS Vul. Board-a-match teams. The players:

S (Unknown), W (Stauber), N (Abelson), E (Rosenstein)

S: 1♣ (strong & artificial)

W (Stauber): Skip bid, 2♥ . (This occurred before bidding boxes were in common use.)

N (Abelson): What’s that?

E (Rosenstein): Preemptive, of course.

N (Abelson): Yeah, BUT IN WHAT SUIT?!!

For some reason, play was allowed to continue after this rather unauthorized question and information! — Perhaps in case Rosenstein and I would do better that way. Abelson and partner got to 4♥ , making 6. At the other table, our teammates bid and made 6H. WIN!

(I had a whole bunch of clubs in with my heart. Apparently I had mis-sorted my hand yet again! ☺ )

P.S., PPS, PPPS, etc. re Abelson (I have no idea why P.S. usually has periods and the others don’t. English lingo ain’t never made no sense to me.):

1. Abelson and Larry (self-nicknamed “The Queen of Spades”) Edwards had the best fight I have ever seen at a bridge game, although I was probably 50 feet from ringside. At the NY Hilton, they literally were tossing each other on the tables! Their combined weight (not to mention their individual weights!) was too much for some of them and they collapsed! I believe that this was the first match ever held by the World Wrestling Federation. Incidentally, I also had a good seat (although once again, not at ringside) for a Larry Edwards fight at a Poughkeepsie, NY Sectional.

2. One time I didn’t have a partner ahead of time, so I played with Abelson in a pair game at a NY Hilton tourney. He actually was a decent player, but rather “unusual” or psycho, even for bridge players. In the afternoon, we had 190 on a 156 average, for a section top. At night, he kept splashing water on his face to stay awake. Finally, he actually fell asleep at the table! At least that shut him up. We had 122, a section bottom. Our 312 was exactly average for the day! This parley of a section top, section bottom, and exact average for the day is a truly rare bridge “achievement”, and even “more rarer” for large sections (13+ tables).

3. At some point, Abelson was rumored to have piled up a big debt with the Mafia, and skipped out of NYC to California!

4. In the 1980’s he won a National Life Master Men’s Pairs with Mike (Eagle Eye) Levinson who was virtually blind. They had the lowest winning percentage that I ever saw in a National pair event. On a 325/final session average, they had a TOTAL of something like 787 that included their carryover. A 60% game for the day would be 780. That is before carryover is added to the score. Of course, that would vary from about zero to probably at least 60-70 matchpoints & possibly as many as 100 for the leading pair.)