It’s the ace of spades that traveled 6.6 million miles.
As reported in the Daily Bulletin from the Spring North American Bridge Championships in Houston last month, astronaut Greg Johnson took an ace of spades from an official American Contract Bridge League deck of cards into space last year when he was on a 16-day trip aboard the space shuttle Endeavor that orbited the earth 250 times.
Astronauts are allowed to carry 10 personal items on shuttle flights, and that ace of spades was one of them.
At the Houston tournament, Johnson presented the card and a certificate of authenticity to ACBL president Jerry Fleming and CEO Jay Baum and made reference to the League as an organization “that has influenced me and been a big part of my life.”
Johnson started playing duplicate bridge in 1989 while in the Air Force and became a Life Master in 2002. He’d like to play more bridge, but flying into space takes up a lot of time.
Johnson noted that he wanted to take an entire deck of cards, but NASA authorities said that would count as 52 items — too many. Aw, come on. Presumably it’s a matter of weight. Would a bowling ball count as one item?
And speaking of astronauts and bridge players, the 1960s series “Outer Limits” had astronauts landing on Mars at the beginning of one episode. You would think someone might have been manning the controls or least looking out the window for the view, but no, the astronauts were playing bridge. Adam West of “Batman” fame was going down in his contract, apparently no better a bridge player than an actor.
And in about the third time around (second remake) of “Invasion of the Bodysnatchers,” some of the pod people are seen playing bridge.
We’ll skip the punch line.
Anatomy of a big win.
Denver’s bridge tournament last month tallied up the best spring attendance in many years at over 500 tables. And Bill Allegar of Denver, Don Vancil of Aurora, Allen Kane of Pueblo West and En Hay of Littleton ran up a juggernaut win in the top division of the double session Stratiflighted Swiss Teams.
Their winning total of 123 out of a possible 140 victory points was one of the biggest Swiss wins in years, but there were a lot of statistical oddities in play.
The Allegar team actually lapped the field (ahead by more than one full match or 20 victory points) by the end of the fourth of seven rounds, virtually unheard of. Their final margin of victory was a whopping 27 victory points. The distant second place team finished with 96.
Going into the final round they had beaten so many other teams in contention that the closest match they could get was a team 38 victory points behind (though still a strong team), with 68 to the Allegar team’s 106. They were so far ahead they could have gone down 1700 on every hand at both tables the last match and still won. But they won their last match handily as well.
Interestingly, in the lower B-C-D division, the winning team also lapped the field by the end of Round 6 and went on to win. Victors were John Clough of Littleton, Karen Renne of Boulder, Donald Patterson of Steamboat Springs and Julie Clark of Aurora.
Sometimes championships are close and sometimes somebody runs away with it.
