Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Going back to the Nationals

So, I found a great flight/hotel deal so I'm gonna go back and spend another 3 days in Washington to play with Mila. yay!

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Washington NABC weekend 1

This past weekend I was in Washington DC for the Nationals with my parents. My mom doesn't play bridge but just likes going places when my dad and I play. It was actually a wonderful 4 day trip for us. The play at the bridge table left a lot to be desired. My dad and I failed to qualify for day 2 of the LM pairs, posting scores of 42% and 53% in the qualifying sessions Friday. Fortunately, we played 4 more sessions in regional pairs and increased every time up to 66% in the Sunday afternoon side game.

But, really, most of the fun in going to bridge tournaments is seeing the people, the midnight games, and seeing the city. Now, I've been to DC a few times before so I wasn't much into sightseeing, which is okay because with my tight schedule I didn't have much time for that. We got to have some nice food, sleep in, and really relax for a few days.

Sunday I ditched the parents to have dinner with some of my friends. I actually made plans separately to go to an Indian restaurant with Giorgia and Megan. I was glad I double-booked myself because I never found Megan after the afternoon session. So, Giorgia, Sean, and I went to one of the 3 Indian restaurants near the hotel. Later on, I found out that Megan was apparently in the same area looking for me but somehow missed me, probably becasue she and Patrick were fighting. Anyway, she came to an Indian restaurant, too, but picked the wrong one. It all worked out well. Then Sunday night Giorgia wants to know if I can fill in on her team on Monday morning. I am normally very much against 9am bridge games but when she said I would be playing with a female about my age, I couldn't resist. So I met Mila Sunday night and our results were fairly mediocre but we enjoyed playing together a lot. I had a flight to catch at 5pm or else I would have stayed to play and get to know her more, so maybe I'll get to play with her some other time, perhaps even next weekend if I can get a flight deal to come back to DC.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

July 4th Atlanta super sectional

So, I played with Coberly for the first time in over a year. 4 sessions at the Atlanta sectional. We didn't play very badly and he was behaving well for the most part, but I definitely remember why I quit playing with him. We had some okay results - low overalls in the A/X Swiss with the Sherwoods.

Since I moved out of atlanta 2 years ago, I guess I haven't realized that some of these youth bridge players have gotten good. Sean Gannon, Zandy Rizzo, Richard and Andrew Jeng, mainly. All of them I am told are close to being life masters already. I should make more of an effort to talk to them and be a good role model. I mean, as a slightly older and experienced junior player, I'm probably someone they look up to, at least as far as how to act as a bridge player. I want to set an example of a person with humbleness and interest in teaching others and spreading my knowledge. There are a lot of junior bridge players, whose names I'm not going to mention here, that are very arrogrant, don't want to teach anybody, and are simply annoying to be around at the bridge table. That's not good. Do they not care if there are any other people learning this game? Anyway, I don't want to see these up and coming youth players to become arrogant when they get better.