Long Island Regional

I just returned home from a 3 day trip to New York. I played 2 days at the Long Island Regional tournament but the bridge was really a small part of the trip. It was just an excuse to go to New York and visit Mila and Greig and just to see the city. Initially I had planned to play 3 days and not actually ever go to New York City, but that's kind of silly. So, Saturday was spent roaming the streets of Manhattan and meeting up with various people. Fun times. Anyway, this is a blog about bridge, so let's get to it.

I left home at 4am Friday morning to catch a 6:40 flight from Atlanta to Laguardia. yikes! The long day definitely took its toll on me as the last few rounds of the evening session I wasn't concentrating at all. It cost us dearly as Mila and I were doing really well and were in good shape to place in the top 3. But several concentration errors dropped us to 55% for the day and 2nd in B. Not too bad but not great either.

I've decided that my weakest part of my bridge game, by far, is playing against weak players. I have difficulty understanding how they bid and play the cards. I try to think what kind of hand I would have to bid or play the way others do, and against bad players, it doesn't work at all. There several examples of this, mostly from today's game, a bracketed round robin. By the way, if there are any tournament organizers reading, I dislike this event very much. It takes bracketing way too far. A/X and B/C and 299er is an appropriate amount of bracketing. I could go on about the types of events I prefer, but that'll wait until a future entry too. I'll get into it some specific hands later, when I have more time to write.