Splinters Abound

This was my first time attending the regional in Greenville - strange because it's so close. I was pleasantly surprised at how well attended it was but I guess I shouldn't have been. Greenville is one of the nicest cities I've been to, particularly downtown, where the tournament was held.

David Coberly and I played in the A/X pairs Saturday and the field was stronger than I am used to seeing in the pair game. I guess that's mostly because there wasn't a full KO starting that day. Sunday we played the Swiss with the Sherwoods. I must say, I played some fine bridge both days on all but about 2 boards. David played well, too, with the exception of most of Saturday afternoon.

Part of the way through the evening session of the pair game, I thought we might win the event after having a 46.62% afternoon session, but we got several averages and one or two average-minuses in the last 3 rounds and only had a 61.33% the 2nd session.

Sunday was fun and had a doozy of matches after lunch. The team of Jerry Helms, Bill Wisdom, and the Joyces was the weakest of our final 3 matches, which we nearly blitzed. Then after being blitzed by the Fireman team including a pair of Poles and Seamon-ShannonCapp we got Meckwell, Allan Graves, and Curtis Cheek the last round. Somehow we came out with 15 out of 20 VP against them to win X and finish 4th in A.

Here is one of our team's worst boards of the day but a fascinating one.
Well, the actual hands aren't so important as the auction.

East	South	West	North
1♦	Pass	1♥	2♣
4♣	4♦	5♥	6♣
X	Pass	Pass	Pass

South, one of the Polish experts, got his lead directing bid of 4♦ in so we kind of knew that they were getting a diamond ruff at trick 1 against a heart contract. We were also off a spade trick so 6♥ shouldn't make. At the other table, south didn't make a lead directing 4♦ call and EW bid 6♥, which is ice, once the diamond ruff is avoided. North would never lead a diamond at trick one from Qxxx unless told to via a lead-directing bid or a lighner double, and I'm not sure lightner would apply to this auction anyway. The opponents had a 12 card club fit - partner had splintered in the suit I was void of! The only defensive tricks we had were the major suit aces so +200 at our table was the best we could do. However, -1430 at the other table was good for losign 15 imps. More hands to come soon.