Winning Charleston!

I hope this awesome feeling of winning an entire regional never gets old. Last week, Sean and I had one of the most awesome regionals. We totaled 106 points in less than 1/3 of the tournament (we played 11+ out of 19 sessions) and very nearly won the open pairs 3 days in a row. Winter, my dog, would have really complained if we played mornings because that was her main time to run and play and get out of the hotel. Here's the official masterpoint list.

On the 3^rd day of open pairs, after having won the first 3, we posted a 65.6% in the afternoon and there was much buzz going on about us getting the hat trick. Has this been done before? Several people recalled back to back and things like 2 firsts and a third but not 3 first place finishes in a row. However, our 55.8% in the evening wasn’t quite good enough. Once that that streak was over, we switched to teams. Barry Harper and Fay Teal accomplished the 1-1-2 feat in this tournament as well, winning the 2 open pair games we did not play in, although they had a low overall in the middle of that.

We cruised through the first 3 rounds of the Sun-Mon bracket 1 KO with Spencer and Andrew Hurd to face the Randy-Kay Joyce, Tom Rutledge-Bill Wisdom, Ellen Allen-Richard Guarneri in the final. Up 20 at the half and having gone down in a low percentage but makeable 4♥ and having 8 fairly flat boards in the 2^nd half, Sean faced this problem (hands rotated to make Sean south).

Dealer: S Vul: NS			Asbury ♠ AJx ♥ JTx ♦ AQTx ♣ Kxx
			Gannon ♠ KQx ♥ Q ♦ KJxxxx ♣ A8x
	South	West		North	East
	1♦	1♥		2♥	4♥
	5♦	Pass		6♦	Pass
	Pass	Pass

1♦ is a variation of Fantunes – 4+ diamonds and 14+ hcp unless 4441, in which case it could be as light as 11. I think that makes my raise to 6♦ appropriate. Sean could easily be void of hearts or have the ♣Q instead of ♥Q, making 6♦ cold.

West led the ♥K and shifted to the ♣Q. Sean won the K, ran 6 diamonds and 3 spades, coming to this ending with the last spade to be played.

Dealer: E Vul: EW	North ♠ A ♥ J ♦ ♣ x
West ♠ ♥ A ♦ ♣ JT		East ♠ x ♥ x ♦ ♣ x
	South ♠ J ♥ ♦ ♣ A8

West was caught in a criss cross squeeze – he must hold the ♥A to prevent dummy’s J from being good but parting with a club allows Sean to cross back to the ♣A and cash the 8 at trick 13. At the other table, they stopped in game so 25 imps were at stake here and our margin of victory was 15.