Reno!

The Reno NABC last month was in some ways great but in many ways a disappointment. The town and general atmosphere was kind of trashy. I played with 3 partners over 6 days, which is more variety than I like. I had never played with two of them before, and never played with Emory at an NABC. I was honestly happy playing with Emory, Mike, and Jessica, but the results weren’t as hot as they should have been.

The first two days with Jessica were pretty solid bridge except for two major flyers each session where one or both of us just totally screwed up a board. That led to four straight 53% games and a low overall place in the mixed pairs. Respectable, but we both thought we had a pretty good shot at winning. However, this event was unwinnable thanks to Jenni and Greg’s ridiculousness. Next year.

The next two days with Emory the expectations were a good bit lower, largely because the Silodor is noticeably stronger competition than the mixed. However, we didn’t make day two. The theme here was me not getting my diamond ruffs and other defensive blunders. We rebounded with a couple of pretty good sessions in the “consolation” regional pairs.

The final two days were maybe the most disappointing as Mike McNamara and I didn’t Q for day two of the Swiss. The theme with him was declarer play problems that we didn’t get right. I had several tough problems and got kind of screwed by the opponents on a few of them as it’s hard to get tough problems right when the opponents don’t have what they should have for their bids. As with Emory, we rebounded with a nice finish in the consolation regional Swiss.

I expect it won’t be the last time playing with these new partners.

Preparing for the Atlanta NABC

So, the NABC is coming up in a few days in Atlanta. For me it will be very different experience from previous NABCs, mostly because it's kind of at home and partly because of what I'll be playing in and with whom I'll be playing.

When flying to an NABC there are very few logistical issues because there isn't really a choice - you must fly, you must stay at a hotel downtown, you can't bring your pet. When the NABC is in your home town, there also isn't really a choice - you're staying at home. When the NABC is this in-between distance of 95 miles away from home, there are several logistical options, and I can't decide what to do:

a) Take Winter and staying at a cheap suburban hotel, not unlike what I do for regionals in the district. With the 10 & 3 start times, that would effectively make it similar to my regular lifestyle, only with a much more interesting "work day" and incentives to go out late night.
b) Commute from home. It's about a 1.5 hour drive as long as traffic is okay.
c) Treat this like most NABCs by leaving Winter with my parents or in a kennel while I go all out playing bridge, socializing, eating, and drinking.

The 10 and 3 start times are particularly draining because bedtime doesn't really change. I won't be able to resist going to bars or playing midnight games if I am in the area, so if I leave Winter home alone, I'll be forced to drive home right after the game and no longer be in the area. Basically, this schedule just means we have 4 extra hours after the bridge game to drink and 3 fewer hours to sleep in the morning. This logic is urging me to go with option b, at least for part of the time, even though I know that is not a very practical plan. I kind of wanted to boycott the tournament to express my displeasure with the start times but it's just too damn convenient, and furlough Fridays mean I can play 6 days without using any vacation.

So, I'm playing mid-bracket regional knockouts the first Friday-Sunday. That'll be a possibly welcome big change of pace from the stressful top bracket knockouts I've been playing a lot of in the last couple of months. Monday I'm going into the office before coming back to play the last 6 days with Cristal in NABC events. Good teammates for the Mixed BAM and Open Swiss would be appreciated.

Last time the NABC was in Atlanta in 2005, I had a summer job working on updating the software for a flooring company just outside Atlanta while also working as a teaching assistant at GT. I lived in Buckhead across the street from a Marta station so commuting to the tournament was really easy. Life was pretty awesome. However, I wasn't a particularly competitive bridge player. Being a regular college kid was too appealing.

I think I played a couple of days but I don't remember with whom or anything like that. I do, however, remember going to the awesome Swichfoot concert with Amanda instead of playing bridge one of the Saturdays during the tournament. I had my priorities straight back then. Well, I still have priorities in the same order today - there are just fewer non-bridge opportunities.

8 Ever, 9 Never - LM Pairs Semi-Final

If I blindly followed the 8 ever 9 never rule, I would have never gone down 7, and would have almost certainly made the third day of the LM pairs, and wouldn't have this cool story about how my play from dummy at trick 3 was a 7 trick swing. If you pay attention to me on Facebook, you've probably already seen this.

At favorable vulnerability against Hampson and Greco, I picked up
ATx, AJxxx, QJxx, Kx.
It went P-3S to me. Pass I think is the correct call here (and I even thought so at the time) but I bid 3NT anyway. In dummy I found
xx, KTxx, Axxx, Jx.

We have a heart fit but 4H is still almost sure to go down while 3NT can make. If I pick up hearts for no losers and diamonds split with the K onside there are 9 easy tricks and even if LHO has 4 diamonds, it will become a fairly easy endplay with Hampson having to give me a club at the end. So after the S9 lead, I pondered at trick 1 for a minute or so before playing both major suit aces and then a heart to the ten. Greco took his Q and 6 spades and Hampson then ran his clubs for down 7 and -350.

Since I'm going to need the DK onside anyway to make, it is probably better to work on that suit first. I would find that the preemptor had a singleton diamond and then I would be much better positioned to get hearts right. -350 was worth 1.5 matchpoints while +400 would have been 86 on a 90 top.

Against the other top seed we played on Saturday (Bob Hamman and Justin Lall), they bid aggressively and went down a couple in a bad 4H contract and then I picked off their spade fit by overcalling with a 12 count and 4 decent spades instead of passing or doubling. That got us -430 instead of -450 and another good score but not enough to overcome all of the less than stellar things we did.

Philadelphia is a very nice city and I would like to have stayed longer but I have used enough vacation this summer and I don't think I could handle the 10 and 3 start times much longer.

Seattle NABC

While many people are just getting into the swing of things at the fall NABC I am on my way back home after 3+ days there. Richard Popper and I started with a good session in the Nail LM Pairs and ended with a great session in the consolation (regional A/X pairs). Unfortunately the two middle sessions were pretty terrible, on both our parts as well as luck. Additionally I scratched with my dad in 2 side games. Strangely, in this my 16th NABC, it is the first one in which I played in no midnight games. Drinking with Mikey and Alli won out one night and kibitzing/wandering around aimlessly won out the other night.

My favorite part of the tournament was certainly our round against Curtis Cheek and Lynn Deas in the LM pairs. We collected 47 out of 50 matchpoints against them. Here is first deal against them (board 9 Friday afternoon):

x
JT9x
Axxx
AKxx

AQx
Qx
KQJx
xxxx
 
I opened 1D and wound up in 3NT after Curtis on my left overcalled 1S and was raised. He led away from the SK at trick 1, which gives me trick #8. Trick 9 would have to come from either clubs or hearts. At first it seems that I would have to rely on clubs splitting 3-2 since there isn't adequate time to set up a heart. However, I ran diamonds immediately to see if there would be any interesting discards. Sure enough, Curtis ditched a heart and a spade.

This allowed me to be able to set up a heart trick and lose only 2 spades abs 2 hearts, assuming spades were originally 5-4 as had been indicated. A club pitch from his initial holding of QJxx would have allowed me to set up a 3rd trick easily but had he pitched both of his hearts, I probably would have gone down as relying on a good club split would be the only reasonable option.
 
Popper and I ran into a couple of situations where we were not on the same page on auctions that cost us dearly. 1NT-2C-X-3C; 3D-P-3H sounds like Smolen to me, and the continuation P-3NT-P-4S sounds like responder is 6-4. Of course, I could have just bid 4S over 3D as that cannot be misinterpreted - it could just wrong side the contract. 1S-P-2S-X; 4S-4NT-P-5D; P. Is this a forcing pass situation? I think so but I suppose there is a good argument for it being not forcing since 4S could be based on a more preemptive hand with playing strength but not much defense.

Mini-Spingold (under 5000)

I must say I am impressed with the competition in the mini-Spingold so far. It's clearly a tougher field than I thought it would be. The Whipple team, the heavy favorites to win, just squeaked through day 1 and lost in day 2. Our team, who I had high expectations for, narrowly lost in day 2 as well. The Lewis team including David Sokolow beat us by 17 and beat the lavee team (including a world champion and some other low-level pros) by 73 today. We had an incredibly fun match against them. Needless to say I am rooting for them to make it to the finals.

The other team I hope makes it to the finals is the Dezieck team (including my 4 new favorite bridge people Shaz Taslimi, Nicholas Smith, Alex Dezieck, and Josh Parks). They surprised a lot of people making it to the quarterfinals free beating the team that clobbered Alli Howard and Scott Stearns yesterday.

The results from the mini Spingold and all of NABC can be found at http://www.acbl.org/nabc/index.php?a=2011&b=Summer&c=daily_bulletins

I guess I'm playing the nabc fast pairs tomorrow and Friday. Sean and I will be doing something we've never done together before - play 2/1.

Crepes

Crepes are awesome. I wish more places in the US served them. I think I might wind up going to the crepe cafe more then chipotle while here in toronto.

I'm feeling weird for a few reasons but Toronto has been super nice. We didn't make the first cut of the open life master pairs so entered a KO with Cristal and Max and lost in the final in extra innings.

Here was the most awesome hand. You have K65432, -, A, AKT9xx. Partner opens 2C showing 11-16 with 4+ clubs, possibly with a longer major. I couldn't figure out how to exclusion in hearts but when I asked for more information, p bid 2H showing 5hearts and 4+ clubs: big surprise. At that point I bid minorwood and signed off in 6C when p showed 1. It was frigid. At the other table, they opened 1H and my hand bid 1S which was raised. At his point the opp in my seat jumped to 6S. Thankfully QT9x was offside so out gtesmmates got 2 trump tricks for win 14.
Tomorrow starts the spingold and we actually have high hopes. I'm sleepy.
Sent from my iPhone

Cancelling a 2/1 Game Force

Now that I have completed my service work for the summer, I feel justified in going to spend 10 days goofing off, sightseeing, drinking, but mostly playing some serious bridge in Toronto. Go here first and here next to read about my experiences as a volunteer and crew leader for the River of Life service project last week.

I head out Thursday afternoon to Toronto via bus from Macon to the Atlanta airport, flight to Buffalo, and then a bus to Toronto, and return home 10 days later. If all goes well, I'll be playing bridge 9 days straight in main events with Sean. If things don't go quite so great, I'm sure I'll find plenty of fun things to get into.

I did get to play bridge twice last week and at least one interesting question arose. We all know that you should have 26 points to bid major suit and NT games but 29 to bid minor suit games simply because you need 11 tricks instead of 10 or 9. So, when an auction starts 1H-2C and you eventually decide you can’t play 3NT and don’t have a major suit fit, can you cancel the game-forcing part of the 2C response? I mean, theoretically, you need some extra values for bidding 5C to be right so there should be some invitational bid even after you've game-forced. A minimum opening opposite a minimum game force is only about 25 points but it seems that most people nowadays say you have to go ahead and bid 5C because they prefer to use a 4m bid to be roman key card blackwood.

1H-2C; 2D-3C; 3D is the start of a sequence in question. Perhaps the only way to stop in 4C should be for responder to bid 3S over 3D (basically asking for a spade stopper) and opener retreat to 4C (with no spade stopper and no extras). But even then, there are a significant number of people who think 4C should be stronger than 5C. Does the game-before-slam principle apply here or are we in a slam try auction whether we want to be or not? If responder bids 4C over 3D, is that forcing or invitational? If we’ve determined that 4C in either auction is forcing, is it Minorwood or not? So that you don't have a misunderstanding, unless you have a chance to discuss all the little variations of sequences that lead to a 4C bid, it is probably best to treat a 2/1 as a game force without exception and a 4m bid as minorwood anytime you are in a game force.

Getting to the Spring NABC in Louisville

I’ll be at the Spring 2011 NABC for a little over 3 days this spring – enough time to play the IMP pairs and a couple of midnight game with Sean Friday and Saturday March 11-12, maybe a couple of midnight games, and then do who knows what on Sunday. When I started looking into travel to the Spring NABC in Louisville, initially it looked like Delta was the only airline flying from Atlanta to Louisville, and therefore could get away with charging way more than what I think the 322 mile flight should cost. At that time it was around $340 and today Delta.com is trying to charge $600 for a round trip March 10-14. But then I ran across Vision Airlines and I only found them because there was an article in the Macon newspaper about them reviving commercial flights out of Macon (to Destin, FL this time).

Anyway, I was able to book a Vision Airlines flight for $120 for Mar 10-14. I had also tentatively booked a room at the Econo Lodge about 6 blocks from the Galt House where the NABC will be held. However, I’ve still been trying priceline to see if I could get a better deal and maybe a nicer place. Today, I put in $71 for 4 nights at a 3+ star hotel in downtown Louisville and it gave me the Galt House. With taxes, that’s only about $86/night. Of course, there’s the drawback that the reservation is non-refundable and you can’t be guaranteed a particular type of room.

So, if you’re still trying to plan how to get to the NABC in a couple of weeks, check out Vision Airlines (if you’re from near ATL) and priceline.

Time to Leave New Orleans

10 days at a bridge tournament is a long time. 24 sessions over 9 days: 5 with dad, 16 with Sean, 1 with Angie, 1 with Emily Shen, and 1 with Cappelletti Jr. While it has all been fun, in the last couple of days, people have finally started to annoy me. I'm glad Bryan came and hung out a lot on Saturday. It's really been a big party for me, how it is supposed to be.

It's after 6am this time and I didn't even drink tonight, the last night here, yet I am wide awake. It'll be hard getting back to a normal life. I am ready for this to be over but I also now most looking forward to the Atlanta regional in 4 weeks for this-light. The last day at a tournament is never fun as the inevitability of going home and being bored again looms heavily. 

I'm disappointed about how we finished in the fast pairs. I apparently suck at estimating scores in national events. We had scores of 59%, 51%, 48%, and 45% while I estimated 60, 56, 64, and 38. Way off, especially on the second day. Apparently, the 5 zeroes that we got in the first 6 boards weren't nearly zeroes and we still had a decent shot to place reasonably high if I had played the rest of the session well, but I was certainly on tilt and not getting rewarded for it after the unlucky start. In the second day of the Wernher, my estimates were equally off as well. What does this mean, if anything?

Swiss Team Success

We're not talking about the first 3 sessions of bridge at the San Diego NABC: 2 slightly below average sessions in the LM Pairs and losing by 1 imp in bracket 2 of a KO. The last 3 sessions, however, were pretty memorable and competition was much much weaker. Sean and I won the Saturday night side game and had 2 below average boards for the session. On one, we didn't bid a cold 4S with 14 opposite 9 hcp and nothing special in distribution. The other bad board was when Sean preempted 3D with AKQxxx and out, doubled and down 3. We got 1.5 out of 22 matchpoints on those two but bridge was easy otherwise despite consuming large amounts of rum throughout the session.

Sunday we played Swiss Teams with Giorgia and her partner. It got off to a very gloomy start, not unlike the last time Sean and I played in a Swiss game together with Megan and Patrick in Athens.

Board 1 was boring but on board 2 I picked up at none vulnerable: x, JT8xx, x, AKJxxx. I opened 1H, promising 4 and the auction proceeds 1S - X (3 card H support) - 2H; 4H - 4S - P - P; 5H - P - P - X; all pass. Probably not the best bidding in the world but I really thought 5H would be a good save over 4S. And it would have been good if I had just played for down 3. I got tapped out and lost trump control when I tried to draw a 2nd round of trumps. If I just play for hearts to split 4-1 and start running the clubs after the first round of trumps, I can never lose more than 3 hearts, a spade, and a diamond. But I was greedy trying to go down only 1 or 2 and wound up down going down 5 for -1100 against +420 at the other table. In matchpoints it's right to play a second trump as down 2 would be close to a top while down 3 or more would be basically a 0. But in imps, down 3 is only a 2 imp loss compared to a 3 imp gain for down 2 while down 5 as we saw was -12 imps.

On our third board, I picked up ATxx, x, xxx, AT9xx at favorable vulnerability. Partner opened a big club, rho bid 1S and I passed showing 0-7hcp or a trap pass. Partner, obligated to reopen with a double with almost any balanced or takeout double-shaped hand, did reopen with a double which I sat for. I think the chances of getting 500 or 800 are excellent and bidding/making slam are unlikely. Plus I was eager to make up for the previous board. But this bidding is not unreasonable at all and we would have had no trouble setting the contract 1 trick if I just led a minor suit card to start the tapping game. But I decided to start with my singleton heart and was unable to get enough heart ruffs to set the contract. Declarer was 6-4 in the majors. I don't totally disagree with partner's reopening double on J, xxx, AKQJxx, KQJ, but I probably would have just bid 2D. Anyway, we got desperate toward the end of the hand and allowed an overtrick for -360 while we are cold for 6 of a minor. So, 3 boards into it, we've blown at least 25 imps.

Fortunately, the rest of the day was smooth sailing and we finished 5th out of 67 with 134VPs out of a possible 180.

Planning for the fall Nationals

A couple of weeks ago, I was planning out some upcoming vacations. This weekend I am going to Pittsburgh, but not for bridge, and next week I am going to a regional in Augusta, GA, and a couple of weeks later to the District 7 NAPs in Spartanburg, and it was kind of assumed that I would go with my parents to San Diego over Thanksgiving weekend.

I've actually attended the fall nationals more than either of the other because it always is in conjunction with an already-long weekend. And we don't have a big family, at least not near home, so we normally don't feel an obligation to go see them. but my parents were excited about their upcoming cruise on the Danube River next week, and they tried to convince me to just go on a 3 or 4 day Caribbean cruise with them that Thursday through Sunday.

Fortunately it didn't take much convincing that San Diego would be more fun. Nationals are really just about the most fun thing in the world if for no other reason than the midnight games that have gone out of style at regionals and seeing all the junior bridge players. This will be my 4th fall NABC and 9th NABC overall. The only problem with the fall nationals is that there usually isn't a major event to play in when I can go. Well, the LM pairs is Fri-Sat, so you'll find me there, with my dad. But when I go to tournaments with my dad, I don't go to win so much but rather as a family vacation. And my mom, who doesn't play bridge, probably loves it even more because she spends the afternoons shopping and exploring the city. So, I'm very much looking forward to the San Diego trip, but I am disappointed that I'll only be there 3 days. Someday I will be able to take more time off of work.

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.