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!

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.

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.

Middle Georgia Bridge

I suppose the metro area of Macon/Warner Robins has about 250,000 people, so I am still kind of surprised that there is as much bridge as there is here. Nine regular club games a week, including 2 novice games between the 2 bridge clubs. Probably 70 tables per week combined. I mean, this area isn't a whole lot bigger than valdosta, where there were 3 games a week with maybe 20 tables total. Anyway, a little over a month ago, my first bridge class in middle georgia ended. We started with 12 people and after 8 weeks we still had 10 people who seemed interested. 2 had already been playing in the beginner games but I am a little disappointed that I have yet to see any of the others in the club games.

I think we're going to try to offer another set of free beginning bridge classes in the fall, maybe make it more of an attempt to bring party bridge players into duplicate bridge. I'd like to get bridge in schools in houston county at some point. With engineering being such a big industry here, there should be a decent amount of interest from these engineer's kids in middle school or high school. We may have to incorporate it as part of the math team or as a little extracurricular activity geared toward those in the advanced math classes. Or maybe the could have a little elective course, where maybe 6 weeks are devoted to some different activity and bridge could be one of those. The drawback with the last option is that we would be teaching a lot of kids who have no interest at all but if we make it more of a spinoff of math team, at least we'll get kids who are motivated and more likely to be interested. I don't know. It probably won't happen until next year, but we're thinking about it. It has worked so well for Patty Tucker and Atlanta Junior Bridge that we want to try teaching bridge to kids in middle Georgia as well.