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.

Memphis NABC fun

I feel like I should update this blog because I have returned from another NABC but I'm really not sure what I want to say. Sean and I had 3 decent sessions (+15, +7, +21) and 1 really bad session in the imp pairs to not make the overalls but finish with a positive score.

Sunday was A/X Swiss with Josh and Alex, which started horribly. At the half, we had 37VP on a 60 average. We dominated the evening session, bringing our total to 142 and 3^rd in X and 15^th overall. The split 1NT (simultaneously 8-10 or 15-17) and split 2NT ranges (20-21 or both minors preemptive) worked well again. Maybe this should become part of our regular system rather than something we do when we want to take bridge a little less seriously. I did feel a bit bad when we beat our junior European friends with this. Oh well.

I didn't mark down any deals that are blog-worthy.

As usual, I returned home from the NABC after just 4 days, emotionally drained and exhausted, halfway wanting to go back for the second weekend and halfway looking forward to being somewhat anti-social again rather than the social butterfly that I tend to transform into during such events.

Sean seems to like using bridge terms to describe various other things in life and it has caught on to some of us less creative people. Sunday we had some big disagreements about how these metaphors should be used.

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.