Bridge report

[Bob78164]

Partner and I arrived in San Francisco Thursday night and played the Nail Life Master Pairs yesterday. Our tournament got off to a good start with a solid morning session. Unfortunately, our afternoon session devolved into a complete nightmare. Pretty much every decision we made proved wrong on the lie of the cards. We were still in qualifying position going into the final round, but one final bad decision from partner’s partner put an end to that hope. We finished just short of the cut line.

The morning session was good for 1.46 platinum points, so unlike my trip to Louisville a year and a half ago, we will not go 0 for the tournament. Today we’re playing a regional Swiss teams event. —Bob

[Bob78164]

We ended up in Bracket 2 of the Bracketed Round Robin Teams. Partner and I were a little soft, but our teammates were solid and despite our softness, I think we pulled our weight. We finished 4th overall, good for 9.30 gold points. Our tournament total is now 10.76 points.

Tomorrow is the first day of the Mitchell Open Board-a-Match Teams. Here’s hoping we make the cut this time to qualify for the finals. —Bob

[Bob78164]

I didn’t realize I’d forgotten to post yesterday’s report. Our team had a very nice first session in the Mitchell Board-a Match Teams, winning 16 of our 26 boards. That was good for 3.92 platinum points, bringing our tournament total to 14.68 points. Our second session scored only 11.5 out of 26, but combined with our first session it was good enough to make the cut, placing us in the event finals.

The finals were today. Unfortunately, we didn’t have particularly good sessions at either table. We scored 11 wins out of 26 in the morning, and 12 out of 26 in the afternoon, so we were well out of the overalls and didn’t add any more points to our totals.

Tomorrow will be the first day of our last national event of the tournament, the Blue Ribbon Pairs. —Bob

[Bob78164]

Partner has a real problem with success. For decades, now, I’ve seen that when we’re in the middle of a session in a major game and things are going well, he loses his mind for 2 or 3 boards, bringing us back to earth. We’ve talked about this and he’s well aware of it.

So I decided to try something new. Before starting play in the Blue Ribbon Pairs, I told him, “It doesn’t really matter what we do. These are the Blue Ribbon Pairs. We’re not going to win.”

My new tactic, which I repeated once or twice during the day as I thought needful, seemed to work. Partner played well all day. We had a very solid morning session, good for 1.49 platinum points, and backed it up with an above-average afternoon session, good for another 0.97 platinum points, for an event total so far of 2.46 platinum points. More importantly, we easily made the cut to reach the second day of the event.

So tomorrow we play the semifinals of the Blue Ribbon Pairs. We’ll even have some decent carryover. Our tournament total is now 17.14 points. —Bob

[Bob78164]

Partner continued to play well today and our morning session felt quite good. Good, that is, right up until the moment I saw our scores. We both thought our game would score somewhat above average. Instead, we had only 44%. Even with our carryover, that left us in position 101 out of 130, with only 64 pairs qualifying for tomorrow’s final.

At least that took the pressure off. It’s a very tough field. If that’s how we score when we’re playing well, I didn’t see much hope of improvement. My only remaining goal was to do better than the last time I reached the semifinals of this event, when (playing with an unfamiliar partner) we finished dead last. I was pretty sure we could improve on that showing.

Unlike the morning session, it didn’t really feel like much was going right in the afternoon. Our final round put a cap on this conclusion — in the first board I couldn’t find a way to bring home a tough contract, and in the second (and last) board the opponents found their slam. So when I hit the button to reveal our scores, I had to do a double take — we had scored approximately 56% for the session.

I didn’t think that was quite good enough. With one round to go, we were sitting in position 61, so I thought our poor final round would drop us below the cut line at position 64. I was only half right. The final round was poor, but it was still good enough to keep us in position 61. We’re in the finals of the Blue Ribbon Pairs for the first time in my life!

The second session earned us another 1.79 platinum points, bringing our total to 18.93. But much more importantly, all participants in the finals of a three-day national event automatically make the overalls. So even if we finish dead last last tomorrow, we’re still guaranteed to win at least a total of 15.62 platinum points in this event (that includes the 4.25 points we’ve already won), and we’ll see our names among the overall finishers.

Tomorrow, my last day at this tournament, partner and I are playing the finals of the Blue Ribbon Pairs. —Bob

[Bob78164]

Yesterday was a virtual carbon copy of Wednesday. Once again, I thought we had a good morning session. Once again, the score from that session was just this side of poor. It was, however, good enough to move us up in the standings from position 61 starting the day to position 57.

And just as happened Wednesday, I thought our afternoon session wouldn't score at all well. I was wrong yet again. We actually had a fair score that was good enough to top our section. Our combined scores, added to our pittance of a carryover, meant that we finished 36th overall for the Blue Ribbon Pairs, for a total of 25.33 platinum points, or 21.08 platinum points on top of what we'd already won. This brought our tournament total to a respectable if not spectacular 40.01 points.

The tournament continues, but I'm home now. Looking forward to the Spring Nationals in St. Louis this February. --Bob