Bridge report

[Bob78164]

I arrived in St. Louis last night for the Spring North American Championships. The first event is the Baldwin North American Pairs. Partner and I qualified for the 2025 event by winning the District Final. This year we finished 4th in the District and since each District gets only three pairs, we left the playing site thinking we hadn’t qualified. However, one of the pairs that finished ahead of us was the pair that won the National Finals last year, and it turns out that the previous year’s winner automatically qualifies for the following year’s national finals. So their qualifying spot devolved to us.

Our first session was decent, definitely putting us in contention for making the cut line for the second (and final) day of the event, but we needed to back it up with something comparable. At the end of the session, the BridgeMate (an automatic scoring machine at each table) estimated our second session as just below average. That wasn’t good enough, in light of our okay-but-nothing-special first session. Fortunately, the estimate was wrong. Our second session was in fact almost exactly as good as our first session, so we qualified fairly comfortably. The two sessions combined for 2.70 platinum points.

Tomorrow, the finals of the North American Pairs. —Bob

[Bob78164]

Our morning session was not at all good. It wasn’t embarrassingly bad, but it was poor. Our afternoon session was much better — good enough to earn us another 1.42 platinum points — but not quite good enough to lift us into the overalls.

My cumulative total for the tournament so far is 4.12 master points. I’ll be playing the rest of the tournament with my regular partner. Tomorrow, we play the first day of the Kay Platinum Pairs. —Bob

[Bob78164]

Forgot to report yesterday. Our first session of the Platinum Pairs was very slightly above average. Our second session, though, was not as good, so we didn’t make the cut.

Today’s event was the NABC Plus Pairs event. Our first session was below average, leaving us in 94th place out of 150, with 78 pairs qualifying for tomorrow’s finals. Our second session felt good, but it didn’t score as well as we thought, so with one round to go, we remained on the outside looking in at 80th place. We had a nice final round, which improved our position.

But only to 79th place. Aaargh.

We’ll be playing a regional pairs event tomorrow. I remain stuck on 4.12 master points for the tournament, and partner has yet to score. —Bob

[Bob78164]

This morning’s session was decent. Not great, but decent, and good enough for 5th in our section, so partner can finally say he’s not 0 for the tournament. Our second session, though, was something else. The opponents kept making blunder after blunder against us, and the blemishes in our game proved not too costly. We ended up with a very nice second session that pulled us up to 4th in the event, good for 17.05 gold points. My tournament total is now 21.17 master points.

Tomorrow, partner and I are teaming with two strong players we know to play a regionally rated Swiss teams event. —Bob

[Bob78164]

We played a regionally rated Swiss teams event today. This is a format borrowed from chess tournaments, where the goal is to match teams with similar records, subject to the constraint that no one plays the same team twice. The first match proved indicative of the day. On the very first hand, one of our opponents failed to notice that my partner had bid, and therefore made an “insufficient” bid (a form of illegal bid). The upshot of the penalty was that she had to guess at the correct contract.

She actually guessed correctly. However, she was so flustered that when the play began she pulled the wrong card from her hand and played it before realizing her error. At that point, it was too late to correct the play. That mistake was the difference between fulfilling and failing at her valuable contract (3NT, for those who know the game). We won that match comfortably and romped in our second match, before losing a close third match.

Margin of victory matters so these results left us in good shape. After the lunch break, we played our fourth match against James Holzhauer’s team (yes, that James Holzhauer). Big wins in that match and the next one had us play our final match against the event leaders, with first place at stake. They had enough of a lead over us that we needed a comfortable, but not overwhelming, win to overtake them. We overachieved with a crushing victory, giving us first place in the event.

That was good for 31.22 gold points, raising my tournament total to 52.39 points. Tomorrow we’ll play another regionally rated Swiss teams event. It will be a slightly different team, but this is the team we’ll have for the nationally rated Jacoby Open Swiss Teams event on the last two days of the tournament. —Bob

[Bob78164]

Another regionally rated Swiss today. We ended up playing the strongest team in the field in our second round, and we edged them by a narrow margin. However, we lost our next match to fall to 2-1. We had three wins in our three post-lunch matches, but only one of the wins was sizable. In the meantime, the strong team racked up a series of large wins. They did lose their final match, but narrowly, so we didn’t manage to catch them and finished the event second overall.

That was good for 12.00 gold points, bringing my tournament total to 64.39 points. Tomorrow we play another regional Swiss before returning to nationally rated events Thursday and beyond. —Bob

[Bob78164]

Yesterday’s Swiss went so-so. We played okay but got somewhat unlucky — on a couple of occasions, the opponents reached high-value contracts that were severe underdogs, but the lie of the cards favored them so the contracts came home. We still had a chance to reach the overalls, but we played a very strong team and on one hand in particular, they made better decisions than we did and were rewarded. That hand proved to be the difference in the match, so we ended up getting credit only for our three match victories, worth a total of 1.50 red points.

That brought my tournament total up to 65.89 points. Today, we played the first day of the Silidor Open Pairs. Our morning session was sound, though it didn’t score spectacularly. Our afternoon session felt fine but scored below average. Still, our combined scores kept us above the cut line so we qualified for tomorrow’s finals, picking up another 0.91 platinum points along the way.

My tournament total is now 66.80 points. Tomorrow we play the finals of the Silidor Open Pairs. —Bob

[Bob78164]

We completed play today in the Silidor Open Pairs. Our morning session was decent. Our afternoon session was poor. They combined to leave us out of the overalls by a small margin. The morning session was good enough to add another 1.79 platinum points to our total.

My tournament total is now 68.59 points. Tomorrow, we begin play in the last national event of the tournament, the Jacoby Open Swiss Teams. —Bob

[Bob78164]

We won four of our eight matches today, with half of the field qualifying for tomorrow’s final. Unfortunately, our wins were narrow and our losses were decisive, so we didn’t come close to qualifying. The four matches we won were worth 2.12 platinum points.

My tournament total is now 70.71 points. Tomorrow, the tournament’s last day, will see us playing a regionally rated Swiss teams event. Then it’s back on a plane Monday and the resumption of normal life on Tuesday. —Bob

[Bob78164]

Yesterday’s results were depressingly similar to Saturday’s. We won three of our six matches, but our wins were small and our losses were big, so we finished under average. Our three wins were worth 1.50 red points, so my final tournament total was 72.21 points.

I’m flying home today. Tomorrow, look for a new edition of Bob’s Log. I’ve been doing fine here on two meals a day, so I’ll be curious to discover how that regimen has affected my weight. —Bob