Bridge report

[Bob78164]

I played the San Diego Regional this weekend with one of my old partners from about 25 years ago. We've recently decided to make an effort to resume playing together -- we stopped when he moved to San Diego around the time I was starting my legal career. We played a pair game Saturday, barely scratching in the morning session and finishing well below average in the second.

On Sunday we played the Swiss team event. We were leading the event after the third, fourth, and fifth rounds (of seven). We survived a stumble in the fifth round to retain the lead at that point, but we fell flat on our collective faces in the sixth round, leaving us out of contention to win the event. (Two teams ahead of each other were playing each other, and at least one was guaranteed to finish ahead of our best possible result. In baseball terms, it's like being two games behind two teams tied for the lead with three games left to play, when the two teams ahead of you are playing each other. You can catch either team but you can't catch both.) We recovered, though, in our last match to finish third in the event. I'd hoped for better, but I'll take it.

This weekend will be Flight A (0-6000 master points) Grand National Teams. We consider it a warm-up for our real goal, Flight B (0-2500 master points) Grand National Teams the following weekend, but I have twice made the District Finals in Flight A, and I'd really like to be able to say I won two different flights (at the District level) in the same year. --Bob