After Thursday’s big win in the knock-out game at the Niagara Falls, Ont., Regional Tournament, after I became Life Master, Bronze Life Master and Silver Life Master all in one swell foop, it’s been a weekend of congratulations. Helping it along was my appearance on the front page of the Daily Bulletin on Saturday, the caption (“A Hat Trick!”) and the goofy hands-up pose that the newsletter photographer had me repeat after I did it for him and his camera didn’t flash. Several people noted it on Saturday and still more did on Sunday. I even got a congratulatory hug from sweet little Kit Nash, the grand old lady of the St. Catharines club. Yes, Life Mastery is good.
But it wasn’t that good at the tables. Playing the Daylight Open Pairs games in the fifth floor meeting rooms in the newer part of the Crowne Plaza Hotel (formerly the Brock), Selina Volpatti and I flirted with getting points, but succeeded only in our first try on Friday morning, when we were fourth in B with a 48.88% game and earned .72 red point. We just missed in the afternoon with 50.64% -- a 50.96% pair tied for fifth, getting .48 point. These were big pairs games – 16 tables in the morning, 15 in the afternoon, playing two-board rounds. Saturday was a little smaller – 11.5 and 11 pairs – but instead of doing better, we fared worse. Saturday morning found us at 45%, third from the bottom. The afternoon brought us back up to a little over 50%, but we needed 53% to scratch.
Back on Thursday night, I had visions of collecting 20 points at the regional, but come Sunday morning, I found my name in something like 48th place on the big list of master point winners with 12.76. Success in Sunday’s grand finale Swiss teams game would bump that up, I hoped, especially since our team – Selina plus Marilyn Sultz and Ruth Wurster – would qualify as a C team since they all have fewer than 500 points.
We started off like gangbusters, winning our first two rounds handily. And after a Chinese couple from Toronto nailed us in the third matchup, we came back to tie our fourth round opponents. After the lunch break, however, we came up empty in the fifth and sixth rounds, losing by 26 and 10 International Match Points, respectively. I was afflicted by my usual post-lunch narcolepsy and misplayed a couple cards. Focus, I told myself, reaching for some gum to chew myself awake. If we won our final round, I told the others, maybe we’ll qualify for something extra.
Our final round opponents were folks from home – Ken Meier and Penny Shui (Marilyn and Ruth played their teammates, Paula Kotowski and John Kirsits). They had roughly the same record as we did at that point: 2.5 wins, about 75 victory points. It turned out to be a close match. In fact, if Selina made what I thought was an obvious lead into my Ace-Queen finesse of the dummy’s King of Diamonds, we would have sent them down two on a 4 Heart contract. Instead, she led into the five-card Ace-King Club suit on the board, while holding five Clubs herself. Perhaps she thought I was void in Clubs and could pick up a ruff. Wrong. Ken Meier was void in Clubs. He threw off his two losing Diamonds on the Ace-King. The 10 IMPs they won on that hand were the key to their 5 IMP victory.
The final hand gave us one last weird little memory. We were playing Board 20 and Selina, with a 17-point holding, did a take-out double that led me into a hopeless 3 Diamond contract that went down two vulnerable. But the director – Dick Rasmus, taking a break from retirement, I guess – came over and asked us how we got that board. He brought over another player who looked at Penny Shui’s West hand and said that he had played it. Seems the caddy brought us the wrong Board 20. The right one was produced and we played it – a better hand for me, a safer contract of 2 Hearts, but it went down one vulnerable thanks to bad distribution. Our teammates had the same result.
No glory, then, in the Swiss and nothing near 20 points for the weekend. Our reward -- .36 for each game we won, a total of 0.90, giving me a tournament total of 13.66, with 12.04 gold.
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