Bridge Blog 640: Buffalo Winter Sectional Tournament Day 3 & Wrap-Up

          Our team of Faith Perry, Florence Boyd, Jane Larcom and myself looked like winners for the first two rounds of the Swiss team event on Sunday. We dispatched our first two opponents quite handily and were sitting in sixth place overall among 25 teams. But we all know what happens in these affairs when you win too much too soon.

          In the third round, who should show up at our table but Saleh Fetouh and David Hemmer, two of the best players in the room. Although it didn’t seem like we disgraced ourselves, the score tally said otherwise. They picked up International Match Points against us on all seven boards, shutting us out 41-0 en route to what would be a second-place finish.

          Our lucky streak shattered, best we could manage after that was a 15-15 tie in the final round. We wound up 20th overall, collecting .65 of a silver point for our 2½ victories. When it was over, Faith and Florence suggested that, since my nearly 1,500 points put them in the B strat in Swiss team competition, they’d like to find someone with fewer points for the Spring Sectional so they could stay in the C division. I’m disappointed, but not too much. I’ve wondered what would happen if I hooked up with B players, say someone like Mike Silverman.

My total take for the tournament was 1.70 points, which put me 93rd on a list of 162 players who won points. Last year I accumulated just 0.93 and was 106th out of 145.

          (Meanwhile, playing with Marilyn Steffan in a unit-rated game Monday at the Airport Bridge Club, I fared far better than I did at the tournament – 57.82% -- first in the B and C strats, earning 1.93 points.)

          Saleh Fetouh was the point champ at the tournament, bringing home 19.04 silver. The other leading point winners were Chris Urbanek, 17.28; John Toy, 14.51; Dian Petrov, 14.16; Jay Costello, 12.48; Judy Padgug, 12.09; David Hemmer, 11.76; Fred Yellen, 11.10; Joan Rose, 10.97; and Donna Steffan, 10.14.