Bridge Blog 692: Buffalo Regional Redux

          Was last week’s Buffalo Regional Tournament a gold mine for Canadians? I thought so at the time, but a review of the leading master point winners brings me to an equally convincing conclusion. It’s a gold mine for the high-level knock-out teams.

          Exhibit No. 1 is our homegrown international whiz, Joel Wooldridge, who hangs his hat these days in Astoria, Queens. Playing with two New Yorkers – Melih Ozdil and Justine Cushing – and Lewis Finkel from Jupiter, Fla., he earned 72.97 points – 38.92 as the winning team in the Wednesday-Thursday Bracket 1 knock-outs and 34.05 from winning the Friday-Saturday Bracket 1 knock-outs. The four of them stood together on top of the tournament’s master point list.

          The visiting gunslingers dominated the upper rungs on that list, but the Canadians did not do badly. They held down 12 of the top 30 positions on the list, while Unit 116 players from Buffalo had only seven.

          To find the best local player, you have to look down to ninth place for John Toy. He accumulated an impressive 45.26 points, 20.30 of them as captain of the winning Swiss team on Sunday.

          In all, 563 players earned points. Other leading local point winners included:

Brian Meyer, 41.11 (16th).

Jay Levy, 40.52 (18th).

Dan Gerstman, 38.74 (tied 20th).

Saleh Fetouh, 37.88 (24th).

John Ziemer, 36.55 (25th).

Jerry Geiger, 35.89 (26th).

Jay Costello, 29.47 (35th).

Michael Ryan, 28.41 (40th).

Davis Heussler, 26.84 (43rd).

Ken Meier, 23.71 (54th).

Yichaun and Wufeng Luo, 22.05 (tied 58th).

Chris Urbanek, 21.74 (61st).

Bud Seidenberg, 21.26 (62nd).

Judy Graf, 20.13 (66th).

Gene Finton, 19.06 (69th).

David Hemmer, 18.82 (70th).

Donna Steffan, 18.16 (72nd).

David Colligan, 17.98 (73rd).

Peter and Penny Shui, 17.51 (tied 75th).

Andrei Reinhorn, 16.91 (81st).

Bob Padgug, 16.72 (83rd).

John Kirsits, 16.14 (87th).

Jeff Bender, 15.99 (88th).

Rich Cramer-Benjamin, 15.32 (94th).

Dian Petrov, 14.51 (101st).

          To find this writer, it’s best to go to the bottom of the list and start scrolling up. You’ll discover me tucked into 329th place with all of 4.59 points, none of them gold. Usha Khurana, my partner for four of the six days of the tournament, is 342nd with 3.97.