The
crowd of players almost filled the big ballroom at the Holiday Inn in Liverpool
as the third day of the Burt Garrell Syracuse Regional Tournament began
Wednesday morning. Me and Judie Bailey (pictured and looking quite nice, I thought) were in the open pairs, a full 14
tables. There also were two knock-out games, three sections of Gold Rush pairs
and another side series.
Memorable
for the number of 1 No Trump contracts I stuck Judie with (five of them, four
of which played very well), it seemed like a very so-so game for us
North-Souths. When the preliminary totals were posted, there were many pairs
bunched just above 50%, ourselves included. In fact, we were third on that list
with 52-odd%. The final tally put us at 52.88%, fifth overall, fourth in the B
strat, earning 0.76 of a red point. Judie noticed that 12 of us North-Souths
were B pairs, while only two were A. Meanwhile, East-West had five As and nine
Bs. She pointed this imbalance out to tournament director Mike Roberts, who
said that last-minute requests for seating in each direction skewed the
lineups.
After
a quick lunch in the hotel, we were back sitting East-West and, it seemed to
me, playing excellent bridge. There was a down-four sacrifice at 4 Spades, not
vulnerable and, fortunately, not doubled after a 2 Spade pre-empt, which
disrupted our opponents’ airtight 4 Heart contract. An early 6 Spade slam that
succeeded, and then another 6 Spade slam that made an overtrick because the
opponents didn’t get to cash their A-K of Diamonds. Our only outright top board
turned out to be defensive, when we sent our opponents down three in a 4 Spade
contract where they should have been only down one or, better yet, making 3 No
Trump.
Unfortunately,
there were plenty of unspectacular and just plain awful hands. We finished with
50.11%, which was just below the line where B pairs earned points (51.28% was
good for sixth overall and fourth in B). But added to our morning effort, the
combined total made us10 th overall and sixth in the B strat, earning us 3.44
points. Gold ones. Hallelujah! We were not going home empty-handed.
Notes
and observations:
A
banner hanging in the hallway outside the big ballroom announced that the 2015
District 4 Central New York regional tournament will be held in Rochester.
During the Lilac Festival in May. First it’s been in Rochester in a long, long
time.
Here’s
hoping there are new decks of cards for that Rochester regional. Most of the
hands we played were annoyingly sticky. I’m surprised they didn’t stick
together in the dealing machine.
The
offending cards were offending in more than one. They were the old-style
automatic dealing machine cards, the ones with the bar codes on them. A couple
of those decks found their way into our knock-out game on Tuesday and the woman
on the opposing side complained extensively, saying they were driving her
berserk. By the time we played a few rounds with them Wednesday, I didn’t even
notice the bar codes. There were no other complaints.
Although
players from Ottawa were most abundant on Tuesday, there also was a fair-sized
contingent from St. Catharines, Ont. First ones we saw were Dorothy Duchnicki
and Marge Dykstra, who were ready to become our knock-out partners until they
learned how many master points Judie and I had. Sitting behind Judie in the photo above are two more St. Catharinians: Brian Macartney and Jeremy Smee. Buffalo was not as well
represented. We saw Jay Levy, but none of the other big-time players. Ruth
Wurster was there. So were Jan Hasselback and Linda Wynes and Chris Malarkey. That’s
all.
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