Bridge Blog 859: Buffalo Regional Day 5

Up until the last minute, we didn’t know. Would we play the compact knock-out game on Saturday? In the end, no. Nobody else turned up unattached and our Friday knock-out partners weren’t having any of it. Our Asian teammate, Won Yang, wanted to play pairs. Our other teammate, Jim Gullo, as one of the partnership chairmen, wasn’t inclined to play at all, but he wound up pairing with a freewheeling and rather fun free agent named Patricia Young from Erie, Pa. (who is notorious, we heard later).

So it was double-session pairs, which were a lot less quirky and stressful than the Friday knock-outs. For one thing, there weren’t opponents who took five minutes deciding which card to play. What’s more, Selina and I seemed to be having a decent go at it in the morning game, even though, as East, I was getting mostly crappy cards. We came in at 50.89%, earning 0.61 of a red point, and went to lunch (at Merge on Delaware Avenue) content in the knowledge that we could break into the gold points in the afternoon session if we did well enough.

We didn't. We wound up at 46.79%, well out of reach of the gold. It would have taken at least a 55% game to get there, so it was no single mistake that sank us, but a lot of 50% rounds with the occasional clunker. And then there were simply rounds that were NOF, not our fault, like Sharon Benz and Nancy Wolstoncroft bidding and making a 6 Club slam.

How much have you spent on this tournament, my significant other asked after the second session finished and we were trudging through the wind and rain to the Buffalo Sabres game in First Niagara Center. I added it up: $24 a day, 5 days. $120, soon to be $168. And how many points have you earned? Not many, I’m afraid – 2.65 gold, 1.95 red. But there’s hope for the final day Sunday, the Swiss teams. Selina and I are playing with Paula Kotowski and Bob Kaprove. We could be contenders.