I always wish I could
spend more time at the St. Catharines Sectional Tournament, but scheduling and
the weather work against me. Instead of having morning and afternoon sessions,
like the Buffalo sectionals, they have afternoon and evening on Friday and
Saturday and those evening games are a pretty much a no-go for anyone in a
relationship with someone who doesn’t play the game.
This year I was all set
to play Friday and Saturday afternoon with Barbara Sadkin, but then she booked
a trip to see her grandkids in Chicago. After a strong second place finish on
Ground Hog Day, in our first game together in a long, long time, Helen Panza
said she’d be interested in playing Saturday.
But then our first (and
perhaps only) touch of deep winter roared in on Friday, with lake-effect snow and
well-below-zero wind chills. Helen caught me on the Bluetooth as I was driving
through a blinding squall Friday afternoon and said she didn’t think a drive to
St. Catharines on Saturday would be such a good idea. I agreed. Instead, I went
to the Airport Bridge Club both days. On Saturday, only four players made it
there.
So it came down to
Sunday Swiss teams. I took the night off from work and lined up a pair of solid
players – Martin and Barbara Pieterse – to team with me and Selina Volpatti.
But as I was asking them, she lined up a pair of players from the St.
Catharines club – Amir Farsoud, the Iranian-born bridge teacher, and his
partner, Peter Runcan.
It could have been
good, but it wasn’t. Once Amir got Peter to show up (he thought the game
started later than 10:30 a.m.), we got off to a poor start, losing our first
two rounds. A pair of winning efforts left us at about 50 percent at the lunch
break, with a shot at finishing among the leaders in the B strat.
That vanished in the fifth
round, where we got shut out in victory points and Amir registered an official
complaint because of the way our opponents from the Toronto area were bidding. We
did no better against a pair from St. Catharines in the sixth round, but
managed to salvage one more win in the last round. Our victory point total was
a mere 85, well short the 129 or 130 it would take to snatch bonus points. How much did we earn for our three winning
rounds? Not sure. I didn’t see anything posted at the Holiday Inn Conference
Center and the overall list of point winners still needs to be tabulated.
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