Bridge Blog 989: Buffalo Regional Wrap-Up

My best regional tournament ever, thanks to persistence. I played in every single session. But instead of one big piece of cake, it was a lot of little crumbs, accumulated in the side games. Twice I was a winner, for which I took home two bottles of Prosecco.

What else will I remember most? Probably the three glaring glitches.

1. The parking fiasco on Friday, when a big convention filled up the ramp behind the Adam’s Mark Hotel and forced players to find spots for $3 (later reimbursed) under the elevated section of the Niagara Thruway.

2. Friday partner Art Matthies bailing out on me, turning around and driving back home rather than parking under the Thruway and making the long trek to the front entrance of the hotel like me and everybody else.

3. Partner Cleveland Fleming’s cell phone singing out the William Tell Overture during Saturday afternoon’s single-session Swiss team game, which cost us 3 victory points, but thankfully didn’t affect our final standing.

My 16.68 points placed me 70th among the 431 players who earned points and 21st among players from Buffalo.  

The five people at the top of the winner’s list accumulated more than 100 points each, which could be the first time anybody has hit the century mark at the Buffalo Regional.

Tied for top were Shan Huang of Toronto and Kevin Dwyer of Melbourne, Fla., with 115.31. (They were tied for second last year with 66.45.) Tied for third were Kevin Bathhurst of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., and Joan Millens of Kingston, N.Y., with 107.46. Then there was Jianfeng Luo of North York, Ont., with 102.16.

Highest-ranking Buffalo player was in ninth place – Saleh Fetouh with 52.34 points. How did he do it?  Tied for third in the top bracket of the Wednesday-Thursday knock-outs (10.39 points), finished third in the Thursday open Swiss teams (14.68 points) and come in first in the Thursday evening side game (3.41 points) and the evening side series (another 7.44 points). Then he was fourth in the Friday open pairs (8.02) and third in the big Sunday Swiss team game (10.04).

The other leading Buffalo players – Bud Seidenberg, 43.05 points; Jay Levy, 41.07; Chris Urbanek, 41.05; Davis Heussler, 31.34; Judy Padgug, 30.31; Fred Yellen, 29.32; Linda Burroughsford, 27.85; Martha and John Welte, 26.53; Bill Rushmore, 22.93; Dian Petrov, 20.75; Jay Costello, 20.39; Kamil Bishara, 20.27; Marilyn Wortzman, 19.85; Donna Steffan, 19.23; Gay Simpson, 19.19; David Hemmer, 18.06; Elaine Kurasiewicz, 17.40; Amita Arora, 17.15; Chongmin Zhang, 17.10; MOI!, 16.68; Mike Ryan, 15.73; Gene Nowatniak, 15.58; Joan Rose, 13.56; Shakeel Ahmad and Manju Ceylony, 13.13; Ruth and Michael Kozower, 12.02; Usha Khurana, 11.93; Ethan Xie, 11.59; Rajat Basu, 10.79; Ed Morgan, 10.47; Art Morth, 10.46; and Glenn Milgrim, 10.40.