Bridge Blog 1073: Buffalo Winter Sectional

“Did you play in the Swiss teams on Sunday?” I ask Linda Burroughsford during Monday’s game at the Airport Bridge Game.

She assures me that she did, with Davis Heussler. They were on a team with the Weltes. They came in third.

That’s how dimly aware I was of my milieu on Sunday, the only day I felt well enough to play in the Buffalo Winter Sectional Tournament in the Social Hall at the Main-Transit Fire Hall in Amherst. A nasty upper-respiratory infection canceled my plans for the Friday and Saturday games.

I arrived as they were making the opening announcements for the game, having alarmed partner Gay Simpson enough to prompt a phone call from her a couple minutes before I showed up.

I spent the first rounds in kind of a fog as we managed to lose three times by just 5 International Match Points. A succession of unbiddable hands may have had something to do with it.

Our foursome – Florence Boyd and Ruth Wurster rounded out our lineup – rallied for a victory in the fourth round, propelling us into the lunch break with a dash of hope. In the final three rounds, we collected a couple more wins. We were Team 13 and, with a total of 92 victory points, we were 13th overall. Our winning rounds gave us 0.78 points. I was feeling better.

Random notes:

Chris Urbanek rules!

Her team – with Saleh Fetouh, Bud Seidenberg and Fred Yellen – won the Swiss event, allowing her to cap a winning weekend with another 8.25 points. She took a total of 28.27, winning the two-session pairs game on Friday with Sharon Benz, and finishing second Saturday with Stan Kozlowski.

Her partners and teammates filled the top places on the overall leaderboard. Sharon Benz was second with 17.19. Saleh Fetouh was next with 16.31, followed by Bud Seidenberg with 13.33 and Stan Kozlowski with 13.10.

Had I played Friday and Saturday and had I followed the Art Matthies strategy of playing only in the single-session side games, how well could I have done? Not as well as Chris Urbanek, but winners of each round earned 2.57 to 3 points and the competition is a lot easier. Max could have been in the 11 to 12 point range.

Did bad weather have an impact on turnout? Let’s compare it with previous winter sectionals:

2019 – 133 tables, 127 players earn points. 20-table Swiss.

2018 – 153 tables, 146 players earn points. 20-table Swiss.

2017 – 145 tables, 135 players earn points. 24-table Swiss.

2016 – 136 tables, 127 players earn points. 23-table Swiss.

2015 – 156 tables, 162 players earn points. 23-table Swiss.

2014 – 132 tables, 142 players earn points. 23-table Swiss. First weekend after New Year’s.

The field included a healthy component of players from St. Catharines, Ont., as well as a handful from Toronto and Rochester.

Surprised to see the 2018 District 5 overall point leader, Sue Lan Ma from the Cleveland area. She comes to our regional tournaments, but I didn’t recall her at a sectional previously. Could it be because her partner, Peter Petruzzellis, is from Scarborough, Ont.? They earned 8.23 points, mostly from a second-place finish in the Swiss teams. Silver-point pocket change for someone like her.