Nov. 13, 2025
The Niagara
Regional Tournament in St. Catharines, Ont., has been going for two days
already by the time I push through the morning registration line on Thursday
morning and I’m primed for competition.
First guys
we come up against, though, turn out to be primed all the time. A pleasant guy
named Jason Morgan, sitting North, says he’s from Madison, Wis., and mentions
that he doesn’t work anymore, despite his youngish appearance. He just does this.
His partner, who says his name is Al, hails from Boston. The results identify
him as R. Muggia. Sharks.
They pick
us pretty clean on the first two boards. Jason starts off with a 3 Heart
contract and goes down one, which feels good to me, but isn't. Out of a possible 23
match points, we get 3.5. The winning East-Wests persevered in Spades, making
three mostly, occasionally four. Here's another case of partner Selina Volpatti not rebidding a six card suit.
The next hand finds Selina opening a Heart, me going
to 2 Clubs with a six-card suit headed 10-9 and her raising me to 3 Clubs. I have
four sure tricks outside of the Clubs, so I go to five. Here’s one of our other
weaknesses – not recognizing a slam when it’s right there in front of us. All
North-South gets is the King of Clubs and we’re a bottom board. Everybody takes
12 tricks our way and seven of them are at 6 No Trump, mostly by East. We go on
to 41.76%, last on the list for East-West, second to last overall. Only
the blissful Sikh guy, Indarjit Ahluwalla, and his partner do worse. We play them last and snatch 31 out of a possible 46 match points.
How did we do in the morning, people ask. We made
all our opponents look good, I say. And how did we do in the afternoon? We
made all of our opponents look better. Playing North-South this time, we wind
up at 36.04%. Believe it or not, we're not last. Another pair finishes with
27.92%.
Winner in the afternoon
is Buffalo’s Jay Levy, playing with Lino D’Souza, who’s from Burlington, Ont.
They're at 66.52% and collect 13.26 gold points. Selina and I needed to hit
at least 50% to catch any points at all. Well, better luck Friday, when
we play in a teams game.
Aside from
Jay Levy, Buffalo is represented by Dian Petrov and Kamil Bishara, who do
poorly in the afternoon, but well enough in the morning to get a fraction of a
red point; John Ziemer and Mike Ryan, who had 48% in the morning and didn’t
stay, and Linda Burroughsford and Davis Heussler, who are in the other section
of open pairs and do well in the afternoon, but snag only red points.
There are 12 tables in our section A in the morning, 13 in the afternoon. There's a section B as well, plus Gold Rush pairs for those with fewer masterpoints and a team game. The ballroom is full and everybody remarks about what a good turnout this is. When it's over, the line waiting to get into the hospitality suite stretches all the way across the lobby (pictured).
