action shots
Ours is #4. Honey, put your teammate down.
Ours is the second red blur from right.
Photos by me, on my iPhone.
Published by stacy on May 14th, 2008 tagged Uncategorized | Comment now »
convention police
I’m spending lots of time prepping for the Trials (which start May 22). There’s a mountain of paperwork involved — convention cards, system summary forms, supplementary paperwork for a few treatments, defenses to this and that, and so on and so forth. The LaserJet is humming away in George’s office and the kids are happy to collate so it’s a fairly chipper industry around here.
It’s annoying to have so much material one must generate and study. Jenny and Shannon and Sue and I have a little extra to prepare since we play methods which are disallowed during the Round Robin phase of the tournament. You know, that 2 
opener (showing 9+ major suit cards, 6-11 high cards) I’ve written about an awful lot — we’re not allowed to play it unless we make it out of the round robin.
I find this appalling. The ACBL convention police have no business limiting the allowable systems in the USBC, USSBC and USWBC. I believe the Trials should be conducted under the WBF Conditions of Contest governing the event for which we are attempting to qualify. I understand that the ACBL wishes to protect its clientele from excessively complicated or destructive methods and so are disallowing things like Multi 2 (forbidden in pairs games beginning with the Summer NABC in July). Fine. The league makes the rules, it’s my responsibility to follow them.
But when we go to Raleigh next week there will be seven teams duking it out for three spots in the KO phase. The winners will go on to represent the United States at the World Championships in Beijing next fall and face all but the most unusual treatments from the very first day, with no written-defense crutches of any kind. Players needing the comfort and protection of the convention police have, in my opinion, no business entering these qualifying Championships.
Published by stacy on May 13th, 2008 tagged Bridge | 2 Comments »
wow
I absolutely love this review. Good writing, man, there’s nothing like it.
Incidentally, I loved the writing in A Million Little Pieces even after the truth about the story came out so I’m thrilled to hear he’s done it again. Now I’ll have something great to read on my trip to Raleigh next week.
We had a great practice over the weekend, played around 200 hands, talked about agreements, studied defenses and ate a little bit of everything (mostly healthy). We went to a baseball game, played at the bridge club, went into the city for brunch, watched the big kid in her hockey game and tried to follow the action at The Cavendish. George got back from Las Vegas late last night, I bumped into him in the bathroom around 3am. I was back at my desk at 5:30 this morning, business more or less as usual. I’ll admit it, though: I’m exhausted.
Published by stacy on May 12th, 2008 tagged Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
session winners
Kevin and Justin. Ship it.
Published by stacy on May 10th, 2008 tagged Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
practicing
Sue and Jenny arrived safely on Thursday, we played 24 getting-acquainted boards after dinner. Yesterday was a work day. While my teammates were sleeping and working out, Judi and I bid 40 major-suit oriented hands in the game-to-slam range. Then the girls and I played thirteen (intending to play sets of 12). We split up and discussed some of the agreement-oriented stuff that came up, then played 36 straight through; I’d say the rockstars had the better of it for the most part.
We broke for dinner and to catch up on the action in Las Vegas. Levin and Weinstein are leading, Meckstroth and Welland are second. Most of my favorites will begin the climb up through the soft underbelly (as if there were such a thing). Take a look at the bottom of the heap, it’ll blow your mind:
32 -11.00 A-28 Paul Chemla - Michel Lebel
33 -38.00 A-49 Michel Bessis - Thomas Bessis
34 -165.00 A-31 Bruce Rogoff - Louk Verhees
35 -197.00 A-18 Michael Rosenberg - Christal Henner-Welland
36 -211.00 A-48 Boye Brogeland - Rita Shugart
37 -246.00 A-53 Drew Casen - Mike Passell
38 -267.00 A-23 George Jacobs - Ralph Katz
39 -279.00 A-33 Peter Bertheau - Fredrik Nystrom
40 -353.00 A-14 Richard Jedrychowski - Wojtek Olanski
41 -370.00 A-36 Alain Levy - Herve Mouiel
42 -433.00 A-44 Chris Compton - Bob Hamman
43 -436.00 A-30 John Diamond - Jim Krekorian
44 -488.00 A-51 Jacek Pszczola - Jerzy Zaremba
45 -526.00 A-27 Kevin Bathurst - Justin Lall
46 -592.00 A-17 Walid Elahmady - Tarek Sadek
47 -616.00 A-9 Per Erik Austberg - Jon-Egil Furunes
48 -653.00 A-4 Fred Stewart - Kit Woolsey
49 -729.00 A-12 Ralph Buchalter - Migry Zur Campanile
50 -755.00 A-19 Fu Zhong - Jie Zhao
51 -768.00 A-34 Albert Faigenbaum - Romain Zaleski
52 -843.00 A-38 George Mittelman - Melih Ozdil
53 -848.00 A-45 James Cayne - Alfredo Versace
54 -1512.00 A-32 Veronel Lungu - Daniel Savin
We played another 24 boards after dinner then went to bed, completely wiped out. As we played all those boards I kept some notes, scribbled down some hands to ask about later, but this morning I look over all the score cards and I can’t quite muster the energy to remember things like how the bidding went. Here’s the one I did write down … tell me what you’d do:
KTxxxxx
AKJx
x
x
I opened 1 and Shannon bid 2 on my left. Partner bid 3 and Jenny doubled. I bid 3 , Shannon bid 3 and Sue bid 4 . Are you done?
Me Shannon Sue Jenny 1 2 3 x 3 3 4 pass ?