We’re back from the DC Nationals. We were eliminated from the Spingold Knockout Teams last night. The session ended at midnight. We were home at 5 am. (I take after my father – a road warrior.) Lance and Malcolm were a great help, talking to me the whole drive to keep me awake. Things were getting somewhat bleak and we were all tired around 3:30, but someone started a conversation about women bridge players not being as good as men bridge players. That got my blood boiling enough to keep me awake the rest of the way home.
As i mentioned in my last post, Lance and i entered a 3-day pairs event, the Von Zedtwitz Life Master Pairs. We played well the first day and made the cut (60% were eliminated) to compete in the second day. On the second day, we were outmatched. I take most of the blame onto myself – i did not play particularly well. But the bridge was amazing. It’s truly a different game to play with people of that caliber.
Our third day, since we were not in the finals of the LM Pairs event, we played 3 sessions of regional pairs. Nothing went right for us. One of the fun things, though, was how many people we knew from Raleigh and the Triad who were also there in DC. We’d have lunch with some folks, run in to a few others at the bridge table, and drink at the bar at the end of the day with even more other folks. It was pretty fun.
Monday was our final day, and we entered the Spingold Knockout Teams event, another national event. 83 teams entered. A few teams got byes to the second day, while the rest of us played 4-way matches. The event is seeded, so when the top 7 teams got byes, the first bracket is seeds 8, 83, 27, 64. The second bracket is seeds 9, 82, 28, 63. We were seeded 58th; our bracket contained seeds 14, 77, 33, 58. In a 4-way match, the two top teams play the two bottom teams for 32 boards, and if you win, you advance. If you lose, you have to play a second set against the loser of the other match, and the winner of that match also advances. So three of four move on to the next day. We thought our chances were pretty good – we weren’t even the lowest seed in our bracket.
The top (14) seed in our bracket contained Steve Robinson, and his team advanced. Our squad faced Buffalo Bill Pettis (33) and his team.
You play half the boards and then compare with your teammates to see how you’re doing, then you play the final 16. Lance and i had an awesome first set. A mistake here or there, nothing too costly. We bid our games and slams, took our tricks (Lance had an awesome endplay to gain 6 IMPs) and put up some good defenses. Our opponents, the Buffalo himself, made a couple of errors – didn’t bid what seemed like an obvious slam, and let me make a vulnerable 3NT (which got set FIVE at the other table, for a swing of 15 huge IMPs). But despite this huge swing, our teammates didn’t bid that “obvious” slam either, and we gave back some of our lead along the way. Still, after 16 boards, we were up by 2.
Lance and i played extremely solid in the second set as well. It’s possible that we made no errors in that second set of 16 boards. We wanted a win. Knocking off a higher seed, having to call work to say, sorry i can’t come back yet because i’ve advanced in a national bridge event, getting to play a lower seeded team with real chances to advance again… i could taste it.
Alas, it wasn’t to be. To use a baseball analogy, we pitched extremely well for 9 innings, but got no run support, and ended up losing the game. By 2 lousy IMPs.
We had a second chance, against the losers of the other match in our bracket. They were seeded lower than us, so surely we could outmatch them. In the first half, lance and i played well once again. The opponents once again did a couple of goofy things, missed a slam, etc. We seriously thought we were possibly up by 40. However, we got back to the table and our teammates said “Brace yourselves, it’s bad.” We were down by 36. The number of times they went for -200 and -300 were appalling. We were unable to get it back in the second half.
And so, 15 minutes after midnight, we were in the car for an all-night drive back to Raleigh.
What can you do? I admit i am disappointed. I have never felt so locked-in and focused. As Lance remarked, “Whoa, when i’m really paying attention, it’s like i can see their cards!”
There will be other tournaments, though, and other big events in which we will play well. I have a few takeaways from this tournament on what i can do to improve. And i will prove to those boys that women players are not inferior to men!