[mike777]

Here at the Nationals for a few days
Playing in some "limited" championship two day events. They are rated in the 0-3000, 4000 area

Great to see and chat briefly
With the star players.
So far most of the action has taken place away from the bridge table

Day one: plane breaks down, pilots time out and leave plane,scared of flying seatmates..

Leave phone on plane, retrieve phone .long story

Host hotel booked , non host hotel adequate is a kind word.

Downtown St.louis empty building, boarded up building. Washington St ok.
But rest of the way at night are empty streets, no people, no traffic.

To its credit the ACBL is running the tournament very well.
Lots of communication.
.......

Day two playing with a very kind couple in some kind of bracketed swiss.
Most interesting part was playing some very grumpy opponents on teams.
We somehow place, have no idea how..

...



Day three we play another event, different pick up partners.
I thought the team did poorly in the morning, better in the afternoon to qualify for day2.

......


Day four, we seem to start poorly, bit better later to finish in overalls.

As far as my performance, counting, counts counting is frustratingly slow to learn at the table, still ..focus..

A couple of our opponents play rather well, but felt partner and I held our own against them.

We finished ok but did not win first.
...

[mike777]

Not surprising to some here, the few hands that stick in the mind are five level decisions.

A couple I did pretty darn well on.
A couple I did not. There were at least two where the other table bid on, got doubled and the winning defense was not found. These were crucial in losing matches.


Another match. We bid and made two slams that the other table did not. However we only won by 8 imps. This was an 8 bd match.
Why? At our table the opponents bid two very pushy games and made. They played both extremely well, almost double dummy and most importantly took advantage when we slipped on defense.


This reminded me of something Kit Woolsey has said. You win matches by bidding and making marginal games.