FORTH GO

The Bright Leaf bridge club did a great job hosting the Chapel Hill sectional tournament last week-end. I played on a team which did OK, though not great, but had fun. We came within one point of making it to the third round of Knock-Outs, and finished about in the middle of the Sunday Swiss Teams event.

It’s been a while since I’ve been in a high school, so maybe I was thinking out of context when I saw the above poster. Not recognizing the entertainer as Hilary Duff, my first thought was that “Duff” was a reference to Duff Beer as a promotion for the upcoming Simpsons movie.

My mother and I played bridge for three days solid at the Cape Fear MABC Regional in Wilmington last week. Actually, we only played about 11 hours per day, skipping the midnight sessions. We hoped to play a fourth day but got knocked out of a single elimination event in the second round and decided not to start a new event on the fourth day.

On the bright side, we won our bracket in a two-day compact knock-out event when we teamed up with a pair we’d never met before from Cary (Thanks Maryann and Dianne), which gave us a couple of coveted gold masterpoints. Plus we won a pairs event, and picked up some fractional points for other finishes.

The tournament attendance summary shows 1188 players playing 2336 session-tables, which means with 4 players per table per session that each player played on average about 8 sessions (2336 * 4 / 1188).

It’s interesting to note that 1118 (94%) players earned masterpoints at the event, suggesting performance is more random than expected. Masterpoints are generally awarded to the top third of the finishers of an event, and my crude conclusion is that anyone who plays about 8 sessions will likely get some masterpoints.
Looking a little further (but not far enough for much confidence), it would seem that placing is mostly luck. That is, if it were all luck, you would have a 1/3 chance of getting masterpoints for a single event, and the chance of getting some masterpoints over 8 events would be (1-(2/3))^8 = 96%. However, it more than just a matter of getting masterpoints. One might argue that skill is more of a factor in placing in the top 10% but not so much for placing in the top 33%.

Through I hadn’t played chess in over a year, I decided to enter this year’s office G15 tournament. Not surprisingly, I finished last (in the A bracket) with only a single draw in my column after 10 games. A couple games I lost quickly, but for most of them, I kept it close until I lost my patience and tried to make things happen.

The exception was this game (interactive player) in which I was a piece up as White, but ran out of time. In the first shown position I’ve already given Black the advantage with some minor mistakes, but he let me back in with Qd6. That allowed me to force his bishop back with f4 and then to fork the bishop and queen with e5 (second position). I got a bishop for two central pawns, and the computer rates the game as even. Black should have pushed his pawn to d3 with a discovered attack on my rook.

Black made good use of his passed center pawns, but ran out of steam when I seemed to have them immobilized (third diagram). Qd4 might have been a good move to try to kick my blockading queen and get his pawns moving again. Instead he tried some flank attacks with his rooks. Meanwhile I pushed my b pawn to remove his c pawn that was anchoring the central pawns and then I was able to put my extra piece to use and capture his menacing pawns.

After that, it was obvious I was going to run out of time, so Black played safe moves while I pointlessly made small gains, though I didn’t record the moves after the final shown position.

I was lucky enough to use a friend’s extra ticket to last night’s UNC - Ohio State game. It was a lot of fun — I can see how people get addicted to such things. It was a close game throughout, and the fans made a painful amount of noise at times.
I’ve been to the Dean Dome before shortly after it opened for an NCAA tourney game, but it’s been seriously overhauled since then with giant replay monitors and other high tech items. The scorer’s table sign, for instance, was completely electronic — not a scrolling poster as I’ve seen at other venues.

Only problem: it took us 30 minutes to get out of the parking lot.

After my continuing procrastination over getting a big screen HD TV, Bonnie couldn’t resist taking this pic of Scott, Serge and I watching the Ohio State game last week-end at Hyco Lake. The game was still fuzzy even with the tinfoil on the rabbit ears.

Our neighborhood picnic featured a cardboard boat race that drew six entries. All boats were constructed on the spot from cardboard, duct tape and two styrofoam noodles. I thought they would turn soggy and sink in seconds, but most held up pretty well. Stability was the main problem. The lower boat in the first photo capsized quickly, but the simple sled design of the upper boat held up great.

The bottom boat in the second photo was even narrower and capsized almost immediately. The upper boat did well, except the sides were too tall for the kids to effectively paddle.

Mom and I played bridge for most of last week in the Mid-Atlantic Memorial Day Tarheel Regional in north Raleigh, NC.

We started out playing in my first Knock Out event, which is where you play in a team of four or more players against one other team for a three hour match. The winner advances to the next round and the loser is knocked out. Two from our team play the north-south cards against two from their team playing east-west, while the reverse happens at the other table, and we swap cards half way through so both teams end up playing the same hands from both sides. We had great teammates and won our first two matches, but lost the third by a small margin.

The next day we switched to pairs events, where it was just us against a bunch of other pairs playing the same hands. We came in first once thanks to some major gifts by our opponents and placed a couple other times. This was the last hand of the Friday afternoon session. My mother opened a 2â™  showing about 6 spades and 5-11 high card points.

I could see slam was quite possible, but I still don’t know if there’s a right way to bid it. I responded 2NT, which we play as the Ogust convention asking about opener’s bid quality. She rebid 3â™  to show a good suit and a good hand, though I might expect an outside honor for a “good hand”. Presumably, 4♣ by me would be a cue bid to see if she could bid 4♦ to show a first or second round diamond control. But lacking confidence to bid scientifically, I gambled and bid 6â™  directly.

The slam made after a spade lead without only minor communication difficulties between the hands. However, we didn’t get a top score. Two other pairs bid the slam and got doubled, earning a bigger score.