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.

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%.

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.

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

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.

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.