Jan 20-22 -- Reached Regional Master Title

Points Summary
♠   ♥   ♦   ♣	Gold	Red	Silver	Other	Total
Earned This Time	2.48	8.28			10.76
Earned Earlier This Year	1.30	1.24			2.54
Total Earned This Year	3.78	9.52			13.30
Earned Prior to This Year	11.41	45.01	21.98	17.39	95.79
Total	15.19	54.53	21.98	17.39	109.09
Required	25.00	25.00	50.00	200.00	300.00
Still Needed	9.81	0.00	28.02	153.08	190.91

Advance Planning

Thanks to a local director and teacher with whom I'm sharing my quest, I found a new local partner willing to work with me to build a partnership and progress in our goals -- my new partner wants to earn enough Gold Points for Life Master this year. We are both eligible to play in 199er games, but usually prefer to seek better competition. Our skill sets appear to vary and are complementary in many ways. We should be able to learn from each other and both improve through a partnership. I may find time to write more on this later. This new partner, called "W" here, will be known to local players. During the week, we made arrangements to travel to the Regional on Friday. The tournament started on Monday, so on our arrival we knew we would find many players already there. We drove down and upon arrival began seeking teammates for the bracketed knockout teams. W wanted teammates at about our level. Fortunately we found another pair from our area, E and E, at about our level, also seeking teammates. They were delighted to join up with us, and the four of us played team events for the remainder of the tournament.

Overall Results

We did well enough in our three events to win points in each, including some gold in the first. Counting each three-way match as two matches, we played thirteen matches, winning eight and tieing another, losing only four. All were delighted! Despite playing only three days in this seven-day regional tournament, W and I earned more masterpoints than 64.2 percent of the participants. Our teammates E and E, who arrived and played earlier, earned more masterpoints than 75.46 percent of the participants. I won almost ten percent of my masterpoint total at this one tournament!

• Friday-Saturday Bracketed Knockout teams
  
  Our team played in the bracketed knockout teams that started Friday afternoon. Because of our relatively small number of total masterpoints (we estimated less than 400), we were in the sixth bracket of six. Instead of the maximum of 16 teams, this bracket had twelve. The Friday afternoon session was four three-way matches, each of which would advance two teams to Friday night's quarterfinals. We split the three-way match, as did the other two teams. Fortunately, we did not lose the tie-breaker, and thus moved on to the quarterfinals, where we won. All were delighted at being guaranteed Gold Points, as the top four teams in bracket all win at least some gold. Saturday afternoon we returned to the fray, and won our semi-final match. There's a lot to be said for being improving players and playing against others at our current masterpoint level; we can expect that few if any of our competitors will totally outclass us. Saturday night's final was hard-fought, and we lost by about 25 IMP's. Change two bad boards to pushes (equal results at both tables) and we would have had a narrow win. Still, all were delighted at the 7.45 masterpoints for finishing second, especially the 2.48 gold included. For W, it was the first award of at least one gold point. One of the E's and I both went over 100 masterpoints total with these masterpoints, each becoming Regional Masters.
  
  

  Knockout Summary -- scoring = IMPs 24 boards per match 12 boards per match in a three-way match
  Match	Boards	IMPs
  1 a (RR)	12	35 - 14
  1 b (RR)	12	24 - 28
  2	24	92 - 49
  3	24	84 - 50
  4	24	48 - 70

  
  
  
• Red Ribbon Pairs Qualification
  
  In an unexpected surprise, I found that our second-place finish gives each of us a Red Ribbon Pairs qualification. This is my first Red Ribbon Pairs qualification. The Red Ribbon Pairs is held each year at the Spring National Tournament. It's a two-day, four-session Nationally rated event, open to qualifying players with under 2000 Masterpoints. The applicable "fine print" from the ACBL web site is the last of eleven ways to gain eligibility to compete in the Red Ribbon Pairs; here it is:

  11. First and second in any bracket of a bracketed KO which does not award 100% gold points for overall placing when no member of the team has more than 1500 masterpoints.

  As the Red Ribbon Pairs is held the two days immediately before the North American Pairs (NAP) flights B and non-Life Master, I now have two events at the Spring Nationals in which to compete in 2007 if I make my goal of winning my District's competition for the NAP.
  
  
• 0-300 Sunday Morning Swiss Teams
  
  After a long discussion in which the other three seemed to reach a consensus, I went along and we all agreed to play in the 0-300 Swiss Teams on Sunday. Although going against my "compete against the best" decision, this gave us the best chance to win more points. Only red points are available in 0-300 games, so we would win no more gold at this regional. Playing in the open Swiss Teams could have resulted in more gold points, but the competition would have been much better and we would have had much more difficulty in winning enough matches by a large enough margin to place overall in even the lowest stratum awarding gold.
  
  In the Swiss, we won our first match by a large amount, and did almost as well in the second. For the third match, we were up against a highly regarded team from our area. We lost a close match, but retained the overall lead. We won the final match and the overall title, adding 2.83 red points to our take.
  
  

  Session Summary scoring = Victory Points 6 boards per match
  Match	IMPs	VPs	Total VP's
  1	21 - 1	18 - 2	18
  2	22 - 3	17 - 3	35
  3	2 - 4	9 - 11	44
  4	43 - 6	20 -0	64

  
  
  
• Sunday Afternoon 0-300 Swiss Teams
  
  We started the afternoon with a three-way match (in Swiss Teams the three-way matches take up two rounds), and lost one and tied the other. In the third round, we were again placed in a three-way match. We won both matches, but finished just one Victory Point short of an overall award. Still, we earned 0.48 more Red Points for our two match victories and one tie.
  
  

  Session Summary scoring = Victory Points 6 boards per match
  Match	IMPs	VPs	Total VP's
  1 (RR1)	13 - 27	4 - 16	4
  2 (RR1)	13 - 13	10 - 10	14
  3 (RR2)	16 - 12	12 - 8	26
  4 (RR2)	14 - 6	14 - 6	40

Lessons being Learned

• I was more aggressive and decisive, taking the extra bid several times. Once it came back to bite us, many of the other times the results were very good.

More Lessons to be Learned

• W says I am poor at opening leads. I'll study what Kantar writes about opening leads in "Defensive Tips for Bad Card Holders" and see how that helps me improve.
  
  
• I have a long way to go to match W in geniality, hospitality and table manners. W provides a good example for me to emulate; all appreciate bridge players who are unfailingly polite and cheerful.
  
  
• There's much work to be done to build a successful partnership; W and I will try to play in pairs events which provide hand records; this will be invaluable in analyzing results. We expect that such analysis will help us to work out firm partnership agreements in bidding and play, and to recognize and correct errors.
  
  
• I will probably need more partnerships with more players, as W is not available at the local Unit Game, plays fairly regularly with other local players, and may not be able to play as my partner in some of the tournaments on my tentative schedule.

Last Word

If my goal is ten Master Points per tournament, I reached that goal at this one. Finding W was a tremendous help this weekend; playing with W or other frequent partners of similar or better ability in future tournaments should give an excellent chance of similar results.

I am very grateful to W, E, and E for the entire tournament experience. I could not have found such excellent companions had I ventured to the tournament on my own. Winning points was of course the goal of each, and all are pleased to have won so many -- but the fact that we are all from the same area, all have close to the same number of masterpoints, and all enjoyed ourselves both at and away from the bridge table added much to the experience. I hope that we'll be frequent partners and teammates in the future. Thanks, W, E, and E!