Katz, Rosenberg lead LM Pairs

It’s an international field at the top of the standings in the Von Zedtwitz Life Master Pairs. Ralph Katz and Michael Rosenberg are well ahead of the field as 104 pairs head into today’s two-session final. A pair from India, S. Sundarram and P. Ridhar are running second, followed by Bryan Maksymetz of Canada and Lars Andersson of Sweden.

Others well up in the standings are 4, Brian Glubok and Fred Chang; 5, Jacek Pszczola of Poland and Jared Lilienstein.

Floridians are champs in Bruce LM Pairs

Brian Gunnell of Jacksonville FL and Henry Meyer of Vero Beach FL came from back in the pack after the first two qualifying sessions to win the Bruce Life Master Pairs, for players with up to 5000 masterpoints.

They finished more than 40 matchpoints ahead of the runners-up, Jane Dillenberg of New York City and Jerry Goldberg of Yonkers. Top on a board was 28. At the halfway point, the winners stood 10th in the field.

With the win, Gunnell, a computer consultant, has now won all three of the ACBL’s 0-5000 events, including the Mini-Spingold last year and the GNT Flight A in 2002.

All five players for District 12 are connected in some way with the University of Michigan. Blekherman and Peters, who are roommates, both are graduate students majoring in math. Kiefer is a psychology graduate. Wasserman is a math professor. And Harty is a cabbie – but his wife, Christianne Myers, is a member of the faculty.

Mahaffey rally earns win in top GNT flight

The District 9 team from Florida captained by Jim Mahaffey rallied from 35 IMPs down in the fourth quarter to win the Grand National Teams, Championship Flight 146-144 over the District 16 squad led by Malcolm Brachman.

For Mahaffey, of Winter Park, and Barnet Shenkin of Boca Raton, the victory was their first in the event. Teammate Jeff Meckstroth of Tampa has won the GNT six times, while Eric Rodwell of Clearwater Beach and Michael Seamon of Miami Beach have captured the title five times. Gary Cohler of Miami is now a two-time GNT winner.

The runners-up, from Texas, are Brachman, Bart Bramley and Sidney Lazard of Dallas, Mike Passell of Plano and Eddie Wold of Houston.

Brachman jumped out to a 55-47 lead after one quarter, but Mahaffey was ahead by 7 IMPs at the break. The Texans blasted their opponents 53-11 to take the lead with a quarter to go but could not hold it.

Long Island duo take Young Pairs

Marvin Levine of Northport NY and Robert Frick of Stony Brook NY scored a solid victory in the Young Life Master - 1500 Pairs, a four-session nationally rated event.

Wieslaw Kalita of Woodbridge IL and Marian Krasowski of Prospect Heights IL were second, followed by Sandy Johnson of Ho Ho Kus NJ and Benjamin Rottman of White Plains NY.

Frick just barely made the Life Master qualification – he won his gold card a month ago. He is a stay-at-home dad who takes care of his two daughters, Kiana 8 and Sarah 6. His wife, Darla Broberg, is a psychologist.

Levine, a retired psychologist, does some writing these days. His most recent book is“Psychology of Buddhism.”

District 21 tops in Flight B of GNT

The District 21 team that won the Flight B Grand National Teams championship had to do a lot of regrouping along the way. Their original captain couldn’t make it – he’s still in Europe. But the new captain, Jim Leuker of San Francisco, found the players he needed for a winning combination.

Playing with him were Bruce Tuttle and Shelley Lapkoff, Berkeley CA; Sathya Bettadapura of Campbell CA and Tanakorn “Big” Lavanakul of Dublin CA.

They triumphed over the District 14 team which included Jonathan Cohen of Prior Lake MN, Charles Nauen of St. Paul MN, Mark Krusemeyer of Northfield MN and Patti Stuhlman of Minneapolis.

Leuker, Tuttle and Bettadapura were original members of the team. Leuker, a retired computer consultant, knew that Lapkoff and Lavanakul had had some experience playing with other members of the team, so he asked them to join.

Why is Lavanakul called Big? It turns out that he is the only boy in a family with six sisters, so he was always the big brother. He’s a software engineer, as is Bettadapura. Tuttle is a retired project planner for Charles Schwab. Lapkoff is a demographer.

District 6 stampedes to GNT Flight A win

The way Sumner Steinfeldt sees it, baseball great Ted Williams had a lot to do with his District 6 squad’s victory in the Grand National Teams Flight A – a win by nearly 100 IMPs against a District 12 team that withdrew after three quarters.

“It was the Ted Williams tee shirts,” said Steinfeldt, who lived in Boston for many years but now calls Washington DC home. Steinfeldt has four Ted Williams tee shirts, which he wore four days in a row in the district qualifying tournament. In New York, he wore the same four tee shirts in the same order during his squad’s run to the championship.

Whether Steinfeldt’s teammates were aware of the tee shirt magic, they were happy winners: team captain Marshall Kuschner, Reston VA; Hal Hindman, Annandale VA, and Mark Chen, Oak Hill VA.

The runners-up, from Michigan, are Mark
Leonard, Ypsilanti; Thomas Rozinski, Ann Arbor; Barry Lippitt, Southfield, and Richard Mydloski, Taylor.

Kuschner is a part-time tournament director whose wife Candy, is a full-time TD. He and Steinfeldt, a retired web master for the U.S. Postal Service, have been playing together for more than 20 years.

Hindman, an OB-GYN doctor, and Chen, a software developer, have been regular partners for about seven years. Chen was anxious to mention his wife, Yin-Ching and their two daughters, Erica and Grace.

The District 6 team started strong, opening a 48- 16 lead after one quarter and extending it to 110-55 at the halfway point. Their opponents withdrew after three quarters, trailing 190-93.

A young squad from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology took a big lead at the halfway point and fought off a determined foursome from Stanford to win the College Team Championship 123-82.

The winners are Ljudmila Kamenova, Jason Chiu, John Hopkinson, all of Cambridge MA, and Kevin Chu of Somerville MA. Chu is studying financial economics at MIT. The others are studying math.

Kamenova, 25, came to the U.S. three years ago from Bulgaria. She was on a fellowship and had a lot of free time, so she gravitated to bridge. She has been playing with Chu for about two months.

Chiu takes credit for assembling the team, doing so in a week after finding out about the event at the last minute. In the college championship, he and Hopkinson played together for only the third time.

The MIT squad opened a 69-13 lead at the break against Stanford, represented by Samuel Ieong of Menlo Park, Ho-Lin Chen and Joon Pahk of Stanford and Eric Mayefsky of Chappaqua NY.