Not afraid to play the big boys: Chris Moore, Jennifer Chalfan, Samantha
MacDouglas and Brian Reynolds.
Many bridge players go through a phase in their early careers where they
soak up every idea like a sponge, challenges are welcomed and their love
affair with the game is evident to everyone they encounter. You can feel their
energy, its infectiousness and its excitement.
There are many here in Reno who fit that description to varying degrees,
but in particular there are four young adults — teammates — who are
throwing themselves into the game with a passion.
Samantha MacDouglas, 30, and Brian Reynolds, 32, live in Van Nuys
CA. MacDouglas is a screenwriter and Reynolds, her husband, is an actor.
Teammates Chris Moore, 26, and his fiancé Jennifer Chalfan, 25, are from
Bellevue WA. Moore is a software engineer for Microsoft, Chalfan is a
systems engineer for Boeing.
The team has been playing together for three years and is enjoying amazing success.
“We’ve played in several regionals and four NABCs, and we haven’t lost a bracketed knockout match since the 2002 NABC in D.C.,” said Chalfan.
This is not a boast, however. To the team, it signals the possibility of stagnation. As students of the game in the best sense of the word, they have grown hungry for sterner competition. They don’t want easy victories; they want to get better.
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“Our team has about 2000 masterpoints total. In most regional knockouts, that puts us in one of the lower brackets most of the time,” said Moore.
“We want to play stronger players. It’s really more fun,” added Reynolds.
The team, therefore, decided upon a solution: they would attend the NABC in Reno and play in national-level team games. On Sunday, they entered the Vanderbilt Knockouts Teams, the granddaddy of knockout events which attracts the cream of the bridge world every year. Their first round-round opponent was the squad captained by Mike Moss. Veterans all, the Moss squad featured players with multiple national wins and tens of thousands of masterpoints.
Moss showed no mercy. They manhandled the less experienced team, winning by more than 50 IMPs. What was the reaction of the “new kids”?
“We had a blast,” said MacDouglas. “I wish we could play teams like that every time. Our games would improve so fast.”
Having developed a taste for high-level action, the team decided to enter a regional knockout event the following day. However, instead of playing in their normal bracket (10), the foursome requested to play in the top bracket of the event. The director in charge agreed to the request — a legal one, if rare — and the quartet found themselves paired against the squad captained by Marinesa Letizia.The cutoff for the bracket was almost 18,000 masterpoints.
The result?
“We lost by 10,” said Reynolds. The loss was largely due to a bidding problem they encountered on one deal, but the squad was undeterred. “We’ve already won two bracketed knockouts and one compact KO, but we’re going to try more of the tougher events,” said Reynolds.
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He's not the caddy, he's the director
14-year-old Cooper Galvin, of Anchorage AK,
was one of 74 people who took the ACBL Club
Director Course here in Reno.
Priscilla Smith, who taught the course, said the
group was the largest ever.
“There were so many people, we had to break
it into two groups,” she said.
Galvin completed the three-day class and
successfully passed the exam to become a Certified
Club Director. He attended the class with his father,
Patrick. Smith reports that both passed the exam
easily.
Interested in learning to become a club
director? Check the Bridge Bulletin for a listing of
upcoming classes near you, or contact Joyce Stone at ACBL at 800–264–2743.
Another big day
We had 1749.5 tables in play yesterday, the
biggest day so far. The total to date for Reno 2004 is 8155.5
tables.
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Vanderbilt KOs: Day 3 action
Each of the four major brackets in the Vanderbilt saw an upset in Tuesday’s round of play.
The #8 seed captained by Rita Shugart was
shown the door by the #25 team led by Richard
Pavlicek, 197–115 . The #10 seed led by Kit
Woolsey also said farewell when they were
defeated by the #23 (originally #42) seed with
Hemant Lall at the helm, 146–134. Sam Lev’s #11 team was sent home when they
lost to the Dutch squad captained by Jan Jansma
125–95. Despite a furious last-quarter charge, Lou
Ann O’Rourke’s squad, the #12 seed, got booted
from the event as Mike Moss’s team, the #21 seed,
won 125–117.
The round of 16 begins today.
Krekorian-Bianco lead Mixed Pairs Jim Krekorian and Judith Bianco led the field
of 474 pairs in yesterday’s qualifying rounds of
the Mixed Pairs. The leaders posted a final score
of 841.00, almost eight boards above average.
In second more than a board behind the
leaders (top on a board was 25) were Marty
Fleisher and Rozanne Pollack with 808.50. Very
close behind in third were Rita Ellington and
Martin Caley who each scored 808.22.
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Lloyd Arvedon surpasses 15,000
His mother taught him the game when he was
10 years old, and now he has more than 15,000
masterpoints. That’s Lloyd Arvedon of Bedford
MA who is now a bridge professional.
Arvedon already is a Grand Life Master – he
has two North American championships to his
credit. He has won both Open Pairs I and Open
Pairs II, both in partnership with Allan Falk Within
the past year and a half he has had two third-place
and one fifth-place finish in national events.
The big time in his bridge life occurred in the
late Seventies when he was a relatively new ACBL
player – he qualified for the finals in seven
consecutive national pair events.
He did fund-raising for schools for 25 years,
but then he turned to teaching bridge. He really
enjoys this. “Most of my students are quite good –
some have as many as 5000 masterpoints. I try to
help them to think along different lines so they can
become really top-flight players It’s challenging,
but I enjoy it.”
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