New Life Masters:
Partners go over the top together
Elaine Vona and Mary Miller of Redmond
WA are neighbors and regular partners back
home, so they wanted to celebrate becoming Life
Masters together. They did it Thursday in the
bracketed knockouts.
Vona needed about three
and a half points and Miller was about five short.
They were ready to play in the semifinal of their
bracket when they reported their success – getting
to the semifinal was worth about six points. “We
came here for the gold,” said Vona, “and we
weren’t leaving without it.”
Another husband-wife combo made the grade
together. Thayer and Alice Johnson of Antioch
CA went over the top in the Friday Compact
Knockouts. Their teammates were Sandy Baker
of Alamo CA and George Keifer of Yountville
CA.
The team from Conroe TX is happy –
Jennifer Lindner is now a Life Master. She
needed only .89, but it had to be gold. She earned
more than enough in the Bracketed Knockouts.
Her Conroe teammates were William Lindner and
Kris and Cathy Digre.
Alayne McFetridge of Vanderhoof BC
became a Life Master playing in a bracketed
knockout match against Bernel and Don Scott,
who became Life Masters on Thursday in the
same event. McFetridge’s partner was Lee
Stevens, also of Vanderhoof.
Len Charney of Winnipeg MB won 11.39
golds for finishing second in the Thursday B/C/D
Swiss Teams – more than enough for a gold card.
Also on the team were Wendy Richardson, Shirley
Pearlman and James Ball.
George Kieffer of Walnut Creek CA got the
last points he needed in the 299er Pairs. His goal
was to make LM before his 80th birthday, and he
made it! He started playing bridge when he was 70.
Howard Marks used to play money bridge
with Peter Weichsel and Alan Sontag back in the
Sixties when he was in his teens in Brooklyn. He’s
back in the game again, and he earned his gold card
when he qualified for the final of the Red Ribbon
Pairs. He made it almost exactly – he had 300.02
points after qualifying. He invents gaming
machines for casinos. He finished fourth in the Red
Ribbon.
Virginia Sherman of Dallas became a Life
Master Thursday evening in the bracketed
knockouts.
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Second in Open II
Second in Open Pairs II were Kit Woolsey
and Fred Stewart.
Deja vu, sort of
Back in 1979 the American team was battling
Italy for the Bermuda Bowl in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil. Malcolm Brachman was the sponsor of the
American team, and Ed Theus, the non-playing
captain, considered not using Brachman in the
final.
Brachman’s teammates wouldn’t hear of it.
He had got his team this far, and he was going to
have a chance to go all the way.
He played the first two sessions, and his team
walloped the Italians, 72-3, over those 32 boards.
Brachman didn’t play the rest of the way, and
the Italians cut heavily into the lead.
They staged a
monumental charge in the final session, but the
Americans held on to win by 5.
What brought this to mind? In Thursday’s
Vanderbilt match, Brachman was on the other end
of a similar score. His team trailed 75-3 after the
first quarter against the team captained by George
Jacobs.
2004 World Computer
Bridge Championship VIII
In 1996 the American Contract Bridge League
established an official World Computer Bridge
Championship to be run annually at a major bridge
activity.
This year’s championships will be held at
the Summer NABC in New York City.
The top bridge-playing programs, or robots,
from around the world are expected to compete.
The six-day event starts on July 13. The format
is a round-robin team event with the top four robots
advancing to a semifinal KO.
Entries are due by April 30. For entry
information as well as the history of this
championship go to computer tournament or write Al Levy.
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Canadian Junior Trials
Kingston ON will host the 2004 Canadian
Junior Team Trials May 22–24. The event will be
held concurrently with the Kingston Regional, May
18–24.
Teams must pre-register for this event prior to
April 15. A deposit of $100 (cheque), payable to the
Canadian Bridge Federation, should be mailed to:
Jan Anderson
2719 East Jolly Place, Regina SK
S4V 0X8.
Teams must submit their deposits by the
deadline to be eligible for any subsidy money (for
travel and accommodations to the trials) from the
CBF.
Additional information is available from
Edmund Antosz, the Canadian Junior Team
manager, at antosz@uwindsor.ca, or from Jonathan Steinberg.
1011 tables to go
Attendance at the Reno 2004 now stands at 12, 985 tables with two days to go. Some time today this tournament will take over the No. 1 ranking among Spring NABCs.
The record was set here in Reno six years ago – 13,996 tables. |
What a putdown!
Tournament Director Patty Johnson noted the 75-3 score in the match between George Jacobs and Malcolm Brachman. “That can’t be right,” she said to Tournament Director Roger Putnam.
“That would be the score if I was playing against Jacobs.”
“No way,” said Putnam. “How would you have gotten the 3 IMPs?” |
Correction
In yesterday’s article about Dixie Hsu, we
stated that she started playing duplicate in 1997 – it
was 1987. She is now a Diamond Life Master with
more than 5000 masterpoints.
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