[TylerE]

Just a random request here - I'm going to be at the Charlotte Regional all week next week and am looking for a game for the Monday Aft. Pairs. Any BBOers interested?

[jillybean]

Which country?

[mike777]

TylerE, on Oct 19 2007, 06:42 PM, said:

Just a random request here - I'm going to be at the Charlotte Regional all week next week and am looking for a game for the Monday Aft. Pairs. Any BBOers interested?

I have not played f2f bridge in years and years. To be fair many online forum posters might say I still do not know how to play bridge but..........

I was thinking of maybe going to this tourney and giving it a whirl since I live just down the road.

PM me if you or anyone else here may have any interest in playing or need more information.

I keep hearing alot about these KO or swiss teams thingies....that sounds like fun.

http://www.mabcbridge.org/RegionalTourname...2/InfoIndex.htm

Mike

[han]

Wow, enjoy Mike!

[TylerE]

Got a partner, thanks for the interest.

[mike777]

Just got back from my first f2f game in years and years.

Played KO with 3 other pickups...We were in bracket 3....3000-5000 team points.

Just a few comments...everyone was very nice and made the game enjoyable.
Lot of stars there, meckwell, cohen, berk, grue, lynch team, sontag and on and on...

KO is a huge event......7 brackets something around 120 or more teams I think...
New version of KO starting every 3 hours it seemed...

The hestitation and gestures and sighs were constant. In one slam auction that was taking forever to bid one opp simple said...I am confused...in the middle of their auction. The play at the other table was constantly slow....30 minutes to an hour behind us...In fact in the last match....they cancelled the last bd...

Every one was very nice..and I really enjoyed myself..I may go back for another pick up event.

Some random comments I heard that stuck with me:
1) I am still confused between takeout and negative doubles.
2) I needed 7.92 gold pts and I just got 3.7 gold pts.
3) Meckstroth " I played the Queen and LHO played......."
4) I only had 5 hcp so how could I force to game let alone bid slam in 2 suits when you showed 18-19 bal.? (6=1=6=0). His partner raised the nonforcing bid to game anyway.


I told everyone to come play online with BBO. The most frequent comment I heard was, it sounds complicated and are the people nice?

If the 3 nice ladies I played with happen to read this ty ladies..btw one had 100 pts and the other 400 pts. good run....

Ok will close with my one and only director call I made


(2d)=2h=(x)=p
((3d)=?

I now ask what x was and am told negative....

I call director and am told
1) x if penalty not an alert
2) x if negative not an alert
3) your partner needs to ask and protect herself.


Ciao

[JanM]

I think that the director was wrong. The rule is that "Doubles and redoubles with highly unusual or unexpected meanings" are alertable. Assuming I'm reading your auction correctly and the DBL was by the partner of a weak 2 bid opening after a simple overcall, for that double to be negative is, in my opinion, highly unusual. I alert a negative double by responder to a 1NT opening, which I think is more mainstream than a negative double by responder to a weak 2 bid.
Glad you enjoyed your "excursion" into f2f bridge.

[mike777]

Jan, thanks for your post.

No luck in getting partners at the partnership desk wednesday and thursday mornings so no bridge.

Today Friday, got a pick up partner and played with a pair who were a partnership. Did not know them but I know they had a ton of points. We were in bracket one morning ko.

We lost. Our opp made enough errors for us to win and played solid bridge but nothing that seemed tough.

Our team simply lost because of poor opening leads, not bidding our games, one bidding misunderstanding and uninspired declarer play. My point being we lost simply from poor basic play that I would expect most posters in the beg/int forum to do better on. Be not afraid BBO's int players I see no reason why you cannot do very well even in some bracket one KO's

[DJNeill]

Hey Mike,
Sorry you had a bad bridge event. I hope the rest of your trip went well. I am not familiar with the area too much but perhaps it had some good restaurants.

Thanks,
Dan

[jikl]

Glad you enjoyed it Mike. I might even do F2F again soon. If and when I get pressured into it I will post a similar rundown

Sean

[mike777]

Sunday was the last day of the tourney. I played in my third event. OTher days no partner. Today was an all day swiss. Over 2000 for any one player played in the top event, I played in the under 2000 points for any one player. My partner was a pickup and the other pair had played together a few times. It was scored Victory Points.

The people were very nice and polite. I enjoyed the table chatter. Our team did nothing great and missed some games, one slam, and some poorish defense on a few hands and silly play on a few others. My partner and I had two smallish bidding misunderstandings, one cost 2 imps the other 6 imps. Despite that we won somehow.

Talk about MP inflation I played in 3 events and in one event won zero pts and won 22+ in the other two. I have no hands or problems to post since my biggest surprise was that the bidding, play and defensive problems we try and solve in these forums, any of the forums are tougher than the problems I noticed at the table. Trying to solve these forum problems really has helped me, a ton!

At the end I got to chat a little with Larry Cohen in the lobby. Jeff and Eric(meckwell) were there also, just standing around and I had a million questions to ask them but I did not want to pester them.

Again I told everyone to come and play on BBO!