We did, in fact, have another excellent session last night, and again we did a lot of good things. Going into the last round we were 21st in a bunch, but on the last board of the evening the defense compressed a trick and Ari pulled off a nice double squeeze, and we came all the way up to ninth.

I'm very happy with this result -- if we had played well during qualifying, we could certainly have come in higher, but we put two good if not perfect sets together. The competition was weak -- I totally see how we could win this so-called national event. The ninth place is our highest finish ever in a national event, surpassing the 10th in the North American Swiss (also a second-tier event), so that's good.

Unfortunately, today in the fast pairs... what can I say. We played well. Our opponents gave us nothing, nothing. We scored 52-47 to barely miss qualifying for tomorrow's final, and that was that. I'm flying home tomorrow evening for a wedding, so barring some spontaneous side game, that's it for Vegas for me. Great times -- I really feel like Ari and I played well, even if we only have the one result to show for it. And the setting can't be beat, of course -- I wish every nationals were here.

See you in Boston!

So having been knocked out of the Spingold, we've been playing the 2-day open pairs starting on its second day, which is the easiest open national event by far, since all the best players are still in it. We didn't do ourselves any favors in the first session, sadly, simply making lots of outright mistakes to end a smidge over 50. With confidence at a low, we managed to pull it together somehow in the evening: we were sloppy, but also did a large number of good things to post a 57 and qualify with plenty of room to spare. This is weird, of course: most of bridge is not making mistakes, but we made some nice leads, had some nice bids and defenses, and put pressure on the opponents at the right time.

Coming into today, we were 84th out of 182 pairs, and we had a nice first set. I thought we'd be around 25th or so, but we ended up 42nd -- it's not out of the question that we could win, but it'd have to be a huge game. So I probably won't win my first open national championship tonight -- nonetheless, if we play solidly, we certainly have a shot at top 20, which would be nice.

The thing is, I don't feel like any of the pairs we played against were better than us. This is encouraging in some sense, but also it feels like kind of a missed opportunity -- if we'd been playing well the whole time, we could be doing much better (admittedly, we haven't played that many pairs, a small fraction of the field, but still.) Oh well -- it's still fun to be doing decently in a national event.

Today we participated in the annual feeding frenzy known as the Spingold. Attendance here has been great; 108 teams signed up for it. We were seeded 84th and drew the #23 seed, so of course we were heavy underdogs.

We actually didn't play that badly, I thought, but after one quarter we were down 50 or so -- some unlucky things, but mostly the opponents were really, really good. It's the first time I've really played a knockout match against a really good team (okay, second), and seeing that level of consistency for 32 boards makes me realize how far I have to go as a bridge player. It's sobering, but at the same time it was actually really fun to play high caliber bridge, and I don't feel like we were horribly outclassed.

The second quarter was like -25, and after three we were down by 90 and withdrew, which was good. Ari and I had some fruitful system discussion, played some creights with the Crank, gambled a bit (low low stakes), and then it was onto the midnight. I was slated to play with the caddy team, but the teammates vanished, so I recruited Ari and Carlos Pellegrini (an Argentine ex-junior*) to play with me and my caddy partner. Amazingly, we managed to win the midnight, which was really neat. This was my favorite hand: I held T9xxx x KT8x AQx. Partner opened 1D, I bid 1S, and now partner jumped to 4S. Without methods, I decided to just bid 6S. They led a heart and dummy tabled AKQ AJxx AJ9x xx. I won the first heart and proceeded to run a dummy reversal: ruff a heart, spade to ace, ruff a heart, spade to K (J dropping, nice), ruff a heart (they were 4-4), diamond to the ace, draw the last trump. When I led a diamond off dummy, righty followed with the queen, eliminating any guesswork. The icing on the cake was that the club finesse was on: a fun +1460. Who needs science?

Back to the high-level battlefields tomorrow with the easiest national event on the schedule, the 2-day pairs with all of the top teams still in the Spingold (presumably.) Hopefully we can get a result after failing in our first two tries.

So we entered the A/X swiss today. I am not making this up: there were two hundred teams in the field. With it being eight sessions, this made it odds on that some team would win all of their matches. TWO HUNDRED TEAMS.

Hilariously, in the first twelve boards, Steve and I had four accidents, but we did okay, had 19 VPs through two matches, just a smidge behind average. Then in the third match, our opponents bid a grand on a finesse which made, and then something unethical happened at the other table (our opponents, not our teammates.) The directors ruled against us, which was sad. These two boards were 30 IMPs, and in a six board match, this adds up to a blitz.

Amazingly, with 19 out of 60 VPs, we played a team of pros in the fourth round. Again, two boards were our demise, and with 22 out of 80 at the break we called it quits and downgraded our entry to the 1-session BAM. Or maybe IMP pairs. I won't know, as I called in a substitute for the evening, which I'm taking off.

These results have been pretty bad so far. Hopefully I can play better, starting tomorrow with the real Spingold. We're going to be seeded pretty low, as usual, but I'm hopeful of making it to the second day. There's no reason we can't do this -- after all, with a partner I've never played with before, we had a great set in the second match of our four-way in the Vanderbilt last year, and came within 11 IMPs of advancing.

Time to rest up, now. In other news, +70 dollars at the tables today.

Summer nationals start with a bang: a three-day pairs, the second hardest pair event on the calendar after the Blue Ribbons. A year and a half ago, I managed to make it to the final day of the Blue Ribbons and acquit myself admirably there, with two 49-plus games. My goal here was to make it to the final day again.

Ari and I hadn't played live bridge in a while, so I was a little nervous, but in the first session we played really solidly and really well, which added up to a 56. This took some of the pressure of the evening off, and we didn't play great, but good enough with some fun moments mixed in, to qualify for the second day with plenty of room to spare -- in the top half of the field even. So we had some carryover to spare.

Unfortunately, in the first session of the second day, the wheels came off. I simply couldn't concentrate -- it was some of the worst bridge I'd ever played. Amazingly, it only added up to a 46, but it was enough to drop us well out of qualifying position (they were qualifying 104 of 234 pairs, so one needed to be somewhat above average to qualify.) In the evening, we played a bit better, but so did the opponents, and we missed qualifying by quite a bit.

There were, of course, some interesting hands along the way. The two moments I'll remember most of all:

-- One of the world's best players mis-claimed in a four-card end position against us. In the end position in 2S, I held a small heart, small club, and two good diamonds. Dummy had the good heart, a club, and two big spades; declarer had two good clubs and two big spades; my partner held three small spades and a club. He claimed, saying, I'm going to get my club and a high crossruff (after I had been in the tank a while, and he looked at my partner's hand to speed things up (don't try that at home.)) My partner pointed out that if I made the weird play of a heart, he could pitch his club and declarer had no recourse!

-- On one of the later hands, I held a totally normal hand, Kxxx Qxxx Jxx xx. My LHO opened 1S, and partner, white-red, pulled out the 6C card. I thought this was a swingy, funny thing to try to get us up a bit, but in fact he held void AJx A AKQJTxxxx, and it was totally reasonable (many people I gave this problem to did the same thing.) What a hand, huh?

Anyway, after failing to qualify, I was planning to take today off, but somehow got roped into a two-session Swiss instead. It's hard to pass up bridge with fun people at nationals, so here we go -- a bit of relaxation before the hard national events start off. Hopefully it'll be a bit of a confidence builder.

On a social note, things here are fantastic. Pretty much everyone I wanted to see is here (with a couple of exceptions -- hi Jenny!), and it's simply a blast. And I haven't even had the chance to exchange money for fun at the casinos yet!

I'm leaving for summer nationals tonight, and I'm psyched. I haven't played that much bridge recently, but Ari and I had a nice bidding session the other day, and I'm confident that we can do well. Of course, the city is also one of my favorites, and I'm looking forward to seeing the usual suspects, so pretty much everything is lined up for an epically good nationals.

In other news, the junior team trials happened, and concluded yesterday. I watched much of it on vugraph, and Eric Mayefsky, Victor Chubukov, Roger Lee, and Kevin Fay played very well and deserve to be representing the US in Beijing this October (disclaimer: Eric and Victor are two of my often-partners.) Congrats to them!

Anyway, I'll be playing 8 days in Vegas (tomorrow through the following Friday), and as always at nationals, I'll be blogging daily about the events: 3-day LM pairs, Spingold, and if we get knocked out of that in time, 2-day pairs (hopefully not) and fast pairs (almost certainly.) If you're going to be there come say hi!