ACBL Unit 431, District 19, Victoria BC
Perhaps some of you have read Paul Linxwiler’s column on masterpoint ranks in the April Bridge Bulletin.
I totally share his conclusion. As he aptly puts it, “the beauty of our game – and the difficulty in becoming proficient at it – demands that we celebrate these milestones”.
Every month, new Unit 431 members who attain new masterpoint ranks, from Junior to Platinum and beyond, are celebrated on our Masterpoint Milestones page. Have a look and see how your friends are doing.
Don will receive a free game, valid at local clubs, courtesy of Unit 431.
Find the complete list of participants and scores under It’s Your Call-Results in the MEMBERS section at the top of the page. For quicker access, follow this link.
To play the April 2019 quiz, either click here, or hover your mouse over MEMBERS (at top of page) to see a pull-down menu of choices, one of which is It’s Your Call, Victoria!
Take a look at this Washington Post article for some light-hearted weekend reading. Be sure to look at the comments too.
Doping scandal rocks bridge world!
With thanks to Madeleine Tremblay for bringing it to our attention.
Unit 431 lost two members in February 2019. Mac Tidmarsh passed away on February 10. Irene McDonald was 101 years old when she left us on February 24.
More details can be found on our In Memoriam page, under Members in the top menu.
This is Michael’s second win (he also won last November). He receives a free game, valid at local clubs, courtesy of Unit 431.
Find the complete list of participants and scores under It’s Your Call-Results in the MEMBERS section at the top of the page. For quicker access, follow this link.
Once there, you can also read some pretty interesting comments by players explaining their choices of bids. If you feel like responding or adding your own comment, just email the webmaster.
To play the March 2019 quiz, either click here, or hover your mouse over MEMBERS (at top of page) to see a pull-down menu of choices, one of which is It’s Your Call, Victoria!
The Victoria Spring Sectional will once again be held at the Mary Winspear Centre in Sidney, March 8 to 10.
Unit 431 will offer a hospitality table of refreshments for our local players and out of town guests. Contributions for the hospitality table are gratefully accepted! In order to protect our unit’s recent investment in a BridgeSorter dealing machine and new cards, we will avoid serving food items which might damage the machine or cards, and we ask that sticky food donations be avoided. If you prefer to provide a cash donation to assist Unit 431 in purchasing food and beverages, cash donations are also welcome. See our Treasurer Gail Richardson, or any of our other board members: JP Weber, Gloria Dorrance, Ann Brydon, Lionel Traverse, Maureen Trappe, Nev Hircock, Shelley Burnham, Jill Stainforth, and Ernie Tradewell.
On Sunday, Unit 431 will provide free muffins, croissants and fruit, before the Swiss Team event.
See the flyer for more tournament information.
We hope to see you there.
Unit 431, Bridge Victoria Board of Directors
A little cold and snow did not keep our dedicated bridge players away from the Ace of Hearts sectional event on February 9, 2019. The event was chaired by Shelley Burnham and directed by Roy Stefaniec. We had a good turnout of 13.5 tables for the pairs, and 10 tables for the Swiss teams.
Ravi Mehra and David Korican won the N/S Morning Pairs and placed first overall in the tournament with 2.66 silver masterpoints.
Margot Northey and Marian Webb won the E/W Morning Pairs.
Eileen Lugossi, Audrey Mactier, Madeleine Tremblay, and Dolores Johnson won the Afternoon Swiss Teams.
Unit 431’s Annual General Meeting will be held on Sunday, February 10, 2019 starting at 12:30 pm. Plan to attend and choose your new Unit Board!
The AGM will be followed by a fun, individual movement duplicate bridge game ($5)
Free coffee and cookies!
Free pizza and pop after the game!
Read all about it in the flyer.
She receives a free game, valid at local clubs, courtesy of Unit 431.
Find the complete list of participants and scores under It’s Your Call-Results in the MEMBERS section at the top of the page. For quicker access, follow this link.
Once there, you can also read comments by players explaining their choices of bids. If you feel like responding or adding your own comment, just email the webmaster.
To play the February 2019 quiz, either click here, or hover your mouse over MEMBERS (at top of page) to see a pull-down menu of choices, one of which is It’s Your Call, Victoria!
Our favourite director, Matt Smith, is also everybody’s favourite director. As reported in the January edition of the Bridge Bulletin, Matt was presented with the Jean Molnar Employee of the Year Award at the Fall NABC in Hawaii, recognizing a field employee for outstanding customer service.
Matt is highly regarded by both players and his co-workers. As one world champion, Steve Weinstein, puts it, “for my money, Matt is the best of the best.” He further notes that any event where Matt is in charge will be run professionally with rulings well thought out and explained clearly and thoroughly.
More encomiums from bridge luminaries can be found in the full article on page 26 of the January Bridge Bulletin.
Matt is going part-time as director, saying he wants to stay home more, so Victoria players can expect to see him more often, playing at local clubs.
The 2019 CANADIAN BRIDGE CHAMPIONSHIPS will be held in Burnaby, May 4-12.
The Championships include various team and pairs events at both the National and Regional level.
Complete information can be found on the Canadian Bridge Federation website.
Congratulations to Jack who receives a free game, valid at local clubs, courtesy of Unit 431.
And a Merry Christmas to all!
Find the complete list of participants and scores under It’s Your Call-Results in the MEMBERS section at the top of the page. For quicker access, follow this link.
Once there you can also read comments by players explaining their choices of bids. If you feel like responding or adding your own comment, just email the webmaster.
To play the January 2019 quiz, either click here, or hover your mouse over MEMBERS (at top of page) to see a pull-down menu of choices, one of which is It’s Your Call, Victoria!
Congratulations to Mike who receives a free game, valid at local clubs, courtesy of Unit 431.
We had 35 submissions this month. Find the complete list of participants and scores under It’s Your Call-Results in the MEMBERS section at the top of the page. For quicker access, follow this link.
Once there you can also read comments by players explaining their choices of bids. If you feel like responding or adding your own comment, just email the webmaster.
To play the December 2018 quiz, either click here, or hover your mouse over MEMBERS (at top of page) to see a pull-down menu of choices, one of which is It’s Your Call, Victoria!
Ernie receives a free game, valid at local clubs, courtesy of Unit 431.
We had 40 submissions this month. Find the complete list of participants and scores under It’s Your Call-Results in the MEMBERS section at the top of the page. For quicker access, follow this link.
Once there you can also read some very interesting comments by players explaining their choices of bids. If you feel like responding or adding your own comment, just email the webmaster.
And you might like to check out “Bridge etiquette: avoiding slow play” in the right sidebar.
To play the November 2018 quiz, either click here, or hover your mouse over MEMBERS (at top of page) to see a pull-down menu of choices, one of which is It’s Your Call, Victoria!
Cliff will receive a free game, valid at local clubs, courtesy of Unit 431.
We had 35 submissions this month. Find the complete list of participants and scores under It’s Your Call-Results in the MEMBERS section at the top of the page. For quicker access, follow this link.
Once there you can also read some very interesting comments by players explaining their choices of bids. If you feel like responding or adding your own comment, just email the webmaster.
To play the October 2018 quiz, either click here, or hover your mouse over MEMBERS (at top of page) to see a pull-down menu of choices, one of which is It’s Your Call, Victoria!
Nev Hircock has been hard at work preparing the September Bridge Buzz. It will be posted at clubs but no extra paper copies will be printed. But you can of course access it on our website, and feel good about saving a tree (or at least a small branch) at the same time.
To view the current issue of the Bridge Buzz, as well as past ones, click on the top menu item called… (wait for it)… The Bridge Buzz.
Or even easier, here’s the direct link to the September issue.
Congratulations to local bridge player Michael Roche, who, paired with John Carruthers of Kingsville, Ontario, won the prestigious Von Zedwitz Life Master Pairs event at the summer NABC in Atlanta, garnering 190 platinum points.
This is a truly remarkable achievement. The Life Master Pairs is a six-session event with two qualifying, two semi-final and two final sessions. At stake is the Von Zedtwitz Gold Cup. In 1930, Waldemar von Zedtwitz donated the Gold Cup, which was presented to the winners of the Life Master Pairs. The first winners were Von Zedtwitz and P. Hal Sims.
The event has been played annually without interruption since then. Winners over the years include bridge greats Oswald Jacoby, Charles Goren, Bob Hamman, Eric Rodwell, Bob Hamman, Bobby Levin, Eddie Kantar, Mike Lawrence, Larry Cohen, Marty Bergen and Zia Mahmood to name but a few.
(source: Wikipedia)
This evening, Sunday July 29, the D19 GNT Flight C team of Jordan Tessarolo, Marc Furnemont, Ryley Breiddal and Jan Soutar played in the GNT Finals at NABC Atlanta, finishing second in the event.
As reported by Marc in previous posts, they had an incredible run through the five-day event — a day-long qualifying round, round of 16, quarterfinals, semifinals and finals. It is a grueling and challenging event.
Congratulations, Jordan, Marc, Ryley and Jan!
As mentioned in the last post, Jordan Tessarolo, Ryley Breiddal, Jan Soutar and Marc Furnemont are down in Atlanta as the team representing District 19 (British Columbia / Washington State) at the Grand National Teams Championships, and they are doing very well.
Marc has sent us an update on their progress (Sunday morning, July 29). Read it below:
On Friday, we played a team from Jacksonville, Florida. Things started rather slowly, with our team losing by 13 in the first quarter but gaining back 1 before the dinner break. Jim McAvoy, texted me these words of encouragement: “Your opponents are one disaster away from losing”. Well, our team certainly cranked things up in the evening, played pretty good bridge, and won the last two sets by a combined total of 59 points. What a birthday present for Jordan 😉
After that, having exceeded our realistic expectations for the tournament and having celebrated a wee bit (couldn’t fall asleep in until after 3 AM), we had to go back for “one last day”, knowing that whatever happened in the semis, we would have good memories and stories to tell.
The team we faced on Saturday was from Oregon and, just like the day before, we trailed by 15 after the first set. Then Ryley and I bid a very nice slam and pushed to a game that our opponents didn’t find, and those two boards gave us a 2nd quarter win by 25 and a 10 point lead at the break. The fist set of the evening finished on a high / low note. Ryley and I had a misunderstanding in the auction but somehow survived. YES ! win by 12 and a more comfortable lead before the final set. Not so fast ! The other team calls the Director, points out that, because of the (unintentionally) incorrect information we gave them during the auction, the score should be adjusted. The ruling came back half an hour later, in favour of the opponents, and, just like that, our lead had evaporated. I had a hard time re-focusing after that, and tried to not think about the complexities of the (fair) ruling. We were down by 12 with just 3 boards to go when fireworks started. I doubled a 6 diamond slam holding only the ace of clubs and 4 tiny trumps, but Ryley had bid and, surely, surely, he had “stuff”. After an uninspired lead that almost gave the opponents a chance to make it, they finished down 3, while Jordan and Jan “stole” a heart contract at their table. On the penultimate board, in spite of our normally aggressive bidding, Ryley and I stopped in 4 spades (making 5) while the other table bid 6, going down 1. All of a sudden, with one board to go, after playing for almost 9 hours, we were leading by 2 tiny points. That last board was all about defence, as both teams were in the same contract. Ryley and I found the perfect defence to beat the contract, while Jordan was able to induce the other team to make a mistake on defense and make his contract. Win by 14 and an UNBELIEVABLE trip to the Final against a young team from California …
Cheers everyone.
Marc
Jordan Tessarolo, Ryley Breiddal, Jan Soutar and Marc Furnemont are down in Atlanta as the team representing District 19 (British Columbia / Washington State) at the Grand National Teams Championships, and they are doing well.
Here is the account of their adventure so far (Friday morning, July 27), as related by Marc.
As expected, things got tighter in the evening (two small losses and a good win against Minnesota, Colorado, and Michigan). Even though we suffered the worst loss of the day in our 4th set against the team from Ohio (losing by 22 in just 7 boards to a very nice and friendly couple), we qualified in 9th place, and awaited the draw to see who we would play in the round of 16.
Our opponents, drawn by lots, were the 5th ranked team from Ohio we had just finished losing badly to in the last round. However, we felt confident, as we thought the two hands we lost 21 points on were more aberrations then being outclassed, and we thought we had a good chance.
We played 2 rounds of 13 boards in the afternoon, winning the first one by 7 and the second one by 16.In the evening, things got interesting when we lost most of our lead in the 3rd session, losing by 16 on a definitely “pushy” slam going down 1 and allowing our opponents to make 4 Spades doubled.
The final set was a see-saw battle, where I didn’t bid an easily makeable slam, and where Ryley and I allowed them to make 3 Clubs doubled vulnerable, but we also had our share of nice results and Jordan and Jan played a steady round, and we won the last set 39-32 to move on to the round of 8.
After a brief tour of the room where we will play today, in order to learn about playing with screens,
we headed for a few celebratory drinks and tried to sleep.
Today, we play against a Team from Florida.
The four of us would like to sincerely thank the amazing bridge community … and our respective spouses. Your moral and financial support, your words of encouragement and advice, and your teachings over the years, are a great part of our success so far.
Cheers.
Marc