There is a two-month break between the Denver sectional this weekend and the first 2012 tournament in Denver in mid-January. In the meantime, local clubs will be hosting their regular schedule of games with some holiday festivities.
The Western Conference Sectional Tournament at Clubs is on tap Dec. 5-11.
At multiple games during the week, the same hands will be played at roughly the same time at bridge clubs throughout the western United States and the results compared with overall rankings among the various American Contract Bridge League districts participating.
What this all boils down to is that with a really huge percentage game you could win as many as 15 or 20 masterpoints or so just for playing in a club game. That should tide you over until the next tournament. Contact your local club for details.
At the Western Conference STAC last spring, former Denver bridge unit president and District 17 president Frank Queen was the top Colorado winner with almost 20 masterpoints.
Also, wherever you play bridge in Colorado, check with your favorite club for holiday parties.
World Championships.It was a good day for the “hometown” team in the finals of the Bermuda Bowl world bridge championship late last month. Unfortunately for the United States team, the tournament was being held in Veldhoven, Netherlands.
The Netherlands team scored a decisive victory over the United States squad over the last 128 hands. Picking up the silver medal were Kevin Bathurst, Joe Grue, John Hurd, Justin Lall, Joel Wooldridge and Daniel Zagorin, the youngest team to ever represent the United States in international competition.
They were no doubt disappointed, but with all the team members in roughly the 25-to-40 age bracket, there will certainly be other opportunities.
In the Venice Cup Women’s Teams, the Indonesian team was so far behind it quit before the end of the final round, handing victory to France. All U.S. competitors had been eliminated in the semifinals. The gold also slipped away from the United States in the d’Orsi Senior Teams, with France eking out a narrow win at the end.
New bridge encyclopedia. The seventh edition of “The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge” has just come off the presses. New editions use dto appear at roughly six- to eight-year intervals, but it has been a decade since the 2001 edition.
Compiling the massive amount of information to revise and add to prior editions is a daunting and time-consuming task for the American Contract Bridge League. It always proves worth the wait.
Masterpoint statistics. Jan Janitschke of Littleton remains the top masterpoint holder in Colorado by a wide margin. He is ranked No. 120 nationwide, with over 17,500 masterpoints. He has held the position of top Colorado masterpoint holder for several decades.
Top masterpoint holder nationwide is Jeff Meckstroth of Clearwater, Fla., almost certainly over 70,000 by the time you read this.
Reprints. Master Point Press has reprinted former New York Times bridge writer Alan Truscott’s “The Great Bridge Scandal.” Originally published in 1969, the book covers the most famous alleged cheating scandal in bridge history, involving British players Terence Reese (a top bridge author in his own right) and Boris Schapiro at the 1965 world championships in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
This is the case for the prosecution. Reese defended himself in “Story of an Accusation,” published in 1966.
