Another year rolls to a close and another new year beckons, with a lot on the schedule for duplicate and tournament bridge players.
The biggest news is probably that, like last year, Colorado will have two regional tournaments instead of the usual one, the traditional Rocky Mountain Regional in Denver May 20-26, and the Colorado Springs Pikes Peak Regional Aug. 11-17.
For those who travel out of state, some other regional tournaments get shuffled around a bit.
The Summer North American Bridge Championships are slated for the popular Las Vegas venue July 17-27. As a result, the usual Las Vegas Regional held in June has moved to Jan. 20-26, thus bumping the annual Albuquerque Navajo Trail Regional out of its customary January time slot to new dates of Feb. 24 to March 2.
The Mesa Roadrunner Seniors Regional remains in the fairly normal time slot of April 7-13, while Phoenix recently voluntarily surrendered its traditional scorching August regional tournament dates for a milder time slot, scheduled this year for Oct. 6-12.
Denver has the usual four sectional tournaments on tap, Jan. 9-12, March 6-9, July 10-13 and Nov. 6-9.
The Denver bridge unit expects to host two 299’er tournaments in April and October.
Other sectional tournaments in 2014 will be held in Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Longmont, Loveland, Grand Junction, Durango, Glenwood Springs and Montrose.
As to that first tournament, the Denver winter sectional is Jan. 9-12 at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds Exhibit Hall at 15200 W. Sixth Ave. in Golden with this schedule.
Jan. 9 has the single-session Stratiflighted Swiss Teams at 7 p.m.
On Jan. 10, Bracketed Knockouts are scheduled at 9:30 a.m. and 1:30 and 7 p.m. The expanded schedule with Friday morning pair games at the November fall tournament was a success, so it’s back. There will be single-session Stratified Open Pairs and Stratified 299’er Pairs all three times.
Jan. 11 has earlier starting times of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. for the double-session Stratified Open Pairs (single-session entries accommodated) and the single-session Stratified 299’er Pairs.
The tournament ends Jan. 12 with two-session playthrough Stratiflighted Swiss Teams and 299’er Swiss Teams beginning at 10 a.m.
American Contract Bridge League members with zero to five masterpoints play free and there will be special pricing for youth and junior members (under 25).
Platinum Life Master: Suzanne Jones of Boulder is just the fourth woman in Colorado bridge history to attain Platinum Life Master status at 10,000 masterpoints. She has been a regular winner at Colorado tournaments for decades and won the Colorado Victory for best performance in a year twice, one of those shared with her most frequent partner over the years, Broma Lou Reed of Boulder, the first Colorado woman to hit 10,000.
She recently retired after more than two decades of running duplicate bridge games at various locations in the Boulder area. More time to play bridge.
Upcoming Lessons: Bridge instructor Norma Sands has new lessons beginning the week of Jan. 13 at 5250 Leetsdale Drive, Suite 135. All classes are six weeks, two hours each. Choose among Basic Bridge, Intermediate Bidding, Improve Your Slam Bidding, Current Trends in Bidding, Play of the Hand and other topics, with additional information available from 303-771-6654.
