A Short trip to the Windy City: Part 2 of 3.

By Howard Einberg

As we all know, bridge is a game of luck and momentum. When things are going right, everything seems to work. When things go wrong… well you know.

Things started out going right for us. Bill and I had a flight into Chicago Midway airport that landed right on time at 8:45 Thursday night, leaving us

75 minutes to travel 30 miles to the hotel for the captains’ meeting. The car rental agency gave us an upgrade for free and we did not get lost. It was a good

start: all four teammates were in town and we were treated like we belonged.

On Friday morning at game time we found out that our first opponents would be the top seeded team in our bracket and Tony and I would be playing

against Larry Cohen and David Berkowitz. “Good,” we thought. “We can play against them before they got warmed up.”

I know some people reading this do not recognize the names of all the top bridge players. My suggestion is if I name someone you do not know, just

think Tiger Woods. Of the 25 teams entered 14 had current or former world champions and most of the rest had national champions. Remember, our goal

was not to embarrass ourselves. If we could just start with a win or two in our early match’s things would be fine.

David Berkowitz and Larry Cohen played nearly perfect against us including making a grand slam that was only about 60% and making a killing lead

against me on the last hand. We lost the match 43-0 IMPs. That was zero victory points (VPs) meaning we started in last place. The event was scored like

a swiss team event using a 20-point victory point scale.

This was the hand I declared in 4♥ against Berkowitz and Cohen on the last hand of the first match.

North:

♠ J85

♥ Q9762

♦ 5

♣ AKT5

South:

♠ KQ9

♥ A8543

♦ KJ

♣ 986

N S

1♥

2♣ 2♥

4♥ pass

Berkowitz led a low club. It looked like I had a loser in each suit unless the ♥K was singleton. I had an additional chance both club honors were

onside. The lead made taking the club finesse dangerous in that maybe it was singleton. It seemed that such a dangerous lead made in tempo was far more

likely to be anything but what he actually held. So, I won the A♣ and lost the obvious 4 tricks. Berkowitz had underled the QJ of clubs in an attempt to talk

me out of the finesse, even before he saw dummy. It worked as game was made at the other table. I thought to myself, if everyone we played against

could make leads like this we were in big trouble.

The format of the event called for two matches to be played before any comparisons with teammates, so as we started the second match against

Michael Seamon (remember Tiger Woods) and Jimmy Cayne we didn’t know how badly we were doing. We lost the second match 19-0 IMPs. Yes— two

matches down and not even one IMP yet for us. We joked that even if they offered us our money back now so that we could go home, we wouldn’t take

it. We were determined to stay and play until we won at least that first IMP.

During the second match the tide started to change. We won our first three VPs, although we were still way back in last place with 3 VPs out of a possible 40 and our third match about to begin.

We were up against the two lowest seeded teams in our bracket for the third and fourth matches. As the third match started, we knew it was now or never.

It was now.

We won both matches and at the break we found ourselves in 9th place out of 11 teams. Close, but not good enough yet. Since the top eight teams would advance after two more sessions we had to improve or we would be gone despite our nascent comeback. I am going to note here that Bill Wickham, also of District 23 and member of the Schuett team was leading our group of 11 and on the way to qualifying.

We won three of the next four matches against teams including Mike Passell, Eddie Wold, Mark Lair, Joel Wooldridge, Peter Weichsel, and Bruce Ferguson. Day One in Chicago ended with us in sixth place, having won five out of eight matches. If we were just average the rest of the way we would easily make it into the second set of matches.

Saturday morning started early for those of us from the West Coast. Our first match of the day was against Wickham’s team and we lost that match by just a few IMPs, leaving us in seventh place. Our 10th round was a bye. Our 11th was against a against the event leaders— Steve Robinson, Peter Boyd, Dan Morse, Bobby Wolff, Fred Stewart and Kit Woolsey— for what was the last qualifying match. Since we were in 7th place by that time, we could afford to lose the match as long as it was close and still be able to qualify. We won it and finished 7th in our group of 11 teams.

The qualifying round was over and our attention turned to the task of surviving the next cut. We had played 70 hands so far and had 56 left to see what we could accomplish. The next two sessions consisted of playing against the eight teams that qualified from the other bracket. The top nine teams out of the remaining 16 would then play in the KO rounds. Eight more matches and again we had to worry about finishing at the bottom.

Our first two matches were against big names. First Tony and I played against Bobby Levin and Steve Weinstein which was followed by a match against Curtis Cheek and Joe Grue. We felt a little trepidation playing against such good players, but found both the opponents and the cards very friendly. We won both matches and all of a sudden, we were among the leaders.

We split the next two matches with a big win and a small loss which helped our VP total and Day Two ended with us sitting in seventh place alongside Wickham’s team, looking like we belonged. Since our bad start we had won 9 out of 12 matches. With only four matches to go we wondered if the dream would continue. But although we wondered if the dream would continue, it still seemed like a bit of a stretch. I still had my airline reservation for the next night and was planning to check out of the hotel in the morning. If we managed to qualify for the next round I could check back into the hotel, I thought. The tournament bulletin also had some reservations about our chances in its predictions. On Sunday morning it read “….while Einberg, who has been a factor, will slide.” We were encouraged to have been mentioned buthoped to defy predictions and stay right where we stood rather than “slide.”