AGAINST THE ODDS

At the Seaside bridge tournament there were over 2100 tables during the six days of play. That is 8,400 individual entries at 18 sessions of bridge, a bit over 466 players per session.

On the last day of the tourney, there is a team game. Most times, bridge is played as a pair game, you and your partner, in a team game, two teams of four play a head to head match. Our E-W plays their N-S and vice-versa over 8 boards during this event. A perfect match would yield a score of 0-0, much like a pitchers duel in baseball, where one mistake can cost a team the game. It is seldom so, but as you only have to win a match against one pair, not every pair in the game, the strategy changes slightly, and the bidding and play are more cautious.

Even though bridge is a game of skill, there is still some element of luck involved. Several times The Kodiak Perspective and his partner made bids that were probable, but failed, where the other team was passive and did not seek out good scores. We had 2 slams (taking all but one trick) fail because our side lacked a small card. It is disheartening when your partner had too good a hand that cannot make because of duplicated or wasted values. It is worse when the other team is rewarded while not even trying for a good score. Losing a hand like that in a team game is very hard to overcome in a short match. Had the slams rolled home we would have won two more matches.

This was the first bridge tournament The Kodiak Perspective has attended in 8 years. It sated his bridge hunger and was great fun. Thanks to district 20 and the Seaside unit 471 for a wonderful time. The hospitality was great with salt water taffy during the day, and in the evenings they had special treats, one night was free clam chowder, and another night was free beer.

Now that the tournament has concluded, The Kodiak Perspective will return to more non-bridge topics. Thank you for indulging these entries.