Reno NABC results for Saturday, March 20
Just because I came home doesn’t mean I won’t be keeping up with the news. Sometimes, that’s pretty easy to do. I opened up the results this morning, and the very first thing I saw was Grant Robinson and Terry Boyd winning another morning side game, 63.3%, 30 tables. Consistency always impresses me.
Was I the only one who noticed the rare co-incidence yesterday? Jeff and Ed were the #6 qualifiers for the Open Pairs, and the #6 finishers?
The National Swiss started yesterday, and the leaders after day one are Hamman, Zia, Meckstroth and Rodwell. No Nickell (who is really a very good player himself), just the 4 top pros. It’s always a tough event, but this is ridiculous. Still, Bob Munson and Bruce Tuttle perched in 5th place, Bipin Patel is 38th, Mike Bandler and Billy Miller qualified 48th and another mystery man, Matthew Haag of Walnut Creek, is 69th. The finals are today.
They publish a list of the most successful I/N players, and Fred and Jeanne Cochran are 40th, winning 8.03 points so far. Which is about twice what I brought home.
Andrew Van Wye and Evan Price won a 299 Swiss Teams.
Manfred Michlmayr and Jack Beers were 4th, (2nd in B) is the pairs game. How can these guys still be in strat B? Susan Ledford was 6th in the same event.
Grant and Terry, yet again, playing with Larry Miller and Brad Komsthoeft, were 4th in the Saturday Swiss. Reggie and Dennis, fresh off the great showing in the Red Ribbon, were in the overall of the Daylight Pairs (used to be the seniors, before they realized that everyone is a senior).
I’ve searched two different ACBL web pages, and I still don’t think I’m finding enough KO results, so there may well be winners I’m overlooking. Which is why you should email me when you win something. Now that I’m home I won’t find you dancing on a table celebrating.
Now it’s time to go out and play with the new chickens. More tomorrow.
A star in our midst
From today’s bulletin:
Five TDs earn promotions
Five tournament directors working at thistournament have been promoted to associatenational rank:Nancy Boyd, San Ramon CA.
Reno NABC results for Friday, March 19
Writing as I pack, or packing as I write. If you find my green suspenders in here, I’ve done something wrong. Too wound up to sleep much last night, so I’m excited and droopy-eyed all at the same time. It’s going home day, I’ve been here over a week and the chickens miss me.
Back in the old days, when we were young and poor, we used to cram the rooms tournament hotels with people. We would bring ice chests and microwaves and save money. Reggie once came close to getting thrown out of this place when they found his barbecue. The hotel is not quite that accommodating to its guests.
Now, were too old to bother and have enough money not to care about having 6 people in a room. And Reggie has become a better player. Yesterday, he and Dennis Teifel were 34th in the Red Ribbon pairs. Susan Ledford and her partner Tanya McCully (from Montana) were 41st. Blair Hoffman and Jim Kuhn placed 5th, but who has a funny story about Blair? Patricia Perry and Shirley Rodenborn were 63rd, showing the value of consistency–4 above average games together pay off.
EVENT WINNERS: Bob Munson, Bruce Tuttle, Jack Beers and Manfred Michlmayr won Bracket 4 of the compact KO’s. Bill Gates won bracket 3. Yes, that Bill Gates. I was behind him walking down the hall, and he was bemoaning the limits of his knowledge of multivariate algebra to Fred Gittleman (founder/owner/big kahuna of Bridge Base Online). I guess we all have our problems.
EVENT WINNERS: Marj Russel and Carroll Brooks & friends won Bracket 12 of the compact KO’s.
Andrew Van Wye and Evan Price were 14th OA, 1st in B and C in the Open Pairs.
Just found my green suspenders. Still 2 pair of dress socks short.
Ed Nagy and Jeff Polisner were 6th in the Silodor Open Pairs (a national event)
Patron members are supposed to have the Daily Bulletin delivered to their room every morning. Except that it almost never works out. I just got my very first delivery of the tournament, and it was Micky Bandler who brought it. Either he wants to relive his boyhood paper route, or he wanted me to see that he and Linda, Dan Scarola, Tom Jacobson and Don Mamula were 2nd in bracket 2 of the KO’s. (for some reason, KO results aren’t showing up on the ACBL website where I find all this). So I can also report that Jack Fulcher and Lisa Evans won bracket 5. In bracket 6, Frank Concepcion and Hedy Wee were 2nd, while Troy and Roberta Lemons, Al and Valerie Petersen were 3rd. Jack Meng and Judy Keilin were 2nd in bracket 8.
Tournament organizers had some pity on us last night–the refreshments were fruit salads. Just the thing after a week of too much heavy food. Unfortunately, the “sock hop” was country music, and I didn’t bring a horse. Haven’t these people heard of rock and roll? You can’t have a sock hop in pointy toed shit-kickers.
All socks are now present and accounted for. Have some extra lingerie, but that’s just from the dancing girls–I’ll FedEx it back. Time to hit the road.
Everybody’s a winner in Reno
Islands of "greens" in the middle of the reservoir. Photo from Mike's Blackberry
If you can’t win at bridge, you can win at the slots. Or Blackjack. Or Craps, roulette, pai-gow, poker, fan-tan or baccarat. The hotel even has a wedding chapel if you want to try the biggest gamble of them all.
Then there’s golf. There’s a reservoir behind the Grand Sierra, where you can hit golf balls towards small islands with targets on them. Mike Rippey was hitting a couple of buckets the other morning, to stretch out and clear his head for the game, when he got a, well, not really a hole-in-one, more like a barrel-in-one. He dropped his drive right into the barrel on the closest island.
Get it into the target on the far island, you win a Hawaiian vacation. Hit the barrel on the near island?
He won a Pepsi. One. 20 ounce. All to himself.
Generous payouts like that keep the dancing girls in the casino owner’s private jets.
You’re supposed to enjoy yourself
It was time for the hospitality break, so I went off to be hospitable. Or find the men’s room. Whatever.
But then I saw these people comparing their scores in the Swiss, and I had to stop and chat.
I’ve seen this sort of thing before, a group of people who travel and play together. People who make this more than a game, more than just an intellectual exercise. I remember the El Paso ladies, with their embroidered purses and matching hand-made shirts. They were damn good, too. It was quite an honor to be on the El Paso ladies team.
The folks above are from Calgary, Alberta. They’ve been playing together for years, longer than they really care to admit. The key to it all is the hats.
One pin for every successful tournament.
They didn’t always have the hats, but at some forgotten time in history they appeared. The team has a rule: they only buy a pin representing a city if they win an event. And there are a lot of pins in that hat.
I’ve always like the social part of bridge–when you find the thing you like to do the most, you want to hang out with other people who like it just as much. So I love it when I see something like this–a group who travel and play together, it just makes me happy.
Unit 499 has a travelling squad–we’re off to Gatlinburg next month. Think we all need silly hats? Matching shirts? Tattoos?
A good word about Costco
The single best employee Costco ever had
It’s no secret that I hate Costco. I shop there because of the prices, but despise their utter lack of customer service or orientation.
So I was pleasantly stunned today when I went to the Reno Costco to purchase gift certificates. It is possible to buy $100 certificates for the Grand Sierra for $79.99, so I buzzed over to pick up $2300 worth for myself, the Bandlers and Mike Rippey.
I was looking at a bottle of Baileys when Amy offered me a $3.00 off coupon. Deciding against the Irish Cream, I asked her where the gift certs were. She walked me over and showed me, then offered to check me out so I wouldn’t have to stand in the usual long, slow Costo lines.
This is incredible: a Costco employee who actually tries to help the customer! I probably can’t convince Gail to move to Reno so we can shop here, but it’s a thought.
Reno NABC results for Thursday, March 18
Back in the room between sessions. I’ve been out to dinner 7 nights in a row, and couldn’t take it anymore. So a quick jaunt to Costco to buy scrip, pick up some Vietnamese food and I’ll just eat here and take a nap. Nationals are great, but exhausting. You don’t want to have so much fun you just collapse and can’t play a decent game.
Part of why I’m beat is staying up too late last night watching the Vanderbilt on Vugraph. Life is easy now that you can just long in to Bridge Base Online and kibitz great bridge from all over the world–or 24 floors down in the hotel. The Nickell team was playing Zimmerman, a team from Europe. The match was close, with Nickell behind. That’s the most interesting, of course, watching Hamman and Zia try to make a miracle happen. Which they almost did, but couldn’t quite carry it off. But it took until 1:30 am to find that out, while I sat here enrapt in front of the computer.
I certainly hope that the people who qualified in the Red Ribbon pairs had more sense than I do. Locals Blair Hoffman and Jim Kuhn (8th), Tom Franklin and Brian Eisenberg (41st), Susan Ledford and Tanya McCully (74th), Ching Chao (91st), Grant Robinson and Terry Boyd (111th), Reggie Williams and Dennis Teifel (121st), Patricia Perry and Shirley Rodenborn (127th) and Keith Gunn and Dan Rubinfeld (129th) all made the cut for the second day.
In the Silodor Open Pairs, the open National event, Ed Nagy and Jeff Polisner qualified 6th.
Shirley Nedham and Susie Wiebe qualified 46th in the Whitehead Women’s Pairs.
Randy Corr, Pat Krock, John and Lynne White won the compact KO consol, bracket 4. Marj Russel and Carroll Brooks were 3rd in the morning KO, bracket 4.
Many more are still fighting it out in the KO’s. Micky and Linda won two matches yesterday, I think, because they dazzled the opponents with their matching argyle sweaters.
Nap time. Have to play good tonight.
More good eats
When last we met, our intrepid adventurers wanted to dine at the 4th Street Bistro, but they were closed for a private party. So we trekked off to Lulou’s, and had a fine meal.
Tonight, the restaurant atoned for being closed on Tuesday. I called, they were open, we went.
4th street is a major thoroughfare here in Reno, and the Bistro is quite a ways to the west of downtown, and the clearest part of their sign says “Tues-Sat”. Micky drove right past it, we looked for another mile before we turned around and found it. Good thing their food is better than their signage.
The restaurant is sort of generically French in decor. It’s just a simple building out in the middle of nowhere, overlooking, well, nothing. Which is what most of the high desert is, nothing.
The menu, however, is something special. More like Berkeley than Reno–all organic, local, sustainable, touchy-feely, tree hugging and über-modern. I loved it.
The exception to the Berkeley-hipness of the place was my first course. Foie gras is about as politically incorrect as you can get–I’m not sure it’s even legal in California anymore. I had it at Lulous, and I had it again at 4th Street. Served here with persimmons and pomegranates and “pain d’epices” which turns out to be dense, sweet, spicy bread. It was fantastic.
Next up was Arctic char, which is quite like salmon. The fish was good, but the highlight was the Quinoa it was served on. “What’s that?” you say? Darned good question. It’s a Peruvian grain, only mildly poisonous until properly treated. Very high in protein and amino acids. Incredibly tasty. Impossible to pronounce–Wikipedia lists 2 ways to say it, the people at the restaurant used another, Linda knows a fourth. None of them sound like you would think they should.
Dan S. and Linda had the halibut. Micky had the lamb shank. I was too busy enjoying to see what Tom had. We were all happy, yet the consensus seems to be that the set-up, the Quinona or Peruvian Lima beans or Beluga lentils that the entrees were served on, were uniformly better than the main events. It’s like they put all their creativity into the foreplay ( some people think that’s a good thing, though)
Prices were not cheap, but on a par with Lulou’s. Service was smooth and unobtrusive, probably the better of the two. Definitely worth a try.
4th Street Bistro, 3065 W. 4th Street, Reno. 775-323-3200
Staying at the Grand Sierra? Watch out for internet charges
If you got the bridge rate, or if you are paying the “resort fee”, they tout free internet. But they mean free wireless internet.
If you carelessly think that you can use the internet cable in your room to connect your laptop (because it is much faster and reliable than the wireless, and you don’t have to log in every single time and un-click the “send me spam” box) they will be happy to charge you $12.99 a day for the privilege.
The good news to this is that you can sweet-talk them into reversing the charges if you go to the front desk. After I saw a note about this in the Daily Bulletin that’s what I did, and now I’m $39 less poor. I recommend you do the same.
Reno NABC results for Wednesday, March 17
Yesterday made me miss Norma Agar, who always wore her orange dress on St. Patrick’s day. The world needs more contrarians. The field was a sea of mis-matched greens, trinkety green necklaces, “Kiss me I’m Irish” buttons (okay, I had one of those, but it didn’t work) silly green hats and dumb t-shirts. Today we go back to the usual bridge playing melangé of bad taste and already-worn clothes that typifies the late days of an NABC.
At least we have some winners to celebrate:
Grant and Terry, 4th place, Strat B of the daylight pairs.
Mike Rippey 2nd in the 100/200/300 pairs, with a pick up partner. Bruce Johnsonbaugh and Ally Whiteneck 6th in the same event.
Nancy Blaustein in the ovealls of the open pairs. Lynn Humphrey and Trisha Oconnor 5/3/2 in A/B/C in a side game.
EVENT WINNERS: Randy Corr and Hedy Wee, with Charles and Ann Conrad were 1st in C in the BCD Swiss
Jack and Lisa, 4th in the compact KO, bracket 5
EVENT WINNER: Ching Chao won bracket 6 of the compact.
Fred and Jeanne Cochran, Luise and Rudy Gebert won a KO consolsation
Sam Atabaki was 2nd in the compact KO, bracket 8
Plenty of locals still in KO events. More pairs today. Maybe the 4th street Bistro for dinner. I blew a couple of bucks on an Irish themed slot last night, or I had a couple of very overpriced free drinks, spin it the way you like it.
More tomorrow.
Totally Unauthorized 