Charlottesville Sectional

The Charlottesville Winter Sectional was an amazing success. Table count was up a lot from last year. It was successful for us, too -- for the second Charlottesville tournament in a row Meg and I were 1st and 2nd in the masterpoint race. (You can check out my post on the last tournament here.) This time, she edged me out-- she played one session with our friend and teammate Geoff (3rd on this tournament's list) while I played with our buddy Al. Meg and Geoff placed, we didn't... so it goes. I'll get her next time!

Playing together, we had two event wins and three third overalls. This was a surprisingly strong showing; I wasn't expecting to do great things this tournament. We'd just made the switch over to playing Transfer Precision. There are always some speedbumps with system changes, especially sweeping ones like that.... and there were. Happily, the few misunderstandings we had didn't cost. Our best event was the Saturday night Swiss-- we won all four of our matches for a total of 72 Victory Points out of a possible 80. We outscored the opponents 119-3! Those 3 imps were my fault. I held:

♠	J3
♥	QJT973
♦	95
♣	T95

Meg opened 1C (strong, artificial, and forcing). I could have bid 2H to show 4-6 HCP and a long heart suit, but I decided that Jx of spades wasn't worth the full 1 HCP. I planned to show a 0-3 hand on the next round...and maybe I should have. So I bid a conventional 1D, (usually) negative.

If Meg had rebid 1H (Kokish; hearts or balanced), I could have rebid 2D showing an awful hand with long hearts. But her rebid was 2C. Now I reevaluated... I had a fit for partner's long suit and two doubletons! So I bid 2H trying to find a fit there. When she rebid 3C, I gave up.

She went down two for -200. The opponents went down 100 in 2H at the other table. Had I bid 2H immediately or passed her 2C, we would have pushed the board and been perfect for the event! Oh well...