Jordan Tessarolo, Ryley Breiddal, Jan Soutar and Marc Furnemont are down in Atlanta as the team representing District 19 (British Columbia / Washington State) at the Grand National Teams Championships, and they are doing well.
Here is the account of their adventure so far (Friday morning, July 27), as related by Marc.
We finished the 4 afternoon matches (against Alabama, California, NY and New Jersey) 2-1-1 and we were nicely above the cut, thanx to a blitz in the 4th set.
As expected, things got tighter in the evening (two small losses and a good win against Minnesota, Colorado, and Michigan). Even though we suffered the worst loss of the day in our 4th set against the team from Ohio (losing by 22 in just 7 boards to a very nice and friendly couple), we qualified in 9th place, and awaited the draw to see who we would play in the round of 16.
Our opponents, drawn by lots, were the 5th ranked team from Ohio we had just finished losing badly to in the last round. However, we felt confident, as we thought the two hands we lost 21 points on were more aberrations then being outclassed, and we thought we had a good chance.
We played 2 rounds of 13 boards in the afternoon, winning the first one by 7 and the second one by 16.In the evening, things got interesting when we lost most of our lead in the 3rd session, losing by 16 on a definitely “pushy” slam going down 1 and allowing our opponents to make 4 Spades doubled.
The final set was a see-saw battle, where I didn’t bid an easily makeable slam, and where Ryley and I allowed them to make 3 Clubs doubled vulnerable, but we also had our share of nice results and Jordan and Jan played a steady round, and we won the last set 39-32 to move on to the round of 8.
After a brief tour of the room where we will play today, in order to learn about playing with screens,
we headed for a few celebratory drinks and tried to sleep.
Today, we play against a Team from Florida.
The four of us would like to sincerely thank the amazing bridge community … and our respective spouses. Your moral and financial support, your words of encouragement and advice, and your teachings over the years, are a great part of our success so far.
Cheers.
Marc