Last night in Regent Bridge Club the Bonanza continued. 17.5 tables of bridge players attended the Regent and this was a great number given the great weather we had yesterday. Also it is holiday season and folk are away. I departed around 11pm with some folk still engrossed in the play and headed for Swords to park the car and amble over to the local.
On arriving home I pondered firing up the computer and checking out www.joemurray.ie
for the results but decided not to disappoint myself and spoil my few pints. Of course I might have wasted 7 minutes valuable drinking time as it was near 12 midnight at this stage .. so left computer behind and ambled off.
Of course chances were no results were there .. but most likely Joe would have logged in from Regent and
uploaded.
As is often the case I spent best part of 1 hour waiting on next table thru the night. At one stage I left the bridge room with the next table halfway thru the 2nd board of 3 .. On returning after a full cigarette and a walk around the Regent Bridge Club and back up to the table and now they were starting 3rd board. Another stroll down to director Joe Murray to quietly ask why he had not taken a board away as this table was already slow to begin with. No big deal but slow tables or pairs need to pick up the pace . We sat down at that table and put a 16 minute round on them for 3 boards so it is possible to pick up the pace if players want to. On one occasion during one of my waits I spotted a pair heading out for a smoke not realizing their next table was waiting. I popped down and informed the pair and quickly they stubbed out and came back up as they honestly had not realized they were behind.
Anyway when I got home about 145am I found the bridge gods were in reasonable favour and a 2nd place position was secured. This should get us 50 euro each if the prize is for 2nd overall. Otherwise we could be in the running for a full 75 euro if its 1st place in our separate competition. We will see.
The leading pair Karel deRaeymaker and Anna Onishuk were not present as Karel is away with the Juniors
in Germany and Anna I guess was somewhere else or just being fair not to steal a march on Karel for the overall prize. Best 3 scores win the overall but with Karel Anna on a 74% from the first night it tough to catch. Still Dave Ryan has a 66 and 59 posted. Paul Delaney had a 59 and 61 posted. James Heneghan has a 59.5 average posted. Michael O'Briain has 59.75 posted.
The rest of positions can be worked out from the two sites.
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The Irish junior team have started their campaign to qualify for the World Youth championships.
Currently it does not look like the bank account will have to be accessed for that event.
A trimming from Norway and a lesser trimming from Czech Republic leaves them at the wrong end of the table.
Results can be found here http://www.eurobridge.org/Repository/competitions/13Wroclaw/Microsite/Results.htm
Hard work is required to become competitive at European level. Being competitive in Irish Congresses and National events is only the start of it. I personally know that Hugh McGann and Thomas Hanlon as good as they might be spend hours practicing bidding. I see our European Senior gold medalists logged into Bridgebase Online several nights a month doing partnership bidding and this is despite a 30+ year bridge partnership. I could be more accurate with the + but lets not go there. A long time established partnership at the top level of bridge who still spend time oiling the machinery.
I will ask how many hours bidding practice our other internationals have done. .
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Ballina Congress takes place this weekend as in Pairs today and Teams on Sunday.
I think it is the first Congress of new CBAI President Thomas McCormac.
Thomas will be playing in Ballina this weekend. No doubt the incredible BJ OBrien will be close by somewhere. He was looking well in the Regent last night although I had to remind him to take his energy pill.
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