Hans Van Weeren and I went to Canberra to represent NSW in the Australian Restricted Championships, along with us were Cassandra Mitchell and Clare Filmer-Ramsay ready to do battle for the glory of being Australia’s No 1 Restricted Pair. The Tournament format was Swiss Pairs, Imps, with 15 tables. The competition was fierce with pairs representing most Australian States and Territories being in attendance.
The venue was at the Canberra racetrack, but they didn’t have the air-conditioning up and running on the first morning and it was bitterly cold, perhaps giving the Canberrans a home advantage? Fortunately this was the only occasion, however we nearly succumbed to exposure. For our first match, a pair from NZ must have wondered what was happening as the woman to my right spent the entire session huddled inside her Parka, literally shivering.
It seemed as though Hans and I had offended the bridge gods, whenever we were N/S or E/W we had very few points, but don’t worry, we never stopped bidding!. We defended well and by Round 7 (out of 9) we were coming 5th. Rumour has it that I’m a choker, well it’s hard to deny, as the next two Rounds saw us get comprehensively thrashed and alas we fell to 20th position, the only good news is that Cassandra and Clare came 10th – well done.
Unfortunately this meant Hans and I had to form the “Bridge of Honour” that Cass and Clare triumphantly walked through, as determined by a pre-match discussion. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t the way I’d imagined finishing the event.
Crushed but still determined we entered another 2 day comp with the same format – 9 rounds, Swiss Pairs, Imps. This time however there were fewer entries and they combined the Open and Restricted sections. Hans warned me that most of the Open players had 1000s of Master Points but I knew I was ready for the challenge – or was I? There were 12 tables and Table 12 quickly became our preferred habitat. We would miss skinny games, we failed to bid makeable games, everything we did was wrong. When we did something brilliant, all the experienced Open players did the same, when we did something stupid the punishment was amplified, as the better players avoided our catastrophe.
Interestingly enough most of the Restricted Pairs competing had done very well in the Restricted Championship and yet no Restricted Pair made it past Table 7 or 8 for the entire 9 rounds. There is obviously a huge chasm between a good Restricted player and a good Open player.
The last 2 Rounds of this event saw Hans and I disintegrate into a maelstrom of despair and hopelessness, probably not the state of mind required for good bridge. I still don’t know if we finished last, it was too painful to check the results, however heaven forbid if we didn’t come last as that means there was another team doing it even tougher. For our efforts we had 1 win, 3 draws and 5 losses, a pathetic achievement that will haunt me for a long, long time.
Although our dreams were crushed and we experienced the horrors of Icarus, Hans and I maintained good humour and never gave up, excepting during the last 2 Rounds where a maniac nihilism corroded our previously disciplined, (if sometimes inept) play.
I’m proud that PBC is supporting Competitive players and hope that it finds new ways to improve standards, as it was obvious that Hans and I still have a long way to go.
Thus ends the saga of Canberra July 2017 - Peter Clarke aka Beagle
(Ed. You can see the full results list for their first event.)
