(no subject)

[jianantonic]

We're calling our team "Team Father Son" because 2/3 of the pairs are dad-son.  So Cristal is my honorary dad for the remainder of the weekend.  (The other pairs are Jeremy and Bob Fournier and Max and Bill Aeschbacher.)  And we qualified comfortably for the National Open Swiss finals :)  And Bob Hamman struck up a conversation with me.  He's like the Cal Ripken, Jr. of bridge.  Not the greatest ever, but certainly one of the best, one of the best respected, best liked, etc.  I know most bridge players know who I am simply because I'm one of the few young ones and I used to play full-time, but it's still really cool to be acknowledged by a guy like Hamman.  So that was rad.

Anyway even if we eat shit tomorrow, it will be very nice to end the tournament in the finals of a championship event for once.  They always have Swiss on the final weekend of nationals, and I've never qualified for the finals in this event before.  Playing a regional event on the last day of nationals is always a bummer.  It's basically a consolation game, and then if you don't win that, well then, fuck it all.  At least there's dignity in losing a championship event.  Heh.  

Also had one of the most fun matches ever in a national event against my friend Brian's team.  We enjoy ribbing each other, and it was just a match full of laughter.  We lost by a little, but whatever.  On a 1N hand, Brian was in the tank, and all of a sudden, I saw this dude walking across the room exhaling a huge puff of smoke.  Smoking hasn't been allowed at bridge tournaments for about 20 years now, so of course I did a double take.  Everyone else at the table noticed my reaction, and this conversation followed:
C:  What's going on?
M:  Homeboy's smoking in the playing site.
B:  Smoking?  He can't be.
M:  Okay then he must be a dragon.

Brian also decided that our system (which is just a basic 2/1) should be called Cristal Megth.  I'm putting "Cristal Method" on the top of my card for tomorrow.  Anyway it was just a really fun match, even though we lost.  The whole day was fun, really.  We played the toughest teams when we were scraping our way up -- once we got above average, we went on a winning streak against a bunch of no-one-specials.  That's not usually how it works...

Anyway, fun times.  Thanks for the well-wishes, those of you who have sent them :)