2010 NEC Bridge Festival qualifying heartbreak
I picked up the following extract from the February 12 Daily Bulletin from the annual NEC Bridge Festival in Japan.
It was a heartwrenching tie breaker loss for John Carruthers and his all star team (known as CANUKUSA) consisting of John Carruthers, David Bakhshi, David Gold, and Howard Weinstein. They were eliminated by one hundredth of a point !
Friday, February 12, 2010 Editors: Rich Colker, Barry Rigal Bulletin Number 4
ZimmermannTop Qualifier for the 2010 NEC Cup
At the end of the qualifying stage Zimmermann (Pierre Zimmermann, Fulvio Fantoni, Claudio Nunes, Cezary Balicki, Adam Zmudzinski, Franck Multon) emerged the clear leader, outscoring Lavazza (Maria Teresa Lavazza, Norberto Bocchi, Agustin Madala, Giorgio Duboin, Antonio Sementa, Guido Ferraro; Massimo Ortensi, Coach) by 9 VPs. 240 to 231.
In third place was The Netherlands (Louk Verhees, Ricco van Prooijen, Bob Drijver, Merijn Groenenboom) with 222 VPs and in fourth Oz Players (Ron Klinger, Ishmael Del’Monte, Ashley Bach, Matt Mullamphy) with 221 VPs. In fifth through seventh places were: the Bulgarian All Stars (205), South Sweden (202) and SARA (196).
CANUKUSA and Kendrick tied for eight place with 195. In one of the closest tie-breaks we’ve seen in quite some time (using the imp quotient: total imps won divided by total imps lost) Kendrick snuck though by just over one one-hundreth of a point. The complete final rankings are shown below; individual match results for the final day can be found on page 5.
NEC Cup: Final Swiss Standings (Twelve Matches)
Rank Team(#) VPs
1 Zimmermann(3) . . . . 240
2 Lavazza(2) . . . . . . . . 231
3 The Netherlands(4) . 222
4 Oz Players(5) . . . . . 221
5 Bulgarian All Stars(8) 205
6 South Sweden(12) . . 202
7 SARA(20) . . . . . . . . 196
8 Kendrick(10) . . . . . . 195
9 CANUKUSA(6) . . . . 195
10 WORLD YOUTH(44) 194
11 China Evertrust(13) . 193
12 England Ladies(9) . . 192
13 Oz Two(11) . . . . . . . 191
14 JAPAN OPEN(16) . . 189
15 TANAKA(25) . . . . . . 183
16 YAMADA(18) . . . . . . 183
17 Beauty(23) . . . . . . . . 183
18 China Women(1) . . . 181
19 Iza Yokohama(33) . . 181
20 The Latin(7) . . . . . . . 180
21 Yukinata(38) . . . . . . 180
22 TSUNAMI(19) . . . . . 179
23 GIBS(24) . . . . . . . . . 178
24 ESPERANZA(21) . . 178
25 MAKITA(27) . . . . . . . 176
26 Kitty’s(22) . . . . . . . . 175
27 SAKURAI(36) . . . . . 175
28 NANIWADA(41) . . . . 174
29 Venus(28) . . . . . . . . 174
30 NXST(32) . . . . . . . . 171
31 KAWABATA(30) . . . 170
32 Attack No. 1(40) . . . 169
33 JAPAN WOMEN(17) 168
34 LAS FLORES(34) . . 167
35 Guriguri(47) . . . . . . . 164
36 Rosewood(29) . . . . . 164
37 CAMPANULA(26) . . 163
38 Korea CACTI(14) . . . 159
39 Hong Kong(15) . . . . 158
40 AQUA(35) . . . . . . . . 158
41 WHITE DREAMS(39) 157
42 Friends(42) . . . . . . . 155
43 BANNO(31) . . . . . . . 151
44 Dolphin(46) . . . . . . . 150
45 JAPAN YOUTH(48) . 146
46 KATSUMATA(37) . . 145
47 KinKi(43) . . . . . . . . . 142
48 MY-Bridge(45) . . . . . 136
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How heart breaking to miss out by such a small amount. It would be heart breaking to lose any tiebreaker but this is like a skiier losing a medal by a tiny fraction of a second.
I hope that doesn’t happened to our Canadian atheletes. Go Canada.
Wow, sorry to hear that. It must be devastating.
John wrote to me this morning and told me the whole story. This is his fifth appearance in the NEC in Japan – all have gone well, but….
“So, five trips to Yokohama for the NEC Festival have resulted in three tied-for-eighth-place finishes, all of which I’ve lost, and two quarterfinal losses by a total of 10.5 IMPs. ”
That’s the trouble with this great game of ours – we “lose” far more often than we win. Really good baseball hitters at least get it right 30% of the time, but at bridge, the win percentage is far lower.
Most (of the best) tournament poker players can count their wins for the whole year on one hand – that’s a lot of losing going on there too!