Yesterday, Sunday, was a first for me. As chief director of the Armidale Bridge club, I've directed hundreds of local bridge events over the years. However, this time I was asked to direct a regional event - the New England Novice Pairs, restricted to players who are relatively new to the game or who have failed to amass many green points in club tournaments.
I had a great time! But it was exhausting. I was in the clubhouse from 9 am until well after 5 pm (that's 8 hours altogether). I was up and down all day responding to requests for the director to rectify mistakes in bidding, play, scoring and so on - the newer players are particularly error prone. I also had to help one of our regular scorers to score the two sessions (one in the morning and the other in the afternoon) and that was time consuming because of all the incorrect scores that had been entered mistakenly during play. And prior to the event, I spent considerable time allocating participants to tables and to either N-S or E-W, calculating the numbers of boards to play (44 in all), and then using our dealing machine to randomly construct deals and deal the cards into the bridge boards.
Surprisingly, the N-S winners from a field of 10 contestants turned out to be a father and son combination from Glen Innes, but alas they didn't think they'd be in the hunt average an average morning session and departed immediately after the end of play in the afternoon. I do hope that the other players from Glen Innes resisted the temptation to consume the winners' prizes on the way back home! And, by the way, Max please note, the younger of the two players must have been about 15 years old - so his win was a great achievement. Maybe Max will play in this event in the next few years! The young guy is immediately in front of the door at the far end in this picture.
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AS
I had a great time! But it was exhausting. I was in the clubhouse from 9 am until well after 5 pm (that's 8 hours altogether). I was up and down all day responding to requests for the director to rectify mistakes in bidding, play, scoring and so on - the newer players are particularly error prone. I also had to help one of our regular scorers to score the two sessions (one in the morning and the other in the afternoon) and that was time consuming because of all the incorrect scores that had been entered mistakenly during play. And prior to the event, I spent considerable time allocating participants to tables and to either N-S or E-W, calculating the numbers of boards to play (44 in all), and then using our dealing machine to randomly construct deals and deal the cards into the bridge boards.
Surprisingly, the N-S winners from a field of 10 contestants turned out to be a father and son combination from Glen Innes, but alas they didn't think they'd be in the hunt average an average morning session and departed immediately after the end of play in the afternoon. I do hope that the other players from Glen Innes resisted the temptation to consume the winners' prizes on the way back home! And, by the way, Max please note, the younger of the two players must have been about 15 years old - so his win was a great achievement. Maybe Max will play in this event in the next few years! The young guy is immediately in front of the door at the far end in this picture.
.jpg)
AS
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