I recently had the opportunity to attend the Summer NABC in Chicago. Approaching the end of my “I/N” days, I wanted to provide the district’s newer players with some of my more memorable moments from this NABC.

Upon checking into my “river view” room at the venue hotel, I immediately went to the window to take in the sights. Upon pressing the top of my head against the window and looking straight down, I clearly was able to view the Chicago River below me. Not exactly what I imagined when booking a river view room. More to come on this.

Without offering up “too much information,” upon checking out the toilet for the first time, I nearly fell over as the toilet began tipping. Fortunately, I was able to right the ship in time. Contact with the hotel staff regarding this issue resulted in a quick call from the hotel manager: Maintenance was on the way. Upon arrival, maintenance ultimately determined that the floor was no longer able to anchor the bolt and the room was deemed inhabitable. Another call from the hotel manager led to a significantly upgraded river view room that – just by standing in the room and looking out the window – one could see seven bridges spanning the Chicago River and all of the boating activity that constantly abounded throughout the day and night. It also included good views of the Wrigley Building and Chicago Tribune Tower, as well as some other spectacular architecture. In the spirit of hosting a national bridge tournament, the city even went out of its way to place the letters T-R-U-M-P on one of the buildings as a further welcome to all bridge players! Upon checkout, I also noticed that my hotel bill was two room nights less than expected.

Unfortunately, once the GNT began we did not make it out of the Swiss qualifying round on Wednesday. It was a team effort, our team consisting of my partner, Jim Weider and I, Dennis Kendig/Doug Merritt and Ted Marconi/Mike Pavlik. Ted and Mike chose to play pairs for the remainder of their stay in Chicago, ultimately making it to Day Three (the final) of the Young 0–2500 pairs event and placing 24th overall for 9.09 Gold masterpoints. Also representing the district in this event were Andrey Dashkov and Jasper Katz (their Flight C GNT team made it to Day Two before bowing out) who finished 21st for 10.00 Gold masterpoints.

Dennis, Doug, Jim and I stayed together as a team and participated in the Bracketed Round Robin teams on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, where we placed third on each day earning 6+ Gold masterpoints for each third-place finish.

On Friday evening we headed out for dinner to a highly recommended restaurant (The Purple Pig), however, only upon arrival at the restaurant did we learn the perils of not making a reservation on a Friday night in downtown Chicago. An hour-and-a-half wait was not for us, so we quickly came up with a “Plan B” restaurant which resulted in being told the same hour-and-a-half wait time. Frustrated, to some extent, we went our own ways with myself, Dennis and Doug heading back towards the hotel. As we did so, however, we passed by an Italian restaurant named Volare and I went in to see if they could accommodate a party of three. The answer was “Yes, with an hour-and-a-half wait!” As I thanked the hostess and turned to leave, a gentleman (it turned out that he was the owner) caught me and whisked the three of us off to a table for three without us having to wait. As he showed us to our seats, he inquired, “Who is the best bridge player in the world?” As I pondered how to best respond to this question, he offered up, “Omar Sharif!” He told us of the time when he had the pleasure of meeting Omar and his friends Richard (Burton) and Elizabeth (Taylor) over in England long ago. As it turns out, I was still wearing a variety of bridge-related name tags and buttons (Goodwill Committee) and he noticed them and gave us the royalty treatment (even preparing one of my favorite dishes (eggplant parmesan) off-menu just for me). I think this must have been Goodwill Committee karma.

Upon Dennis and Doug’s departure, on Sunday Jim and I teamed up with members from the district’s other Flight B GNT team, Tim Rilling and Mark Mackenzie, to play in the Mid-Flight Swiss teams event. Next!

With Tim and Mark’s departure, Jim and I were now left to scour the Partnership Desk bulletin boards for teammates for the upcoming week’s team events. After a few phone calls, we agreed to establish a team with a pair from the San Francisco Bay area (John Stremel and Greg Gauthier). The primary targeted event was the 0–2500 Mini-Spingold teams that was scheduled to begin on Tuesday, however, as a team we decided to participate in the main Spingold event on Monday, with limited expectations. As expected, our seeding points placed us 78th out of 80 teams entered, however, the bottom seeds are shuffled and the end result was a seeding of 69th. This meant that we would face the 30th seed (captained by John McAllister) in the morning session and the 60th seed (including the Gong brothers) in the afternoon session. We significantly improved our net IMPs loss from the first session to the second session, but as expected, we did not move on to Day Two.

Tuesday began our play in the 0–2500 Mini-Spingold event. We ended up 1-1-1 in a three-team knockout (two of three teams progressing) and moved on to Day Two based on favorable net IMPs. Interestingly, the other team to advance based on net IMPs was captained by Jackie Zayac, our district’s Regional Director. Jackie and I played at the same table and this was my first opportunity to meet her in person. Heartbreakingly, Jackie’s team lost in the next day’s quarterfinal match by one IMP!

On Day Two we faced the number one seed in a head-to-head knockout for a place in the semifinal. It was a closely contested match through three quarters, however, we pulled away in the fourth quarter to easily advance to the next day’s semifinal. It was there that our journey ended. On a positive note, the team we lost to went on to win the event the next day.

Greg became a Bronze Life Master and it was nice to be able to share that moment with him.

This left only Friday and Saturday for Jim and me and we chose to play in the Bean Red Ribbon pairs event on Friday, however, we did not advance. I was unable to make the transition from teams (IMPs) to pairs (matchpoints) quickly enough.

We closed out our NABC on Saturday playing in the 3000/1500/750 Stratified Mid-Flight pairs event where we placed 4th overall in the 750 strat and took a section top (1st in all three strats) in the afternoon session. A pleasant way to conclude our NABC experience.

On the “non-bridge playing” front, my time in Chicago afforded me the opportunity to interact with a number of bridge personalities. Upon my hotel room displacement noted earlier, I found myself on the same floor as Jeff Meckstroth for the duration of the NABC. Try as I might, on multiple occasions throughout my stay, I was only able to achieve zero (some sort of sound) or one syllable responses from Jeff.

More successfully, I was able to:

Offer my condolences to Hemant Lall on the passing of his son, Justin;

Introduce myself in person to Chris Compton with whom I have had the occasion to chat with while kibitzing his BBO games (he noted my BBO screen name (Phantom58) and talked about his and Donna’s love of Broadway shows);

Congratulate John Carruthers on his Hall of Fame induction. John and I first met at the 2019 Las Vegas NABC when he asked me directions to a particular event. While we were heading to the event we passed by Ola and Mikael Rimstedt who said “Hello” to John at which point I turned to John and said, “You must be someone, eh?” He smiled. Later I Googled him to confirm (Carruthers was inducted into the ACBL Hall of Fame in Chicago);

Inquire of Marty Fleisher as to how the Spingold semifinal was going for his team. I first met Marty walking back to the hotel from dinner at the 2019 Memphis NABC. During our conversation it came to light that I was from the Portland area and that Marty’s wife had relatives in Beaverton; and lastly;

At every NABC that I have attended since the Philadelphia NABC in 2018, my “nod and smile” from the always busy, but always affable David Bakhshi. David and I had a good laugh at the table when competing against him in the Lebhar IMPs pairs event in 2018. We had a difference of opinion about his “weak” two-level overcall of my strong 1NT opener, when I played him for that expected weakness, but he turned out to be stronger than I had expected.

In conclusion and continuing the theme from my recent Declarer article about having the opportunity to obtain gold and red master points by participating in the North American Events program, during this NABC, upon playing 574 boards over 11 days, I ultimately earned 36 Gold masterpoints and 4 Red masterpoints. From my perspective, however, the other tangibles and intangibles of the experience are priceless.

I once again encourage the “I/Ns” to participate in the North American Events program and if presented the opportunity to attend an NABC to please do so if at all possible. Perhaps the 2024 NAP Finals in Louisville or GNT Finals in Toronto? Enjoy the game!

More about Grand National Teams

More about North American Pairs