A final Atlanta report

I'm actually in Bar Harbor, Maine, as I write this on Sunday, just after 10 p.m. I'm not going to blog about my Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia trip here; I'll do that at WorldIsRound.com. But I thought I'd write a little about the final day of bridge in Atlanta.

In a nutshell, we had a solid round of bridge in the third round of the knockouts; it was perhaps the best bridge Dallas and I have played together, and Tommy and Evan were strong as well. Then in the fourth round, at the half we were up by 23 points and feeling very confident. Just don't do anything stupid was our mantra going into the second half. Then the world collapsed. Let's just say that games and slams that should've been bid were bid by our opponents and not by us. We ended up losing by 2 points! It was heartbreaking.

In the evening we decided to play in a single-session Swiss team event, four six-board rounds. Let's just say that I must've been tired. In one hand where I was the declarer, I trumped dummy's good Ace on one trick and then on a later trick led a small trump toward the board and finessed the dummy's Jack after LHO had played the King.

Let's just say that after three miserable rounds, we finally recovered and scored a near blitz on the final round. It would have been much better to have taken the night off and partaken of adult beverages.

All in all, I had a good time in Atlanta. I do keep making the awful mistake of reacting harshly when my partner makes a mistake, and sometimes even when he doesn't but I perceive that he has. In many ways the game of bridge is much like life. I have much to learn in both.