leggi in italiano »
Città di Milano Team Tourney, 7-9 December 2012. Giuseppe Failla (Attanasio, Failla, Franchi, Montanari, Paparo) is leading Group A with 83 VPs after seven rounds; this first day’s format is 16-0 in order to avoid that the VPs gained at an early stage count too much, before the selection parts the eagles and the turkeys. Yesterday evening it snowed in Milano; today morning it it’s cloudy and cold, but dry at least. Lavazza (Lavazza, Bocchi, Madala, Ferraro, Duboin, Sementa) trails with 81; third with 78 comes Eldina (Marilina Vanuzzi, Annalisa Rosetta, Debora Campagnano, Gianna Arrigoni Monica Aghemo, and David Domenech, the sole man of the team).
Fourth to sixth, definitively in Group A, are Topone, Penna, Nessuno, all with 76. Seventh, first of the climbers, is Miroglio (Kowalski, Bongiovanni, Comella, Buratti). Fantoni and Nunes, in Lanciano’s team (with Masoero, Biondo, Delle Cave), are 18th, but there is still time to emerge.
An interesting combination. Dummy: A982, Declarer: Q107543: what is the safety playing to lose only one trick? Small up to the ace covering anything played by West. Paolo and Riccardo – omitting second name, team, and some other words that may be deserved to be said – played small to the ace, losing two tricks to West, who played the six from KJ6. Both Paolo and Riccardo had read Trezel; both knew this safety play. Both went down in this slam (it was a slam contract). What else do Paolo and Riccardo have in common? Both are chess players: Paolo is first category, 1820 ELO scoring; Riccardo is master with 2130. Nonetheless, the moral of this story maybe does not have anything to do with chess but with another fact: the difference between a champion and a good player is that the former always does what he knows, while the latter sometimes does not. Paolo and Riccardo are not Word Class players.
***
Paolo Enrico Garrisi
December 8, 2012
***
We thank Mrs. Alessandra Urso (HN Milanofiori) for her kind cooperation.
About the suit playing in slam contract: Riccardo has given up the anonimate: he’s Riccardo Gueci, of the Team Arcuri, president of the Palermo bridge club “Enzo Riolo”, founded one year ago. It’s still a little club, but they hope to become great as the player who the club has been entitled to.
Paolo remains still unidentified, but rumor has that he might be right Enrico Paolo Garrisi of Neapolitan Club, that is me.