The road to São Paulo

At the end of 2008 Doug Doub and I agreed to join the Robinson team, starting with the Vanderbilt in the Spring of 2009. The team, which had previously been playing four handed, was:

Steve Robinson
Peter Boyd
Kit Woolsey
Fred Stewart

We lost a close Vanderbilt match in the round of 32. In the Jacoby Swiss Teams that weekend we finished 27th. The tournament was not an auspicious start for our team.

Our next major event was the US Bridge Championships in White Plains in June. We were one of 27 teams entered. Two teams would qualify to represent the USA in the Bermuda Bowl in São Paulo in September. Five teams had byes to the round of 16 or later. We were not one of them, because we had not earned a bye through high finishes in major team games over the previous year. We thus started out in the round robin, where we took an early lead and held on to it. Winning the round robin let us choose which half of the knockout bracket to play in, a small edge which we used to full advantage.

We played 5 knockout matches, taking an early lead in each and found we were never behind at the end of any quarter. We rotated pairs, giving each pair a break after two sets in. We were lucky not to have to face the Nickell team, who lost their quarter-final match.

After winning I took a 3 month leave of absence from Google to prepare for the World Championships. Doug and I played a number of online practice matches, bid Challenge the Champs hands, and fleshed out our system notes. We hired Marty Bergen as a coach for our partnership. He helped us with some stylistic issues, especially takeout doubles.

Our team played in the Spingold KO at the Summer NABC in Washington DC. We again lost in the round of 32, but by a larger margin than we had in Houston. The following weekend we played in the NABC+ Open Swiss Teams, sneaking into 10th place by winning our final match.