(Edit: Rosenthal advanced to semi finals! Congrats)
Our coverage of the San Francisco NABC is still on-going, with quite a few other solid finishes for Greater New York members. David Yoon, Lorraine Cable, Barry Rigal, and Peter Bonfanti took 6th place in the 0-10000 Swiss teams. Siqing Yu and Giorgia Botta ended the first day of the Mini-Blue Ribbon near the top of the Day 1 qualifiers. Many pairs will move on to Day 2 of the NABC+ Blue Ribbon Pairs.
The Soloway Knockout Teams is a new event this year, which required two full days of Swiss to qualify 32 teams into 5 rounds of knockouts. Yesterday, the team of Andrew Rosenthal, Aaron Silverstein, Chris Willenken, Jan Jasma, Boye Brogeland, and Christian Bakke defeated #2 seeded team Lavazza in the Round of 16.
As we write this, team Rosenthal is in a very close match in the quarterfinals. The first 30 boards ended with Rosenthal slightly ahead 78 – 72. With one board to go, the 3rd “segment” of 15 boards will likely reverse the narrow lead by 10 IMPs to 91 – 95. Still, trailing by 4 IMPs is a very close match. Even though it is midnight in NYC, you can join in live on BBO Vugraphs to sweat out the last 2 hours.
In the last segment, the last 2 boards are fascinating swings: -12 imps with 5D making and 6D down one other table. But then making up for it on the final board: main table used all of the latest gadgets: strong club interference, kickback keycard, 4NT swapped as a control bid, ultimately finding a good slam. Other table in 3NT down 1. The final score 146 – 119 Rosenthal wins!
