The Team of Melanie Petsch, James Beha, Daniel Lev, and Linda Einhorn-Ihde emerged as the winners in the GNT-B opening round robin. Melanie originally faced off against Linda and Daniel during the GNT-A round robin two weeks ago on May 7th. This time, they joined forces to take 99.32 Victory Points after 8 rounds with 5 wins and one push.
The other three advancing teams are Latta, Schwartz, and Verrier.
The Dilemma of Choice
A long-standing GNT ritual is the winners choice of opponents in the KO round. The leading team must choose either the 3rd or 4th place team as their semi-final match, which leaves the 2nd place team to play against the opponents they did not choose. Adding to the fun and stress, the team captain has a very limited time to decide — usually about 5 minutes after the director updates the final scoreboard!
Put yourself in the captain’s shoes as your team huddles in a corner to discuss. How would you make your choice? To minimize second-guessing yourselves, picking the 4th place team seems to be a safe choice. But you could attempt some rapid ACBL Live results stalking (or Power Ratings if anyone still uses that). Perhaps you consult the limited 6 boards of datapoints you have from the day’s round robin match. Maybe pick the more friendly team (less annoying team?), because win or lose you are spending half the day together.
Who Did They Pick?
Team Petsch ultimately opted to play against Team Verrier, consisting of Celia Verrier, Carole Pasquarelli, Lore Monnig, and Joann Goodspeed. One of the main factors was actually finding which opponents have the most compatible schedule for actually choosing a date and time to play. On that front, we can apologize on behalf of GNYBA for holding the GNTs so late in the season. Next year we will move them back to February.
The other side of the bracket is Michael Schwartz, Janie Woo, Barbara Z Schwartz, and Christopher Rivera, playing against the GNT-C finalists Team Latta.
Bracketed Teams June 25th, 2023, Silver Points
For those itching to play more teams, especially for anyone practicing for GNTs, mark Sunday, June 25th on your calendars. GNYBA is holding a silver point sectional from June 22nd to June 25th, with the final Sunday event consisting on a two-session bracketed teams event. Win silver points without venturing outside of NYC.
Lee, can you post the actual results from Sunday B, please. And thanks for all your work in putting this together.