GNT Knock Outs: Trophy Wars

We’ve entered the GNT phase that everyone both loves and hates: the KO rounds.

For those in Flight C playing GNTs for the first time, congratulations. You are guaranteed to win a big chunk of gold and red points, but apologies if you thought it was all over in one day! The KOs have been in the conditions every year for an eternity, but no one reads it until their team qualifies past day one.

Trophy Wars: Rising Stars Cup versus Interclub Cup

One anticipated KO match in Flight C is Team Oratofsky vs. Team Moscow (the winner will face off against Team Rockoff). Paul Oratofsky and Steve Soloman entered the NYC tournament scene during the GNYBA June Sectional scoring silver points in both sessions of the Countess Cup, then followed up with an impressing back-to-back first overall finish in both morning and afternoon sessions of the Rising Stars Cup during the Astoria Regional.

Team captain John Moscow has two cups on display: the Interclub Season Winning Team and the Interclub Season Winning Pair, both found in the trophy case at the Harvard Club of New York. Their team consists of four regular players from the Interclub Bridge League, including Laszlo Seress, who represented our District in spring 2021 for NAP Flight C.

This match will take place on leap year day, February 29th, Thursday 6pm at Honors with former GNT Flight C national champion Sam Kuang officiating as table director.

Past Victors from District 24?

Sam is the first player in D24 to ever win the GNT-C national finals in 2014, followed by Lucy Zhang in 2018. Interestingly, they were playing for D21 and D23 respectively at the time of their victory. You have to fast forward to 2021 when the team captained by Henrui Xing won with an all D24 team, followed by last year’s 1st and 2nd place victories of Team Boge and Team Mandel.

GNT-A: Dziekanski vs Jonas-Silver

The final 24 boards of the match versus Team Dziekanski and Team Jonas-Silver takes place today, Feb 10th, at Honors. After the first two segments, the score was 28-11 followed by 47-31 with Dziekanski in the lead by about slightly more than one game swing. That’s a fairly thin margin at the halfway point of a 48-board match, so anything can happen as they enter segments three and four.

The winner of the match will play against Mini Spingold veterans on Team Chang in the semi-final KO to determine who gets 20 gold versus 30 gold and an invitation to the Blue Ribbon Pairs during the Fall NABCs, as well as advancement to the District final KO against the winner of the Trabulus and Ekinci match.