Newcomer swiss

I finished Harry Potter 7 a mere half hour ago. If you haven't read it yet, you should probably get on that before reading any more of my drivel. But if you have, or it's not your thing, read on.

Lovey and I slept through the fast pairs we had intended to play in at 10AM, so we played in a side game this afternoon. Things were going fine but not great in a bad field, and nothing seemed very blog-worthy. And then came board 13... we're in 3S, and dummy has:

S KQ82
H KQ42
D A8
C QT4

across from my hand:

S JT543
H 853
D 3
C KJ92

The lead a diamond, and I win it on the board and begin drawing trump. Lefty gets in with the ace and instantly plays a club back. I duck, righty wins the ace, and after a moment fires back a diamond. I ruff, draw trump, finesse the hearts and win my clubs: making.

After the hand, lefty chides her partner. "Partner, I had a singleton club, we could have gotten a ruff." I inwardly smile, having not noticed this and now realizing this could be a good board. Then she continues. "Why do you think I switched to clubs so quickly?" My stomach churns, my heart skips a beat. I mentally vomit a little. What did she just say? I playback the sound of the words again in my mind, confirm that I just heard this said, out loud and in front of me, with no guilt or remorse. I wish I had called the director, said something mean, at least told her nicely that it was the most sinister comment I had ever heard at the bridge table, but I didn't. We got a top, I moved on, we laughed about it later. But newbies be warned, it's a jungle out there.

Then tonight we played in the 299'er Swiss teams with Argenta and her Mom, for whom this nationals is her introduction to ACBL sanctioned bridge. However, given the reputation of these events, we knew it would be a unforgettable source of shame for Lovey and me if we didn't win. So the stakes were high. Let me give you the hilarious story of the event in bullet points:

1) We are given a C stratification entry, despite my 100+ masterpoint holdings, because they need to fill the strat to have it exist and we are the closest to 100.
2) We win our first 3 matches handily (our first two without losing a single IMP) to get into the lead position. We haven't won big more than once since there have been no swing boards. Argenta's mom plays smashingly.
3) We get matched against the 2nd ranked team. During the match, a director comes by and mentions that a ruling he made during the other teams last set will be overturned - whatever. Then Eric comes over to kibitz after whomping his Spingold opponents. We beat them modestly, seemingly securing our win. Eric begins mocking us, telling us he's going to put the victory picture on facebook, etc.
4) The third place team's results come in, a blitz; we are now in second by one VP, despite giving up 8 IMPs all day. Eric begins mocking the fact that we didn't even win the 299'er swiss but is sad he won't have the picture to immortalize our folly.
5) We realize that because we were artificially added to the C strat, we are now 1st C, and will still get our pictures taken and get a trophy. Eric thinks having us lose AND be in the paper is the best thing ever. Lovey regrets not listing Eric as non-playing captain so he has to be in the picture too. I try and convince the director that this was true all along, to no avail.
6) Lovey notices that we played the 3rd place team instead of the second place team. Apparently, the director ruling made during the final match meant that the matchings no longer reflect the Swiss scoring system. So we should have had a crack at the winners, but did not.
7) We get our picture taken, get a trophy for Argenta's mom, and drown our sorrows in Pizza and Boggle.

For all my sarcasm, it was really fun to play in the event and I'm really happy Argenta's Mom seemed to enjoy it a lot. Was it worth giving Bob a blackmail bulletin photo that he can save in his My Pictures folder until the end of time? Yes, definitely.