As regular as "Old Faithful"... that is, not.

So we're really not so good at this whole blogging regularly thing. Sorry. Tuesday, we split up to play different events with different partner--Alex played with Argenta in the fast pairs at 10 and 1 and with 3 ex-Princetonians in the loser Swiss at 7, while Jon worked in the morning, then played in the Wehrner Open Pairs (a national pairs event) with Jon Pines.

Alex (re)discovered the beauty of stratification, as he and Argenta won the C strat in their section of fast pairs for both sessions. They had a 57% in the first set...and a 42% in the second. This earned them each 2 tumblers, the section top awards for this nationals. Alex and the Princetonians had a great set in the 1 session Swiss, winning all four matches and placing tied for 7th out of 139 teams. Doing well in smaller events certainly makes you feel better about yourself.

Jon's first-time partnership with his correctly-spelled name-twin doppelganger went relatively well. They posted a score slightly below average each time in a big, nasty open pairs event (by big nasty, we mean the most joker nationally rated event of the summer schedule). There were some great hands and very few disasters, which neither Jon can really remember at this point. Pines did once hilariously open a hand gambling 3NT with a couple outside controls (after Bittner passed, to be fair), which didn't go well and he still feels sorry for. Bittner had a stiff diamond and the majors stopped, but Pines's suit actually turned out to be clubs, so the opps took 5 diamonds off the top when 6 clubs is frigid. So it goes.

On Wednesday, our two intrepid bloggers took it down a notch to play in a compact KO with Eric and Dan Recht. We switched partnerships each of the first three rounds (winning them all), and managed to lose the final with our "regular" partners due to some poor judgment all around.

Our evenings were filled with merriness - Chrononauts, work, gambling, happy family, and other good times.

As a point of interest, you might enjoy this website:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU