Precious metals

I still don't have the urge to update this blog regularly, but I have been playing both for fun and for profit. The past few weeks have seen me rack up about 40 masterpoints, almost all gold or silver.

First came the Eastern States Regional, at the Park Central hotel in NYC. I played with the client in one Golden Opportunity Pairs (tied 3rd/4th), with Agent 99 in the other Golden Opportunity Pairs (won it), with the client in a Swiss teams (came nowhere), and with Elwood in a Round Robin teams (tied 2nd in bracket 2). That all worked out to more than 26 gold, plus a red point for good measure. It could have been more - I was supposed to play two events with Elwood, but was a little unwell and missed one.

The Golden Opportunity Pairs were something special, in this sense: for the first (and realistically, last) time, I played in a fairly large event where I felt that I was the best player in the field. When Agent 99 and I sat down to play, I actually told her that, and that we were the pair that everybody else had to beat. We then showed it was true, winning our section in both sessions to finish first overall almost a top clear of second place. I could feel my ego bulging out of my shirt.

The teams with Elwood provided some deflation. We played with the same teammates we had won with the last time we played, so we knew we could produce some good results. But the bracket seemed to be very evenly matched all around. There were no easy matches, and few blow-out victories. We narrowly defeated the eventual winners, but Scott Heaydon's team wasn't slowed down and beat everybody else to finish 22VPs clear of the field. Meanwhile, we lost a couple of matches, and were rather surprised to find that, going into the last round, we had a chance to finish second. As it played out, all we had to do was lose 13-7 or better, and we were playing the bottom team, who hadn't won a match all day. So of course, we lost 14-6, giving them a consolation victory and putting ourselves into a tie for second. Oh well.

Almost immediately after the Regional came STaC week. The client needed about 10 silver, so I played with her twice at the Manhattan's Eastside location. We chose East rather than West because the field tends to be somewhat weaker. No sentimentality involved here, I was after results. And we did in fact win both sessions we played, with scores big enough that the client got her silver points from the overalls (scored across the city). I also played with Agent 99 and with Elwood, and while we didn't win, that brought in a couple more points. I haven't seen the total yet, but it will be about 13 silver points for the week.

So now I get a week off. I think I've earned it.