Blum on Bridge No Guts, No Glory
	The Reisinger Board-a-Match Teams is perhaps the most prestigious of all North American Bridge championships. Though entry is not restricted, typically only the world's highest-ranked players compete in the event. This year, 46 teams entered the three-day, six-session marathon. At the end of the first double session, 20 of the elite group qualifies for the second-day semi-final and 10 play the last day's final, which is on viewgraph for all attendees at the Nationals. Before telling the John Vega story, let me explain the format for Board-a-Match. Each team has four members. One pair sits N-S in section A; the other sits E-W in section B. Just as in match point duplicate, each pair plays two or three boards against every other pair in their section (three boards in the Reisinger). The movement of the pairs is so arranged that during the course of the game every NS pair play the same boards against their EW opponents as their teammates play against the same numbered NS pair. At the games' conclusion the EW pairs compare their scores with their NS teammates. Each win on a board gives the team 1 point. Each loss gives the team 0 points and each tie gives the team 1/2 point. Assume NS 1 compares with EW 1. On boards 1-3, NS 1 score +620, -200, +1430. EW 1 scores: 650, +200, -680. The team loses board 1, ties board 2, and wins board 3 for a total of 1 1/2 for the three boards. If everyone plays 24 boards a final score of 19 may well win the event. Thirty-two-year-old John Vega, a Neapolitan practicing attorney, doesn't have a lot of time to play bridge. When he's not at his dad's law firm Vega, Stanley, Zelman, & Hanlon, he's busy at home with wife, Yadira, and daughters, Sofia and Olivia. However, about once a week he's allowed to play an evening at the Naples Bridge Center. Before the Marco Island Regional, John had amassed the grand total of 18 masterpoints. When locals team Roger Hill, Sugar Rubin, Suzie Fess and Joy Curtis entered a bracketed KO at the regional they found that Joy was unable to compete for the entire event. Roger suggested that though he had no tournament experience John played an adequate game. Kind of reluctantly the team agreed to add John as a fifth member. He would play in the second half of each session. However, should the team unexpectedly reach the final, in Joy's absence John would have to participate for the entire match. In the first match the team was up 17 IMPs when he entered and barely won by 5. In the second match he was given a cushion of 30 and only gave back 10, the team winning by 20. By unanimous vote they put John in the first half of the semis. When he left they were down by 15 but the rest pulled it out in the second half. As John, a brilliant guy with a great sense of humor, told me, "My teammates weren't too impressed." Of course, there was a storybook ending. Playing with partner Roger they won the first half of the final by 50 and at he conclusion had devastated their opponents by 85 IMPs. As John looked into his teammates' happy faces he thought they might be thinking "Guess you're not so bad after all." For the win John had garnered 10 gold plus 5 red points. Flushed with success, John found he was able to spend a few days at the NABC championships in Orlando. The day before he had to leave, he played with Marty Levine, a nine-month partner in Naples before Marty moved to Chicago. They had kept their bridge game current by playing on "OK Bridge", a computer Internet program. Marty and two others, Stan Cristy and Randy Cross, convinced John to play in the Reisinger as a learning experience. Hey, they'd be knocked out in a day and John could go home. Just in case they weren't, they added a fifth member, Henk Uijterwaal from Amsterdam, who they found at the partnership desk five minutes before game time. Only Stan had as many as 2,500 masterpoints and the team total of less than 4,000 points was less than the number of points held by almost every other individual entrant. Competing against the world's best, with one round to go in the afternoon they were in second place. After a tough last round they ended in seventh. After the evening session their game, though not as good as the afternoon, landed them in 17th place out of 20 qualifiers for the semi-finals. During one round John was kibitzed by the renowned Dorothy Truscott and said to himself, "I'd better play well because I learned from her book." Yes, John went home. No, the team did not qualify for the finals. But like the "Little Train That Could," they sure did.