Bridge Big difference in events between decades ago, now

Former American Contract Bridge League publicity director Robert Bonomi once likened bridge tournaments to a track meet, with lots of events going on, sometimes simultaneously. But indeed, the proliferation of events over the last several decades has been astonishing.

At the average Denver sectional tournament in the 1970s, you usually had two single-session pair events on Friday, with probably a 49’er or 99’er game for less-experienced players in the evening, a double-session pairs game on Saturday, and an open Swiss teams competition on Sunday. That made five sets of winners, and just fifteen sets of names for covering first through third place in each event.

There were no stratified events. There were no flighted events. There were no knockouts (except at regional tournaments), much less bracketed knockouts.

Today? Denver’s summer sectional last month had more than 40 sets of winners, just counting first place in each division of the various stratified games, both open and novice-intermediate, and the knockouts.

The key concept in stratified events is that players in lower strats (lower masterpoint holdings) can win in higher strats if they score well enough, but players in higher strats can’t get ranked in lower strats.

Winners of major upper-division championships were covered last Sunday, but for a change, let’s look at the top scorers in all the other divisions (strats), and novice-intermediate events.

Board-a-Match Teams: First place in divisions B and C to Nancy Rainwater and Dan Stern, both of Denver, and Donna Barrow and Barbara Gallagher, both of Littleton.

First single-session Stratified Open Pairs: Rhoda Taylor of Arvada and Winnie Knapp of Denver, took both the B and C divisions.

Second single-session Stratified Open Pairs: Carol Bertz of Englewood and Sharon Berglund of Parker won the B division, with C going to Susan Fallon and Lloyd Parker, both of Estes Park

Third single-session Stratified Open Pairs: A division B pair, Jim Walker of Berthoud and Daryl Dietrich of Woodland Park, won both the A and B level competition. Division C victors were Frances Huber and Glen Woodson, both of Lakewood.

Double-session Stratified Open Pairs: First in B division to Elizabeth Ronning of Denver and Blair Young of Littleton, and first in C to Ed Hartshorn and Heather Gallegos, both of Buena Vista.

Bracketed Knockouts: Second bracket winners were Eric Mead of Lakewood, Jane Mondrow of Aurora, and Roger and Patricia Miller of Highlands Ranch. Rita Parden and Wendy Leonard, both of Denver, Kathleen Porter of Aurora and Katie McCool of Castle Rock triumphed in the third bracket, while fourth bracket congratulations go to Robert Stansbury of Centennial, Kevin Stansbury of Littleton, Lorena Soares of Louisville, and Jared Johnson (not the author of this column) of Denver.

Stratiflighted B/C/D Swiss Teams: Top performance in both the B and C divisions to Frank Demeyer, Sherry Phillips and Larry Hulse, all of Fort Collins, plus Robert Solick of Berthoud. First in C to Ole Nordhild of Longmont, and Ann Gruidel, John Crittenden and James Smith, all of Boulder.

And there you have it — quite a few different names from the players who often dominate the upperdivision championships.

There were also multiple stratified 299’er games restricted to players with fewer than 300 masterpoints to be covered next Sunday.

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