1 fine Labour Day, we (Langston, Xinrong from 6H, Howard, "Fish" from 7B, your 2 C reps and some other people) went to CJC to labour ourselves by playing bridge...
Me, Jia Guang, Xinrong and Nat Gan being HCI5; Langston, Fish, Howard, Marcus Tan and Michelle being HCI 4. 6 4O-ers =)
Sounds fun? I think not. For a start, we had to play a gruelling 4 rounds (each consisting of 8 boards) of contract bridge for approximately 6 hours... AND AFTER THAT, the top 4 teams were pulled away to kill each other in the semis while the rest of us had to play ANOTHER 2 ROUNDS of contract bridge... So it's a total of 48 games for each of us (except for teams who used their reserves, of which my team had none)... Funny, I only hear people playing 48 games in mahjong... Yea, both mentally challenging and physically crippling, cos we just sat there and played and played and played, now I can't walk properly...
Yea...and my left hand fingers are kinda cramped...probably from holding cards and playing cards for prolonged periods of time..48 boards leh
And so, at approximately 8.40am, the torture started... and of all teams the C reps had to play against, 3 of the 1st 4 were from RJC... Langston's team weren't a lot better, they played the same RJC team twice... It's like playing in those 2-legged soccer matches... But at least they got to play a certain team from a certain college named MJC, whose members used a strange convention named after their own school... (Marcus asked, "SAYC?" They replied, "No, MJC.") And this particular convention was SO ususual that when they were asked for the meaning of their bid, they replied, "Can't tell you now, tell you later"... Moreover, this paricular convention was so useful that Langston and company breezed through the 8 boards to get near-maximum VPs...
(SAYC = Standard American Yellow Card, a common bidding system)
So..this is how the matches went: From each team, a pair would sit N-S at one table, and the other pair would sit E-W at another table. Eventually both tables would play the same board, and the net score for each team for each board was computed, converted into IMPs, and the overall IMP difference between the two teams converted into VPs.
On the second round, if I'm not mistaken, ended up declaring quite a lot. Jia Guang commented that at times ah, I seemed to be like thinking damn hard and stoning at the cards liddat, as though somehow ah, he thought I was going to hong him for bidding wrongly. But then I would suddenly lay down my cards and claim. =) Made a couple of many-card claims, the best being 9 tricks at a go...saves a lotta time =)
But then ah, both of us fail maths. Got one board, passed over from another table, got card distribution problems somehow. Play halfway, realise declarer(jia guang) got 7 cards left, dummy(me) had 5 cards left. End up we call tournament director, who promptly deducted one VP from us from 'miscounting'. So...lesson learnt, we counted every single board from then on =(
After the first four rounds, the VPs were tallied, and the top 4 teams, HCI 1, HCI 2, RJ1, ACJC?, moved on to the semi-finals. Anyway, none of the J1 teams managed to get into the semis (obviously, we're all not that experienced)... And I shall not talk about Langston's team too much because I'm the one who's posting this message hehheh... The remaining teams then went into the 'consolation round(s)'. So, we went into round 5, half-dead and looking to be going home empty-handed...or maybe to go home cry
Then we got lucky. Real lucky. We got drawn against some seniors (HCI3). They accidentally played wrongly and gave us a lot a lot A LOT of points... Really should not niao them anymore, but yet I must thank them a lot...(yea..i think they now expect a treat from us) cos it sparked our way to...
Last round. Finally, a "not-so-zai" JC. Ok they're from SAJC la. At that point of time we were in 4th place, 6 VPS behind the 1st (not too surprisingly from RJC)... since the 1st would play the 2nd (ie. an all-RJC encounter), we had to thrash that SAJC team and hope those 2 RJC teams "iron things out" between themselves...
Despite not much practice, and a usual lacklustre performance, somehow after some chionging in past few days (in which we erm...kinda played badly on Bridge Base Online (BBO)), Jia Guang was amazing in his bidding and play today. Way to go, boy! *gives Jia Guang a pat on the back* Hm..perhaps it has something to do with the 'moral support' he obtains from his phone... Nat and Xinrong also put up lots of superb plays and defences along the way =) (Kudos to them for downing a game contract that we missed - whew, saved our skin!)
We didn't disappoint ourselves. Flattening the SAJC team and collecting maximum VPs (that's 25), we were guranteed a 2nd place and not too far from obtaining a 1st consolation prize. We just needed a not-so-big victory from 1 of the top 2 RJC teams...
They didn't disappoint us either. The 2nd-placed RJC team beat the 1st to overtake them into 2nd place, but not by a big enough margin. And so, with a margin of only 1.8 VPs, the C-reps' team, consisting of me, Zhe Wei, Xinrong from 08S6H and Nathaniel Gan from 08S66 finished FIRST in the CONSOLATION ROUND!!! Actually a bit ironic, but who cares? We got a trophy!!!
As for the top 4 teams that were hauled off from the more inferior teams to play amongst themselves, one of our teams also finished 1st! RJC finished 2nd, ACJC 3rd, and another team from HCI finished 4th. And so, we claimed all the top awards(shouldn't it be only the top awards xD)! YAY!!!
Problem is, next year, everyone will be expecting us to win...
That's all! Very tired liao, sigh...
Jia Guang
Zhe Wei
PS. 3 Cheers for 6K!
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