It was the time of year for the Summer Nationals in the USA (Sjoert's articles have been published earlier on the Dutch Bridgevaria.nl site; on Bridgevaria.com they are not – yet! – topical. Furthermore he still speaks – as many still do – of 'Nationals', but the correct name is and has been for some time 'North American Bridge Championships' -Ed.), this time held in Washington D.C.
One of the nice things about the Nationals is they take place in a different North American city every time, so there are always different sights to see.

Our team was different from last time: Dan Zagorin, Kevin Bathhurst, Ish Del Monte, Vince Demuy and of course Bas Drijver and me.
The start was Joe Grue, a young American top player, coming up to me and saying: 'Sjoert, there is a table tennis table waiting for us.' (In Biarritz I had beaten him both left and right handed and he was looking for revenge). So off I went, playing table tennis against him (still a bit jetlagged). At the very moment it looked like I was winning, I stepped on the ball. A draw yeah, so he won. Grrrr.

The most important tournament in the Nationals is the Spingold. Every day a 64 deal match against a single opponent. We were ranked 25th and cruised into the last 32. There we had to play team O'Rourke. Playing on her team is the Italian crack pair Duboin - Sementa, one of the pairs we will have to face later this year, in São Paulo during the World Championship teams... and will have to beat in order to become world champions. This match was going to be a dress-rehearsal, therefore.

The harsh reality was that after 48 out of 64 deals we were trailing 29 IMP. Then at last Bas and I were to play the Italian pair (so far they had been careful to avoid us).

It all started well enough. Confident we still could win, I got in the first deal:

Arrrgh, now how did they guess I had the bare ♠QJ?
Ok, I had to find a lead. The ♠J perhaps, a false card? No, Duboin would not fall for that. Since Bas had not doubled 5♦ and Sementa probably did not have a first round control in clubs, I decided to lead a club.
When dummy came down...

...and Duboin quickly went up with the ♣K, Bas winning with the ♣A, I knew the slam was doomed (I was sure to make a trick with the ♥K). In the end South was defeated by two tricks, which gave us a 2 IMPs gain: our team mates at the other table went one off in 4♠ (you can trust Italians to play well, which is exactly what Duboin did against us).

When the last deal hit the table, I estimated we had won back about 40 IMPs so we would be leading by a margin of some 15 IMPs. In that last deal I had as South:

One thing seemed clear to me: if this deal went well we would make it to the next round.

¹ three card diamond suit and long club suit, so: 'pick a minor'
² proposal to partner to bid 5♥

For some time I considered redoubling but in the end I took the view that doubled and made would suffice anyway.
West led the ♥A and continued with the ♥K:

		♠	7 2
		♥	8 4
		♦	Q 7 4
		♣	J 9 8 7 5 3
		♠	A Q 10 4
		♥	5
		♦	A J 10 8 4 3
		♣	A K

I could not enter dummy and lost a heart, a spade and a diamond: one down.
West would have gone one down in 4♥ as well. Would this deal seal our fate?

The answer is no. My assessment turned out to be wrong. Until this last deal we had won back 4 IMPs only, so we were still trailing by 25 IMPs. This last deal was unimportant therefore - it was a tie, by the way. Anyway: we were knocked out without really having been in competition.

Afterwards we did win a two day knock-out tournament. In the final we beat team Cayne, of one of its pairs being Italian world stars Lauria - Versace. Beating Italians, I love it.