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Team WOLFSON emerged as the champions of the Vanderbilt Knockout Teams at the Spring 2023 NABC+ in New Orleans. Jeffrey Wolfson's team defeated BERNAL in the final round of the competition. The victory marks Wolfson's second Vanderbilt win, having won in 2019 with a different lineup.
The winning team, consisting of Jeffrey Wolfson, Steve Garner, Zia Mahmood, David Gold, Brad Moss, and Joe Grue. In the semifinals, WOLFSON defeated GOODMAN while BERNAL won against ZHAO. Although BERNAL made a comeback in the final round, WOLFSON maintained a lead to win 141-113. The runners-up, BERNAL, comprised Francisco Bernal, Leonardo Cima, Giorgio Duboin, Michael Kamil, Antonio Sementa, Alfredo Versace, and Claire Alpert as npc.
Sjoert Brink and Sebastiaan Drijver emerged victorious in the Silodor Open Pairs, winning the two-day event by a fraction of a board over runners-up Allan Falk of Okemos MI and John Lusky of Portland OR. Brink and Drijver won Thursday's qualifying round and scored 59.10% and 57.19% in the final to produce a four-session total of 2636.27 matchpoints, narrowly beating Falk and Lusky who finished with 2613.95. Michael Rosenberg and Kevin Rosenberg came in third place with a total of 2612.83 matchpoints.
This marks the first NABC victory in a pairs contest for Brink and Drijver, who have previously won five NABC team contests, including last year's Springold KO Teams and Reisinger Board-a-Match Teams as part of Pierre Zimmermann's multinational squad based in Switzerland. Brink and Drijver have also won multiple world championships as teammates.
Jovana Zoranovic and Selena Pepic from Serbia won the Smith Life Master Women's Pairs, their first North American title. The duo has been playing together for eight years, and they first joined Serbia's Junior program. They have represented Serbia internationally in Women's, Mixed, and Junior contests. Zoranovic played at the Phoenix NABC in 2022, while Pepic played at the Summer NABC in Providence. In the opening round of the tournament, they qualified in 10th place. In the final, they posted scores of 62.23% and 55.33%, finishing with a total of 806.00 matchpoints. Fran White from Vista, CA, and Christine Denny from Encinitas, CA, came in second place with 790.98 matchpoints, while Frances Schneider from Riverside, CT, and Kate Hill from Santa Rosa, CA, were third with 777.44 matchpoints.
Stan Tulin's team is currently leading the Jacoby Open Swiss Teams after a strong performance in the qualifying round on Saturday. The team, which includes Dror Padon, Alon Birman, David Bakhshi, Cornelis Van Prooijen and Louk Verhees Jr., scored 116.51 victory points in the four-session event, earning a carryover of 3.98 VPs for today's two-session final. The event consists of two qualifying sessions and two final sessions, with 46 teams advancing to today's final round.
The Jacoby Open Swiss Teams is a prestigious event named after father-son pair Oswald and Jim Jacoby, who are one of the most renowned father-son pairs in ACBL history. Oswald won numerous major titles and was the first player to win 1000 masterpoints in a single year and earn 10,000 masterpoints. He was named to the ACBL Bridge Hall of Fame in 1965. Jim won over 14 NABC titles and captured the Barry Crane Top 500 in 1988 – the same year he won the Olympiad title. Together, they co-authored the Jacoby transfer bids, Jacoby 2NT and other bidding ideas.
The NABC+ Fast Open Pairs started on March 18 and requires players to finish their two-board rounds in just 11 minutes. The event consists of two qualifying sessions followed by two final sessions the next day. Defending champions Greg Humphreys of Charlottesville VA and Adam Parrish of New York dominated the qualifying round, earning the maximum carryover of four boards with scores of 70.92% and 62.48%. They are currently leading the field with a board and a half advantage over second place Eric Gettleman of Ellicott City MD and Paul Holmes of Wadsworth OH, who scored 76.08%. In third place are Janice Seamon-Molson of Hollywood FL and Susan Zhang of Los Altos Hills CA. Sixty-four pairs will participate in the final round today.
