Above: The Philadelphia Downtown Marriott was the venue for the Summer North American Bridge Championships.

Had fun at the ACBL Summer NABC that just concluded in Philadelphia. The big topic was the starting times. They are normally 1 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., but not this time. The first session was 10 a.m. with a short lunch break before the second session at various times from 2:30 to 4 p.m. The bridge was finished in time for players to go out for a nice dinner in the evening or to get together and go over the boards.

Feelings were mixed with the nays voicing their dislike more strongly than those who liked it. Me? I kinda liked it and would like to see it tried again. Many bridge players simply don't like change and will gripe about anything new. The same idea was tried in Atlanta back in 2005 and I remember there was a lot of bitching then, too.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the memo. By that I mean I hadn't noticed the early starting time. I showed up at noon on the first Friday and was shocked to find the bridge was alreay rolling. My partner, Rich Rothwarf, had found a fill-in until I showed up. That's the good news. The bad news is they had a 42+% game. We scored around 56% at night, but not quite enough to qualify. Because of that, we were relegated to a knockout and came in second, beating some pretty good teams along the way. Lost the final by 5 IMPs.

Played with Kate in the Senior Swiss Teams. We qualified for Day 2, but didn't do anything in the finals. We did bid some slams that our opponents at the other table didn't bid. Love our Precision Club system. If we get the right hands, look out.

Played with Cindy Bernstein in the Mixed BAM Teams and the Roth National Swiss Teams. We qualified for the finals in both and were 16th in the Mixed. All four of our sessions were above average, but we never had the big session you need to get into contention.

Above are some of the 96 teams who qualified for Day 2 of the Roth National Swiss Teams.

Above: Remember the Monoply game card that says "Take a ride on Reading"? The Reading Terminal Market has about 92,000 places to eat. (Okay, I exaggerated -- there are only 81,000.) If you can't find anything there you like, you're too picky. It was just across the street from the Marriott and was a favorite of bridge players during the short break between sessions.

Jonathan Steinberg has an extensive collection of photos of bridge players. I caught him doing his thing. The shooter became the shootee.

Photos taken with my Point-and-Shoot. Click to enlarge.