Thank you to everyone who came out to Orange for our last Sectional of the year! We had another great attendance, nearly filling the main ballroom at St Barbara, and handed out almost eight hundred silver masterpoints to 212 players over three days.
Friday
Friday morning’s Open Pairs game featured twenty tables and was won by Frank Blachowski and Tom Joyce. We had eighteen more tables in the afternoon game, won by Doris Greenwald and Terry Lubman.
Both sessions of the 499 Pairs were won by Barbara Webb and Anita Thompson.
Saturday
Saturday’s Open Pairs saw a total of 43.5 tables over two sessions. The morning game was won by K Hart and Jeff Horowitz, and the afternoon by Peter Sugerman and Frank Blachowski.
In the 499 Pairs, the morning session was won by Sandra Miller and Wayne Olson, and the afternoon by Shengli Zhou and Juanjuan Liao.
Sunday
Our free lecture series by Mike Hess continued with a lesson on overcalls and how to respond to them. It was another packed house and we’ll definitely run more classes next year.
We held a single session 299 Pairs game in the morning, which featured eleven full tables and was won by Judith and Steven Rolnick.
The Sunday Swiss Teams game featured an exciting finish and a tie for first place! Honors were shared between REBELEIN (Robert Rebelein, Jill Marshall, Melissa Baker and Vivian Wu) and WATSON (Bill Watson, Eric Vogel, Bob and Ann Hughes). Our winners:
Here’s a link to all the results from the tournament.
Trophies!
We handed out two trophies from previous tournaments: the Barbara Shaw Trophy to Justin Young and the Scott Loring Trophy to Gregg Rich:
We have two more trophies to hand out next year after the results of this weekend:
Robert Rebelein’s 30.54 masterpoints led all players at the Fall Sectional, he will be awarded the 2026 Jeff Feldman Trophy for his efforts. The Monroe Magnus Trophy is awarded annually to the player with the most masterpoints won across all three of our Sectional tournaments in the year; in 2026 it was won convincingly by Frank Blachowski, with 68.01 silver points earned in the three weekends.
We’ll be presenting both trophies at future tournaments.
A Tribute to Richard DeMartino
We paused between sessions on Sunday to remember Richard DeMartino, who passed away earlier this year. For those who didn’t know Rich, he was a unique force in bridge at both the state and national level: Connecticut’s all time masterpoints leader, a national and world champion, and former President of the ACBL Board of Directors.
Remembrances were led by Phyllis Hartford, one of Rich’s former partners and long time friends.
Richard A. DeMartino 1939-2026
