In 2010, after Doug Doub and Yiji Starr won the four-session Goldman Cup Pairs at the New York Regional, they agreed they had to play together again. It’s taken eight years to make good on that commitment and make good, they did – sneaking by the May Sakr squad to win the Freeman Mixed Board-a-Match Teams. Completing the winning quartet are Rose Yan from Beijing and Jiang Gu from Mountain Lakes NJ.
A blazing 19.50 second final sealed the deal for Doub; however a penalty came close to pushing the match the other way. They were penalized .17; their margin of victory was .09.
This is the first North American championship for Yan, who won the Venice Cup with the Chinese Women’s team. It is the ninth for Doub, including, now, all three ACBL board-a-match championships: the Reisinger in 2002 and the Mitchell Open Bam in 1997. Doub hails from West Hartford CT. Starr, from Wayland MA, won the Women’s Pairs in 2015; Gu has one previous win.
Playing with Sakr were Nikolaos Delimpaltadakis from Athens, Greece, Giorgia Botta from Woodside NY and Vasileios Vroustis from Athens.