Caption: They won the Bruce LM–6000 Pairs: Gregory Tapia and Hong Liu.
Hong Liu of the St. Louis area and Gregory Tapia of Monterey Park CA won the Bruce LM–6000 Pairs, catapulting into lead in the second final session where they grabbed more than two-thirds of the matchpoints. The winners finished almost a full board ahead of the runners-up, the Southern California–based duo of Frank Xie and Mukund Thapa.
Liu and Tapia qualified in 20th place after Saturday’s opening round and moved up to 15th place after Sunday’s qualifying session. Their final session scores of 54.95% and 66.27% pushed them into the winners’ circle.
But the duo had never played together before: Each of their prospective partners had canceled before the event, so a last-minute arrangement got them to enter the event together.
It was the first win in an NABC limited event for both players.
Runners-up in the Bruce LM–6000 Pairs: Frank Xie and Mukund Thapa.
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