Jordan Chodorow
of Los Angeles won the Summer NABC Robot Individual in July with a three-day average of 68.35%. Chodorow barely edged
Leo LaSota, the perennial winner of the online masterpoints race, who scored 68.33%. Chodorow and LaSota ran neck and neck throughout the event: on day 1 they scored 69.01% and 69.63% respectively; on day 2, 72.19% and 71.08%; and day 3, 63.86% and 64.28%. “He was the first to congratulate me,” Chodorow said.
Chodorow, 47, is the president of West Los Angeles Unit 562 and a Diamond Life Master who has earned more than 70% of his masterpoints in online play. He won the North American Pairs Flight B in 2003. Chodorow joked about his plans for celebration. “Champagne for me and a big bottle of Valvoline for my ‘partner.’ This gives my human partners a lot to live up to.”
Paul Holmes
It took a strong third day for
Paul Holmes of Wadsworth ON to win Flight B with a 65.32%. His session scores were 64.18%, 61.69% and 70.10%. Holmes, an economics professor at Ashland University, wasn’t planning to play in the event until he won a free entry in the practice tournament. “Experience with the robots is a key to doing well in these events,” he said. “They bid some hand types really well, but some are a work-in-progress. Similarly, they declare and defend some hands/auctions well, and some poorly; once you figure out which is which, you can use that to your advantage.”
Rick Jones
of Baltimore MD won Flight C, scoring 64.34%. Jones did best on the first day, scoring 70.23%, when he was ninth overall. His later session scores were 64.33% and 58.47%. Jones began playing duplicate last year when his friend Mike McCormick, the son of his father’s longtime bridge partner, retired. They played once or twice a month as Jones’s work schedule allowed until the pandemic, when Jones began playing more often online, both with Mike and with the bots. “I’ve learned a lot from them,” Jones said.
The summer 2020 event was by far the largest NABC robot individual to date, with 3242 players competing. It was up 48% over spring 2020, which was larger than all but the inaugural event in summer 2017.
