Washington – Spingold Pictures – Page 2

The Cinderella team of the Spingold was the Michael Moss team, even though Moss himself was in the final last summer too, but with three completely different team mates. The Moss team again played four handed, and at one point, due to health problems, Moss had to be taken away from the hotel on stretcher. Yet, nothing could keep this fighter out of the ring for long.

Moss did not have a partner for the event until one week beforehand, when a mutual acquaintance arranged for Moss to play with the young Austrian Martin Schifko, shown above. The first day of the Spingold the new partnership was still determining what bidding methods they should play. When Martin declared a hand double dummy early in the event, Moss gave notice it would take a lot to impress him, as he chided Martin with “Wow, you must be the best card player in your village.”

Moss’s and Schifko’s team mates were the Canadians Bryan Maksymetz and Allan Graves. Graves and Maksymetz had won the Canadian Team championship in June, also playing on a four person team for many days. They provide a very strong, steady, low error game. They were using a convention that Maksymetz plays with most of his partners – two diamond opening to show 18 to 19 balanced.

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