Posted 3:20 PM by Floyd

Look at the pretty skeletal horses!

Last night I went to the Palo Alto club with my wife. We expected to play in a nice peaceful matchpoint club game, and were unprepared for what was in store for us.

When we arrived at the club the director told us that the game was a silver-point Swiss -- like a STAC but with Swiss teams. In a Swiss movement (also used for other tournaments such as chess), teams of four play short matches against each other. Then winners play winners, and losers play losers. This can be slow because of the time it takes to match up teams between rounds. So the director planned a board-a-match game with a matchpoint movement.

Board-a-match is matchpoints with a top of 1. If your team's combined scores are postive, you get a 1. If negative, you get 0. A tie awards one half.

We didn't have teammates, so I flopped down at a table where two young Chinese guys were sitting. I had never seen them before and they said they had not been playing long. I explained the matchpoint scoring to them and even warned them about some of the strange methods played by a pair from another team. Then we moved out to play the field; we would play 12 rounds of two boards, then compare to our teammates.

Sherry and I had a really good start, mostly because our opponents did strange and sub-optimal things. After we had cycled through half the room, we could see our teammates' results on the traveller. I quickly determined that they were very much beginners, as the results made little sense. Fortunately they did have some good luck and after several losses we did score some wins.

We were playing the last round when there was a commotion up front. There is a fellow named Todd who is a fixture at several club games, including the Wednesday night game. He is in a wheelchair because he has no lower legs. Todd, without any warning, fell unconscious. Fortunately there were an emergency room doctor and a fireman amongst the players. Gary, the doctor, and Rich, the fireman, laid Todd on the floor and began to apply mouth-to-mouth and CPR.

After a few minutes the paramedics arrived and began to help. It was clear that things were not going well, as they had been performing CPR for the better part of half an hour. They finally gave up and packed him on a stretcher to take to the hospital. I asked Gary as he was washing up how it looked. Gary said that Todd had no heartbeat and was 99% not to make it. (Emergency-room-ese for "heartbeat" is "rhythm", as in "He had no rhythm", making it sound like Todd expired because he was musically inept.)

Watching someone die is not pleasant, and what I found really scary was how sudden it was. No goodbyes, no reflection on a life well or not well spent. Just out like a light.