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North Island Teams: a “capital” tournament.

The North Island Teams was held at the Wellington Bridge Club and had all the players could ask, strong competition, excellent catering and an exciting finish. The event was played in an excellent atmosphere and in no small way helped by director and scorer, David Stephen and Kevin Walker. Thanks also to Bridget Hannaway and to all those local players who helped out during the weekend. 

The excellent atmosphere, conviviality etc was referred to in the victory speech from David Ackerley, for whom this is a very rare appearance at the bridge table. That is also true for his partner, Scott Smith, though their teammates, Jo and Sam Simpson are tournament regulars.

These then were the top five placings when the music stopped after 7 x 14 board rounds, though the statistics only tell part of the story:

1	Simpson		96.62	Jo Simpson		Sam Simpson		David Ackerley		Scott Smith
2	Davies		90.84	Kate Davies		John Patterson		Anne Somerville		Murat Genc
3	Schumacher		90.71	Tim Schumacher		David Skipper		Leon Meier		GeO Tislevoll
4	Johnstone		89.76	Michael Johnstone		Paula Gregory		Moss Wylie		Kevin Skoropada
5	Miao		84.60	Clair Miao		Wayne Burrows		Russell Wilson		Bob Hurley

                                                                Top Teams

David, Jo, Sam and Scott: the winners                Murat, Anne, Kate and John in second place

Both pictures also feature Wellington Club President, Peter Newell

With one round left, Schumacher had less than 1 vp advantage over Ware (Michael Ware – Matthew McManus, Peter Newell – Martin Reid) with several other teams 8-10 vps behind. That was all to change when Simpson had a huge win over Ware, the margin being 19.74-0.26, which saw Simpson end up comfortable winners while Ware dropped to 8^th . Meanwhile, it was much closer between Schumacher and Johnstone, the latter winning 13.48- 6.52.

Schumacher had started with 4 big wins including almost the full 20 off Ackerley though they finished with 3 small losses and only just held on to 3^rd place at the end.

Meanwhile,   Miao performed perhaps one of the biggest “Swiss Rolls” ever. They lost their first four matches and were near the bottom of the field before scoring 58.05 vps out of 60 from their three matches on Day 2 to scrape past several teams into 5^th place.

The following board from the last round was significant in several matches: 

 

The above was a typical strong no-trump auction. West would lead 2 and a declarer would play low from dummy, with East’s J winning the first trick. East switches to a middlish 5 or a high 9. How would you plan the play from there?

More declarers made 9 tricks than did not but there were some casualties. It looks that South could take a finesse in any suit except spades, which if successful (the heart finesse would require a 3-3 break as well) would come to 9 tricks. However, all three finesses would seem to be to the danger hand, West, if they lost.

A losing finesse followed by a second spade would be decidedly unpleasant, especially since it appears that from that 2 lead, both defenders held 4 spades.

The diamond suit offers South a unique opportunity for a strange finesse through West. Losing a diamond to East would not be terminal as long as the suit breaks 3-2. Losing to Q would mean a second finesse but there is a chance it just might not be needed.

So, there seems some value in  after winning A at trick 2  to play K followed by J finessing unless Q appears. Whether or not it appeared, there was to be a fine reward for those South players who adopted this line. They were not to lose any diamond tricks!

 

The normal finesse of J would see the defence take 4 spade tricks and a diamond. The above backward finesse sees South take 9 tricks without a second finesse needed.

Those who took the normal diamond finesse would not get a second chance to make their contract.

That was one of many interesting deals during the weekend. The only shame of the weekend was that there were only 22 teams taking part.

Richard Solomon

 

 

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