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A first tournament win.

Do you remember your first tournament win? For those fortunate enough to have won tournaments, the answer almost certainly is “yes”. Like one’s first A Point, it is a rather special feeling, one to remember even if one goes on to win many more.

Jeremy Fraser-Hoskin is one of our strong up-and-coming young players who has already won many tournaments. This story, though, is not about Jeremy but about his partner in last Thursday’s Restricted 8B Open Pairs at the Auckland Bridge Club. His partner was his father, Peter Hoskin. That tournament provided Peter with his first ever tournament win. What makes the achievement just a bit special is that Peter is blind.

Peter has been blind since his teenage years. Around 20 years ago, Peter and his wife, Kathrine, used to play “kitchen bridge” at home with Peter’s parents. Around 2010, after Peter’s parents had died, Peter and Katherine decided to take bridge lessons at the Auckland Bridge Club. That was also about the time they introduced Jeremy to the game.

Peter now plays every Wednesday at the club with Kathrine as well as playing two other sessions each week with different partners. The club’s director, Patrick Carter, always deals special braille cards for Peter, inserting them in the boards for his use. The same applied for this and other tournaments.  

Peter and Jeremy had a good first session leading the way with 62.50%. However, it got a bit tougher for them in the afternoon when they played 6 extra boards. While having Jeremy as a partner was mainly an advantage, Jeremy pointed out that his success rate in doubling opponents was pretty low, indeed could not have been worse! Jeremy’s best effort was in doubling 5 only because this contract did not make an overtrick, unlike his doubling of 4 and 5! Meanwhile, the only time Jeremy and Peter were doubled, the contract went 2 down and earnt them 0 matchpoints!

Peter to the rescue!

Peter did well on the following board from the second session:

 

East led 7. What is your plan when you play low from dummy and West inserts J?

Peter has obviously seen Jeremy's light opening bids before and looked no further than the no-trump game when Jeremy owned up to holding "not very much" with his second bid!

Peter ducked the J smoothly at trick 1, smoothly enough for West to continue with K. This provided Peter with a very useful second entry to dummy (Q) as this was the full lay-out:

 

Peter took A and played his diamond. Q appeared rather too soon. So, Peter had to lose a diamond to West before regaining the lead in his hand and crossing to table with Q to enjoy his 6^th diamond. 5 diamonds, 2 club tricks and AKA in the majors gave Peter a joint top score for the board.

However, with just three boards to play, Peter and Jeremy were rather off the pace. Indeed, they needed 3 x 100% scores to overhaul the then leaders, Graham Wakefield and Leah Andrews and Peer Bach and Ming High. Unluckily for these two pairs and especially Peer and Ming who were Jeremy and Peter's opponents, Jeremy was declarer on all three boards, each time in 4. Twice Jeremy made overtricks and each time the result was a 100% score. That brought their session score up to 58.07%, up from somewhere in the very low 50%s!

This left Peter and Jeremy with 460.86 matchpoints (the 2 sessions had unequal weightings) ahead of Leah and Graham on 460.02 and Peer  and Ming on 419.11 in 3^rd place.

A nice ending for Peter and Jeremy and for Peter to celebrate his first tournament success.

Richard Solomon

 

 

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