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Johnny Davidson. 

North Island Pairs On-line.

After a most successful on-line South Island Pairs a couple of weeks back, the Waikato Bays Region hosted the North Island Pairs on-line. There were not quite so many pairs, 58 as opposed to 74, but nevertheless a decent number. Thanks to the Region and directors/scorer David Stephen and Kevin Walker, for ensuring the event ran very smoothly.

The winners were Sam Coutts and Johnny Davidson who had their noses in front for most of the event with consistent session scores of 63.59%, 57.23%, 58.16% and a slight dip of 53.95% at the end. Their first session was the highest score achieved in any of the sessions by any pair.  These were the top 10 scores:

						mps
1	Sam	Coutts		Johnny	Davidson	3723.64
2	Leon	Meier		Max	Morrison	3678.07
3	Jenny	Millington		Barry	Jones	3630.78
4	Rachelle	Pelkman		Malcolm	Mayer	3630.28
5	Julie	Atkinson		Patrick	Carter	3582.97
6	Russell	Dive		Anthony	Ker	3542.82
7	Jan	Cormack		Grant	Jarvis	3523.68
8	Jane	Lennon		David	Taylor	3473.00
9	Bob	Hurley		Russell	Wilson	3467.86
10	Blair	Fisher		Liz	Fisher	3459.93

 

The following board saw the clash in the final round of the top 2. It was the declarer, Leon Meier, who came on top giving Sam Coutts a rather hard time:

 

Leon needed no second invitation to bid 3NT. What’s your line as East when South led 2 to 9, North’s J and your A?

Some West players did double 1 which ensured their partnership reached 3NT. The mainstream approach with the “suit-less” West hand would be to pass. Some auctions then fell short of game when one partner did not realise the other held an opening hand.

Sam was always on the back-foot once he had opened the bidding. Leon showed that he did not even need a diamond finesse to make 11 tricks. At trick 2, he led J:

 

Sam played low to J as did Leon from dummy. He did not mind North winning the trick as they could not do Leon any damage in the danger suit, hearts. Also, the opening bid made it very likely South held Q. A small club to the ace was followed by two more rounds of clubs with Sam discarding two spades.

Leon then played 4 from hand which Sam took to play A and a second heart. There was no point in giving Leon a heart guess. The opening bid would make the guess simple. A spade to the ace and a 5^th club saw the likely winning diamond discarded from the West hand. K and Q8 won the last three tricks giving Leon 11 tricks and 51 out of 56 matchpoints. Only half the field reached 3NT and only 6 declarers made 11 tricks.

       
Sam Coutts                             Max and Leon from a previous success

Notice it would not have mattered had Sam discarded a spade and a diamond on the 3^rd and 4^th rounds of clubs. (At that point, he was unsure of East’s diamond length.) The 5^th round of clubs would have sealed his fate. If he threw a second diamond, Leon would have discarded a spade from dummy and Leon would have scored 5 clubs, 3 diamonds, 2 spades and A for 11 tricks.

On the second board of the set, Sam and Johnny exacted revenge by beating a part-score to score most of the match-points and went on to complete an excellent two days of bridge. We will see Sam and Johnny having more success on a board tomorrow. 

Richard Solomon

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