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Canberra Week 2: South West Pacific Teams Day 4

Congratulations to the Don and Jacob teams both of which contain Kiwi players and both of whom finished in the top 8 of the South West Pacific Teams. They will contest the quarter-finals on Friday.
Leibowitz, the team containing Ashley Bach- Michael Cornell and Matt Brown-Michael Whibley had a frustrating final qualifying day. A small loss saw them play the table-topping Hans team in the penultimate round with the match going the same way as almost every other match Hans had played, a big victory to Hans. While there are no easy matches near the top in the final qualifying round, Leibowitz might have wished for better than Lazer, another strong team just out of the top 8 after a big loss. It was a winner takes all with both very unlikely to qualify.

There was no big winner, Leibowitz winning by just 6 imps which eliminated both teams. When swings like the following occur against each team, it is no surprise that there was no big winner.

Firstly, a lucky pick-up for Leibowitz. There was a better contract than 6Heart-small on the following cards. That was 5Heart-small as the Spade-smallAK were missing and East’s two spade losers were not going to disappear in a hurry. When you have only a very slim chance to make a contract, just hope it is your lucky day…..

Board 13
North Deals
Both Vul
A
4 3
J 10 9
K J 9 8 6 5 4
Q 9 8 4 2
J 9 8 6 2
8 5
A
 
N
W   E
S
 
6 5
A K Q 10 7 5
A K 3
3 2
 
K J 10 7 3
Q 7 6 4 2
Q 10 7

 

Matt Brown was in 6Heart-small as East on the Club-smallQ lead. All he could do was draw trumps, eliminate clubs and diamonds from his hand and from dummy and lead a spade. If either defender had singleton ace or king, they were end-played. If not, he was down.

That resulted in 13 rather lucky imps to Leibowitz and perhaps cancelled their bad luck on the previous board:

 
Board 12
West Deals
N-S Vul
10 6 4 3
J 9 6 4
8 6
8 6 4
A Q
A 10
A K 10 7 4
A K 10 5
 
N
W   E
S
 
J 9 8 5 2
K 7 3
9
Q J 9 3
 
K 7
Q 8 5 2
Q J 5 3 2
7 2

Matt Brown and Michael Whibley bid the East-West cards to the very good 6Club-small contract. With only 23 pairs bidding a small slam, they might have expected a pick-up but instead they lost 11 imps when their opponents were one of only 2 pairs who bid the grand-slam. The spade finesse had to be taken and when it worked, Leibowitz were pretty much eliminated.

Final top positions of New Zealand teams

3.

Don

158.36

Rose Don-Michael Courtney, Tania Lloyd-Hugh Grosvenor

6.

Jacob

153.56

Nick Jacob- GeO Tislevoll, Ella Jacob- Simon Hinge, Jamie Thompson – Matt Smith

20.

Leibowitz

147.59

Tony Leibowitz-Espen Erichsen , Michael Cornell- Ashley Bach, Michael Whibley- Matt Brown

11.

Williams

147.06

Stephen Williams- Andi Boughey, Sam Coutts- Brad Johnston

21.

Genc

136.13

Murat Genc- Mindy Wu, Eva Samuel- Serhat Ozenir

27.

Crichton

133.05

Ross and Pam Crichton, Graham Wakefield- Michael Pemberton

32.

Fraser-Hoskin

130.16

Jeremy Fraser-Hoskin- Jack James, Chris Ackerley- John Yoon

 

 

 

 

 Hans finished on top, 34 vps ahead of second place, a huge performance.

Richard Solomon




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