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Daily Bridge in New Zealand

no bridge at the club but plenty on-line for Timaru.

Taking a Trip "to" Timaru. 

It would surely be a nice trip to visit Timaru whether or not one spent all one’s time in the local bridge club. Currently, we can play in bridge tournaments all over the country without shifting from our own homes. There are advantages in that too.

So, to the Timaru Congress held last weekend on RealBridge. There were 40 teams in the Open Teams, 68 pairs in the Open Swiss Pairs and 16 pairs in the Intermediate/ Junior Swiss Pairs. Thanks to the local club for organising the event and for David Stephen and Kevin Walker for directing and scoring it.

Bridge in NZ.pngnz map.jpg

A little problem..or maybe not one at all.

 

6

K Q 10 9 8 7 5 4 3

7 2

7

 

West

North

East

South

       

 

 

 

1 

1 ♠

?

 

 

 

Your bid: Swiss Pairs: N/S Vul.

Congratulations to the following in the various events:

Open Teams…”It’s never over until the fat lady sings”

1

Graeme

Tuffnell

Jan

Alabaster

Fuxia

Wen

 

Ian

Berrington

104.89

2

Gary

Chen

 

John

Wang

 

Jeter

Liu

 

June

Lei

 

104.76

3

Blair

Fisher

 

Liz

Fisher

 

Jo

Simpson

Sam

Simpson

95.75

4

Alan

Grant

 

John

Skipper

Jane

Skipper

Jane

Lennon

 

95.32

5

Jeremy

Fraser Hoskin

Max

Morrison

Brad

Johnston

Sam

Coutts

 

88.71

 

The Tuffnell team were doing very well with 6 wins out of 6 and looked to have the event sewn up. However, they ran into severe trouble against   in the last round and lost that match 11-46. However, the 1.42 vps they took from this match proved extremely valuable as you can see above. Chen won their last match 46-17, worth 17.68 vps. You can see that another overtrick somewhere might have made all the difference.

For the Tuffnell team, “the fat lady” sang just in time!

Fuxia and Ian B 2020 (2).jpg  
Fuxia and Ian, 1st by a whisker!

Intermediate/Junior Swiss Pairs

1

Emma

Russell

 

Bigi

Cameron

85.75

2

Caroline

Caseley

Jo

Hampton

81.26

3

Rex

Green

 

Ian

Beattie

 

71.48

               

What is it about the final round? Emma and Bigi had four big wins but were brought down to earth by Jill Lockett and Giles Hancock in the last, scoring just 5.70 vps. Caroline and Jo scored the perfect 20 vps in their last round but they not catch up the runaway leaders.

Open Swiss Pairs

1

Pat

Carter

 

Grant

Jarvis

 

99.94

2

Jeremy

Fraser Hoskin

Max

Morrison

94.30

3

Anne- Marie

Russell

 

Jack

James

 

91.57

4

Gary

Chen

 

John

Wang

 

91.01

5

Leon

Meier

 

Michael

Ware

 

90.33

 

Anne -Marie and Jack led going into the last round but were beaten then by Patrick and Grant. That was a first loss for Anne-Marie and Jack while Pat and Grant were unbeaten throughout the day.

This was the last board of the weekend in the Open Swiss.

Board 63
South Deals
N-S Vul

6

K Q 10 9 8 7 5 4 3

7 2

7

A Q 10 8 7 4

Q 9

K J 10 6 2

 

N

W

 

E

S

 

J 5 3

A 6 2

K 8

A 8 5 4 3

 

K 9 2

J

A J 10 6 5 4 3

Q 9

 

West

North

East

South

Anne-Marie

Patrick

Jack

Grant

 

 

 

1 

1 ♠

2 

Dbl

3 

4 ♣

4 

4 ♠

Pass

Pass

5 

Dbl

All pass

 

While Patrick will argue that 2Heart-small will never get passed out, it seemed an unusual action with his hand, allowing plenty of space for the opponents to explore. Indeed, if he was looking to get doubled in 5Heart-small, he got his wish and lost one trick in each suit for -500 and a small loss in Swiss scoring.

This seems a more normal action from North, to the same place:

West              North            East                South 

Pavla              Michael       David             Leon
Fenwick         Ware           Taylor             Meier

                                                                   1Diamond-small

2Diamond-small 1                       4Heart-small              4Spade-small                 x

Pass                    5Heart-small               x                  All Pass

1 spades and another, Michael’s style

Michael had no problem in pulling his partner’s penalty double and at least turned -790 into – 500.

Several tables saw West bid on to 5Spade-small which sometimes got doubled, resulting in the obvious overtrick. Only one of the 34 East-West pairs tried the 50% slam. Roger Wilkinson and Derek Bartosh reached 6Club-small and were very happy with the position of the Spade-smallK.   

Richard Solomon         

 

 

 

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