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 Michael Ware, Brian Mace, Hugh McGann and Tom Jacob. 

End of play and end-play at Gold Coast.

Congratulations to the mainly Kiwi team of Hugh McGann, Michael Ware, Tom Jacob, Brian Mace and Matthew Thomson who finished runners-up in the Gold Coast Congress Teams. This team led by 17.1 imps at the half-way point of the 48 board match but lost eventually 77.1-104.  They were beaten in the final by the team of Tony Leibowitz, Paul Gosney, Tony Nunn and Paul Dalley. Ziggy including Matt Brown were beaten by Thomson in the semi-finals while Dalley had beaten the team which included GeO Tislevoll, Johnny Davidson, Ashley Bach and Leon Meier in the Round of 4.

Try this board from the final round of the Ivy Dahler Butler Swiss Pairs.

 

You reach 3NT via a pretty normal route with your balanced 23 count. Your partner shows a negative and then 5 spades (3). West leads 2 (4^th highest leads). You play low from dummy at trick 1 with East’s J forcing your ace. You play A and then T with West taking their K and exiting a second heart to dummy’s king. Plan the play after you cash Q only to see East discard a heart.

You have a certain 4 tricks in the majors, A and three top club tricks. There are plenty of possibilities for the  extra tricks you need for your contract, even though you have no entry left to dummy to set up any more spade tricks, unless J was doubleton (in which case you already had 9 tricks). These were the four hands:

 

You seem to need either a friendly 3-3 club break, J doubleton or a successful working diamond finesse. In fact, you can succeed when none of these occur. You can take 3 rounds of clubs but on the third round, West discards 6. No worries. You were not dealt 10 for no reason. It is time to play it with these cards remaining before 10 is played:

 

As long as one’s opponents are trustworthy with their 4^th highest leads, exiting 10 should be safe. At the point you exit with 10, you have 7 tricks (2 tricks in each major and 3 top clubs). If the diamond finesse was working all the time, the opponents will end up playing the suit for you. However, after taking 2 hearts and J, West will have to lead into your AQ. Had East held Q, they would have taken that trick and J before leading the diamond.

When you need a successful finesse for your contract, get the opponents to lead the suit for you. You are no worse off than taking an immediate finesse yourself and are certainly much better off when the finesse was failing! Only 32 out of 85 West players succeeded in this contract in the Open field. 

There were some good Kiwi results from this event:

Ivy Dahler Butler Swiss Pairs

Open Field North/South           (99 tables)

2nd     Sandra Calvert and Colin Carryer
5th      Jenny Millington and Barry Jones 
Sandra and Colin missed out on the top spot by only 0.48 vp.

Open Field East/West
7th      Linda Cartner and Jonathan Westoby
8th      Gary Foidl and Yuzhong Chen

Intermediate field                  (33 tables)

2nd     Rhonda Graham and Nick Edginton
11th   Kevin and Helen Walker

Rhonda and Nick missed out by 2.65 vps.
               
Nick Edginton and Rhonda Graham       2nd in the Open: Sandra Calvert  Annette and Stephen Henry 
                                                               and Colin Carryer     
(pictures courtesy of ABF Gold Coast website.)                 
                                                                                                                                     

Restricted field                   (39 tables)
1^st       Eileen Sanger and Judith Tremain
2nd      Patricia Murphy and Marion Coburn 
4^th       Julian Herbert and Jane O’Brien
6^th       Tim Rigter and Charlotte Jager
8^th       Jo Hampton and Caroline Caseley
11^th     Charmaine Hanbury-Webber and Lyn Anderson
16^th     Bigi Cameron and Emma Russell
17^th     Darryl Dowthwaite and Deborah Matthews
18^th     Aaron Starr and David Scarborough
Congratulations to Orewa’s Eileen and Judith who won this event by 20 vps and who led from Match 3 onwards winning 9 out of 10 events.

Seres McMahon Matchpoint Swiss Pairs (13 tables)
1^st        Stephen Henry and Paul Hooykaas
2^nd       Annette Henry and Pele Rankin
3^rd       Andi Boughey and Fraser Rew
5^th         Ian Berrington and Fuxia Wen
9^th       Grant Jarvis and Jan Cormack    

Richard Solomon

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