All News

Kiwis v Australia: Match 7.

The Trans -Tasman Challenge has been played out on line roughly once a month this year between New Zealand and Australian teams. Each New Zealand team (and vice versa) plays each of the 9 teams from the other country on a Friday night, a 16 board match each time. Each country has 2 Open, 2 Women, 2 Senior, 2 Mixed and one Youth team.

Round 7 (of 9) took place last Friday night with these being the latest top 5 positions:

Round 6			Round 6		Round 7		Round 7		Round 7
Position					v		Score		Cum Score
1	Aust Open 2		77.32	3rd	NZ Women 1		17.31		94.63
2	Aust Seniors 1		83.97	1st	NZ Youth		6.03		90.00
3	Aust Open 1		82.37	2nd	NZ Seniors 2		5.82		88.19
4	NZ Open 1		71.82	5th	Aust Seniors 2		13.97		85.70
5	Aust Women 2		72.42	4th	NZ Women 2		10.91		83.33

 

One of the more interesting results from the last round was the 13.97- 6.03 victory by the New Zealand Youth Team over the previous leaders, Australia Seniors 1.

The win was mainly as a result of a slam bid and made by Kevin Hu and Ryan Song requiring a successful finesse and the following:

 

 

As usual in such situations, everyone had plenty to say and Kevin (North) and Ryan (South) had given their Australian opponents plenty about which to think. East, Neil Ewart, decided to double and that ended the auction. These were the 4 hands:

 

After a spade lead, the defence were sure to take one spade and two club tricks. The diamond suit could have produced a fourth trick for the defence. If West ducks the Q, declarer has a big decision about which diamond to play next. North should delay the decision as long as they can. They can tell West had 6 spades (East’s probable 3- card raise), two hearts and probably three clubs, meaning they should get the guess right.

Of course, if West does cover Q, then the guess is harder. However, Kevin was spared the guess when at trick 2, West went for a diamond ruff by playing K. Kevin escaped for down 1, -100.

That was worth 9 imps to New Zealand as this was the bidding at the other table.

 

Tim had no problem in making 11 tricks. With South having no entry, a declarer, even in 5, can win any continuation after the heart lead, draw trumps and play clubs, discarding one of West’s losing diamonds.

In Teams, it is often right to “take the money” at the 5-level, except this time, there was not much on offer.

The 4 young Kiwis are all products of the Auckland schools, three of the four being part of a strong group of young players from Macleans College in Howick. They should have been pleased with their efforts this Friday evening.

Richard Solomon

Go Back View All News Items