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Tournament results have been flying in fast and furious over the last few months, but thanks to Richard's write-ups on these for each month, it means I can instead focus on those that deserve special mention.

Congratulations to Chris Ackerley and Murat Genç for winning the provincial rubber qualification, after a tight final play-off against against Harry Shepherd and Tony Winters of Invercargill.

Well done to the back-to-back Teams tournaments winners of James Coutts, Ellena Moskovsky and Graeme Stout (playing with Jeff Miller and Peter McCaskill respectively), who won both the Otago Southland Provincial Teams and the Otago Winter Teams. James and Ellena are also enjoying success in the local Teams Championship, where they're sitting at a dominant 58.73 vps after 3 rounds of play, and were also selected earlier in the year to be part of the New Zealand Mixed Team taking part in the world event in Poland next month.

Lots of new players at Otago

More important than any of these results are those of the lessons that bring newcomers into this wonderful game. There are 25 new entrants to the Otago Club who've come through the most recent lot of lessons. Hats off to Phil Noye for volunteering to run the lessons and all of the help he's had from other club members to ensure an enjoyable experience was had by all who attended.

I want to shift the spotlight to another player who's starting to show great promise. Hopefully to show that achieving great things at the bridge table isn't limited to those who've been playing for decades and already know every trick in the book.

Introducing Tim and Genevieve

Tim Webb is a name that you may have seen recently on this website. He picked up the game in 2014 and has since been the scourge of the Intermediate division at the club. Averaging over 60% at the club when he's not playing up in the clubs Open division, he's both really keen to play bridge and is putting in the time to improve.

Lately this has been showing through solid results in tournaments, mostly with his sister Genevieve.  Their result in the Gore Junior Pairs this year may be some sort of record, Averaging 73.03% in a tournament is certainly very rare, and an outstanding accomplishment. Not only did they manage this, but Tim and Genevieve have also managed to qualify for the Otago/Southland Intermediate Inter-Provincial team. Considering they're both Juniors, this is quite an accomplishment.

Genevieve and Tim, loving the game and doing really well.

They were also top Junior Pair at the Otago Festival Pairs.

They were able to manage themselves handily on this board from the Club Championships.

 

 

where Tim led the A against 4 from North. I don't know many Juniors who are au fait with suit preference signals, but here Genevieve was able to play the J under the ace. Hearing the signal loud and clear, Tim switched to a heart and three rounds of that suit broke the contract. I'll admit it's not the most interesting board I've ever seen, but it shows how improving at bridge can really be broken down to discrete, manageable chunks.

Tim has also enjoyed success with other partners. One fateful Thursday night at the Otago club, the director announced that they needed an extra pair to fill up a half-table for a tournament that weekend. I need not have to say who was instantly keen to play, even if the slight drawback of not having a partner sorted could be seen as an issue. Eventually Tim managed to find a partner in Pam Hodgkinson, whom he had never played with before. Imagine everyone's surprise when after the morning session they were 2 match points behind the leaders, and after two of the three sessions were still clinging on to second. Sadly the spell was broken in the third session, but they finished a respectable 7^th. Congratulations to Graeme Stout and Frances Sheehy for being able to remain consistent over the full day and take out the win.

More recently, he also enjoyed success in the Oamaru Graded Pairs, where he played with Nik Mitchell and finished a respectable 3^rd overall. This was not enough to get them the top spot in grade 2, as the runner-up, Elna Bell and Ian Williams were also in grade 2. Margaret Perley and Lorraine Peacock were consistent in their (wo)man-handling of the field, with an average score of 67.19% to win this event.

Passed in at one table: slam made at another!

I feel like I'm obliged to include the following story from this tournament, as it shows the most radical difference in hand evaluation I've seen yet and is representative of the nature of these graded tournaments.

 How often is it you stand to gain 19 imps on a board, if it were scored as imps? Nik and Tim were East/West on this board, when North down-graded their 4441 hand shape and a singleton Jack to not open. South, also, decided they could come in later with such distribution. Sadly they didn't get the chance, as the board was (wisely from West's point of view)) passed in. At my table, the auction was much more lively. Here are the four hands and the auction:

 

  I needn't tell you which seat I was in, and my only defence was that I wanted to be able to report another +2070 for the bulletin in the hope that it keeps happening to me.

 

 

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