All News

OUR MIXED TEAM OFF TO A FLYING START

New Zealand’s 4 teams had mixed starts on day 1 of the World Teams Championships in Wroclaw, Poland. The Mixed and Seniors are in Round Robins of 23 and 24 teams respectively with the top 8 qualifying for the knock-out stages.

After 4 matches, our Mixed Team of Andi Boughey- Tom Jacob, Ella Pattison – Nick Jacob and James Coutts – Ellena Moskovsky lie in 2^nd place after three good wins over United Arab Emirates (14.93), England (18.28) and Germany (12.01) finishing with a small loss to Brazil (8.30) to be second to Australia.

Our Seniors, Linda Cartner- Glenis Palmer, Andrew Janisz- Trevor Robb and Chris Ackerley – Douglas Russell, ended the day in 23^rd place after 4 losses, Israel (5.07), Poland (2.44), Brazil (6.55) and Australia (2.92).

 Kiwis at the Opening Ceremony.

Douglas Russell is the "flag bearer" with Susan Humphries and Tom Jacob on his left. Chef de Mission, Derek Evennett looks very relaxed in the front of the picture, with Ashley Bach, GeO Tislevoll, Michael Cornell and Michael Ware alongside. 

Women start well too

The Women’s team of Shirley Newton- Jenny Wilkinson, Jenna and Christine Gibbons and Steph Jacob- Susan Humphries also started well in their pool of 17 teams, where the top 8 qualify. (There are 2 pools.) On the first day, they played three European countries, never an easy prospect and beat Denmark (15.19) and Poland (16.42) before losing to France (6.72). After three matches, they are in fifth place.

The following contributed to the loss against the French:

 

The French North-South reached 4x played by South on the K lead. Although East could get a club ruff to go along with the Q and K, there was no fourth defensive trick and an excellent 790 to go with +50 from 4 going one down in the other room.

Mixed Start for Open Team.

Like the Women, the Open teams are in pools of 17 countries, though there are 3 pools. The top five qualify from each pool along with the highest scoring 6^th placed country. 14.18 off Egypt was a good start but was followed by a small loss (9.09) to Ireland and a bigger one (2.97) to Austria. Our Open Team of Michael Cornell- Ashley Bach, GeO Tislevoll – Michael Ware and Matthew Brown – Michael Whibley are currently in 12^th place.

Could you have stayed out of slam with the following hands?

West                  East

 73                  AKQ8642

 AQT864          7

 Q4                 AK

 T42               AQ8

East dealt and would have started with a strong 2 opener with West having enough for a positive response. Had you reached 6, you could hope that North held the K..but North held KJ9 while South had KJ7.

Our Open team could have had an even bigger win in the first match but our East-West pair bid to 7 while the lead against 6 in the other room was 7! After receiving that lead, East would have been delighted when all the relevant honours were placed badly.

A further update tomorrow.

Richard Solomon

 

 

 

Go Back View All News Items