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Hindsight is a wonderful  thing to have. At the start of Day 6, our Open Team would need about 40vp

from Day 6 to stay competitive for the top 8. Read on to see if they could achieve that on a day of three very hard matches. 

	OPEN			WOMEN			SENIORS
		NZ score			NZ Score			NZ Score
USA2	30-14	14.18	Canada	39-12	16.26	Egypt	53-51	10.26
France	14-60	1.23	China	19-82	0.00	USA 1	27-46	5.20
Monaco	26-29	9.09	Netherlands	16-35	5.20	China Hong Kong	24-22	10.61

Match 16

An excellent result …and two more like that and who knows how high the Open Team could finish.  Board 23 provided a third of the Kiwis imps:

 

Michael Ware played in 3NT from the South seat on a small heart lead. It looks like the defence could score three hearts and two spade tricks but the diamonds favour declarer and nine tricks were achieved. The USA pair played in 3. ….10 imps to New Zealand.

Our other two teams tasted very welcome success, with 104 imps changing hands in a lively Seniors’ match with Canada.

Round 17.

Revenge would be sweet, if that is how the table topping French saw their comprehensive victory 60-14 over our Open Team, a big reversal from when the two countries met in the Round of 16 a year ago. Board 10 summed up how it went for the Kiwis.

 

 

21 opposite 14 with a solid 5-4 fit. Enough for a grand slam? Half of the East-Wests in the Open field thought so, including Whibley- Brown. Unfortunately, this time, the other half, including the French East/West, who played in 6 were correct. There was nowhere for that club loser to go. That there were seven other countries who conceded 17 imps on this board was no compensation for our Open Team. This board also cost our Women  17 imps when Christine and Jenna Gibbons could not stop but Barry Palmer and Neil Stuckey were the heroes for our Seniors Team, earning 17 imps for their small slam.  Could you have analysed in the bidding about the club problem?

Our Women had a horror match against the strong China team while our Seniors, who had a better day, could not get the better of USA 1.

Round 18.

Our Open Team needed a big win over Monaco, a professional team, though in reality a small loss was no embarrassment. It was a relatively low scoring match…and therefore showed up the importance of doing well in part-scores:

 

With Whibley-Brown East-West, the contract was 1NT by South on a small diamond lead. Michael Whibley’s jack would have been great news for his partner with the contract going 2 down…+100. Meanwhile, Cornell- Bach defended 2 by West and managed to also get that contract 2 down on a trump lead…+200 and 7 imps for defending at  a low level at both tables.

While our Women could not beat the Dutch, our Seniors finished with a small win over China Hong Kong.

So, our Open Team rose a little but finished the day in 14^th place, nearly 30vps behind 8^th placed Egypt, too much to catch up in three matches even if one of those is against bottom placed Mexico.

Our Women’s Team have dropped to 19^th with 18^th now as high as they can realistically finish. Our Seniors moved up to 19^th but with 18^th out of reach, they will need to play well against India, Brazil and France to prevent Egypt or South Africa overtaking them.

Richard Solomon

 

 

 

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