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If you were around Auckland during the last week, you could really have thrown aside the belief that Bridge is for the older folk in our society. Let’s see what has been happening.

Auckland Grammar School where bridge is played two lunchtimes per week. There is also an annual after-school Staff v Students match which was held on August 25^th. Three teams of students took on one team of Staff…and when the music stopped, it was the Staff team which emerged triumphant. Peter Shore, the teacher who organizes the regular school sessions, commented that a couple of juicy 1100 penalties were very instrumental in his team retaining school bragging rights! It sounds like the young players may have been a little too exuberant in the bidding.

The school libary was the setting for the Student v Staff match at Auckland Grammar

Youth Success at Akarana. There’s always a good field of players at Akarana with the four night July Swiss Pairs being no exception. Thus, it was no mean achievement to see our latest Youth Internationals (they will be when they head off to China later this week), Zachary Yan and Vincent He win the event with another Youth pair, Yiwei Qi and Eddy Tan finishing third. Both pairs have played all year at Akarana and are helping to recreate the age when Akarana was largely a young person’s club.

Auckland/Northland Pairs Competition. This was held on 29^th July at the Howick Bridge Club with 22 pairs from four schools taking part. The schools were: Auckland Grammar, Bucklands Beach Intermediate, Macleans College and Remuera Intermediate.

The top Macleans pairs (like those mentioned just above) were asked not to participate though it was neat to see Zachary, Vincent, Yiwei and Eddy come to the club voluntarily and play a practice match using the same hands as the other young players played. There’s a new generation of enthusiastic students at Macleans too who took the top prizes on the day:

North-South	School	%
1. Kevin Hu- Tony Ren	Macleans College	64.16
2. Frank Shen- Eric Chang	Auckland Grammar	59.16
3. Andrew Johnstone – Ke Hu	Bucklands Beach Intermediate	55.91
East- West
1.Victor Li – Wayne Lu	Macleans College	67.09
2. Ian Hsu – Donny Weng	Macleans College	58.38
3. Yanxiong Wang – Jack Lobb	Auckland Grammar	58.31

 

     

Scoring well is neat but most importantly this day was the excellent atmosphere, plenty of talking (not during the hands, of course!). Constant morning tea and drinks and a pizza and chips lunch were also important parts of the morning.

 
Evan Yong, sitting South, and partner, Richie Bendall take on two of the Macleans students.
        

One of the biggest cheers emerged from one table when the South declarer, announced in grand fashion to the world that he had taken all 13 tricks on one board. In case you did not hear, these, surprisingly, were the four hands:

 

It hardly matters how Evan Yong (South) from Remuera Intermediate came to play in 1NT but he received the rather helpful 6 lead (“top of a sequence” next time, please!) which presumably  Evan won with the 10. Five discards on the spades must have proved rather troublesome for East.. and perhaps a duck too many but Evan emerged with every trick and a pretty good result, though two pairs had bid and made game (only 11 tricks, though!).

It's all concentration, even from dummy!

If those that have taken the classes at the four schools can install such excitement and love of the game into the students, they will have succeeded very well. Maybe some of them will follow in Zachary and Vincent’s footsteps too.

Thanks to our hosts, the Howick Bridge Club, to Richard Andrew for being a very conscientious and patient director and scorer (the students had few problems with the bridgemates) and to all those who have brought the students this far in the wonderful game of bridge.

Richard Solomon

 

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