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The winter months are a good time for a bridge club to hold a quiz night, which often doubles as a fund raiser and fun social evening. At the Wellington club, our local Chess players use the club rooms, with several also being (excellent) bridge players. This year, they again entered a quiz team, and again made a strong showing, coming first. Even so, there is no credence (yet) to the notion that they have set their chess AI machines to anticipate the questions coming from our quiz master, Dean Sole. You too can study Dean’s lines of thought on bridge and other things on Gary Hanna’s Facebook group, Kiwibridge.

Local Competitions

It’s not the busiest time of the year for local bridge, but there is still enough around most weekends for those who hunt it out. The Kapi Mana Open was held near the end of June, with frequent winners, Sandy McKirdy and Graham Stronach taking it out from Dorothy Mackay and Naciye Bagci.

The big Teams event, the Wellington Regional Teams, was held at the Wellington Club on 30th June with 26 teams entered. Henry; Annette, Stephen, Lorraine Stachurski and Stephen Blackstock headed off  Kearney; Karl Hayes, Brian Cleaver, Peter Benham, and Nigel. Karl had previously stepped in to be the event photographer, and this extra duty didn’t slow him down. He just multi-tasked and took a selfie, although this photo isn’t it.

Wellington Teams Runners Up, Karl Hayes, Brian Cleaver,Pete Benham and Karl Hayes

There was also a prize for the highest placed team with less than 750 rating points in total. This was won by the club’s President Brad Tattersfield, with Bridget Hannaway-Willcox, Jo Rollo and Malcolm Greig in the team. It’s Brad who is the fifth person in the non-selfie above.

The popular Kairangi Multigrade Teams, one week later, provided another fun day. The approach is Swiss, where a strong pair (usually but not necessarily Open) joins up with a lower graded pair (Intermediate or Junior, with Junior pairs getting an IMPs handicap added in).

This event was won by  Elliott, Jane Blackwell, John H. Elliott, and Fern and David McRae.(pictured above). Sutich came second.

The end of July had an Intermediate (Karori, 20 pairs) and Junior (Paraparaumu, 21 pairs) on the same day. Susan Young and Bronwen Collen were closely followed by Miriam Lewin and Adrienne Dale in the former. Paul Barnes and Anna McDonald, scoring over 60% in both sessions, won the Junior from Noelene Rust and James Jones.

Peter Benham (on a roll recently?) and Charles Ker won the Wellington Club’s Open tournament at the end of the month. Susan Laurenson, also in the photo, presented the prizes, as well as having been busy in the organisation of the day. David Macdonald and Alister Stuck were second, with two more Kers, Anthony and Kathy, coming third.

The Waikanae Multigrade in early August is a popular tournament where the organisers have to turn folk away. There were several winning pairs, covering the various grade combinations, as well as a couple of session prizes, and several raffles. It was hard for the 48 attending pairs not to take away a prize of some sort.

I haven’t yet tried setting up a table in my approach to writing these updates. So we’ll give it a go to list the various winning combinations.

Winning Pair Combination	Pair	Overall Placing
Open-Intermediate	Zheng Zhang and Morgan Brooker	First
Open-Open	Charles Ker and Alister Stuck	Second
Open-Junior	Jeanne Wardill and Anne Ricketts	Eighth equal
Junior-Junior	Ann Verboeket and Anne Wolf	Eleventh
Intermediate-Intermediate	Adrienne Dale and Miriam Lewin	Twelfth equal
Intermediate-Junior	Rohan Wewala and Janine Fenelon	Twenty-eighth

 

Rubber Bridge

The Wellington region, with the greatest numbers of pairs entered, secured two entries to the finals to be held in Hamilton. Johnny Davidson and Susan Laurenson (second mention this update) have won their way through the large field for one place. In late breaking news, Peter Newell and Martin Reid had a narrow win over Michael Gibson and Tony Thomson for the other place in the finals. In other news, and unrelated to the rubber bridge competition, Peter has reached the status of Gold Grandmaster.

Interclub

The Wellington region, with the greatest numbers of pairs entered, secured two entries to the finals to be held in Hamilton. Johnny Davidson and Susan Laurenson (second mention this update) have won their way through the large field for one place. In late breaking news, Peter Newell and Martin Reid had a narrow win over Michael Gibson and Tony Thomson for the other place in the finals. In other news, and unrelated to the rubber bridge competition, Peter has reached the status of Gold Grandmaster.

As all should know by now, Wellington has a healthy Interclub Teams competition. Entries in the lower grades consistently exceed what we can get in the local Congress and in local Pairs events. It would be great if we could somehow translate the enthusiasm for 24 board Friday night play into a 2 session weekend event. Is it timing or a less intimidating feel that attracts players to the Friday night competition?

This month, I’ll provide updates on those grades that have gone through their preliminaries and are starting into their final rounds. The Open Reserve grade of 14 teams has been split into 3 groups, two of 4 and one of 6. There will be 3 round-robin matches within the Final and Plate groups, and the bottom 6 teams will take part in a Swiss style format. Carry-overs from the qualifying round will apply.

The 16 Junior teams have been split into 4 groups. Again the top 3 groups will hold 3 round-robin matches, with carry-overs. The bottom group will be joined by the top two teams from the Novice competition, which finished a month ago.

Those winners of the Novice Group are the K.Cordes team from the Karori club, and the C.Arlidge team from Kapi Mana. The remaining 4 Novice teams will play in another 3 match round-robin.

All this shows the scale and complexity of sorting out the format, operation, and recording across the 5 graded groups, and thus how much the chief organiser, Tony Sutich, will be missed when he steps back after the conclusion of the current competition.

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