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A pictorial celebration of the big winners at Auckland this past Queens Birthday Weekend. Firstly, we can celebrate the country’s second Emerald Grand Master. That means a total of at least 8,000 masterpoints of which at least 6,000 must be A Points. While Michael Ware leads the way being our only Platinum Grand Master, Ashley Bach lies third behind Michael and the other Emerald Grand Master, Grant Jarvis.

                EMERALD FOR ASHLEY

Ashley has 6685.68 A Points and another 1513 B Points. Although resident in Australia, he is still a member of the Akarana Club and, of course, will very soon be partnering Michael Cornell in the Pacific Asia Bridge Championships in Singapore.

                                                GOLD for Steve, Blair and Martin

                                  
Steve Boughey                                                                   Blair Fisher
    Akarana's Steve Boughey,Hamilton's Blair Fisher and Wellington's Martin Reid are the latest players to reach the Gold Grand Master ranking which requires you to get 4,000 master-points of which 2,500 must be A Points. Martin is still to be presented with his certificate.

Queen's Birthday Champions in Auckland

 New Zealand Open Team win the Teams
  
They did not lead the whole way though eventually, there could only be one winning team, that of Michael Cornell, Matthew Brown, Ashley Bach and Michael Whibley. They won the two day event by 17vps. The fifth player in the above picture is Jeter Liu whose Taishin Building Company has been the main sponsor of this event for several years with huge sponsorship. Jeter finished highly in both main events as well.

The second placed team were Jo and Sam Simpson, Rose Don and Michael Courtney. As Jo put it when she accepted her prize-money, they felt they were the winners of the rest of the field as the Cornell team were just in a league of their own.

  Double for Matthew and Michael                                      West End Pairs Winners

                               
  Michael Whibley and Matthew Brown                             Jonathan Westoby and Grant Jarvis
Their first two rounds were 66.67 and 64.29%. The third set was a little more modest, 53.08% but you would think that an average of 61% might win you a prestigious strong field10A Open Pairs event. Those scores are not the scores of the winners but of Andi Boughey and Carol Richardson who finished second, 3% behind Michael and Matthew. Rumour has it that if Andi and Carol had to lose to a pair that Michael and Matthew, or especially Matthew, would be the pair/person they would not mind losing to.....or as Matthew put it in his victory speech, he was relieved that he had not been chucked out onto the streets after the winners stormed home with a third session 66.5%. We think that Matthew still had a bed after the event!

Jonathan and Grant had a good day on Monday to win the West End Pairs while clear winners of the Restricted Open Pairs on Saturday with an average of over 60% were the Howick pair, James Thompson and Marlene Young.

Richard Solomon

 

 

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