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Congratulations to the Don and Jacob teams both of which contain Kiwi players and both of whom finished in the top 8 of the South West Pacific Teams. They will contest the quarter-finals on Friday.
Leibowitz, the team containing Ashley Bach- Michael Cornell and Matt Brown-Michael Whibley had a frustrating final qualifying day. A small loss saw them play the table-topping Hans team in the penultimate round with the match going the same way as almost every other match Hans had played, a big victory to Hans. While there are no easy matches near the top in the final qualifying round, Leibowitz might have wished for better than Lazer, another strong team just out of the top 8 after a big loss. It was a winner takes all with both very unlikely to qualify.

There was no big winner, Leibowitz winning by just 6 imps which eliminated both teams. When swings like the following occur against each team, it is no surprise that there was no big winner.

Firstly, a lucky pick-up for Leibowitz. There was a better contract than 6 on the following cards. That was 5 as the AK were missing and East’s two spade losers were not going to disappear in a hurry. When you have only a very slim chance to make a contract, just hope it is your lucky day…..

 

Matt Brown was in 6 as East on the Q lead. All he could do was draw trumps, eliminate clubs and diamonds from his hand and from dummy and lead a spade. If either defender had singleton ace or king, they were end-played. If not, he was down.

That resulted in 13 rather lucky imps to Leibowitz and perhaps cancelled their bad luck on the previous board:

Matt Brown and Michael Whibley bid the East-West cards to the very good 6 contract. With only 23 pairs bidding a small slam, they might have expected a pick-up but instead they lost 11 imps when their opponents were one of only 2 pairs who bid the grand-slam. The spade finesse had to be taken and when it worked, Leibowitz were pretty much eliminated.

Final top positions of New Zealand teams

3.	Don	158.36	Rose Don-Michael Courtney, Tania Lloyd-Hugh Grosvenor
6.	Jacob	153.56	Nick Jacob- GeO Tislevoll, Ella Jacob- Simon Hinge, Jamie Thompson – Matt Smith
20.	Leibowitz	147.59	Tony Leibowitz-Espen Erichsen , Michael Cornell- Ashley Bach, Michael Whibley- Matt Brown
11.	Williams	147.06	Stephen Williams- Andi Boughey, Sam Coutts- Brad Johnston
21.	Genc	136.13	Murat Genc- Mindy Wu, Eva Samuel- Serhat Ozenir
27.	Crichton	133.05	Ross and Pam Crichton, Graham Wakefield- Michael Pemberton
32.	Fraser-Hoskin	130.16	Jeremy Fraser-Hoskin- Jack James, Chris Ackerley- John Yoon

 Hans finished on top, 34 vps ahead of second place, a huge performance.

Richard Solomon

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