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 young bridge prize winners.

Greetings bridgers. As the approaching winter chills start to encourage indoor activities, so our thoughts become more focussed on our great game. And what makes it so wonderful is that it never ceases to turn up surprises. Take a look at this hand, actually dealt at a regular Monday morning session at the Mt Albert club. With flattish 10 counts in every hand, the bidding at almost all tables unsurprisingly proceeded Pass, Pass, Pass, Pass.

 So, imagine everyone’s astonishment when the score sheet was opened up to reveal that East-West can make not only a game, but 6NT, via the two major aces and 5 tricks in each minor! Who says you need 25 points for a game, or 33 for a slam, when 20 are perfectly sufficient? Hard to imagine that the Bridge Devils were not having a little fun at everyone’s expense.

 

Back to real life. Our tournament roundup starts at the beginning of May with the Howick Club Restricted Pairs, where Russell Watt and Leah Andrews put together two solid 65% sessions to head the field. Rather less even at the May Auckland Thursday event, with James Yang and Yuzhong Chen overcoming a modest 52% in the first session with 66% in the second to seal the win.

 And the East Coast Bays club hosted two events in quick succession. First their combined Intermediate/Junior event was a second win for Leah and Helen Andrews in the former and Dave Morkel and Bruce Aitken in the latter.

The next weekend saw this year’s showing of the 5-club North Shore Challenge. The Takapuna-based North Shore Club turned in a solid all-round performance, with their Juniors placing 3^rd, their Open Team 2^nd, and the Intermediates winning their respective divisions to claim the overall trophy for the 5^th time.

 

Leah produced a second win, this time with Russell Watt, in the Papatoetoe Restricted 8B event, following a good 55% in the first session with a storming 63% in the second. And then the Waitemata Intermediate event produced a rare tie for first place, the honours being shared between Barbara Curtis with Jeff Meyer, and Rosemary Jackson and Takaya Yanagisawa; while the Junior section was a clear win for Sue Cockcroft and Cecilia Clarke. And last off the rack for this episode was the Auckland Thursday competition, sponsored by Hedgerow, with a win for Ian Berrington and Fuxia Wen continuing their fine run in these events.

 

Of course, the major event of this period was the Queen’s Birthday Congress, as usual superbly hosted by the Auckland Club. As usual, the weekend started with both the Main Centre 15A and the Restricted 8B Pairs. In the former, Jeter Liu and June Lei were solid across all three sessions to emerge winners from a star-studded field, while Jan Brown and Kevin Birch led the way home in the latter. After the Main Centre Teams qualifying rounds on Sunday, Michael Ware’s team of Michael, Malcolm Mayer, GeO Tislevoll and Irish international, now Hamilton based Hugh McGann topping the field, a lead they never relinquished by winning all four matches in the final stages to run out clear winners. And simultaneously on the Monday, the very popular West End Pairs was a victory from a field of 50 pairs by Ant Hopkins and Gary Foidl.

              
Russell Watt and Deborah Tangney, representing the Auckland Bridge Club present the prizes to:
Jeter Liu and June Lei, winners of the Main Centre Pairs and to Anthony Hopkins, who along with
Gary Foidl won the West End Pairs.

Also at the Auckland Club at the beginning of May, the trials to select our teams for the Interprovincial Championships to be held in November took place. A close- run thing in almost all four of the categories, with the following taking the leading spots and hence winning selection:

Open:      David Dolbel/Denis Humphries and Malcolm Mayer/Brian Mace

Women: Carol Richardson/Andi Boughey and Jan Cormack/Faith Tislevoll

Seniors: Julie Atkinson/Patrick Carter and Grant Jarvis/JonathonWestoby

Intermediate: Aaron Starr/Rob Davies and Felicity Hannay/Cathy Carroll

and Yours Truly once again serving as Chef de Mission. Congratulations to all, and very best wishes for the tournament in Auckland later in the year.

 

The Auckland Club also recorded a first for bridge in New Zealand by being a host for major international event on-line, namely the Zone 7 Championships (which serve as qualifying events for the World Championships) against Australia. By all accounts, the event ran very smoothly, with no concerns whatsoever over security. New Zealand won three of the five categories, namely the Open, Womens and Mixed, while finishing creditably in the Seniors and Youth sections. Well done to all, and best wishes for the Worlds later in the new year.

Finally, Paul Coleman sends this report on a very successful Schools’ event held during June.

“Auckland Bridge Club hosted the annual School Pairs event on Sunday 20^th June. 25 school students competed for the title with help from parents and teachers to make 7 full tables. For two-thirds of the students it was their first bridge session; let’s hope the first of many! The schools represented were Macleans College, Auckland Grammar School, Rangitoto College, Avondale College, Baradene College and Remuera Intermediate.

The bidding was fierce with the first 2 contracts at table 4 both getting doubled. The EW pair of Michael Lu and Marcus Choi didn’t stop doubling after the first table and against Iris Chan and Eason Chang they picked up 1000 on a re-doubled hand in Round 5. On that same board, NS pair William Lockhart and Yixue Wang also found their diamond fit and competed to 6DX. A great score if the other EWs in the room find 6 or 7S; unfortunately none did.

Congratulations to all the winners:

N/S Sue Li and Niccolo Nustrini (Macleans College) 61.1%

E/W Alex Shan and Briar Coleman (Remuera Intermediate and Baradene College) 66.9%

Also featured in the winners’ photo are runners-up Joseph Tan with James Ling and Angel Huang with Edward Siew.

Here are the full results

http://www.auckland.nzbridgeclub.org/resultsbm.asp?id=395637&umbid=0

A big thanks to Lance Bowden who brought his 9 pairs from Macleans College and to Tony Morcom and Sylvester Riddell who were on-hand at the start of the session to ensure smooth running. Thanks to the Auckland Bridge Club for hosting and the Auckland Northland Regional Committee for sponsoring this event.

  Winners on the day                             all action at the Auckland Club

     

All players are now eagerly looking forward to the NZ Youth Weekend 7-8 August in Wellington. If there are any Youth who haven’t registered, please let me, Paul, know ASAP youth@nzbridge.co.nz”

 

 

 

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