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We’ll start with a brief update on the state of play in Wellington under COVID restrictions.

Of interest to both locals and itinerant bridge players, the 15A Wellington Region Teams event, scheduled for the end of June but hit by the previous lockdown, has since been rescheduled for the 18th and 19th December.

As this current lockdown progressed, nine of our twelve clubs offered bridge in their club rooms, either this week or last week, according to protocols for Delta level two. Practices varied, but often included no more than 12 tables, mask mandates, restrictions on movement, different arrangements for tea, and a “no visitors” rule. With the latest level changes and NZBridge guidance, allowable numbers are up and clubs might ease the masking rule.

Prior to that, three clubs had said they were waiting for level one to arrive, with one of these clubs offering online play. The biggest local club, the Wellington club, also offered online play from early on in the lockdown. The Auckland online tournaments also remain a popular option for BBO members.

Aside from this, there’s been a string of cancelled tournaments and paused club competitions.  Once again, there’s the prospect of some future rearranging of club schedules to enable the major club competitions to conclude over the remaining months. Clubs are good at tackling these conundrums, once they get some certainty about future levels.

Interclub wasn’t possible as scheduled for the 17th September, so we’d hoped to play on the following Friday. Not to be, so the current plan is to move all rounds back by one rotation, and introduce December 3rd for round 9. Round 7 will now be played on 15th October, possibly with a revised draw. Round 8 will be played on 5th November.

We’ve also had to defer a meeting of the local clubs until we get back to level one. Among other things, we were intending to work on some improvements for 2023 and out-year tournaments.

Playing Bridge

Before the latest lockout, we had managed to fit in three events in early to mid August.  These were the Waikanae Club’s Multigrade on 1 August, the Hutt Club’s Intermediate tournament on the 8th, and the Upper Hutt Multigrade on the following week.

Waikanae attracted 48 pairs for its Multigrade. The club website has easily accessible detailed results and photos of winners, enhancing the life of bridge correspondents. This is very much the case in times of few events and few photos. So I’ve been able to compile the following:

 

Group	Winners of the Group	Overall Placing	Number of Pairs
Open & Open	Ruth Brucker, Phil Revell	3	7
Open & Intermediate	Donna Upchurch, Denise Barnett	1	19
Intermediate & Intermediate	Pauline Reid, Lucy O’Regan	9	16
Intermediate & Junior	Anne Wolf, Eileen Queree	20	4
Junior & Junior	John Harper, Vicki Boffa	38=	2

 

Second overall were Nigel Kearney and Julie Hawkins, an Open Intermediate pair.

                   
  Donna Upchurch & Denise Barnett

 

        

 

The Hutt Intermediate had a big field of 40 pairs. Lorraine Gaffaney and Anne Verboeket of Waikanae were the winners. It was close for second and third - Dougal Watson and David Don, Sue Brown and Denise Barnett, respectively.

 

Thirty pairs contested the Upper Hutt Multigrade, despite the out of region alternative mentioned below. Christine and Sandy McKirdy, averaging 61.46%, came first, with Derek Snelling and Nebojsa Djorovic being the second pair.

Elsewhere

You can see that none of the above events offered A points. That might have been part of the attraction for those of us who went up to the Central Districts Fullerton teams in Hastings on the 14th and 15th. This tournament of 20 teams held one of the strongest regional event fields I’ve seen in some time. I counted 46 grandmasters or better, and only three of the 20 teams had no grandmasters. The team organised to make up an even number of teams was not a weak team by any means.

Some Wellington based players did well. Kate Davies, John Patterson and John Luoni, John Davidson, all Wellington, repeated their 2019 win. (The 2020 event had been cancelled.) Alan Grant and Anthony Ker were one pair of the second placed team.

 

 

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