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One win, one second for Kiwis in the tri-international weekend.

A tri-series of internationals took place on Real Bridge over the past weekend, with New Zealand, Australia and Indonesia fielding two teams in each of Open, Women, Seniors and Mixed grades. There was also a Youth event where New Zealand fielding just one team.

Each country played the other 4 teams twice not playing their own compatriots in 12 board matches.

Before seeing how they fared, try this problem. First in hand, vulnerable against not, your partner opens 4. You have a nice hand, plenty of aces but are deficient in just one thing:

 

To bid..or to pass?

Here then are New Zealand’s results.

Youth

Pride of place to our Youth team, Jack James-Jeremy Fraser-Hoskin, Leon Meier – Jacob Kalma who with five large wins and three small losses won the 5-team event with 110.44 vps, nearly 18 vps ahead of second placed Indonesia 1.

A fine result with Jack and Jeremy already a strong partnership in Open bridge though it was a first outing together for Leon and Jacob.

Women

New Zealand 1 (Carol Richardson – Andi Boughey, Shirley Newton – Jenny Wilkinson)recorded two big wins over Australian teams part way through the competition which took them into a strong second place. However, life was much tougher in their final two matches against Indonesian opponents. They suffered two losses to end 4^th with 79.70 vps, 22 vps behind the victorious Indonesians.

Our other team (Jenna and Christine Gibbons, Jane Lennon- Jane Skipper, Linda Cartner – Glenis Palmer) struggled throughout the event finishing a rather distant 6^th.

Seniors

New Zealand 1 (Julie-Atkinson – Patrick Carter, Jonathan Westoby- Grant Jarvis) only managed 3 wins out of 8 matches but two of them were big wins against Indonesia 2 and saw them finish in 4^th place. That was one place better than Tom Jacob- Brian Mace and Alan Grant- John Skipper, New Zealand 2. The event was very well won by Australia 1 who finished 37 vps ahead of 2^nd place.

Mixed

4^th and 5^th place was also to be the final positions of our two teams in this category. New Zealand 2 (Barry Jones- Jenny Millington, Liz and Blair Fisher, Jo and Sam Simpson) did better finishing 4^th with 76.05 vp, 35 vps behind the winning Indonesia 1. New Zealand 1 (Clair Miao- Wayne Burrows, Kate Davies- John Patterson) were 16 vps further back in 5^th place.

Open

New Zealand 1 (Peter Newell – Martin Reid, Ashley Bach- Michael Cornell) hit the lead at the half-way mark after three good wins. However, they were pegged back by two losses to Australian teams but came back strongly at the end to sneak into second place, 6.6 vps behind Australia 1 and 0.06 vps clear of the 3^rd placed Indonesians.

New Zealand 2 (Michael Whibley – Matthew Brown, GeO Tislevoll – Nick Jacob) started with three losses but fought back with five wins to finish 4^th, only 1.57 vps behind their second placed compatriots.

So, did Peter Newell take a bid with his good “spadeless” hand? He did. Bearing in mind the adverse vulnerability of his partner’s opening bid, he raised to 5, focusing on his partner’s trump suit. Martin Reid thought they looked good enough and thus they reached 6.

How do you play AQT98752 opposite a void for just one loser? Lay down the ace and hope you catch an honour. Martin did.

 

Oh, there was the little matter of a successful heart finesse as well though if you think that was a rather fortunate slam (and 13 imp swing), then a couple of boards earlier, Martin had played a slam requiring one out of two finesses to work…. and he recorded 0 successful finesses on that one. So, perhaps fortune evened out over the two boards.

We will feature a few more deals from the event this week.

 

An important Lead

Well, you doubled the final contract. So, you must know what to lead!

Your choice is?

Richard Solomon

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