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no bridge at the club but plenty on-line for Timaru.

Taking a Trip "to" Timaru. 

It would surely be a nice trip to visit Timaru whether or not one spent all one’s time in the local bridge club. Currently, we can play in bridge tournaments all over the country without shifting from our own homes. There are advantages in that too.

So, to the Timaru Congress held last weekend on RealBridge. There were 40 teams in the Open Teams, 68 pairs in the Open Swiss Pairs and 16 pairs in the Intermediate/ Junior Swiss Pairs. Thanks to the local club for organising the event and for David Stephen and Kevin Walker for directing and scoring it.

A little problem..or maybe not one at all.

 

 

Your bid: Swiss Pairs: N/S Vul.

Congratulations to the following in the various events:

Open Teams…”It’s never over until the fat lady sings”

1

Graeme

Tuffnell

Jan

Alabaster

Fuxia

Wen

Ian

Berrington

104.89

2

Gary

Chen

John

Wang

Jeter

Liu

June

Lei

104.76

3

Blair

Fisher

Liz

Fisher

Jo

Simpson

Sam

Simpson

95.75

4

Alan

Grant

John

Skipper

Jane

Skipper

Jane

Lennon

95.32

5

Jeremy

Fraser Hoskin

Max

Morrison

Brad

Johnston

Sam

Coutts

88.71

 

The Tuffnell team were doing very well with 6 wins out of 6 and looked to have the event sewn up. However, they ran into severe trouble against   in the last round and lost that match 11-46. However, the 1.42 vps they took from this match proved extremely valuable as you can see above. Chen won their last match 46-17, worth 17.68 vps. You can see that another overtrick somewhere might have made all the difference.

For the Tuffnell team, “the fat lady” sang just in time!

 
Fuxia and Ian, 1st by a whisker!

Intermediate/Junior Swiss Pairs

1	Emma	Russell		Bigi	Cameron		85.75
2	Caroline	Caseley		Jo	Hampton		81.26
3	Rex	Green		Ian	Beattie		71.48

What is it about the final round? Emma and Bigi had four big wins but were brought down to earth by Jill Lockett and Giles Hancock in the last, scoring just 5.70 vps. Caroline and Jo scored the perfect 20 vps in their last round but they not catch up the runaway leaders.

Open Swiss Pairs

1	Pat	Carter		Grant	Jarvis		99.94
2	Jeremy	Fraser Hoskin		Max	Morrison		94.30
3	Anne- Marie	Russell		Jack	James		91.57
4	Gary	Chen		John	Wang		91.01
5	Leon	Meier		Michael	Ware		90.33

 

Anne -Marie and Jack led going into the last round but were beaten then by Patrick and Grant. That was a first loss for Anne-Marie and Jack while Pat and Grant were unbeaten throughout the day.

This was the last board of the weekend in the Open Swiss.

 

 

While Patrick will argue that 2 will never get passed out, it seemed an unusual action with his hand, allowing plenty of space for the opponents to explore. Indeed, if he was looking to get doubled in 5, he got his wish and lost one trick in each suit for -500 and a small loss in Swiss scoring.

This seems a more normal action from North, to the same place:

West              North            East                South 

Pavla              Michael       David             Leon
Fenwick         Ware           Taylor             Meier

                                                                   1

2 ¹                       4              4                 x

Pass                    5               x                  All Pass

¹ spades and another, Michael’s style

Michael had no problem in pulling his partner’s penalty double and at least turned -790 into – 500.

Several tables saw West bid on to 5 which sometimes got doubled, resulting in the obvious overtrick. Only one of the 34 East-West pairs tried the 50% slam. Roger Wilkinson and Derek Bartosh reached 6 and were very happy with the position of the K.   

Richard Solomon         

 

 

 

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