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Sharleen Grounds.

“David v Goliath” in the 21^st Century.

This is a story of the National Rubber Bridge competition and of two different achievements. They straddle two years of the competition rolled partly into one.

The heats of the 2021 competition took place last year in anticipation of live finals at the National Bridge Congress which, of course, never happened. Eventually, the last 8 played the knock-out finals on-line on Real Bridge in March and April this year. The final was between Canterbury’s Fiona Temple and John Kruiniger and Wellington’s Russell Dive and Anthony Ker with the Wellington pair winning the title.

 
2021 Dan Gifford National Rubber Bridge winners 
While Russell held onto the trophy, Anthony displayed the hand he would like
to have held in the first round of their 2022 title defence. 

Anthony has played international bridge for this country while Russell is also a top Open player. Anthony is a gold and Russell a Grandmaster. They are also top chess players both having won New Zealand titles.

No sooner had they won the 2021 National Rubber competition, they were back again for more in the Wellington heat of the 2022 event. Their first opponents were Sharleen Grounds and Andrew Chambers from Karori.

Let’s take stock:                                                                  A Points

Anthony                    Gold Grand Master                             4952

Russell                       Grandmaster                                      871

Sharleen                    Local Master                                          0

Andrew                      Club Master                                           0

Both Sharleen and Andrew are Intermediate players.

So, not a very even contest you might think. Yet, 30 boards of Rubber Bridge can be quite a leveller.   

Of the first 29 deals in the match, Sharleen and Andrew got to play 22 of them and they were to declare the last deal as well. 13 of those 22 deals were defeated though Sharleen and Andrew got one very significant plus along the way, a vulnerable small slam. Thus, going into the final board, Board 30, Anthony and Russell had a lead of 170 points and with a part-score in, had the prospect of an extra 100 points to come. However, Sharleen and Andrew were vulnerable and so they had 300 points coming their way as long as they could get any plus score from the last board. Thus, both sides needed a plus score, any plus score. This was Board 30:

 

 

The bidding was all natural with Russell believing that 3 was a make and chancing his arm with 4. At that point, Andrew and Sharleen were destined to be successful as they could take 5 side-suit tricks against 4. However, that was not obvious to Sharleen who bid on to 4. When the Q fell on the second round of trumps, Andrew was on his way to making 11 comfortable tricks (or as comfortable as possibly bearing in mind the pressure of Board 30) and overall victory.

Sharleen and Andrew knew that their opponents were very strong Open players but not all their achievements not just in bridge but in chess as well. (Anthony has won NZ Chess Championships 14 times and Russell 8 times. They have both also represented this country at the Chess Olympiad, Anthony 8 times and Russell 12 times.) Back though at the Rubber Bridge table, such experience as Russell and Anthony have counts but only so much. We have always said top pairs can be beaten by less experienced players in this competition. This match proves that.

 
Sharleen and Andrew

Sharleen and Andrew were just stoked. As Sharleen said: “I am still feeling quite stunned and to be honest in disbelief; especially when we heard both of them have been national chess champions as well! We basically expected to be completely smashed when I happened to notice they'd just won the 2021 national title, so it was probably best I didn't think to look at their online NZB profiles until afterwards.”

Sharleen has been building up her own bridge profile in a different way, by visiting bridge clubs all around the country. Of the 110 affiliated clubs, she has been to 95 so far, with just 7 in the North Island and 8 in the South still to be visited. Just now, she’s going to be running some Beginners’ Lessons at Karori…and there’s a bit of directing as well on the horizon. Maybe, an A Point or two, to start catching up to Anthony!

She also paid this nice compliment to her opponents. “The very best part of it all was enjoying an absolutely fantastic time with such wonderful guys who in addition to obviously being quite amazing bridge players, were also incredibly fun, friendly and very nice to us too (competitively!). In summary, it was a really cool experience”.

Their next “cool experience” will be against Joan Waldvogel and Joan McCarthy. We will keep tracks on how they do. And a warning to their opponents. They will be brushing up their lack of knowledge about Rubber Bridge scoring before they sit down to play! 

        Balanced but “unbalanced”!

 

 

That about sums up your hand. You are playing Acol. What now?

 

 

Richard Solomon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

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