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John and Douglas. 

Storming Finish for Victors in North Island Pairs.

Auckland’s Douglas Russell and John Buckleton produced a huge finish to win the 2022 North Island Pairs at the Auckland Bridge Club over last week-end. An excellent format which saw all 38 pairs play 3 boards against every other pair over 5 sessions saw Douglas and John come home in relative ease after scoring 71.30% in the final 21 board session.
In what was always going to be a good round, they averaged 81% in their last 10 boards to win the event by 67 match-points with an overall 59.83%. The unlucky pair were Andi Boughey and Carol Richardson who had averaged 60.20% over the first 4 rounds but who finished with a below 50% final round.

The top positions were:

							%
1	Douglas	Russell		John	Buckleton		59.83
2	Andi	Boughey		Carol	Richardson		58.16
3	Geeske	Joel		GeO	Tislevoll		57.38
4	Pam	Livingston		Graeme	Tuffnell		56.93
5	Jerry	Chen		Kevin	Hu		55.21
6	Leon	Meier		Michael	Ware		55.16
7	Steve	Boughey		William	Liu		55.11
8	Jeremy	Fraser-Hoskin		Liz	Fisher		54.60
9	Gary	Foidl		Ant	Hopkins		53.38
10	Barry	Jones		Jenny	Millington		53.25

 

 

High Places: Happy Faces

     
    Andi and Carol  in 2nd place                      with Jerry and Kevin in 5th                                            

What would you bid as West with the following after South opened with a Weak 2 on your right?

  

The event was very well run by David Stephen and the scorer, Kevin Walker, while Tony Morcom dealt a multitude of boards. Thanks also to all at the Auckland Club who contributed, notably Kim and Denise.

Back then to our problem. There seemed an awful lot of part-score battles during the 5 sessions though session 4 offered bidding opportunities on Board 1 for East-West, with none of the 19 pairs finding their way to slam. Some had to judge what to do when their opponents bid up to 5. Unless you were going to bid to slam, then the best option was to “take the money” as these were the 4 hands:

 

Firstly, though, what to bid over 2? The best option is to show a 2-suiter and it was a perfect-hand for Leaping Michaels where a jump to 4 of a minor shows at least 5 of the minor bid and at least  5 cards of the other major. It also shows a powerful hand as you can either play that 3 is a weaker version of Michaels or with a weaker hand simply overcall 2.

Had West bid 4, North might well do best to keep silent as 4 now would give East even greater incentive to bid directly to slam. The question would be which slam? Playing Teams, 6 would be by far the safer slam as a 4-1 spade break could defeat 6. The same argument would apply in Pairs where no other pair bid to slam.

However, Pairs encourages major slams if you can make them. So, the top score this day would have been 980 with 6 cold. Yet, some North-South pairs did bid to 5 and even without a club ruff available (West must be careful not too show a doubleton club too early in the defence as a 3^rd round of clubs before a diamond has been cashed would be terrible for the defence.), the result should be doubled down 3. 

Some tables saw North open 1 and South raise to 4. Now, West might either try 4 or else the spade suit would seem to be lost. East could hardly appreciate how valuable his club honours were. 

5x down 3 would be fine for North-South had East-West been vulnerable or had pairs bid to slam. This time, -500 was worth very few match-points with the field collecting just 480 from the spade game. Unlucky, maybe for those North-Souths who conceded -500 but at equal nil vulnerability, one has to be a little careful in sacrificing at the 5-level. Opposite, a Weak 2, North has plenty of trumps and plenty of losers: no singleton or void. The 4-level was indeed high enough. Yet, South may well bid once more over 4 if their partner had opened at the 1-level.

We will feature John and Douglas in action tomorrow. 

Richard Solomon

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