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Everybody’s Talking ‘bout it…

Most people’s post mortems after play on Monday centred around one board. After all, it was not another 4333  7 count! So, what would you do given holding the hand below?

 

 

3NT from South is Gambling style, long-running minor and no outside ace or king.

Part of your problem is that you do not know which minor South has, not that you care! Well, you do care because you want your partner to choose a major and if possible value their own hand in relation to your monster. If you can get a major out of your partner, key card will not help you as the A is somewhat more useful than either minor ace.

So, without any specific agreement to show both majors (and one option is to play 4 as such), start off with a double and enlist the opponents’ help as surely North will run to a minor.

West              North             East                South

                        Pass                Pass                3NT
X                      4 (p/c)          Pass                4

at which point a sensible action seems to be 6 asking partner to choose a major. This would give East the opportunity to re-evalue their rather modest flat collection:

 

Bidding like that and missing A and Q? It looks like the 7 level is a level or two too low! Bid 7 and let partner bid their longer major. Job nicely done.

In the top section of the Open Pairs, only 4 out of the 14 East/Wests bid the grand, the rest being in small slam. In Section B, we had 3 grands and 8 small slams and in the other 5 Open sections, the grand was bid only 5 times in total.

At the end of the Pairs events, these were the top 10 Kiwi finishers in their sections:

Open Pairs

A

3          GeO Tislevoll- Liam Milne
9          Pamela Nisbet – Jan Cormack
C
6          Greg Lee – Alan Currie
7          John Patterson – Kate Davies
D
2          Matt Brown – James Coutts
8          Bev and Allan Morris
10        Paula Gregory- Michael Johnstone

E
3          Andi and Steve Boughey
4          Wayne Burrows – Peter Hall
6          Will Adler – John Luoni
10        Setsuko Lichtnecker – Peer Bach

F
3          Graeme Tuffnell – Pam Livingston
4          Alison Beer – Marie Milsum
7          Sulochna and Bill Humphrey
9          Mike Newton – Kate Terry

G
1          Debbie McLeod – Brian Cleaver
6          Lynette and David O’Shaughnessy
8          Andrew Michl – Sebastian Langdon McMillan
9          Derek Snelling – Sally Ann Murphy

Intermediate Pairs
D
2          Kevin and Helen Walker

Restricted Pairs
A
4          Derek Bartosh – Jan Bennett
9          Margie Robbie – Jenni Borren
10       Joy Williams – Guy Kalma

B
3          Catherine Wilkie – Rosemary Parker
7          Marilyn Kennedy – Anna Chappell

C
1          Sue Hunt – Sue Skarupsky

D
5          Trish Clearwater – Viv Murray
6          Sue Solomons – Craig Shannahan

Monday Butler Swiss Pairs
North-South
1          Hugh McGann – Michael Ware
3          Daniela Von Arnhem – Geeske Joel

East – West
1          Annette and Stephen Henry
4          Ken Yule – Grant Jarvis

Tuesday is the first day of the Teams events.

Richard Solomon

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