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Celebration Time at Hamilton.

Labour Weekend was celebration time at the Hamilton Bridge Club, albeit just a little late as the club turned 70 last year though celebrations had to be delayed until this year. As well as the usual three days of Bridge, there was a celebratory social time and  dinner on the Sunday evening, a time of reflection for the club since its early days with several past Presidents commenting on different aspects from their periods at the helm.

There was plenty of bridge, especially on the Saturday when the Open Pairs, renamed the Shirley Waymouth Open Pairs ran for three 24 board sessions. Shirley was a Life Member of both the National Association and the Hamilton Club and passed away earlier this year. She would relate well to  plenty of dealing as she dealt for club, region and National Congress initially in the days before dealing machines were around. She also excelled in pre-computer scoring. A family member of Shirley was there to present the winners with their prizes at the dinner.

The Open Pairs was relatively low scoring and was won by Julie Atkinson and Patrick Carter on 175.6% followed by Hamish Brown and Johanna Perfect (171.70%) and Fuxia Wen and Ian Berrington (171.57%). The Restricted Open Pairs, also named in Shirley’s honour, was won in style by Pamela Pedersen and Megan Richards with 128.40%. Rachelle Meijer and Duncan White were second on 117.23% followed by Mark Beaven and Don Weston on 112.98%.

Christine Wilson and Barry Palmer won the Consolation Swiss Pairs with 70.40, just keeping ahead of Wayne Burrows and Clair Miao on 69.87 and Bill Humphrey and David O’Shaughnessy, 68.58.

The Open Teams final was close. After 4 matches in the final (round-robin), Ware led Fraser-Hoskin by just 1.06vp and won their final match by a bigger margin to end up on top.

Ware		Michael Ware		David Skipper		Gary Chen		John Wang			68.99
Fraser-Hoskin		Jeremy Fraser-Hoskin		Alan Grant		Patrick Carter		Barry Jones			64.36
		Julie Atkinson
Boughey		Steve Boughey		Carol Richardson		Alice Young		George Sun			57.22

 
   Michael Ware and David Skipper

What would be your thoughts holding the following hand after your partner opens or rebids 1NT to show 12-14 and you hold:

There is no interference.

For the Teams winners, John Wang held this hand and thought his hand was worth an invite. After all, vulnerable games are really good to bid at Teams, with the proviso that they make! So, John invited:

 

2 started the invitational sequence and 2 was a forced bid. 2 showed an invitational hand with spades. Even though he only held a doubleton, Gary bid straight to the spade game with three aces looking good cards for a spade contract…and so it proved. There had to be a loser in each major suit but the only other loser could be the Q: game made. 

Yet, game was only bid at 8 of the 22 tables in the qualifying rounds. Even without the use of checkback, game could be bid after the 1 opening and 1NT rebid. East can bid 2 to show their second suit and when West gives false preference back to spades, East can invite with either 3 or 3…and those aces and the lack of wasted honours in hearts should encourage West to give game a go.

That was worth 9 imps in for the Ware team. Of course, no-one would even contemplate bidding the diamond slam, making on two successful finesses.

Tomorrow, we will see another reason the Ware team came out on top.

Richard Solomon

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