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Anthony and Russell celebrate a previous success…in the
National Rubber Bridge tournament.

Emphatic Victory in National Swiss Pairs.

The New Plymouth Bridge hosted the on-line National Swiss Pairs over the past weekend. A well-organized event run by a directing team led by Allan Joseph and scorer, Kevin Walker, consisted of 11 rounds of 10 board matches. A huge entry of 96 pairs showed the popularity of major events on-line.

It was a wonderful two days for Wellington’s Anthony Ker and Russell Dive. They scored 20 in their first match but lost first place in match 2 even though their total was 36.16 vps. After that, they led the whole way and were mathematical going into the final round. Their only loss was by 1.79imps to third placed Australians Peter Gill and Josh Tomlin.

       The top 10 finishers were:

						vps
1	Anthony Ker			Russell Dive		169.35
2	Zachary Yan			Kevin Hu		144.82
3	Peter Gill			Josh Tomlin		141.24
4	Carlos Pellegrini			Steve Baron		136.09
5	GeO Tislevoll			Leon Meier		132.79
6	David O'Shaughnessy			Bill Humphrey		132.74
7	Mindy Wu			Kate Terry		131.25
8	Fuxia Wen			Ian Berrington		129.52
9	Colin Carryer			Sandra Calvert		127.70
10	Grant Jarvis			Jonathan Westoby		127.51

 

 

What would be your line in the following 5 contract? Oh, you have been doubled by your left-hand opponent?

 

Now is not the time to reflect that if clubs break 3-1 or 2-2 that you have 9 top tricks in 3NT. You receive the K lead. What’s your line?

This board occurred in the “top of the table” match with Zachary Yan declarer and Russell Dive, North, and Anthony Ker, South. The club break was 3-1 and 5 was makeable but that was assuming you do not take Russell Dive’s bidding too literally!

With only 14 hcp outstanding, the two doubles seemed to indicate that Russell held most of them, certainly the important ones like the DK. So, Zachary won the opening lead and ran the Q at trick 2. He was very quickly one down:

 

Having failed to bid 4 for the majors over 3, it looked like Russell was still hoping his partner would bid. The South hand certainly did not look like 5 of a red suit even if 5 is potentially a small save against a making 5. It was certainly better to beat 5x!

There seem to be two winning lines for West. The first is to duck the opening spade lead, win the spade continuation and take the losing diamond finesse. However, while all dummy’s entries are intact, win the opening lead, and play A and ruff a second diamond. Q and then club to the ace and another diamond ruff to be followed by a club to the king and a third diamond ruff.

West can play a heart to the ace and discard 2 of their 4 major suit losers on the 2 remaining established diamonds, with just 2 losers at the end.

That was not the case for Zachary who not unreasonably placed K in the North hand. The winning lines were more easily found where North had bid 4 to show both majors, North's true shape. Not so though against Russell Dive. 
 
Zachary and Kevin finished much higher 
than 7th this time. 

Although Anthony and Russell had a big win in this match, Zachary and his partner, Kevin Hu, also had a great tournament to finish 2^nd. Other than the loss to Anthony and Russell, they scored a mammoth 104 vps from 6 of their first 7 matches and were unlucky to be trailing a pair in such good form throughout.

Richard Solomon

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