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Nick Bailey, Malcolm Mayer, Zachary Yan and Lysandra Zheng.

New names and partnerships win the National Teams.

This coming weekend sees the National Youth Weekend take place in Auckland. Some 40+ young players are expected to attend for a weekend that is more about enjoying the game and mixing with others who have a similar enjoyment of bridge rather than improving the players’ knowledge. They are there to have a good time.

These have been annual weekends for some 25 years. In recent years, a group of students from Macleans College in Howick have attended. A former teacher there, Lance Bowden, a member of Papatoetoe Bridge Club, has been hugely influential in bringing bridge to a significant group of students at the school. Two members of this group, Lysandra Zheng and Zachary Yan, were in the team which won the National Teams in Dunedin this past weekend. Both are still youth players.

That is only half of an unusual story. They played in first time partnerships. Lysandra played with Dunedin’s Nick Bailey. Nick is also a former youth player and attendee at these Youth Weekends. He has, though, not played much serious bridge for a while, commenting that it was 10 years since he had played in a 2-day event.

Zachary played with Malcolm Mayer, who brought experience to the team. Malcolm needs no introduction. This team not only won this 22 team competition but they won all 9 of their 12 board matches and finished 23.34 vps ahead of second place. That’s a huge achievement.

Here then are the top 5 finishers.

										vps
1	Mayer	Malcolm Mayer		Zachary Yan		Lysandra Zheng		Nick Bailey		138.69
2	Ackerley	Chris Ackerley		Arleen Schwartz		Margaret Perley		Paul Freeland		115.35
3	Alabaster	Jan Alabaster		Graeme Tuffnell		Jane Skipper		John Skipper		112.52
4	Ware	Michael Ware		Jack James		Brad Johnston		Sam Coutts		107.96
5	Berrington	Ian Berrington		Fuxia Wen		Kate Davies		John Patterson		103.65

 

 
2nd placed Paul Freeland, Margaret Perley, Arleen Schwartz and Chris Ackerley

Here’s one board which helped the team to victory.

 

What would you do here, pass and defend or take some action? If you do act, what bid would you make?

Zachary elected to make a take-out double with the bidding proceeding as follows:

 

East was on the right track with their opening lead but led, from their perspective, the wrong card, 2. Malcolm, North, won the first trick with dummy’s 6 and tried a low diamond from the dummy. West had to win but could not reach their partner’s hand to play 2 more rounds of trumps. They exited 10 taken by the ace. Next came A 2 club and 2 diamond ruffs to bring declarer’s total to 7 tricks and East was still powerless to stop the Q scoring a third club ruff. 2x making on a board where East-West can make a rather fortunate 3NT or a safe club partial.

An initial lead of A and a second trump would have cut down declarer’s ruffing potential and would have left North/South with 1 trump trick, 3 ruffs and the two black aces, down 2. North/South were fortunate with the diamond lay-out. Had East  heldA, the cross-ruff would never have occurred.

2 would not have made though would less likely have been doubled. West may not realise they needed to ruff a spade to create a fourth trump trick for the defence.

That was 13 imps in when 3 made at the other table. The sun certainly shone for North- South on this board.

The Otago Club put on a fabulous tournament including excellent catering. Thanks also to the excellent director, Lorraine Stachurski, and scorer, Kevin Walker.

More from the event tomorrow from the other successful pair.

Richard Solomon

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