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KIWIS IN CANBERRA
Of all the Kiwis who went across to Canberra’s Summer Festival of Bridge, the most successful was Auckland’s Nick Jacob. Nick certainly landed himself a very good partner in the shape of Ishmael Del’Monte.
Nick and Ishmael started by winning the National Open Swiss Pairs, winning 10 out of 11 matches with a vp score of 208, 12.5 vps more than the second placed pair. Then, their team finished 3rd of 8 qualifiers in the South West Pacific Teams and won through to the final of the National Open Teams where they took on the highly fancied Lavazza team, losing eventually over 64 boards 124-150.1.
Nick and Ishmael’s team, including Reese Milner, Justin and Herman Lall and Jaceb Pszczola had the satisfaction of winning the last set of 16 boards 63-37, Lavazza’s biggest set loss of the week. (They only lost two other sets, one in the quarter-finals by 7 imps and one in the semi-finals by 1 imp.) So, a pretty satisfactory result for Nick and Ishmael, who, of course, learnt his trade here in New Zealand though who now lives in the USA.
Here, then, were some Kiwi highlights of the Festival: (Australian partners in italics)
Penline 1 Day Swiss Pairs (26)
- GeO Tislevoll – Joan Butts
6 Sam and James Coutts
Chris Diment Match-point Swiss Pairs (34)
- Sam and James Coutts
- GeO Tislevoll – Joan Butts
- Jenna Gibbons – Julian Foster
National Open Swiss Pairs (208)
1 Nick Jacob- Ishmael Del’Monte
South West Pacific Teams (138) top 8 to qualify
3. Nick Jacob - Ishmael Del'Monte
4 Ashley Bach, GeO Tislevoll, Liam Milne
8 Murat Genc
10 James and Sam Coutts, Ellena Moskovsky- Laura Travis
11 Peter Newell – Martin Reid
12 Carol Richardson - Steve Boughey, Alister Stuck- Russell Wilson
The above team won the New Zealand High Commissioner’s Trophy for the top finishing Zone 7 team from outside Australia.
The Coutts team above won the prize for the highest finishing Mixed team.
Although finishing 8th, Murat’s team did not continue into the National Open Teams knock-out allowing the 9th placed team into the event.
James and Sam Coutts finished second on datums for this event and recorded the highest modified datum for a pair who played in all 12 matches.
National Open Teams
As stated Nick Jacob was a member of the beaten finalists. The team including Ashley Bach, GeO Tislevoll and Liam Milne won their quarter final comfortably and played Milner , including Nick and Ishmael, in the semi-final, the result being 158.1 -90 in Milner’s favour.
Australian Mixed Teams (14)
- Matthew Brown, Laura Ginnan, Will Jenner O’Shea, Joe Haffer, Simon Hinge, Tim Munro
- Peter Newell- Martin Reid, Sophie Ashton- Sartaj Hans
In this 10 match event, the winners scored 146.47. The second placed team scored 133.54 with the team that finished 3rd back on 109 vps, quite a huge margin for the top 2 teams.
National Flighted Swiss Pairs (30)
- Rose Don – Michael Courtney
- Jenna Gibbons – Julian Foster
Other Kiwis to feature in Canberra were Arie Geursen on the directing staff while Stanley Abrahams produced the excellent Bulletins.
Here are a couple of hands which helped the Richardson team to its high finishing position in the South West Pacific Teams. Firstly, a tough 4♥ played by Alister Stuck:
Dealer South North
Vul All ♠ J82
♥ KJ108
♦ 52
♣ 10653
West East
♠ A ♠ Q975
♥ A954 ♥ Q732
♦ K1098763 ♦ Q
♣ 8 ♣ AQJ9
South
♠ K10643
♥ 6
♦ AJ4
♣ K742
West North East South
1♠
2♦ 2♠ Pass Pass
x Pass 4♥ All Pass
Second time round, Alister owed his partner a bid…hence the jump to 4♥. He won the spade lead, played a club to the ace and then ♣Q covered and ruffed. A diamond went to South’s ace with South exiting a club. Alister won and ruffed a spade. Next came ♦K and then a diamond ruff with ♥7 followed by a spade ruffed with dummy’s ace, North under-ruffing. With 9 tricks, Alister led West’s last trump and his ♥Q became his 10th trick. That earnt 12 imps when 5♦ failed in the other room.
Meanwhile Steve Boughey and Carol Richardson showed that a strong no-trump opening is not to be messed around with.
Dealer East North
All Vul. ♠ A9652
♥ 10643
♦ AK3
♣ 9
West East
♠ J83 ♠ Q1074
♥ KQ952 ♥ 7
♦ Q ♦ 109765
♣ QJ106 ♣ 852
South
♠ K
♥ AJ8
♦ J842
♣ AK743
With Carol sitting South and Steve North, the auction was:
West North East South
1NT
2♣ 1 x All Pass
1 ♣ and ♥
Over to Steve:
“Opening 1NT with a singleton honour is something we’re comfortable with. So, Carol started proceedings with 1NT. I doubled to show a take-out of clubs, the suit bid. East’s Pass showed a preference for clubs. South’s Pass indicated a desire for blood!
And so it came to pass. I led my singleton club (although here a high diamond followed by a trump switch has the same effect, it is so often best for the defence to lead a trump after such a common auction as the above, whether doubled or not ) which ran to declarer’s 10. In desperation to ruff at least one heart, declarer advanced the ♥Q from the hidden hand, but that was to no avail, as Carol took that trick and proceeded to play two more rounds of top trumps, then continued with a low diamond.
It was all pretty calamitous from then on for the declarer, who made a careless play as the penalty mounted higher and higher (as often happens – it’s hard to stay focused in the midst of disaster!). In the end West made just three tricks, 2 trumps and the ♥K. So when the dust settled the damage was: five light … +1400 to North-South.
Our opponents in the other room duly bid and made their routine 3NT for +600 and were no doubt taken aback when this netted them minus 800, or 13 imps out, on the board.
At the conclusion of the event we had crawled our way up – having assiduously avoided playing all the superstars in the field – to 12th place, far higher than our original 36th seeding; thereby far exceeding our expectations. We were also the highest-finishing team from Zone 7 (aside from Australia), which meant we were awarded the High Commissioner’s Trophy.”
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