All News

 

Kiwis in On-Line WBF Women’s Tournament.

The concept of a world-wide on-line tournament seems challenging when one has to overcome vastly different time-zones. However, an international event was run on-line this past weekend, an On-Line Women’s Teams. 74 teams took part including two from this country.

The Black Diamonds were Jane Lennon- Jan Alabaster and Kinga Hajmasi – Candice Smith while Kiwis were Andi Boughey- Carol Richardson and Debs Smith – Pam Livingston.

All teams played 13 x 8 board matches. Kinga commented “It was very well organised. We had to give them 24 hours availability in 2.5 days and they put together a schedule with the teams available at the same time.”

Below is one situation Candice faced:

 

2 was semi/ natural game-forcing, the jump to 4 showing a Delayed Game Raise. How do you feel? Do you want to head “slamwards” or are you content in 4?

Unlike her opponent, Candice had ambition. She certainly had a better than minimum opening hand and her minor doubleton appeared to be in the right suit. She tried Key Card and would  have pulled up at the 5-level had Kinga only showed one ace/ key-card. However, Kinga responded with 2 key-cards and Candice went for slam. Kinga was to produce something extra almost as good as an ace, J:

 

Kinga’s spades could have been a little better and those club cards below the ace would be very useful on a different day though were superfluous this time. However, that J was a wonderful card.

Candice won K lead with dummy’s A and discarded her losing club. Next came one round of trumps before a heart to J and South’s A. Candice could ruff the diamond return and lay down a second top trump before playing two top hearts and then ruffing a heart before claiming 12 tricks.

Either major suit jack in the East hand improves the chances  of slam making. The alternative to bidding 4NT would have been a 5 cue-bid. Despite the prospect of the cue-bid being a void, with a very useful card in each side-suit, East would surely bid slam despite that poor trump holding.

This board resulted in an 11 imp pick-up for The Black Diamonds when their opponents stayed in 4 after the same first four bids.

 
Candice and Kinga representing  New Zealand at a recent APBF Women's event. They will be looking forward 
to playing in our Women's team again this year, in the same event. 
Carol and Andi are playing in both Womens' international events this year, in China and at the Venice Cup in Denmark. 
Jane and Jan will also be playing in the Venice Cup event. Thus, this event provided good practice 
for all the pairs. 

The Black Diamonds finished in 21^st place with 150.11 vps, earning Kiwi bragging rights with Kiwis just below them in 27^th on 146.38 vps. The top score was 193.63 achieved by a French team.

Whoever said January was the off-season for bridge! That phrase hardly seems to exist in these days of on-line bridge.

Richard Solomon

Go Back View All News Items