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Jeff Miller and Graeme Stout. 

South Island success in South Island Teams.

It was rather appropriate that victory in last weekend’s South Island On-Line Pairs should go to a “mainland” pair, one of their strongest in Jeff Miller and Graeme Stout.

The event was run with a 2-session qualifying with a field of 80 pairs. The top 15 each direction made the Final, the next 15 the Plate and the rest played the Consolation, all 2 session events on the Sunday. Jeff and Graeme returned scores of 58.39 and 49.64% to qualify a comfortable enough 12^th and then 59.84 and 51.79% in the Final which saw these as the final scores:  

						matchpoints
1	Jeff	Miller		Graeme	Stout	908.64
2	Julie	Atkinson		Patrick	Carter	888.21
3	Gary	Chen		John	Wang	887.43
4	Lysandra	Zheng		Pam	Livingston	887.36
5	William	Liu		Steve	Boughey	883.64
6	Jo	Simpson		Sam	Simpson	877.43
7	Jeremy	Fraser-Hoskin		Moss	Wylie	869.43
8	GeO	Tislevoll		Michael	Cornell	866.64
9	Carlos	Pellegrini		Steve	Baron	846.57
10	Peter	Collinge		Noel	Woodhall	843.43

In the end, Graeme and Jeff had a few match-points to spare though there were very few match-points separating the next few places.

The Plate was won by Daisy Lu and Xiao Lu from Emma Strong and Jan Alabaster and Barry Jones and Jenny Millington while Deborah Tangney and Nebojsa Djorovic won the Consolation.

Would you open the following hand in first seat at equal nil vulnerability?

 

While it might be an OK Weak 2 opening, several North players who presumably were not playing a Weak 2, chanced their arm with 3 and rather paid the price in a slightly unusual way. The hand seems to have too many soft values in the majors to warrant this action while the diamond suit can only be described as average.

Those who did open 3 found a quick acceleration of the auction:

 

They were lucky that East did not try 5 which loses a trick in each suit or -300. Most East players passed 5 and North made a comfortable enough 11 tricks for +400. 4NT over 4 would be Key Card rather than an attempt to play there. 

Jeff Miller was one of those North players who passed in first seat. It was an important board played against 3^rd placed Gary Chen and John Wang. John felt he had bid enough by the time Graeme Stout bid 3NT:

After 8 lead, via the best kind of spade finesse, Graeme managed a comfortable 11 tricks for +460.

Michael Cornell (South) had to deal with a very persistent Matthew Brown:

Same heart lead: same result. It would be virtually impossible for West to find a club lead, the only one which beats 5NT if the bidding escalated that high. More realistically, North-South scored better when North did not open the bidding than when they bid.

A nice weekend’s bridge well organised by directors David Stephen and Babs- Merel de Visser (South Island success here as well as on the playing front) aided by a North Island scorer, Kevin Walker.

Richard Solomon

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