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Welcome to Sue Brown who presents the first on-line news from Northland....and what a great piece of news she has to start with, a great success for a Northland player.
Northland is celebrating its first ever player to achieve selection for the international New Zealand Open team this year. Matthew is not only the first Northland player ever to represent New Zealand in our wonderful game but also the youngest ever New Zealand Open representative.
Congratulations and well done to Matthew Brown who, although still a “youth” player has achieved selection in the Open team. He will play in the World Olympiad in Poland in August. As a measure of Matthew’s progress, in the three events used as a basis for selection of the international teams, Matthew’s team came second in both the Swiss Pairs event in Auckland and in the South Island Teams and third in the North Island Teams. He will have the eyes of Northland on him when he plays internationally. We all wish him well.
Northland bridge players are enjoying being back into bridge for the season with record turnouts being recorded for tournaments in Northland so far this year.
The Northland year started off on January 9th and 10th with the two day summer tournament jointly hosted by Kerikeri and Paihia Bridge Clubs. This is always a Northland bridge highlight and attracts large numbers of pairs. In the last two years, due to popular demand, the first day has been run as a Swiss Pairs event and Northland players are enjoying this form of the game. The Swiss Pairs was won by Whangarei’s Andrew Liu and John McIntosh by a healthy 13.5 vps over 7 rounds while despite 66.90% in the second round of the Pairs Day, and averaging 63.87% over the 2 sessions, Andrew and John were beaten by nearly 1% by club mates Margaret Hooson and Neill Ruddell.
For 2016 Northland has four Swiss Pairs events scheduled – two in Kerikeri (one an A point event in September), one in Dargaville and one in Whangarei. Several Auckland pairs came up to Northland for Dargaville’s Swiss Pairs event in February demonstrating this form of bridge’s popularity nationally. The winners were one of the Auckland pairs, Clair Miao and Gary Chen.
Meanwhile, Keri Keri’s Dolphin Pairs was a close-run contest between locals, Jill Cottle and Bill Humphrey and Dargaville’s Neil and Margaret Hearn. Neil and Margaret made the early running by scoring 63.81% in the morning session, a full 8% ahead of Jill and Bill. However, in the afternoon session, there was an almost identical score reversal with Jill and Bill scoring 64.64% to win the event by 0.71%.
This year three pairs from Kerikeri and one player from Whangarei travelled to the Gold Coast to enjoy a whole week of bridge in this tropical paradise. In all, 250 New Zealanders played that week and had a great time. Great bridge with strong competition! Carrying on from a previous paragraph – the Gold Coast congress offers three Swiss Pairs events during the week as well as the three days of teams of four (and lots of other events to choose from). All events are run over several different grades of player so players of all levels can enjoy playing at their own level. Think about planning for next year for this week! With so many bridge players “in town” accommodation should be booked early!
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