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The social Christmas season arrived early in the Waikato Bays kicking off with Thames Xmas tournament in November (who says November is too early to put up Xmas decorations!), followed by Te Awamutu, Waikato, Rotorua and concludes this weekend with Huntly.  Each are special and long running events which all have a point of difference (usually the food but also unique features like the Rotorua quilts).

An early ham for Judy and Kate at Thames

The spoils of these tournaments were shared around with Kate Terry and Judy Pawson from Tauranga celebrating in Thames; the Te Awamutu tournament was won by Waikato club’s pairing of Olive Davis and Mary Ronke and Auckland’s Patrick Carter and William Liu won top spot at Waikato.

A full room at Rotorua is 40 tables and they were close to that with 78 pairs taking their seats on Saturday with a view to capturing one of the 20 prizes on offer (more if you count prizes for best festive dressed).

Party time at Rotorua

This was one memorable board in the afternoon session

   What would you do with the East hand?  Open 4 or a game force 2? 

Anna, this is a reputable website. You could never, ever, ever, not even at a Christmas tournament even think of opening that hand 2 let alone do it. It's not that it's not a game forcing hand but if you ever want to describe your hand, you need to want to start by bidding a suit. Partner will never believe you have so little in high card strength. 1 please. 4 if you must but not 2. My blood and the turkey have both just boiled over at the thought of such an opening.

Some tables had a Tartan 2 (weak with 5 spades and 4/5 minor) open the bidding in the North seat.  Then ensued a battle between pairs to get into a  spade or a heart game with West also desperately trying to persuade their partner that clubs was indeed the place to be. Despite the attractive shape, no slams should make according to Deep Finesse which disappointed many who ended up going down by a trick or two.

6 by East is an interesting contract on a normal spade lead from South. East ruffs and needs diamonds 3-2 with South holding the king and hearts 2-2 (North holding the king) or 1-3 if the singleton is the king in the North hand. Those East players nearly got their wish. As long as South does not return a trump when in with the K, the contract must fail. Those West players in 6 would not have enjoyed the sight of dummy at trick 1 even though dummy had a useful spade void. The lead was the A and declarer may well have been heard to exclaim:

“With what shall I ruff it, dear dummy, dear dummy?

With what shall I ruff it, dear dummy with what? "

"With a club, dear partner, dear partner, dearest partner.

With a club dear partner, dear partner, with a club."

"But you do not have any, dear dummy, dear dummy, dearest dummy.

Take a look dearest dummy, like Santa, you're all red!"  (with due apologies to Harry Belafonte, those who wrote the original version and Anna Kalma)

Yet, unless North led their singleton or switched to it after cashing their A, this slam is now cold.

Unaccustomed as I am … Winners at Rotorua Gary Foidl and a relaxed looking Yuzhong accept their prize hams from newly appointed Rotorua life member Heini Lux (aka the "santa director").

We are very pleased to get another three local club directors qualifying after the latest round of exams. Ella Gray, Phil Thompson and Nick Cantlon will provide a boost for the club director numbers in our region (however, Tournament Directors are still very rare).  Taupo is planning on running a series aimed at new directors in January which they have opened up to anybody interested.  And the Waikato Bays are hoping to arrange further director seminars in 2017. So keep an eye on when these are happening. Budding Director?  We need you!

At the recent Inter-provincials in Dunedin, the Waikato Bays team arrived home full of praise for the hospitality put on by the Otago club.  Our intermediate team of Bruce Ballard, Hattie Curtis, Mark Thomson and Jeffrey Chang were the pick of our bunch coming home in second place and also faring well on the datums in 3^rd and 4^th place.  

Finally, the Hamilton Bridge club farewelled one of their Grand Masters, club directors and all round nice guys Mike Barton, who succumbed to his battle with cancer last week.   Mike will be remembered for a lot of things at the bridge table and can include in his legacy the NOTRAB (or Barton backwards) defence to 1NT ….  Mike’s bridge partner Karen Harris describes the convention;

The Notrab defence to 1NT (or maybe we can call it "Barton" now!):

• Double  Penalties
• 2       one or both majors.  Advancer bids 2 if they prefer hearts, or 2 if they prefer spades.  Overcaller can then pass or correct as appropriate. 
• 2     Ideally a 4441 shape with the shortage in one of the majors.  Not a minor, because then you'd have both majors and could bid 2.  Some people have been known to stretch it a bit to a 4432 shape but Mike is not responsible for any bad boards resulting from that!
• 2     4+ hearts and 5+ of a minor
• 2     4+ spades and 5+ of a minor
• 3/3  natural

 

We will miss Mike at the bridge table and extend our condolences to Cherie and their families.

 

Mike and Cherie

On behalf of the Waikato Bays Regional Committee, we hope the bridge community has a great Christmas shared with family and friends and we look forward to seeing many of you at the Thames Summer Festival in January to kick off 2017. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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