On the Move

Your Humble Correspondent has been a little preoccupied with domestic matters over the past few weeks, as I am shortly about to move house. Biritch the Russian Blue is not at all happy about this state of affairs, as not only did I bully him into substituting for me in a couple of events, but I have also told him that he must downsize his collection of trophies – not only cups and medals, but also a large number of rats, mice and other unsavoury beasties.

Tournament Winners

Nonetheless, a few tournament reports for you, plus a little “goss”. Auckland’s Waitangi Day event attracted its usual huge field, this year 50 pairs, and provided a win for player of the month John Wang with William Liu. Also at the Auckland Club, the Bell-Taylor Pairs was won by Neil Beckett and Susan Rowe. Sadly, they disqualified themselves on gender grounds for the two other trophies on offer, namely the Men’s Bruce Bell Trophy won by Yuzhong Chen and Herman Yuan, and the Women’s Eileen Taylor Trophy, which went to Rosemary Matskows and Heather Salmons. Up in Orewa, the regular pairing of Alan Dormer and Anthony Hopkins walked off with the spoils; and congratulation to Alan on his election as the new Chairman of NZ Bridge. Yuzhong and Herman also won the Papakura Open Pairs, with the corresponding Intermediate event going to See-Lin Lee and Prem Soundranayagam. Finally, the Howick Swiss Pairs event (and I delighted to see more of these events coming on stream) provided a “Hah!” moment for Julie Atkinson in partnership with Jan Ashwell, as they overtook Patrick Carter and Bruce Wright in the final round.

Our 2017 Internationals.

The major event in the region was of course the North Island Teams, won at a canter by the team of Michael Ware, GeO Tislevoll, Michael Whibley and Matthew Brown. This event also served as the second trial event for the New Zealand teams to represent us in the  Pacific Asia Bridge Federation Championship in Seoul, and the World Championships in Lyon, France. Auckland is very well represented in these teams; congratulations and good luck to all players selected.

The Auckland internationals are in the Open Michael Cornell- Ashley Bach, Michael Whibley- Matthew Brown, Michael Ware- GeO Tislevoll. In Women's events, there will be Steph Jacob - Susan Humphries (yes, she is still an Akarana Club member), and Linda Cartner- Glenis Palmer and in the Seniors, Bob Grover- Eileen Horsman, Neil Stuckey- Barry Palmer and with due modesty, Douglas Russell. The Akarana Club can claim 13 internationals this year over these three categories.

North Island Teams

Of course, the North Island Teams provided a large number of entertaining stories and incidents, and Richard Solomon has provided some examples of these.

 

Hand 16 from Match 4 provided probably the biggest swings of the day, with scores ranging from +590 to North-South making 4♠ doubled to +1660 to East-West for 6♥ doubled. Biritch was one of those to earn the latter score; the only potential problem on the hand is locating the ♦J (South was marked with the ♦ A from the bidding), but this was no worries for our feline hero after North had shown a weak hand with 6 spades, a doubleton heart, the stiff ♣K, and therefore 4 diamonds.

" The Nelson Coup"

Finally, a little aside from the South Island Teams, superbly hosted by the Nelson Club; although strictly speaking this is outside my territory, one could have been forgiven for supposing one was in "JAFA" land from the number of Auckland-based players at Nelson Airport after the event.

Anyway, my redoubtable partner Chris Ackerley and I were defending a contract of 1NT played by your Esteemed Editor, with Gary Chen looking on with interest as dummy. At some stage, I was on lead and was in a position to return partner’s suit; in order to give him a steer in defence once he had cashed his tricks, I first cashed the ♠ K from a holding of AKJ, knowing that I was sitting over declarer’s ♠ Q. I then changed suit to diamonds, a suit in which partner was well stacked , but after correctly ducking the first round, he forgot to win the next trick  with his A.; apparently he had not noticed my signal. In honour of the location, and also the famous quote attributed to Admiral Lord Nelson, we have christened this "The Nelson Coup", as in “I see no signal”.

The "Admirable" Chris Ackerley

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