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Seven North Islanders headed to Dunedin for this year’s South Island Pairs andt two of them returned home with the title. It did not look that way when after the first of the four rounds, Clair Miao (Auckland) and Wayne Burrows (Palmerston North) scored only 46% to be way off the pace, 15% behind the early leaders, Pavla Fenwick and Max Morrison.

They improved to 61.67% in the afternoon but only closed the gap on Pavla and Max by 2%. At the half-way point, Pavla and Max had a 10% lead over Michael Ware- Glenn Coutts, followed by Graeme Stout- Jeff Miller and then Clair and Wayne. Sam and James Coutts returned the highest score of the day, 64.4% to move up to 7^th.

Day 2 saw a repeat of the good movement of three boards against every other pair in the field (an advantage of the very small 10 table field). Clair and Wayne continued their improvement to score 64.63% (the highest session score of the event), and close the gap by a further 6% on Max and Pavla who still led by 6.5%.

However, the last round was not good for the leaders, only 42.80%, opening the gate for Clair and Wayne. Needing just 50%, they scored 58.23% to win by 8.93%.

South Island Pairs winners, Clair Miao and Wayne Burrows

You need some luck along the way with the following hand demonstrating what can happen when a declarer runs their long suit:

 

Against 3NT by South, the lead of a high club appears to spell disaster for South who has only 8 tricks without losing the lead. Clubs could break 4-4 in which case giving up a diamond trick will give declarer nine tricks. Not today, though. South’s “long suit” is only four cards long (spades) but look at the trouble West is in to find three discards. Two low hearts…and then? Some threw a third heart though that or a club discard gave South at least 9 tricks. What chance East had J and that West could throw a diamond honour…and still beat the contract? Against Clair and Wayne, South played for clubs 4-4, scoring just 1 mp out of 18.

Two slams were very helpful for the winners:

 

3 was game-forcing with 4+ spades and the redouble showed a club shortage. The defence just took their A which is more than they (different opponents) got on this deal:

 

2NT showed 18-19 with Clair not bothering to rebid her “holey” suit. “If you have hearts held, my holding will help!” South believed the opposition not their partner (perhaps wise if that overcall is typical!) and led a diamond. Wayne soon had all of the tricks and all of the match-points.

On the three deals above, Max and Pavla also beat 3NT, bid 6 but failed to find a heart lead to hold the other 6 to 12 tricks.  

Clare was to comment afterwards that she would return to Dunedin if only for the lovely food that was provided. They showed that you can recover from a very poor start in an event of this length.

Final placings:

1. Clair Miao	Wayne Burrows	231.23%
2. Pavla Fenwick	Max Morrison	222.30%
3. Russell Dive	Moss Wylie	219.71%
4. Graeme Stout	Jeff Miller	218.62%
5. Jenny Wilkinson	Shirley Newton	215.25%

 

Richard Solomon

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